Paris in the Twentieth Century Page 13

  Gabrielle had also been reworked, the State having been concerned to spare the feelings of lawyers' wives in some circumstance or other; Julien was about to abandon hearth and home for his mistress, when his wife, Gabrielle, came to him and so vividly described the horrors of a life of infidelity that he abjured his crime for the highest moral reasons, ultimately invoking the family pieties, in words of plaintive address: "O mother of my family, O poet, I love you!"

  This play, entitled Julien, was actually crowned by the Académie-Française.

  Discovering the secrets of this great institution, Michel felt his talents dissolve; yet he had to earn his keep and was soon assigned a considerable task: he was to rework Nos Intimes by Sardou.

  The wretch sweated blood; he saw the situation clearly between Madame Caussade and her friends, those envious, selfish, and debauched women; he supposed that he could replace Dr. Tholozan by a midwife, and in the rape scene Madame Maurice could keep Madame Caussade's bell from ringing... But the denouement! The impossible denouement! No matter how hard he tried, he would never manage to work it out so that Madame Caussade would be killed by that famous fox! He was obliged to give it up and confess his failure.

  When the Director learned this result, he was quite disappointed, and it was decided try the young man in the Division of Drama; perhaps he would turn out to have some abilities in this line. After fifteen days of employment in the Grand Entrepôt Dramatique, Michel left the Division of Comedy for that of Drama, which included both historical and modern plays. The former included two sections, quite distinct from each other: one in which actual history was transcribed into the works of good authors; the other in which history was outrageously falsified and denatured, according to this axiom of a great nineteenth-century playwright: History must be raped if she is to bear a child. And she was made to bear any number, who themselves bore no resemblance to their mother!

  The chief specialists of historical drama were the employees assigned to curtain lines and dramatic effects, especially those of the fourth act; they were handed the situation roughly sketched out and managed to shine it up in no time; also much valued in this Division was the employee assigned to the Grand Tirade, known as the Grandes Dames Special.

  Modern Drama included plays in formal dress and those in everyday clothes, even overalls; occasionally the two genres combined, but the administration frowned on such mesalliances, which disturbed the employees' habits and made them far too liable to put in a dandy's mouth the language of a day laborer. And that would have encroached on the specialty of the argot expert.

  A certain number of employees were assigned to murders and assassinations, to poisonings and rapes; one of the latter was unrivaled for getting the curtain down at the last possible moment; a second late and the actor, if not the actress, risked being seriously embarrassed. This expert, a good fellow moreover, about fifty years old, father of a family, paid about twenty thousand francs, honorable and honored, had worked variations on this one rape scene for thirty years, with a matchless sureness of touch.

  For his first effort in this Division, Michel was assigned the complete reworking of the drama Amazampo, or the Discovery of Cinchona, an important play which had first been performed in 1827.

  The task was considerable: he had to transform the play into an essentially modern work, an undertaking considerably hampered by the discovery of cinchona, which rather dated matters.

  The employees assigned to this project were all at their wits' end, for the work was in very poor condition. Its effects were so worn, its devices so stale, and its construction so weakened by a long retirement in the stacks, that it would have been easier to write an entirely new play; but the administration's orders were incontrovertible: the State wanted to remind the public of this important discovery at a period when periodic fevers were ravaging Paris. Hence the play had to be revised to satisfy contemporary tastes.

  The employees' talent and experience prevailed: the thing was a tour de force, but poor Michel counted for nothing in its success; he had contributed not the smallest idea, nor was he able to exploit the situation; he manifested no talent whatever in such matters, and he was declared incompetent.

  A report that was anything but complimentary was sent to the Director, and it was determined, after a month of Drama, that Michel was to move down to the third Division. "I'm good for nothing, " the young man moaned; "I have neither imagination nor wit! But all the same, what a way to write plays!"

  And he despaired, cursing this organization and forgetting that collaboration in the nineteenth century contained in germ the entire institution of the Grand

  Entrepôt Dramatique. Here it was merely collaboration raised to the hundredth power.

  Michel thus descended from Drama to Vaudeville. Here were collected the funniest men in France; the clerk in charge of rhyming couplets competed with the clerk in charge of punch lines; the section of naughty situations and of blue wisecracks was occupied by a most agreeable young man; the Department of Puns functioned to perfection. Moreover there was a central office of jokes, witty repartee, and preposterous phrases; it fulfilled all the needs of the service in all five Divisions; the administration tolerated the use of a funny line only if it had not been used for at least eighteen months; according to regulations, clerks incessantly ransacked the dictionary and collected all the terms, Gallicisms, and special phrases which, diverted from their usual meaning, produced an unexpected effect; at the company's last inventory, it reported an accumulation of seventy- five thousand plays on words, one quarter of which were entirely new and the rest still presentable. The former, of course, were more expensive.

  Thanks to this economy, and this accumulation, the products of the third Division were excellent. When Michel's lack of success in the upper divisions was learned, he was deliberately assigned to an easy role in the confection of vaudevilles; he was not asked to think up new ideas or to invent clever lines; he was provided with a situation and his task was merely to develop it. His first job was a curtain raiser for the Palais- Royal theater; the piece exploited a situation still fresh in the theater and full of the surest effects. Sterne had already sketched it in Chapter Seventy-three of Book Two of Tristram Shandy, in the episode of Phutatorius.

  The mere title indicated the premise; the play was called Button Up Your Trousers!

  It may readily be observed how much humor could be drawn from that piquant position of a man who has forgotten to satisfy the most imperious requirement of masculine habiliment. The terrors of his friend introducing him into a salon of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the embarrassment of the mistress of the house, added to the skill of the actor who was able to play on the audience's fear that at any moment... And on the hilarious terror of the ladies who... Here was the substance for an enormous success! [Author's Note: This play was performed some months later and earned a lot of money. ] Yet Michel, at grips with this highly original idea, was horror-stricken and actually ripped to shreds the scenario which had been entrusted to him. "Bah!" he decided, "I shall not stay another minute in this charnel house! I'd rather starve to death!"

  And he was right! What would he have done? Sink to the Division of Operas and Operettas? Yet he would never have consented to write the mindless verses which the musicians of his day required. And if he sank even further to review, to pantomimes, to official occasions!

  But it would be better to be a scene shifter or a painter, and not a dramatic author, producing new stage sets, and nothing else! A great deal in this kind had already been accomplished, what with the advances in machinery—real trees rooted in their invisible crates had been brought onstage, whole flowerbeds, natural forests, and entire structures of stone were built in a few seconds. The ocean was represented with real sea- water, emptied each evening before the audience's eyes and renewed the next day!

  Did Michel feel capable of conceiving of such things? Did he have it in him to influence audiences, compelling them to leave the contents of their pocket-books in t
he theaters' coffers? No, a thousand times no! There was only one thing he could do, clear out of the place. And this he did.

  Chapter XV: Poverty

  During his time at the Grand Entrepôt Dramatique, from April to September, five long months of disappointments and disgust, Michel had not neglected his Uncle Huguenin nor his Professor Richelot.

  How many evenings were spent with one or the other, which he counted among the best of his life; with the professor he spoke of the bibliophile; with the bibliophile he spoke not of the professor but of his granddaughter Lucy, and in what terms, with what sentiments!

  "I have rather poor eyesight, " his uncle remarked to him one evening, "but I do discern, I believe, that you are in love with her!"

  "Yes, Uncle, madly in love!"

  "Love her like a madman, if you like, but marry her like a wise man, when..."

  "When... ?" Michel asked, trembling.

  "When your position in life enables you to do so; succeed for her sake, if not for yours!" To these words Michel made no reply but managed to conceal his rage.

  "But does Lucy love you?" his uncle asked him on another evening.

  "I don't know, " Michel answered. "How could I have any value in her eyes? There's really no reason on earth for her to love me!" And the evening this question was put to him, Michel appeared to be the most wretched man on earth.

  Yet the girl never once wondered whether or not this poor boy had a position in life! It never even occurred to her to wonder; gradually she grew accustomed to seeing Michel, to hearing him talk, to expecting him when he didn't come; the two young people spoke of everything under the sun, and the two old men put no obstacle in their way: why keep them from loving each other? They never talked of their love. They spoke of the future. Michel dared not broach the burning question of the present.

  "How I'll love you someday, " he would say, with a nuance which Lucy understood, a question of time which was not to be answered.

  Then the young man flung himself into all his poetical conceptions; he knew he was heard, was understood, and forthwith poured his every aspiration into this young girl's heart. He was truly himself when he was beside her; yet he wrote no verses to Lucy; he was incapable of that, for he loved her too authentically; he understood neither the affiliation of love and rhyme nor the possibility of subjugating his feelings to the requirements of a caesura.

  Yet, unbeknownst to him, his poetry was impregnated with his dearest thoughts, and when he recited verses to Lucy, she listened as if she had written them herself; they seemed to respond to some secret question which she dared ask no one.

  One evening Michel, looking at her carefully, said: "The day is coming. "

  "What day?"

  "The day when I'll love you. "

  "Oh!"

  And on other occasions, from time to time, he would repeat: "The day is coming. " Finally, one fine August evening: "It's come, " he said, taking her hand. "The day when you'll love me, " she murmured. "The day when I love you, " Michel answered. When Uncle Huguenin and Monsieur Richelot realized that the young people had reached this page of the book, they intervened.

  "You have read far enough, children; close the book. And you, Michel, now you must work for two. "

  There was no other engagement party.

  In this situation, as will be readily understood, Michel did not speak of his disappointments. When asked how things were going at the Grand Entrepôt Dramatique, he would answer evasively. This was not a satisfactory state of affairs; reality would have to be faced, and he had not yet acquired the habit.

  The old men saw no more than this; Lucy divined Michel's sufferings and encouraged him as best she could; but she showed a certain reserve herself, being one of the interested parties in the matter.

  Imagine then the young man's profound discouragement, his veritable despair when he found himself once more at the mercy of chance! There came a terrible moment when existence appeared to him in its true aspect, with all its fatigue, its disappointment, its irony. He felt poorer, unworthier, more useless than ever. "What is there for me to do in this world, " he agonized, "where I've not even been invited! I must leave!" The thought of Lucy held him. He went to see Quinsonnas, finding him packing a pathetically tiny trunk. Michel described his situation.

  "I'm not surprised, " Quinsonnas replied. "You aren't made for grand-scale collaborations. What are you going to do?"

  "Work on my own. "

  "Aha!" the pianist responded. "Then you'll stick it out?"

  "We'll see. But where are you going, Quinsonnas?"

  "I'm leaving. "

  "Leaving Paris?"

  "Yes, and more than that. It's not in France that French reputations are made today; it's foreign products we import, so I'm going to get myself imported. "

  "But where are you going?"

  "To Germany, to stir up those beer drinkers and pipe smokers. You'll hear about me!"

  "And you still have your Secret Means?"

  "Oh yes. But what about you? You're going to fling yourself into the struggle for existence, which is a good thing. Have you any money?"

  "A few hundred francs. "

  "Not much at all. Now here's a thought—you can have my place: the rent is paid for the next three months. "

  "But..."

  "I'd lose it if you didn't take it. I have a thousand francs saved up. Let's divide it. "

  "Never!"

  "Don't be stupid, my boy—I ought to give it all to you, and I'm dividing it. That's another five hundred francs I owe you."

  "Quinsonnas...," Michel stammered, tears in his eyes.

  "Tears! Well, why not? It's the obligatory stage business for a departure. Calm yourself—I'll be back. All right, give us a hug!"

  Michel flung himself into the arms of his friend, who had promised himself he would not be moved, and who fled in order not to break his promise. Michel remained alone. At first he was determined to inform no one of the change in his situation, neither his uncle nor Lucy's grandfather. There was no use burdening them with this additional worry. "I'll work, I'll write, " he repeated, in order to harden his resolve. "Others have struggled, when an intransigent age refused to believe in them. We'll see!"

  The next day he carried his few possessions to his friend's room and settled down to work. It was his hope to publish a book of useless but splendid poems, and he worked unremittingly, virtually fasting, thinking and dreaming, and sleeping only to dream some more. He heard nothing further about the Boutardins; he avoided streets where he would be likely to meet any of them, imagining that they might attempt to take him back! His guardian never gave him a thought, glad to be rid of a burdensome fool. Michel's only happiness, whenever he left his room, was to visit Monsieur

  Richelot. He emerged for no other purpose but came to his old professor's in order to steep himself in the contemplation of the girl, to drink from this inexhaustible spring of poetry. How he loved her! and, it must be confessed, how he was loved! This sentiment filled his existence, nor did he realize that anything else would be necessary in order to live. And yet his resources gradually melted away, though he paid no heed. A visit to the old professor in the middle of October greatly distressed him; he found Lucy sad and sought the reason for her melancholy.

  Classes had begun again at the Academic Credit Union; the subject of rhetoric had not been eliminated, it was true, but the end was approaching; Monsieur Richelot had only one student, and if he were to withdraw, what would become of the impoverished old professor? Yet just such an eventuality might occur from one day to the next, and the professor of rhetoric be dismissed. "I'm not concerned for myself, " Lucy said, "but I am worried about poor Grandfather!"

  "I'll be here, won't I?" Michel declared, but he spoke with so little conviction that Lucy dared not look at him. Michel felt a blush of helplessness rising to his face. And when he was alone: "I promised to be there— if only I can keep my promise! Onward—to work!" And he returned to his room.

  Many days
passed; many fine notions blossomed in the young man's brain and assumed delightful forms under his pen. Finally his book was done, if such a book can ever be said to be done. He entitled the poems Hopes, and indeed his pride required all his poetry in order still to hope.

  Then Michel began his great siege of the publishers; it is unnecessary to report the predictable scene which followed each of these harebrained attempts; not one publisher consented even to read his book; such was all his payment for his paper, his ink, and his Hopes.

  He returned in despair; his savings were dwindling to nothing; he thought of his professor; he sought manual labor, but everywhere machines were advantageously replacing human hands; there were no further resources; in another day and age, he might have sold his skin to some rich boy who wished to avoid conscription; such transactions were no longer possible.

  December arrived, the month when everything fell due, cold, mournful, dark, the month which ends the year but not one's sufferings, the month which is generally unwanted in most existences. The most terrifying word in the French language, misère, was inscribed on Michel's forehead. His shirts yellowed and gradually fell to pieces, like leaves from the trees at the beginning of winter, and there was no spring to make them grow again. He grew ashamed of himself; his visits to the professor became less frequent, and to his uncle as well; he reeked of poverty; he offered as excuses important work, even absences from the city; he would have inspired pity, if pity had not been banished from the earth in this selfish age.

  The winter of 1961-62 was particularly harsh; worse than those of 1789, of 1813, and 1829 for its rigor and length. In Paris, the cold set in on November 15, and the freeze continued uninterrupted until February 28; the snow reached a depth of seventy-five centimeters, and the ice in ponds and on several rivers a thickness of seventy centimeters; for fifteen days the thermometer fell to twenty-three degrees below freezing. The Seine froze over for forty-two days, and shipping was entirely interrupted.