The Town Below. Roger Lemelin
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“I just finished scrubbing one of those ceilings,” she said. “But look at the two bucks I got for it.”
“Don’t be telling us your troubles,” said big Jacques Langevin. “Listen.”
Gaston slipped a thin arm into the front of his shirt and handed Germaine an apple. “Eat it.”
Jean began his recital with that slight degree of exaggeration that expansive souls display in relating their first exploits. The Langevins interrupted him frequently, for they wished their leader to know that they too had been present. Denis was silent. His right eye was almost shut as if in mockery while the other held a reflective look.
Gaston, who did not understand all that was being said, kept his gaze fastened on Germaine’s chin, her hair, her bosom, and the holes in her stocking which afforded him a glimpse of the chapped flesh of her knees. Her face was beautiful, and her lids appeared to be drowsing above her eyes, which were young and full of life. They were like any other pair of eyes, except that they were neither blue nor grey nor black but a little of each. Her hair was faded-looking, and there were a few tarnished curls on the back of her neck, the remains of a permanent. At the corners of her thin lips a faint crease held a hint of derision: the narrow bed of a puny pride sapped by poverty. Germaine at eighteen was already old, having lost amid the mops she plied on other people’s floors that naive trust in happiness which is natural in the young. A glint of sunlight through a crevice in the roof played upon her face but was poorly reflected there owing to the dried perspiration and the grime which her features had absorbed. Beneath her rumpled, tight-fitting dress her bosom was suggestively outlined, and at sight of it Gaston’s big childlike eyes beneath his man’s forehead became so animated that one would have said the look in them was inspired by lust.
Jean was spreading his arms in declamatory fashion: “That’s just what she said to me: ‘Don’t tell anybody!’ And maybe you think she didn’t know how to talk.”
“She talked to us, too,” put in the Langevins. Denis kept silent.
“She’ll make a swell girlfriend for you, a young lady,” remarked Germaine.
At this insinuation, Denis sprang up showing his large, strong teeth; there was a gleam in his brown eyes and his face was savagely contorted.
“I was waiting for you to say that. There you are, parish love affairs again. That’s the way love gets you. Are you like all the others, then?” He turned to Jean: “And you, Colin, in love already, you who were bragging you could overcome it? Don’t you realize that it means the end of your freedom? Haven’t you noticed how the love of our parents has turned into kitchen wrangling?”
Jean blushed but said nothing. He was thinking of Lise and how she had asked him not to tell. The Langevins were protesting, their little eyes sparkling from among their freckles.
“You have to get married sometime or other. And besides, love is not always the fault of the girls!”
“Shut up, you idiots! Their charms are like glue. But I’m here to protect you, my lads.” Denis was particularly concerned with maintaining his domination over Jean, whose silence led him to believe that he was still in command. “I had faith in you,” he continued, “in a gang that would be independent of girls.”
“Those are fine words, I must say,” was Germaine’s admiring comment, “but Jean is old enough.”
“That’s no concern of yours!” Jean snapped, turning upon his sister. “This is a man’s affair.”
The dispute was interrupted by the arrival of Tit-Blanc Colin and Chaton, the worm vendor, who was Jean’s formidable rival in that business. Jean’s father was drunk and had his arm around his companion’s neck. Chaton made for the worm box and lifted the lid.
“They’re rather fat and sluggish,” he said, crushing a clod of earth with the gesture of a connoisseur. “You don’t have such an awfully large stock. For a lot of creepy worms like these I can offer you a couple of dollars.”
Jean looked him over contemptuously. “They’re not for sale. And what’s more, I can show you a thing or two, Chaton.”
Tit-Blanc solemnly raised his arm. “It’s no use, Chaton, old pal,” he said. “Those worms bring in too good money. They are bread and butter.” Slyly the drunkard made the rounds of the group, and then, suddenly, he snatched from Germaine’s hand the two-dollar bill she was twisting between her fingers.
He flourished it triumphantly as Germaine gave an anguished cry: “Father! That’s for my dress! My dress!” She burst into sobs.
With a sanctimonious smile on his lips, Tit-Blanc was about to put the money in his pocket when there came a hoarse growl. The drunkard’s arm being within reach of Gaston’s mouth, the invalid had sunk his sharp teeth into it. As his victim screamed, Gaston seized the banknote and, pantingly, handed it back to Germaine. He stood there at her side, the wraith of a man, trembling all over and scarcely knowing what he did; for this impulse to which he had yielded represented for him a week’s store of energy. “Don’t cry, Germaine, don’t cry.” And he ran his emaciated hand through the girl’s hair, lavishing upon her his invalid’s caresses, as feeble and faltering as his body. He was awkward at expressing his sympathy, for he had never forgiven himself his own sufferings.
Tit-Blanc, meanwhile, was sucking his bleeding wrist. Catching hold of Gaston’s collar, he jerked the lad violently toward him. “Damned hunchback! You’re going to pay for this!” But he had no sooner made a move in Gaston’s direction than Denis was upon him hammering him with both fists.
The elder Colin was a strong, stockily built man, and the two of them now rolled over on the floor as Grandfather Pitou, who had come up to see what the noise was about, shouted: “Give it to him Tit-Blanc! Let him have it in the belly — in the belly!”
Féda Colin, her hair standing up, dashed out of the kitchen, crying: “He’s drunk again! He’s spent all his pay once more!”
Bent over the fighting pair, Gaston anxiously followed the course of the struggle, indicating with wraithlike gestures what his brother should do to overcome his adversary.
“You bastard, I’ll kill you!” Tit-Blanc roared. Suddenly Denis got a firm hold under the older man’s head and began pounding his nose, and then Jean leaped on his friend’s back.
The fight was becoming a free-for-all when the door to the entryway opened and a grave voice rose above the din: “Is that the way you love one another?”
Abashed by the presence of the Abbé Charton, the participants in the fray fell apart. The priest, who rarely took sides in the rows of his parishioners, strode forward majestically, his eyes full of solemn dignity, his mouth quivering with sorrow.
“He struck Jamaine, he did,” said Gaston, pointing a finger at Tit-Blanc.
The Abbé laid a chubby hand on the drunkard’s hairy arm, and the elder Colin with religious unction suffered him to do so. The atmosphere was a ceremonious one, as at high mass. As for the lads, they were tired and were trying to find an excuse to leave. In the victoria, Charton and old man Pitou had begun a checker game.
Having examined Tit-Blanc’s wound, the Abbé Charton produced from the depths of his capacious pocket a box of adhesive tape, which formed a part of the worthy vicar’s ministerial equipment. Every morning, after mass and the reading of his breviary, he would stroll through the streets in search of minor injuries. He sought them out with a tranquil devotion, and the Mulots were good patients; he never missed one of their brawls, and his mouth would water at the sight of deep gashes. He felt that he was gradually becoming a physician of the poor in a cassock, a sort of Curé of Ars — but with an added distinction, that went without saying.
Each evening, at the hour when every good Christian was engaged in meditation, Oscar Charton would indulge his heart in dreams of heroism, yielding to grandiose reflections that had to do with the courage he displayed — a man of his station in life — in fulfilling the duties of his ministry.