Henri Duchemin and His Shadows Page 2

  Henri Duchemin knew that certain women spoke to men to ask for money, but he preferred not to think about it, remaining hopeful of some new experience.

  “Yes, what a sad Christmas Eve indeed!”

  He watched the door, afraid that his neighbor, Monsieur Leleu, would come in. If he did, he would sit down right there beside him and without a doubt take his place.

  “You must be bored, Monsieur.”

  “Oh, I am, but don’t be offended. If you knew how I’m suffering. I’d like so much to open my heart. I’m a stranger in your eyes. Be patient. I shall tell you the story of my life. It’s a very sad story.”

  He was so happy to be speaking that he seemed younger. He was sure he would be liked and this gave him confidence. He was about to go on when the woman burst out laughing:

  “Don’t be ridiculous. If you’re so unhappy, just kill yourself.”

  Henri Duchemin blushed. For a minute he tried to find a way to respond. When he could not, he got up and went out, his heart heavy with bitterness.

  The rain whipped his face, reviving him. Two rows of gas lamps converged at the end of an avenue. The heads of the passersby touched the fabric of their umbrellas.

  Kill myself! She’s out of her mind, he thought. The world is so cruel.

  His damp trousers clung to his thighs. His feet slid in his shoes that leaked even when the sidewalks were hosed down in summer. He saw nothing, not even the streams of rainwater swallowed up by the sewers with the gentle sounds of a small waterfall.

  At last he recognized a small recessed lot cluttered with tarred pipes where he often would come to watch the men at work while he warmed himself over a brazier.

  He had arrived home.

  The wind was so strong as he opened the door that it felt as if someone wanted to prevent him from going in.

  Henri Duchemin climbed the stairway slowly and then, once inside his room, gently closed the door so as not to wake Monsieur Leleu.

  When he lit the lamp, it revealed a disorder that surprised him—he had forgotten the housework had not been done.

  The items of furniture, with their shadow twins, seemed to touch one another. Icy air crept beneath the window, stirring the curtains. The damp blistered the ceiling plaster. The wallpaper flapped like old posters. The unmade bed was cold. When the wind rattled the door, the lock squeaked.

  “Kill myself, come now, she’s lost her mind!”

  To drive the woman from his memory, Henri Duchemin paced the room, counting his steps, elated to find the same number going and coming. He then noticed that his intake of breath was sharper when he faced away from the lamp.

  The shutters, unhinged by the wind, slammed so violently against the wall that he was afraid the neighbors would complain.

  He opened the window wide: the flame of the lamp flickered, the curtains rose behind him like ghosts, a tram ticket flew around the room.

  Across the street he saw a lit window and, through the blinds, a woman’s shadow gesticulating.

  Leaning out, his hair tangled in the wind, his hands blackened by the window sill, Henri Duchemin spied on this woman. He stood still and his eyes were so wide that his pupils seemed smaller in the middle of so much white.

  But the light went out. Hoping she would turn on a light at another window, he waited. The night was black. The wind, burrowing in his sleeves, chilled his body. The rain shimmered around a street lamp.

  He closed the window and, motionless in front of the only armchair, he saw women everywhere, in the depths of the walls, standing on his bed, languidly waving their arms. No, he would not kill himself. At forty a man is still young and can, if he perseveres, become rich.

  Henri Duchemin dreamed of supplicants, of owning houses, of freedom. But once his imagination had calmed down, it seemed the disorder of his room had grown, in contrast as it was with his reveries.

  A mirror in a bamboo frame reflected his face. He forgot everything and, talking to himself, gazed at his reflection to see what he looked like when he spoke.

  The flame was becoming so weak that now it lit only the table. It flickered on its wick. Suddenly it went out.

  Henri Duchemin, groping for matches, knocked over objects he did not recognize.

  Weary from searching, he sat in the armchair and closed his eyes so as not to see the darkness.

  The warmth from his body was slowly drying his clothes. He felt better. Soon it seemed to him that the floor was slipping away beneath his feet and that his legs were swinging in the void, like those of a child on a chair.

  He had been sleeping for a long time when he felt the heat of a flame on his cheek, a little like someone’s breath.

  He opened his eyes.

  Monsieur Leleu was beside him holding a lamp.

  Monsieur Leleu was a calm fifty-year-old man who lived in poverty. He was interested in the lives of criminals and always sided with the police. He read the local crime news but never detective novels because he felt uncomfortable reading tales of things that did not exist.

  “Are you asleep, Duchemin?”

  “No.”

  Monsieur Leleu set his lamp on the fireplace mantel. It continued to light the floor.

  “I need to speak with you, Henri.”

  Monsieur Leleu stroked his beard, honing it to a point.

  “Do you remember the woman in the café?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have to do what she told you.”

  “Kill myself?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think I must?”

  “Yes, because you are unhappy.”

  The rain, driven by the wind, relentlessly bombarded the windowpanes.

  “But I wouldn’t dare.”

  “Why not, Henri? I’ve brought you a rope. The slipknot has been made. You see, everything is ready. I’ll come back once you’re dead; that way, no one will suspect me.”

  Monsieur Leleu rose.

  “You’ll come back once I’m dead!”

  “Yes. I’ll wake the other tenants. Adieu. I’ll leave you the lamp; I’ll retrieve it later.”

  Monsieur Leleu went out without a sound.

  Left alone, Henri Duchemin rubbed his eyes, looked at the lamp and, realizing he wasn’t dreaming, wanted to write down his last thoughts. But he did not know what to say.

  Suddenly, either because he was afraid of dying or because he feared Monsieur Leleu would return, he decided to flee.

  He blew out the lamp, checking that the flame was really extinguished, and left.

  * * *

  Although Monsieur Leleu’s door was closed, Henri Duchemin walked on tiptoe.

  Outside, the cold air gnawed at a nerve in one of his teeth. The slope of the street made him want to run. The bubbles floating on the puddles did not burst because they did not move.

  Henri Duchemin walked through the faubourg. There were words written in chalk on the walls. A fence concealed an empty lot. Curtainless windows glinted like mica in the light from a lantern.

  A cabaret, painted in red, flooded a cul-de-sac with light. Shadows shifted on the panes still splashed with rain.

  Any passerby would have hesitated to enter this dive.

  Henri Duchemin, who on this night feared nothing, went in and sat down in the back like a regular.

  A few other customers were standing around, chatting with the female owner. She was washing glasses, her apron damp around her waist, her feet secure and dry on a duckboard.

  “What may I serve Monsieur?”

  “A glass of rum.”

  Henri Duchemin downed it like medicine.

  Then he drank beer, wine, liqueurs, and, since this was not his habit, he was drunk in an hour. Alcohol made him overemotional, and he grew worried at the idea that he could not pay for his drinks.

  Soon his thoughts became muddled. He blinked his eyes as if blinded by the sun. He no longer perceived the glistening of the counter or even the clinking of the bottles.

  Just then, despite his state, he not
iced a man dozing before him, his head on the table, his arms between his legs.

  Henri Duchemin could not believe his eyes. Thinking he was dreaming, he reached out and with a fingertip touched the sleeping man’s hair.

  The latter woke with a start. His eyelashes were sticky. He must still have been half-asleep because he searched for his handkerchief in all his pockets. Although he was unshaven and his hat had no hatband, he was wearing a detachable collar. He had enormous veins on his hands at the spot where one would kiss them.

  “A drink!”

  No doubt, like many people, he favored a drink when he woke up.

  As soon as the proprietress had brought him a bottle of wine, he swigged two glasses in a row.

  He smiled, trying to strike up a conversation.

  “What awful weather!”

  Henri Duchemin did not respond. He liked to chat, but distrusted strangers.

  The customers, realizing their conversation was not changing the world, left the establishment.

  The proprietress arranged her hair with her damp fingers. The two men observed each other.

  “Listen,” said the stranger.

  No word in reply encouraged him to continue.

  “Listen, I said.”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me your name.”

  Henri Duchemin did not know how to answer.

  He thought he would be weaker, exposed, if he placed himself at the mercy of this stranger by telling him his name but, taken by surprise, he did not have the presence of mind to invent a false one.

  Very quietly, as if he did not want to be heard, he said:

  “Henri Duchemin.”

  “Do you want to be my friend? Like you, I wouldn’t mind having a lot of money.”

  Indeed, Henri Duchemin did want to have a lot of money. Because he thought that this yearning could come only from a bold man, he was flattered that his tablemate had noticed. And so, even though this alliance seemed risky to him, he accepted.

  “But what is your name?”

  “I have no name.”

  “You have no name?”

  “I have one, but you don’t need to know it.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “Nothing. But from now on, we must act. Do you want to get rich, old pal?”

  “Yes, if possible.”

  When the proprietress came to serve them again, the man without a name took her by the waist.

  “Do as I do, then, Duchemin.”

  He would have been happy to do so if his strength had not been sapped by his timidity.

  “You mustn’t blush, young man,” said the proprietress as she pulled away from the man without a name.

  “Duchemin, I have important things to talk to you about. Pay attention.”

  “I’m listening, pal,” responded Henri Duchemin, determined to echo the familiarity of his interlocutor.

  “Would you like to be rich?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t just say ‘yes.’ Say ‘I’d love to.’”

  “I’d love to.”

  A customer, dozing off near the stove, gave a start. The moisture evaporating from his overcoat and shoes enveloped him in a transparent cloud. The proprietress, reading a novel, had trouble turning the pages.

  “Are you listening to me, Duchemin?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Between the life you’re leading and riches, which do you choose?”

  “Riches.”

  From a leaky faucet drops of water fell into a tub.

  “You choose riches.”

  “Yes.”

  “Congratulations! You are saved!”

  The man without a name drew close and took Henri Duchemin’s hand.

  “Are you brave?”

  “Yes.”

  Everything was motionless in the brightly lit room.

  “Good. In a little while, we’ll go into a house. A banker is to spend the night there.”

  “A banker?”

  “Yes. When he falls asleep, you...”

  The man without a name removed his hat so that the sweat on his forehead would not dampen the leather.

  “When he falls asleep, you...”

  “I...”

  “You’ll kill him.”

  “I’ll kill him?”

  “Yes...”

  Henri Duchemin felt dizzy, as if he had not eaten. His vision became blurry. The ceiling lamp and the bottles fell behind the counter then moved through the room.

  “You’ll enter his bedroom, the moon will light your way. You’ll just need to strike, and you’ll be rich.”

  “Help! Help!” cried Duchemin.

  The proprietress did not even raise her eyes.

  As for the other customer, he swayed on his chair, waking and falling back to sleep by turns.

  “You’ll buy clothes, Duchemin, new clothes.”

  Henri Duchemin took a deep breath. The warm air dried his teeth.

  “Shall we have a toast?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two cognacs, please!”

  The woman poured their drinks with small, careful gestures so that the glasses would not overflow.

  A minute later the two men headed for the exit. The trapdoor to the cellar trembled beneath their footsteps. The man without a name drew his mustache to his lips to suck up the last drops of cognac.

  “Good evening.”

  “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  We did not pay for our drinks, and she didn’t ask us for anything, thought Henri Duchemin.

  He wanted to share this thought with his companion, but he was afraid of appearing ridiculous.

  * * *

  It was raining again. Without exchanging a word, the two men, slipping wherever the sidewalk sloped, set out for the house about which the man without a name had spoken.

  Henri Duchemin was ambivalent. It seemed to him, in this street that belonged to everyone, that the murder would be more difficult to commit. In the end he realized he should not have accepted and, because it was too late now to get out of the deal, he was determined to flee. But either because he was waiting for the right time, or because he was afraid of the man without a name, he kept postponing the moment.

  Finally, at the sight of an empty lot, he ran away as fast as his legs would carry him. In order not to trip over a clod of earth or a stone, he raised his knees high, like a horse on parade. His tie floated behind him. Hollows and mounds followed one after the other beneath his feet, reminding him of the time when as a child he would jump from the top of a hillock the better to climb the next one.

  A stitch in his side forced him to stop running. Henri Duchemin was sluggish by nature, prone to stitches.

  Intoxicated by his freedom, his neck stiff, he wandered down a muddy path. Hedges with dead branches scratched his hands. The wind cut his breath short.

  A tin can he knocked over with his foot splashed his ankles as it toppled. Despite this, he felt like whistling, but the air came out of his lips as if out of a tube. He did not know how to whistle. So he sang the only song he knew by heart.

  “Duchemin!” cried a distant voice, one of those lone voices that can be heard in the woods on Sundays.

  He listened without breathing. He was afraid. He wanted to run. But his legs were shaking like they did during the war when he was a stretcher-bearer and had to carry a fellow soldier.

  “Don’t be afraid. It’s me.”

  It was the man without a name. So as not to frighten Henri Duchemin, he did not scold him. On the contrary, he told him he would have done the same thing in his place.

  The two men left the path and, on the sidewalk, treaded as if they had clubfeet, trying to unstick the mud from their shoes.

  Henri Duchemin, who had been too warm, was now trembling, which made him fear he was coming down with bronchitis. He no longer thought about running away; all he wanted now was a bed to sleep in.

  The two men wandered the streets for a full hour. Sometimes they stepped in a puddl
e and were splashed to the knees.

  These events had no importance in relation to what was about to happen.

  At last the man without a name stopped in front of a new house.

  “It’s here.”

  He rang. A window lit the street. Grumbling and the clattering of old slippers could be heard even outside.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me!”

  The lock clicked and the door opened. A light bulb fixed on the ceiling made the upper part of the foyer brighter. The man who had just opened the door was in shirtsleeves. You could tell from his hair and the blotches on one cheek that he had been sleeping.

  “Come in, follow me,” he said.

  He showed his guests into the dining room where, winter or summer, a basket of artificial flowers always sat on the sideboard. A white porcelain lampshade covered an electric lamp hanging motionless at the end of a wire.

  Henri Duchemin took off the overcoat that was numbing his shoulders and, more comfortable, his arms longer, he inspected his jacket for stains. They had disappeared.

  The man without a name lay down on a sofa with his feet hanging off so as not to dirty the red velvet. He shut his eyes and fell asleep.

  Henri Duchemin sat in a wicker armchair that creaked loudly even when he did not move, and blew on his hands. Eyes closed, he imagined his whole body bathed in warm breath. He felt his feet were cold and wet, but this did not bother him. His feet were so far from his body. Every now and then a car drove down the street, almost grazing the shutters.

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door.

  The man without a name got up like a passenger on a train who had been occupying two seats. Henri Duchemin, trying to find his bearings, did not understand what was happening.

  “Duchemin, he’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “The banker.”

  Yes, it was the banker. He was wearing an overcoat with a silk lining and holding a top hat in his hand. He came in, bowed in greeting, sat down in a chair, unfolded a newspaper, and studied the stock prices.

  The silence was marred only by the rustle of the large sheet of paper.

  Then the banker stood, motioned good-bye, and left the room.

  The two men who remained alone wore the scheming expression of servants who had just won the sympathy of their masters.

  “Follow me, Duchemin.”

  On tiptoe, one hand against the wall, they walked down the dimly lit hall.