Farewell, My Queen Black Moishe (short novels in english .txt) 📖

had complained after being accosted as she left her apartments by a group of miserable wretches whom her household servants had mercilessly thrashed, “a beggar will bring the plague into the château with him.” As for me, I sometimes felt that the plague was near at hand, whenever the usual smells of Versailles (strong smells, of course, but I had come to appreciate them) were augmented by the sickly, sugary odor of rotting flesh. Impossible to eradicate, because its source could not be traced, and intermittent, this stench would suddenly be there and as suddenly be gone. Gripped by a spasm of nausea, I would close my eyes. A dead body? at Versailles? That was specifically prohibited; there must be no corpse at the château unless the dead person was a member of the royal family . . . Despite which, yes, there was a dead body . . . I was not the only one to notice it, but no one spoke up . . . And then the stench would dissipate. It was at its worst only for a while . . . And now? Since there was no longer anyone to stop them, would the beggars come swarming into the château? Had they joined forces with the populace that was marching down upon us? I doubted it: the beggars constituted a distinct populace of their own.

THE VICTORS REJOICE

(about eight o’clock in the morning).

Around me, everything was silent and empty, hostile and threatening. I set off to seek refuge in my room. Perhaps I would read awhile, if I was unable to sleep, for I had reached a level of anxiety where it was unlikely that I would fall asleep. That was when I saw them: two doorkeepers, their persons in scandalous disarray. They had thrown their blue cloth jackets on the ground, and there, right under the windows of the Queen’s Bedchamber, in shirtsleeves, with a bottle of wine set down at their feet, they were jabbering away to each other. One was straddling a marble statue; the other, his back propped against the statue’s base, was putting a makeshift bandage over his hand. Together, the two were not talking—they were shouting. I was forced to stop: they were barring the way to my room. I ought to have turned around and used a different doorway. More to the point, I ought to have sent them packing, ordered them out from under the windows of the Queen’s Bedchamber, instead of staying there listening to them. There is a horrid fascination in hatred and vulgarity, in the thing that, some day or other, is going to swallow you up.

“Y’know what I did yesterday morning when the Duke de Richelieu came in?”

“No, what?”

“Nothin’.”

“You mean you didn’t stamp your foot twice while you announced in your loudest voice: His Excellency the Duke de Richelieu?”

“I didn’t let out a peep. The Duke stopped at the entrance to the salon and waited. Looked at me, he did. I di’nt say nothin’, I tell ya.” (He was bellowing, crazed with his own daring, his legs thumping against the statue.) “Duke and peer he may be, but I didn’t do nothin’. I didn’t move a muscle, I didn’t say a word. Anyhow, why announce him? He knows what his name is. I don’t care if he is an old wreck before his time. A degenerate, a rotten fruit of his father’s debauched loins, he still knows his own name. Your name is the last thing you forget. Isn’t that right, Boineau?”

“Moinel, stupid. My name is Sylvain Moinel.”

“See? Even you remember your name.”

“And don’t be so goddam smart! Why d’you have to poke fun at everybody? Isn’t the Duke de Richelieu enough excitement for you? I can supply you lots more like him. There’s no shortage.”

“Thanks, Boineau, I knew you were one of us.”

Although he had an injured hand wrapped in a bandage, the other man leaped up and punched his companion to make him fall. The one astride the statue held on and was about to hit back, but did not dare. He was inhibited by his partner’s injured hand.

“Okay, Moinel, it was just my little joke. My own name is Pignon, Chrétien Pignon. I didn’t mean no harm. If a guy can’t have a laugh these days, when will he? Hey! To celebrate the Bastille, and the freeing of the prisoners, and the processions and all that stuff, at home, the wife and me, we busted everything in the place. I mean, we wrecked everything. The bed, the table, clay pot, the tumblers. By the time we were done, there wasn’t nothin’ left but an iron pot, and we bashed her till she was all shrunk up. My wife was the one who threw it at the window so’s it split the paper apart.”

“You’re lucky to have a wife like that. She’s way more fun than mine. That Suzette, she’s always goin’ to church. She prays. She says turning ourselves into a republic is something that’s gonna have to be atoned for and it’s gonna be a long time, a real long time. Our children’s children will still be paying. What if she’s right? It gives me the creeps, it really does. Sending our children, and our children’s children, to roast in hell, are you prepared to do that?”

“You’re about as cheerful as your wife, for gosh’s sake! I never thought I’d see the day! . . . The day I refuse to greet a lord and peer. The day the world is ass over tit. Because that’s what a revolution is, after all. You take a thing, no matter what, and you turn it ass over tit.”

“No matter what, eh! In that case, a person might as well take a woman and a cutie to do what you’re talking about. That’s it, let’s do things in the right order here, let’s start by revolutioning a whore! But you haven’t told me what reaction you got from the present Duke de Richelieu.