The little city train to Naye had passed the Porte Maillot and was heading down the boulevard toward the banks of the Seine. The little car pulls a carriage at the head of the train and beeps its whistle to drive away pedestrians in the way. It was spewing steam, like a man running fast, out of breath, huffing and puffing. Its piston issued a fast-paced rattling sound, as if the iron legs of the train running. The sweltering heat of the summer evening enveloped the avenue, although there is not a breeze, the road is raised like chalk dust white dust, thick, choking and hot, but also clinging to the human skin, confuse people's eyes, and even drill into the human organs.
There are residents coming out of their homes to take a breath of fresh air.
The windows of the car were wide open, and the car was moving so fast that the curtains fluttered in the brisk wind. There were few passengers in the car, most of whom stayed on the top floor and the platform outside because of the sweltering heat. Some of the passengers were fat ladies dressed in tacky clothes, suburbanites who relied on pretense as a substitute for the elegance they lacked. The other passengers are civil servants who are tired of working in the office. Because of their long hours of work, their faces are yellow, their backs are hunched, and their shoulders are high on one side and low on the other. Their sad and haggard faces show that they have old people and young people, heavy burdens and financial constraints; they also show that their early hopes have been completely dashed, and now they have joined the ranks of the poor in tattered clothes. They settled in a field on the edge of Paris as a garbage dump, living in a dilapidated house painted whitewash, a flower bed in front of the door is even their own garden, the day, of course, is to live frugally, living in a tight situation.
Next to the door of the car, sat a short, fat man. He had bloated cheeks and a big belly that hung straight down to the fork of his legs. He was dressed in black, wearing a medal ribbon, and was chatting with a long, thin man. The man was unkempt, wearing a dirty white twill costume and an old Panama straw hat. The short, fat man spoke slowly, sometimes like a stutter, he was the Navy Department Chief of Staff, Mr. Karawang. The tall, thin man used to work as a hygienist on a merchant ship, and then settled near the Gulbova Rotunda, where he used his shallow knowledge of medicine after a lifetime of wandering to treat the poor people of the area to make ends meet. His last name was Schenai, and he was called "Dafu". There are many rumors about his character.
Mr. Kalawan lived the life of a civil servant. For three decades, he went to the office every morning, walked the same road, at the same time, the same place, met the same group of office workers, and in the evening after work, still walked the same road, met the same group of eyes to see the aging face.
Every morning, at the end of the street in the San Onore district, he buys a newspaper for one sous and two buns, then walks into the ministry building with the demeanor of a criminal who has turned himself in. He hurried to his office, terrified, always fearing that he would be reprimanded for any negligence in his work.
This monotonous routine of his life never changed much, for he cared for nothing except the affairs of the office, except promotions and bonuses. Once upon a time, he couldn't care less about dowry and married a colleague's daughter. For a long time, he talked only about official business, both in the ministry and at home. What little brain he had, had long since atrophied in the dull routine of the office, and nowadays he had no more plans, hopes and dreams other than those related to the ministry. However, although he was content with his career as a civil servant, it was always mixed with a bitter sense of disappointment because some naval quartermasters, who had a few white stripes on their uniforms and were known as "white blacksmiths," were transferred to the ministry as soon as they were made deputy chiefs or chiefs of sections, a fact which both he and his wife were indignant about. Every day at dinner, he argued and listed all kinds of reasons to prove that the Parisian official position so easily given to those who should be sailing on the sea, from any point of view, is extremely unfair.
The time has passed, and without realizing it, he has grown old. In the early years, since he left the school gate, he went straight into the government office, and the school superintendent whom he trembled at the sight of in school was later replaced by his boss whom he was scared to death of. As soon as he arrived at the door of those office tyrants, he shivered all over. As a result of being in such a state of fear and anxiety for a long time, he also formed the habit of behaving in a lewd and ridiculous manner, and when he saw people, he would be uneasy and lower his voice, and when he spoke, he stammered nervously.
He knew very little of Paris, no more than the blind man who was led by his dog to beg on the same doorstep every day. He had read some social and erotic news in one of the Sue's tabloid newspapers, but thought it was pure fabrication, for the amusement of the small staff. He has always been law-abiding, a conservative without distinctive views, but still has a strong hatred for "new things". He skipped all political news in the newspaper. But, then again, the tabloids, when reporting on this subject, always distorted the facts for the benefit of one or another of their paymasters. Every evening, he walked home along the Champs-Elysées, looking at the bustle of pedestrians and traffic like a traveler from a distant land.
This year, Mr. Carawan's thirty years of service expired. On January 1, he received a Legion of Honor medal for it. In this militarized institution, it was known that such rewards were bestowed on document slaves bound to green leather files after a long period of miserable servitude, or "dedicated service". This unexpected honor impressed him with a higher opinion of his own talents, and at the same time revolutionized his daily habits. From then on, he no longer wore mixed-color pants and unorthodox tops, but changed into a black dress and pants, so as to match and complement the wide ribbon of the medal. At the same time, he shaved every morning, meticulously manicured his nails, and changed his shirt every other day. In short, in the blink of an eye, Kara Wang is like a new man, neatly dressed, full of vigor but easy and modest, and all of this, he is out of respect for the country's "Order of the Legion of Honour", out of a kind of reasonable spirit of community, knowing that he himself is a member of the group ah!
At home, he likes to talk about "my medals". His pride was so great that he could not tolerate any other medals on his buttonhole, and he was even more incensed by foreign medals, thinking, "They should never have been allowed to be worn in France." He was particularly disgusted with the "doctor" Chenet, whom he met every evening on the train, and who always wore a medal ribbon, white or blue, yellow or green, I can't say what it was.
From the Arc de Triomphe to Na?, the two of them talked about much the same things. The day began, as usual, with talk of the ills of the region, all of which they both abhorred, but to which the district governor turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. Then Calawan turned the conversation to disease. It was natural to travel in the company of a doctor, and he counted on being able to pick up some free advice and guidance in small talk, which, as long as it was done without traces and with skillful questioning, might amount to a diagnosis. Besides, he had lately been very anxious about his mother's health. She often fainted and woke up only after a long time. She was in her nineties, and she refused to seek medical attention.
Mother is dying, Kara Wang to talk about the need to be very emotional, he repeatedly said to the "doctor" Shenai: "You can often see such a high life?" He rubbed his hands together with joy, not necessarily because he wished that his mother would live forever, but because her longevity was an omen that he himself would live a long life.
He went on:
"Haha, everyone in our family lives a long life, and therefore I am sure that, if nothing happens, I shall live to be very old."
The old hygienist cast a pitying glance at the companion beside him, then surveyed the other's red-faced face, his fat neck, his belly hanging down over his two fleshy thighs, and his rounded, stroke-prone physique, and then lifted up the gray Panamanian straw hat clasped on his head, and with a heated smile replied, "Not really, man. Your mother's body is dry and thin, while you are as fat as a leather ball." Karawang was so embarrassed that he didn't say a word.
Then the train arrived. The two companions got off. Mr. Schnee suggested that they go across the street to the Globe Café, which they frequented, and buy Callaway a glass of absinthe. The owner, who knew them well, held out two fingers across the bottle on the counter, which they shook, then walked over to see the three card players who had been playing dominoes there since noon. There was a warm exchange of greetings, and the usual "what's the news" inquiries. Then the fans went back to their game. When the two said goodbye, they didn't look up, just put their hands out, they shook hands, and went home for dinner.
Karawang lives in a small three-story building near Gulbova Square, with a barbershop downstairs.
His residence contained two bedrooms, a dining room, and a kitchen, and several repaired chairs had to be moved around in several rooms as needed. Almost all of Mrs. Callawan's time was spent cleaning rooms. Her daughter, Marie-Louise, 12, and her son, Philippe Auguste, 9, spend their days in the mud puddles down the street, romping and playing with the neighborhood's urchins.
Calawan's mother is housed upstairs. She was known in the neighborhood for being cheap, and she herself was so thin and scrawny that it was said that God had applied all of his old man's own principles of careful budgeting to her. She was very bad-tempered, and not a day went by that she didn't quarrel with someone and lose her temper. She yelled out of her window at the neighbors who stood in front of her house, at the vegetable vendors, the scavengers & the children. The children, in retaliation, followed her far behind as she went out of the house, shouting, "Old--demon--spirit, old--demon! ---spirit!"
The family hired a maid who specialized in household chores. She was a short Norman and incredibly careless. She slept on the third floor, right next to the old woman, just in case anything happened to the old man.
When Callawan returned home, his cleanliness-obsessed wife was wiping down with a piece of facecloth the mahogany chairs that were scattered across several empty rooms. She always wore wire gloves, a cap on her head, colorful ribbons on the cap, now and then slipped to one ear, she always waxed ah, wipe ah, wash ah, brush ah, whenever she was bumped into, she always said: "I'm not a rich man, my home furnishings are very simple, my luxury is cleanliness, which can be no less important than other kinds of luxury. "
She was born a truthful and stubborn person, and she gave orders to her husband in matters big and small. Every night, first at the dinner table and then in bed, the two couples chattered about the office. Although he was 20 years older than his wife, he told her everything, as if he were a priest making confession, and had to follow her advice in the world.
Mrs. Callaway has never been pretty; she was short and thin, but now she is ugly. It was her fault for not being able to dress well; if she had dressed properly, her very limited feminine features could have been subtly emphasized, but now they were lost to her own impropriety. Her dresses were always worn crooked and twisted to one side. She also loved to scratch and claw at her body, no matter what the place or occasion, a habit that had become a quirk. At home she usually wore a floppy hat with a large cluster of silk ribbons, which she felt was the only dress that suited her, and thought herself beautiful that way.
As soon as she saw her husband return, she rose at once, kissed him on the cheek-beard, and said:
"Do you still want to go to Botan's department store, my dear?" He originally promised his wife to go to the store for her to do a thing, this is the fourth time to forget everything. When his wife asked, he was so shocked that he fell back in his chair. He said, "It's too bad, I've been thinking about it all day, but it's no use, I've forgotten it in the middle of the day." Seeing that he looked very sad indeed, his wife said soothingly, "Just don't forget it tomorrow. Why, isn't there any news from the ministry?"
"How could there not be? Another white blacksmith has been appointed deputy section chief."
His wife's expression snapped to solemnity: "Which section?" "The foreign procurement section."
The wife was immediately furious: "So, it's Ramon's replacement? That's exactly the position I want you to have. Where's Ramon? Is he retired?"
Caravan replied numbly, "He retired."
The wife flared up, the fedora on her head slipping over her shoulders, and she let out her anger, "It's over, see, this hellhole, and now there's no hope at all. What was the last name of that quartermaster you spoke of?"
"Bonasso."
She took the Naval Almanac, which she had stored in her hand, and brought it over for a check, reading, "Bonasso. --Colonel. --Born in one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one. --Quartermaster Trainee in 1871, Assistant Quartermaster in 1875."
"Has he ever been to sea?"
Calawan's indignation at the question subsided, and a smile sprang to life that went straight to his heart. He replied, "The same as Balaam, exactly the same as his superior, Balaam." Then, letting loose a laugh, he told the joke that everyone in his ministry found wonderful: "Send them both to inspect the Dawn Military Harbor, and don't take the water; they'll get seasick even if they take a small fireboat."
But the wife remained stone-faced, seemingly deaf to the joke. After a few moments she scratched her chin slowly and muttered, "If only I knew a member of parliament, the minister has to step down once parliament learns about all this going on in the ministry ......"
A loud noise from the stairway interrupted her words . Marie-Louise and Philippe Auguste were returning from a mud pit in the street. The siblings were slapping me and kicking you at every step up. Enraged, their mother rushed over, grabbed both of them by the arms, shook them vigorously, and pushed them into the house as soon as they could.
The two children immediately pounced on their father. The father lovingly wrapped his arms around them and kissed them, then, sat them on his lap and talked to them.
Philippe Auguste was an ugly child, with matted hair like a pile of weeds, dirty from head to toe, and a silly face. Marie-Louise looked like her mother and talked like her mother, loved to repeat her words and even imitated her gestures. The little girl asked the same question, "Is there any news from the ministry?" The father, on the other hand, answered quickly and cheerfully: "My girl, your friend Ramon, the gentleman who comes to dinner every month, will soon be leaving us, and a new deputy head of the department will take his place." The little girl raised her eyes to her father and said in that sympathetic tone of a precocious child, "So another one is stepping on your back to climb up the ladder."
The father put away his smile without answering, then digressed to ask his wife, who was cleaning the glass window:
"How's Mom doing upstairs?"
Mrs. Calawan stopped, turned around, righted the fedora that had slipped down her back, and said with a quivering lip, "Hmph! Well, let's talk about your mother, she really gave me a good look! You see, Mrs. Le Bodin, the barber's wife, came upstairs to borrow a packet of starch from me, and just as I was going out, your mother called her a 'beggar,' and threw her away. I came back and gave the old woman a hard time. As usual, she pretended to be deaf and dumb when people talked about her faults, but in fact, she didn't seem to be any more deaf than I was, did she? She's just pretending. I have a good reason for saying that. She didn't say anything at the time, and immediately gambled upstairs to her room."
Calawan was embarrassed and silent. At that moment, the maid came running to inform that the meal was ready. So, Carawan picked up a broom handle hidden in the corner and stabbed it three times into the ceiling, informing his old mother to come downstairs for the meal. Then, everyone came into the dining room, and Mrs. Kara Wang divided the soup and waited for the old lady to come down. However, after waiting until the soup was cold, they didn't see her come down, so they had to eat slowly first. When each person's soup was finished, they waited again. Mrs. Karawang was impatient, she was really angry, so she took it out on her husband: "You see, she is intent on making trouble, but you are always favoring her." Calawan was in a dilemma and had no choice, so he sent Marie-Louise to ask her grandmother to come, while he himself sat there without moving, with his eyes downcast. His wife, for her part, huffed and puffed and kept tapping the foot of her wine glass with the tip of her table knife.
The door burst open and the little girl, alone, came running back, white-faced and alarmed, saying, "Grandma's fallen on the floor!"
Calawan jumped up at once, threw his napkin on the table, and ran out, the stairs ringing with the sound of his tom-tom footsteps. His wife, deciding that her mother-in-law was playing a trick, shrugged contemptuously and followed slowly up the stairs.
The old woman slumped upright in the center of the room. Her son turned her over on her back, only to see that her face was senseless and expressionless, her skin yellow and wrinkled all over, her eyes closed, her teeth clenched, and she didn't move a muscle, that dry, thin body had stiffened.
Karawang knelt beside her, whimpering: "My poor mother! My poor mommy!"
But his wife scrutinized him for a moment, and said confidently, "Come on, there's nothing wrong with him, he's just passed out again. Needless to say, it just doesn't want us to have dinner!"
The husband and wife lifted the old lady to the bed, took off her clothes, plus the woman, all together to give her a massage, after half a day's hard work, but still do not see her wake up. So, they sent the woman Rosalie to go to ask Shennai "doctor". He lived by the river, near Suresnes, a long way away, and waited a long time before he arrived. He examined him, took his pulse, patted the old woman, and declared loudly, "The man is not going to make it!"
Karawang threw himself on top of his mother and bawled his eyes out, crying so hard his whole body shook. He desperately kissed his mother's stiff face, and large tears, like rain, fell in droves on the dead man's face.
Mrs. Calawan's attack of grief was moderate and proper, and she stood behind her husband, weeping softly and rubbing her eyes with her hands.
Calawan's face swelled wider, his thinning hair was all disheveled, and his grief made his countenance look hideous. He stood up violently and said, "Really ...... doctor, are you sure ...... you are absolutely sure? ......"
The hygienist rushed over to him, and with the skillful movements of a connoisseur he fiddled with the body, like a merchant boasting of his wares, and said, "Here, man, look at the eyeballs." He flipped open the old woman's eyelids, and the eye that showed under his fingers looked unchanged, except that the pupil seemed a little larger.
Karawang's heart was cut to the core, and he was so frightened that he went limp. The "doctor" first grabbed the old woman's arm, which had already shrunk in muscle, and broke her fingers, and said to him, as if he were facing a man who was trying to raise his hand, "Look at this hand, and don't worry, I won't be able to miss anything.
Calawan threw himself on the bed again and rolled around, crying like a cow wailing. At that moment, his wife pretended to be still sobbing while she did what she had to do. She moved the nightstand over, laid a tablecloth, put four candles on it, and when she had lit them, she took a boxwood branch from the mantelpiece that hung behind the mirror and set it on a plate between the four candles. What if there was no holy water, the fresh water that filled the plate would do. However, after a moment's consideration, she pinched a pinch of salt and put it into the water. No doubt, she thought that with this, she had completed the dying puja.
After she had set up the hearth, she stood still. The hygienist, after helping her with this and that arrangement, reminded her in a low voice, "Mr. Karawang should be pulled away." She nodded her head in agreement and walked over to her husband, who had been kneeling and weeping bitterly, and took an arm with Mr. Scheiner to help him up.
The two men first helped him sit in a chair. The wife kissed him on the forehead, and then she talked him up. The hygienist also helped. They advised him to recognize the fate of God, to be sad and self-possessed, to be strong, not knowing that they prescribed these medicines, which are difficult to be digested by people who are in great sorrow and pain. So the two men took him up again and led him out.
He was huffing and puffing like a fat child, his body limp, his arms drooping, his legs weak. He followed them down the stairs, but was blissfully unaware of what he was doing, just taking mechanical steps.
They helped him to sit in the same chair in which he usually ate his meals, and on the dining table stood the almost empty soup tureen, the spoon still immersed in the soup. He sat motionless in the armchair, his eyes staring straight into his glass, his mind blank.
Mrs. Kalawan was in the corner talking to Mr. Schenay, inquiring about what formalities should be followed and learning about every aspect of the funeral. Schenay seemed to be expecting something, and finally he grabbed his hat, said he hadn't eaten dinner yet, and curtsied to indicate that he was leaving, to which Mrs. Callawan loudly expressed her surprise:
"Why, you haven't eaten dinner yet? Then stay, stay and eat! Eat what you have, there is no need to be polite, as you know, we never eat very simply in our house."
The "doctor" politely declined, but Mrs. Kalawan insisted on staying: "Why are you doing this? Please stay. At a time like this, it's a blessing to have a friend by your side; besides, if you persuade my husband, he might eat something, he really needs to replenish and regain some strength."
The "doctor" bowed, put his hat back on the furniture, and replied, "In that case, ma'am, I'll have to be obliged."
Mrs. Callawan, after giving instructions to the stunned Rosalie, sat herself down at the table, saying that she would "keep the doctor company" and that she herself had to "put on an appearance and eat something."
They drank all the leftover soup that had gotten cold. Mr. Scheiner added more. Then a plate of Lyon-style tripe was brought up, smelling of onions, and Mrs. Karawang decided to try it, too. Dr. Schnee praised: "It's delicious." The housewife smiled and said, "It's good, isn't it?" Then turning to her husband she said : "You should eat some too, my poor Alfret, even if it's just to pad your stomach, think about it, you still have to stay up all night!"
Calawan tamely brought his dinner plate over to him and began to eat, and now he obeyed in all things, neither resisting nor thinking, even when he was told to go to bed.
Shennai "doctor" did it himself, adding to his plate three times; Mrs. Karawan also occasionally forked a piece of tripe and ate it with a distracted look.
Then another pot full of macaroni, the "doctor" again murmured: "Yo, this is really good stuff!" This time, Mrs. Kara Wang gave each person a full share, even the children's plates are full. The two children then stirred and stuffed their mouths, sometimes stealing the original wine when no one was looking, and kicking each other's feet under the table.
Mr. Schnee suddenly remembered that Rossini loved spaghetti, and came up with this line out of nowhere: "Ho, that rhymes... I could write a poem about it... I'll just start it off like this:
Rossini, the musician
Loves macaroni and noodles ...... "
No one paid any attention to what he was saying. Mrs. Calawan was suddenly preoccupied as she considered what the consequences of this sudden accident might be. Her husband, on the other hand, pulled off the bread piece by piece, rolled it into little dough balls, laid them out on the table, and then stared at them with two dead eyes and a look of total idiocy. He felt a burning dryness in his throat, and, again and again, drained his full glass of wine. His mind, already in disarray from the shock and grief, was now even more wobbly, like the feeling you get when you've had a congested stomach and drifted off to sleep after a binge drinking session.
Shennai's "doctor" was no longer polite, and drank like a bottomless pit; he was obviously drunk. Mrs. Kalawan, who was restless and distracted after her bout of nervousness, felt dizzy even though she had only drunk some water.
Mr. Chenet gossiped about the deaths of several families, which seemed to him all very unsympathetic. For in the suburbs of Paris, where all the people who lived were provincials, they retained that countryman's indifference to the dead, even when it was their own father and mother who had died. It is true that among the country people this disrespect for the dead, this callousness of which they are not aware, is extremely common and not surprising, but in Paris it is very rare. He said:-"Noo, it happened to me; last week a family came to ask for me in the Rue de la Puteaux, and I hurried there, and saw that the patient had already breathed his last. But the family were drinking aniseed beside the bed, which had been bought for the dying patient on the first night, and the family had to drink the bottle with alacrity before they would stop."
Mrs. Callawan, however, wasn't even listening; she was thinking about the inheritance. Callawan's mind went blank, and he understood nothing of what Mr. Schenectady was saying.
The coffee was served, and it was made very strong for the sake of refreshment, and brandy was added to each cup, so that once it was consumed, a blush spread over everyone's cheeks, and what little fuzzy awareness remained in their heads was disturbed.
Finally, the "doctor" grabbed the bottle and poured a little brandy into each of the glasses. They stopped talking and slowly sipped at the yellowish syrup that the sweetened brandy made at the bottom of their glasses, each indulging in the sweet warmth of digesting their food, while the wine made them all the more like animals, lost in the comfort of a full stomach.
Both children fell asleep and Rosalie put them to bed.
Calawan, like all men who have suffered misfortunes, mechanically submitting to a subconscious that wants to numb him, drank brandy several more times in quick succession, and his dull, sluggish eyes actually gleamed.
The "doctor" at last rose to go, and, seizing his friend by the arm, suggested:
"Come, go out with me, it will do you good to get some air; one should not remain at home when one is troubled."
Calawan heeded this advice; he put on his hat, took up his cane, and went out with the "doctor." The two friends, arm in arm, walked under the starry night sky towards the Seine.