The Town Below. Roger Lemelin
gratitude of a priest — what an honour for me!”
He fingered the big black beads of his weekday rosary in the depths of his pocket. “I’d like to see Zépherin Lévesque’s face when he hears how I’ve uncovered this nest of sedition. I can just picture it! Why, this is a terrible thing!” He shuddered.
As he reached the parish-house gate, Anselme Pritontin realized that the indignation he had felt at the club a short while ago had disappeared. Here he was, thinking of that communist affair as coolly as if it had been a routine matter! He was alarmed at this. He longed for the sacred fire of inspiration, like a young journalist who wishes his article to show the marks of genius. Anselme stood there, turning about on first one foot and then another as he eagerly sought for the word, the attitude of mind that would put him in a rage. He called up the memory of Tit-Blanc’s head, raised it to a level with his gaze (and he was quite tall), looked it in the eyes, dishevelled the hair, and added the drunkard’s puffy red face and the alcohol gurgling in his mouth. The hands of the ambitious Soyeux curled like claws about to descend upon Tit-Blanc’s cheeks. He thought of the man’s strumpet of a wife, that Barloute who in the days gone by had made a mockery of his youthful passion. But it was all in vain. The sacred fire would not come, and Anselme Pritontin was deeply grieved. He tried another method: thought of the obvious decline of the Faith; and this quickly brought him to the conclusion that he was more pious than these wicked ones. But where was his anger? Was he really angry?
There was a sudden gleam of light through the big window of the sacristy, and he caught sight of Bidonnet, who was lighting the tapers of the new candelabra. Pritontin gave a start.
“The jealous wretches! So, I defend religion because it provides me with old chandeliers, because I want to be a churchwarden! They are liars, those low-life Mulots! To be a churchwarden! To be a churchwarden! Because they have no chance of being one! As for me, it is not that I am interested merely in the honour of the thing; my wife, who is in delicate health, has her heart set upon it. That’s natural enough, seeing that she has two brothers in holy orders. And then there are the children who must be worthily prepared for the great task. But what they say does not worry me. It will be a pleasure to show that — that fellow Lévesque the stuff that I’m made of.”
He rang the bell, anxious, trembling all over for fear he would lose his mood of exaltation before someone came to open the door. He could hear footsteps.
Footsteps could also be heard in the rue Colomb. They fell at first with a regular beat, and then all of a sudden the pace quickened, only to slacken once more like the panting spurts of a motor that is out of order. There was a smell of roast beef and fried potatoes in the air. Flies knocked against the gaslights with a buzzing sound, forming a kind of accompaniment to the rhythms of the street. Tit-Blanc was endeavouring to convince himself that he was not drunk.
“If I was drunk, I wouldn’t be so brave.” He looked down at his feet and was astonished to see how straight he was walking. “I can’t back out now, they’d take me for a coward. After all I said I was going to do it, I can’t go and tell them it was just to hear myself talk. I swear to God I don’t want to do it. He never did anything to me. Nor the priests either. It’s damned silly to do a thing like that in church. Let’s get it straight. He has a lot of nerve, that swine, going around saying that my wife is a whore! Even if I am poor and take a drop now and then, I can pick a virgin as well as he can. It’s true, I always went in for the ones with good figures.”
This flattered him. He recalled his conquests of long ago. But another thought came to startle him: “That bastard can’t have any proof, can he? Could he have tried to make her before I married her? You never can tell with those pious old hypocrites! Wait till tomorrow, I’ll get him off his knees.”
Tit-Blanc felt himself to be immense, all-powerful. It seemed to him that all he had to do was give those ramshackle dwellings a blow with his fist and they would come tumbling down like a house of cards. He could feel mounting from the depths of his bosom a thunderous symphony of courage, a vortex of vengeance. He was conscious of a strange desire to hum, then drew in his lower jaw by way of containing this glorious flood of sensation. Taking the middle of the street, he had the impression that the houses with their lance-like chimneys were an imperial guard in his honour. Then a sharp pain darted through his jaw as he tried to close it. Ah! Denis Boucher’s fist. “He’ll pay for it, too; the whole family will pay.”
This was a great day for him. He had not known that he possessed such will power, such strength and determination. He cast about for those who deserved his vengeance, but his mind was not one of those that can take in a number of problems at the same time. The figures of Pritontin and Denis appeared to him as a pair of Cyclops’s eyes which he would have to gouge out before he could reign over the Mulots. He paused in front of the house to admire the way in which it stood at the corner of the street, and gave a smile of satisfaction. “I never thought of it before!”
He entered the house without closing the door, having thrown it open with too violent a gesture. “I am boss here! Jean, here is ten cents for you; go to the hardware store and get me a firecracker. And be quick about it, for I need it right away.”
Surprised and annoyed, Jean left without making any reply, for he was too busy thinking of Lise. Féda Colin told her husband he was acting like a crazy man, that everybody was looking at him.
“I’ve had enough from you,” he shouted back at her. “The things I put up with on account of your reputation, Barloute!”
Féda, whom the milkman addressed as “Madame,” did not like to be reminded of this nickname. “My name is Féda, Tit-Blanc, and if there is anything to be said against Barloute, it’s your fault.
Tit-Blanc did not feel inclined to argue the point. “We’ll settle that later. First, I’m going to see about our shop.”
He began measuring the walls, figuring where they would put the counter. His family was disgusted with him, all except his father. Old man Pitou had taken part in the riot of 1917. He had a face like an old quarter-moon; it was almost entirely covered by a dark red splotch while the rest of it bore an inflamed look as from an excess of gaiety.
With a relapse into childhood, he applauded Tit-Blanc’s announcement: “A shop! Be sure and lay in some chewing tobacco!”
“Madame Boucher is opening a shop for her Gaston,” Féda remarked, with a shrug of her shoulders.
“Well, they’re not going to have the laugh on us any longer; they’re done with taking the bread out of our mouths. That Joseph Boucher is a hog. He’s not satisfied with earning twenty-five dollars a week. Ah, little Mamaine! I’m going to buy you a pretty blue dress like the ones you see in the big grillrooms.” And with an air of good-humoured complicity, he pointed a scolding finger at Germaine.
She was indignant. “I don’t want anything from you,” she replied. “Take it away from poor Gaston — never!”
“That’s right,” cooed Féda, “you’re a girl after my own heart.”
“Oh, I know you,” said her husband. “You have no nerve; you’ll be poor all your lives.” He washed his hands of them contemptuously.
“It’s not that, Tit-Blanc. The hunchback may put a spell on us. The Good Lord will punish us for it later!”
“You can’t do anything these days without having the Lord on your heels. It wasn’t that way in our time.”
Féda was stupefied. Tit-Blanc was striding up and down the kitchen floor with uneven gait, for it was full of knobs and excrescences. Beer bottles stood guard near the sink. Jean returned and tossed the firecracker on the table. He still looked surprised.
“I’m the boss here!” cried Tit-Blanc as his eye fell on the cracker. He had to shout and assert his authority in order to stifle, to deaden the fear that was rising in him.
By way of calming him, Féda showed him a letter calling attention to the fact that a payment was overdue on the sofa they had bought. He tore it up, for at that moment his mind was on bigger things. She served him a supper