The Bark Tree by Raymond Queneau Read Free Book Online Page B

marc.”
    Slowly, he gets the bottle, and brings it over. All his actions seem ponderous: all his looks, heavy with thought.
    “Still not ezactly overworked?”
    “Still no one. Just one tenant for an eight-floor apartment house with all mod. convs.; and what’s more, he doesn’t even pay, the one and only tenant. It’s an uncle who arranges for him to be here.”
    “You’ve already told me that. The one who was a musician.”
    “Mm; at the moment, hasn’t got any work. No idea what he does. He looks very weird, at the moment.”
    “Zthat a card for him?”
    “Mm; comes from the suburbs. Says: ‘Alberte doesn’t read your epistles; if you don’t mind too much, send them straight to me, then I won’t have to stick the bits together. Best wishes, Théo.’ It’s postmarked Obonne, 3:45 yesterday.”
    “Tsit mean?”
    “Way I work it out, Théo, he must be Alberte’s husband, and a friend of Narcense’s. He’s writing to tell him to stop importuning his wife with his assiduities. Tsas plain as the nose on your face.”
    “What’s he going to look like when he reads that, eh, your tenant?”
    She laughs.
    “Yaren’t half lucky to be able to take it easy all day.”
    “Oh, I don’t take it easy all the time. I’ve got work to do.”
    “Your thing you’re writing.”
    “Yes, my thing I’m writing. Makes a lot of work for me. But it’s getting on.”
    “You’re a bit nuts, you know. For a concierge, working as a penman, snot right.”
    “Tcha, can do what I like, can’t I? If you don’t understand, just too bad.”
    “What if I started to write?”
    “Write then, write then, my beauty. Well—seen anything nice recently?”
    “Oh yes! I saw a horrible accident outside the Gare du Nord. And another the next day.”
    “Nice—accidents?”
    “The first wasn’t bad. There was brains all over the shoes of the people standing round. A guy squashed by a B bus. The other—wasn’t anything to it; but the following Saturday, it was the Thursday it happened, the guy who nearly got run over, I saw him at Dominique’s. He came to have some French fries. Scalled Etienne Marcel.”
    “Like the street?”
    “Mm, Dominique even passed the same remark.”
    “And what sort of guy?”
    “Looks like a meussieu. Probably works in an office. But it was funny meeting him like that. And then, I just wonder what he was doing at 4 in the afternoon, at Dominique’s; and a Saturday, at that! Eh, what do you think?”
    “Maybe he lives thereabouts.”
    “Aren’t any houses for that sort of people round there. Zonly the factory, and a few huts for people who come and dig in their garden patches. After that it’s the railroad sidings, and then old Taupe’s shack. It certainly couldn’t have been old Taupe he wanted to see.”
    “Maybe’s a cop. On account of your whatsit.”
    “Oh, go on. Dominique’s not worried, he’s too useful to them. Me neither, I look after one of the local superintendent’s wives; I’m not worried.”
    “Never know.”
    “What I thought: maybe it’s on account of Ernestine. Za pretty girl, Ernestine. Maybe she’s scored.
    They laugh.
    “Your marc’s better than Dominique’s.”
    “So he’s doing all right, Dominique?”
    “Oh yes; course there’s the depression, but even so he reckons he’ll be able to buy a brothel soon. In which case his kid, he’ll be able to go to the lycée. Dominique’d like Clovis to be an engineer.”
    “I’sa good trade.”
    “And how.”
    “But if his father keeps a brothel, that’ll count against him later on.”
    Mme. Cloche considers that Saturnin is no fool; yes but it’s a pity he’s a little nuts; what an idea, taking it into his head to be a writer; it’s not for the likes of him. Ah, if he’d only wanted to, he could really have done something! But it’s time for her to go. Her work is calling her.
    Her brother says into her ear:
    “Tell Dominique to watch it, though; snitching on people, that can make trouble for