Mister Belhomme’s Beast
The Havre stagecoach was just leaving Criquetot and all the passengers were waiting in the yard of the Commercial Hotel, kept by young Malandain, for their names to be called out.
The coach was yellow, on wheels that once were yellow too, but now almost turned grey with accumulated layers of mud. The front wheels were quite small: those at the back, large and rickety, bore the well of the coach, which was unshapely and distended like the paunch of an animal.
Three white hacks harnessed in tandem, whose huge heads and large round knees were the most noticeable things about them, had to pull this conveyance, which had something monstrous in its build and appearance. Already the horses in front of this strange vehicle seemed to be asleep.
The driver, Césaire Horlaville, a corpulent little man but agile enough nevertheless, by virtue of continually mounting the wheels and climbing on to the roof of his coach, with a face reddened by the open air of the countryside, by rain and storm and many brandies, and eyes always blinking as if still under the lash of wind and hail, appeared at the door of the hotel, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Large round hampers, full of scared poultry, stood in front of the solid countrywomen. Césaire Horlaville took these one by one and put them up on the roof of his vehicle; then, more carefully, he put up those which were filled with eggs: finally he tossed up from below a few little sacks of seed and small parcels wrapped in handkerchiefs, bits of cloth or paper. Then he opened the door at the back and, taking a list from his pocket, he called out from it:
“The reverend Father from Gorgeville.”
The priest came forward, a tall powerful man, broad, stout, purple in the face, and kindly. He lifted up his cassock to free his foot for stepping up, just as women lift up their skirts, and climbed into the rickety old coach.
“The schoolmaster from Rollebosc-les-Grinets.”
The schoolmaster hurried forward, a tall and hesitating fellow, with a frock-coat down to his knees; and disappeared in his turn through the open door.
“Mister Poiret, two seats.”
Poiret takes his place, tall and stooping, bent with drudgery, grown thin through lack of food, bony, and with a skin all withered from neglected ablutions. His wife followed him, small and wizened, looking very like a tired jade, and clutching in both hands a huge green umbrella.
“Mister Rabot, two seats.”
Rabot, by nature irresolute, hesitated. He asked:
“Was it me you were calling?”
The driver, who had been nicknamed “Foxy,” was going to make a joking reply, when Rabot took a header towards the door of the coach, thrust forward by a shove from his wife, a tall buxom wench with a belly as big and round as a barrel, and hands as large as a washerwoman’s beetle.
And Rabot slipped into the coach like a rat into his hole.
“Mister Caniveau.”
A huge peasant, more beefy than a bull, summoned all his energy and was, in his turn, swallowed up inside the yellow well of the coach.
“Mister Belhomme.”
Belhomme, a tall skeleton of a man, drew near, his neck awry, his aspect dolorous, a handkerchief applied to his ear as if he suffered from very severe toothache.
All of them wore blue smocks over antique and peculiar jackets of black or green cloth, garments, worn on special occasions, which they would uncover in the streets of Havre; and their heads were covered with caps made of silk, as high as towers—the final elegance in that Norman countryside.
Césaire Horlaville shut the door of his coach, climbed on to his box, and cracked his whip.
The three horses seemed to wake up, and, shaking their necks, made audible a vague murmur of tiny bells.
Then the driver, bawling out “Gee up!” from the bottom of his lungs, lashed the animals with a sweep of the arm. They were roused, made an effort, and set off along the road at a slow and halting jog-trot. And behind them the vehicle, jolting its loose panes and all the old iron of its springs, made an astounding jangle of tin and glassware, whilst each row of passengers, tossed and rocked by the jolts, surged up and down with every fall or rise of their uneven progress.
At first silence reigned, out of respect for the parish priest, whose presence put a restraint on their loquacity. He made the first remark, being of a garrulous and friendly disposition.
“Well, Mister Caniveau,” he said, “are you getting on all right?”
The big countryman, whose similarity of build, appearance, and paunch formed a bond between the priest and himself, replied, smiling:
“Much as usual, Father, much as usual, and how’s yourself?”
“Oh, as for me, I can always get along!”
“And you, Mr. Poiret?” asked the reverend gentleman.
“I’d be all right, except for the colzas which have had nothing at all of a crop this year, and in business it is by the crops of colza that we make up our losses, as a rule.”
“Well, well, times are hard!”
“Lord, yes, they’re hard!” declared Mr. Rabot’s hefty wife, in a voice like a policeman.
As she came from a neighbouring village, the priest knew nothing of her but her name.
“Are you the Blondel girl?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s me. I married Rabot.”
Rabot, skinny, nervous, and complacent, saluted the priest with a smile; he saluted him by bowing his head deeply forward, as if to say: “Yes, this is really Rabot, whom the Blondel girl has married.”
Abruptly, Mister Belhomme, who kept his handkerchief over his ear, began to groan in a lamentable manner. He ground his teeth horribly, stamping his feet to express the most frightful suffering.
“Your toothache seems to be very bad?” demanded the priest.
The peasant stopped moaning for an instant to reply:
“Not a bit of it, Father. It’s not my teeth, it’s my ear, right down inside my ear.”
“What’s the matter with your ear then? An abscess?”
“I don’t know whether it’s an abscess, but I know it’s a beast, a filthy beast, which got itself inside me when I was asleep on the hay in the loft.”
“A beast! Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? As sure as heaven, Father, seeing it’s gnawing away the inside of my ear. It’ll eat out my head, for sure, it’ll eat out my head. Oh, ger-ow, ger-ow, ger-ow!” … And he began stamping his feet again.
His audience was roused to the keenest interest. Each of them proffered different advice. Poiret would have it that it was a spider, the schoolmaster that it was a caterpillar. He had seen such a case before at Campemuret, in the Orme county, where he had lived for six years; though in this case the caterpillar had got into the head and come out through the nose. But the man had remained deaf in that ear, because the eardrum was split.
“It must have been a worm,” declared the priest.
Mister Belhomme, his head tilted on one side, and leaning it against the carriage door, for he had been the last to get in, went on groaning:
“Oh, ger-ow, ow, ow, I’m scared to death it’s an ant, a big ant, it’s gnawing so. There, Father, it’s galloping and galloping … oh … ow … ow … ow … it hurts like the devil!”
“Haven’t you seen the doctor?” demanded Caniveau.
“Lord, no!”
“What for haven’t you?”
Fear of doctors seemed to cure Belhomme.
He sat up, without however removing his handkerchief.
“What for haven’t I? You’ve got money to waste on them, have you, for them good-for-nothings? You take yourself to them, once, twice, three times, four times, five times. And for that, a couple of crowns of a hundred sous apiece, two crowns at least. And you tell me what he’d have done for me, the good-for-nothing, you tell me what he’d have done! D’you know that?”
Caniveau laughed.
“Now how would I know? Where are you going anyway?”
“I’m off to Havre to see Chambrelan.”
“What Chambrelan?”
“The healer, of course.”
“What healer?”
“The healer who cured my dad.”
“Your dad.”
“Yes, my dad, in his time.”
“What was the matter with your dad?”
“A great wind in his back, so as he could move nor foot nor leg.”
“And what did your Chambrelan do for him?”
“He kneaded his back as if he was going to make bread of it, with both his hands. And it was all right again in a couple of hours.”
Belhomme was quite sure in his mind that Chambrelan had also pronounced certain words over it, but he dared not say as much before the priest.
Laughing, Caniveau persisted.
“How d’you know it’s not a rabbit you’ve got in your ear? It might have taken that earhole of yours for its burrow, seeing the undergrowth you’ve got growing outside. You wait. I’ll make it run for its life.”
And Caniveau, shaping his hands into a speaking-trumpet, began to imitate the crying of hounds hot on the scent. He yelped, howled, whimpered, and bayed. Everybody in the coach began to laugh, even the schoolmaster who never laughed.
However, as Belhomme appeared irritated at being made fun of, the priest turned the conversation, and speaking to Rabot’s lusty wife, said:
“I dare say you have a big family?”
“Yes, indeed, Father. And how hard it is to rear them!”
Rabot nodded his head, as if to say: “Oh, yes, it’s hard to rear them.”
“How many children have you?”
She stated magisterially, in a harsh deliberate voice:
“Sixteen children, Father. Fifteen of them by my good man.”
And Rabot’s smile broadened, as he knuckled his forehead. He managed fifteen children all by himself, he, Rabot. His wife said so. And there was no doubting her. He was proud of it, by George!
By whom was the sixteenth? She did not say. Probably it was the first. Perhaps everyone knew about it, for no one was surprised. Even Caniveau remained unmoved.
But Belhomme began to groan.
“Oh, ow … ow … ow … it fair tears me to bits. Hell!”
The coach drew up outside the Café Polyte. The priest said:
“If we were to drop a little water in your ear, it might bring the thing out with it. Would you like to try it?”
“For sure. I’m willing.”
Everyone got down to assist at the operation.
The priest called for a basin, a napkin, and a glass of water; and he ordered the schoolmaster to hold the patient’s head well over to one side, and then, as soon as the liquid should have penetrated into the passage, to swing it rapidly over the other way.
But Caniveau, who had straightway applied himself to Belhomme’s ear to see whether he could not discover the beast with his naked eye, cried out:
“God bless my soul, what a sticky mess! You’ll have to get that out, my boy. No rabbit could get out through that conglomeration of stuff. He’d stick fast with all four feet.”
The priest examined the passage in his turn and realised that it was too narrow and too stuffed with wax to attempt the expulsion of the beast. It was the schoolmaster who cleared the path with a match and a bit of rag. Then, amid general anxiety, the priest poured down this scoured channel half a glass of water which ran over Belhomme’s face and hair and down his neck. Then the schoolmaster turned the head sharply back over the basin, as if he were trying to unscrew it. A few drops fell out into the white vessel. All the travellers flung themselves upon it. No beast had emerged.
However, Belhomme announcing: “I can’t feel anything,” the priest, triumphant, cried:
“It is certainly drowned!”
Everyone was pleased. They all got back into the coach.
But hardly had they got under way again when Belhomme burst out with the most terrible cries. The beast had wakened up and had become quite frantic. He even swore that it had now got into the head, that it was devouring his brain for him. He accompanied his howls with such contortions that Poiret’s wife, believing him possessed of the devil, began to cry and make the sign of the cross. Then, the pain abating a little, the afflicted man related that it was now careering round his ear. He described with his finger the movements of the beast, seeming to see it, and follow it with a watchful eye.
“Look at it now, there it goes up again! … ow … ow … ow … oh, hell!”
Caniveau lost patience.
“It’s the water has sent it crazy, that beast of yours. Likely it’s more used to wine.”
His listeners burst out laughing. He added:
“As soon as you and me reach the Café Bourboux, give it a small brandy and I’ll warrant it’ll worry you no more.”
But Belhomme could no longer endure his misery. He began to cry out as if his very inside was being torn out. The priest was obliged to support his head for him. His companions begged Césaire Horlaville to stop at the first house on the way.
It turned out to be a farm, lying near the roadside. Belhomme was carried to it; then they stretched him out on the kitchen table to begin the operation again. Caniveau persisted in advising Memboux brandy with the water, in order to make the beast either tipsy or drowsy, or perhaps kill it outright. But the priest preferred vinegar.
This time they poured in the liquid drop by drop, so that it would reach the farthest corner; then they left it for some minutes in the inhabited organ.
Another basin having been brought, Belhomme was turned bodily over by that lusty pair, the priest and Caniveau, while the schoolmaster banged with his finger on the healthy ear, the better to empty out the other.
Césaire Horlaville himself, whip in hand, had come in to watch.
All at once they saw in the bottom of the basin a small brown speck, no bigger than an onion seed. It was moving, however. It was a flea! Cries of surprise burst forth, then shouts of laughter. A flea! Oh, this was rich, this was very rich! Caniveau slapped his thigh, Césaire Horlaville cracked his whip, the priest burst into guffaws like the braying of an ass, the schoolmaster gave vent to a laugh like a sneeze, and the two women uttered little cries of merriment like nothing but the clucking of hens.
Belhomme was sitting on the table, and, resting the basin on his knees, he contemplated with grave intentness, and a gleam of angry joy in his eye, the vanquished beastie which turned and twisted in its drop of water.
He grunted: “So there you are, you swine,” and spit at it.
The driver, beside himself with amusement, repeated:
“A flea, a flea! Oh, look at it, the little devil of a flea, the little devil of a flea!”
Then, his exuberance wearing off a little, he cried:
“Come now, let’s be off. We’ve wasted enough time.”
And the travellers, still laughing, made their way to the coach.
But Belhomme, last to come, declared:
“I’m off back to Criquetot. I’ve nowt to do at Havre.”
The driver told him:
“Never mind that, pay your fare.”
“I don’t owe no more than half, seeing I’ve not done half the journey.”
“You owe as much as if you’d done the lot.”
And a dispute began which very soon became a furious quarrel. Belhomme swore that he would pay no more than twenty sous, Césaire Horlaville declared that he would have forty.
They shouted at each other, thrusting their faces close together and glaring into each other’s eyes. Caniveau clambered out of the coach.
“In the first place you owe forty sous to the priest, d’ye hear, and then drinks round to everyone, that makes it fifty-five, and out of that you’ll have to give Césaire twenty. How’s that, Foxy?”
The driver, delighted at the idea of Belhomme’s having to screw out three francs seventy-five, replied:
“Right you are.”
“Now then, pay up.”
“I’ll not pay. The priest’s not a doctor, anyhow.”
“If you don’t pay, I’ll put you back in the coach with Césaire and take you to Havre.”
And seizing Belhomme round the waist, the giant lifted him up as if he had been a child.
The other realised that he would have to give in. He drew out his purse and paid.
Then the coach set off again for Havre, while Belhomme turned back towards Criquetot and all the travellers, silent now, watched his blue peasant’s smock, rolling along on his long legs down the white road.