Mouche
A Boating Man’s Reminiscence
He said to us:
“What queer things and queer women I have seen in those long-ago days when I used to go on the river! Many a time I have longed to write a little book, called On the Seine, describing the athletic carefree life, gay and penniless, a vigorous, roisterings holiday life, that I led between twenty and thirty.
“I was a penniless clerk: now I am a successful man who can throw away vast sums of money to gratify a moment’s whim. I had a thousand modest unattainable desires in my heart, which gilded my whole existence with all the imaginary hopes in the world. Today, I don’t really know what fancy could make me rise from the armchair where I sit nodding. How simple and pleasant, and difficult, it is to live so, between an office in Paris and the river at Argenteuil! For ten years, my great, my only, my absorbing passion was the Seine. Oh, the lovely, calm, varied and stinking river, filled with mirage and all uncleanliness! I think I loved it so much because it did, it seems to me, give me a sense of life. Oh, the strolls along the flowery banks, my friends the frogs dreaming on a water-lily leaf, their stomachs in the cool, and the frail coquettish water-lilies in the middle of tall fine grasses that all at once, behind a willow, opened to my eyes a leaf from a Japanese album as a kingfisher darted past me like a blue flame. I loved it all, with an instinctive sight-born love that spread through my body in a deep natural joy.
“As others cherish the memories of tender nights, I cherish memories of sunrises on misty mornings, floating wandering vapours, white as the dead before dawn; then, a first ray gliding over the meadows, lit with a rosy light that took the heart with gladness; and I cherish memories of a moon that silvered the quivering running water, of a glimmering radiance where all dreams came to life.
“And all that, symbol of the eternal illusion, was born, for me, from the foul water that drifted all the sewage of Paris down to the sea.
“And what a gay life I and the other boys led! There were five of us, a little circle of friends, serious-minded men today; and as we were all poor, we had founded in a frightful pothouse at Argenteuil an indescribable colony that possessed nothing but a dormitory bedroom where I have spent what were certainly the maddest evenings of my life. We cared for nothing but amusing ourselves and rowing, for we all, with no exception, looked upon rowing as a religion. I remember such singular adventures, such incredible jests invented by those five vagabonds, that no one could believe them today. You never get anything like it now, even on the Seine, for the whimsical madness that kept us brimful of life has died out of the modern spirit.
“We five owned one boat between us, bought with immense effort, and over which we have laughed as we shall never laugh again. It was a big yawl, rather heavy, but solid, roomy and comfortable. I won’t describe my comrades to you. There was one small, very mischievous fellow, nicknamed Petit Bleu; a tall fellow, of uncivilised appearance, with grey eyes and black hair, nicknamed Tomahawk; another, an indolent witty fellow, nicknamed La Toque, the only one who never touched an oar, on the excuse that he would capsize the boat; a thin, elegant, very well-groomed young man, nicknamed N’a-qu’un-Œil, in memory of a just-published novel by Claudel, and because he wore a monocle; and myself, Joseph Prunier by name. We lived in perfect harmony, our sole regret being that we had not a helmswoman. One woman is indispensable in a river boat. Indispensable because she keeps wits and hearts awake, because she livens, amuses, distracts, sets an edge to life, and produces a decorative effect, with a red sunshade gliding past the green banks. But we did not want an ordinary woman cox, we five who were like no one else in the world. We had to have something unexpected, uncommon, ready for anything, almost unfindable, in fact. We had tried several without success, girls at the helm, not helmswomen, idiotic river girls who always preferred the thin wine that went to their heads to the running water that bore the yawls. You kept them one Sunday, then dismissed them in disgust.
“But one Saturday evening, N’a-qu’un-Œil brought us a little slender creature, lively, quick on her feet, loose-tongued and full of japes, the japes that pass for wit among the jackanapes, male and female, hatched on the sidewalks of Paris. She was pleasant-looking, not pretty, a mere sketch of a woman that had got no farther, one of those silhouettes that draughtsmen pencil in three strokes on a napkin in a restaurant after dinner, between a glass of brandy and a cigarette. Nature makes them like that sometimes.
“The first evening, she astonished and amused us, and was so unexpected in her ways that we could come to no conclusion about her. Dropped into this nest of men, who were ready for any mad prank, she quickly made herself mistress of the situation, and with the next day, she had made a complete conquest of us.
“She was, moreover, quite crazy, born with a glass of absinth in her stomach, that her mother had drunk when she was brought to bed, and she had never been overcome by drink since, for her nurse, she said, enriched her blood with draughts of rum; and she herself never called all the bottles ranged behind the wine merchant’s counter by any other name than ‘my holy family.’
“I don’t know which of us christened her ‘Mouche,’ nor why this name was given her, but it suited her very well, and stuck to her. And our yawl, which was called Feuille-à-l’Envers, bore on the Seine every week, between Asnières and Maisons-Lafitte, five youngsters, happy and healthy, ruled from under a painted paper parasol by a lively madcap young person who treated us as if we were slaves whose duty was to take her on the river, and whom we adored.
“We adored her, to begin with, for a thousand reasons, and afterwards for only one. She was a sort of little mill of talk in the stern of our craft, chattering to the wind that slipped over the water. She babbled endlessly, with the light continuous sound of those mechanical wings that turn in the breeze; and she said heedlessly the most unexpected, the most ridiculous and the most amazing things. In her mind, all the parts of which seemed disparate like rags of all kinds and colours, not sewn together but only tacked, you got the whimsical imagination of a fairytale, spiced wit, wantonness, impudence, things unexpected and things comical, and air—air and scenery like travelling in a balloon.
“We used to ask her questions to provoke answers found goodness knows where. The one with which we most often worried her was this:
“ ‘Why are you called Mouche?’
“She produced such fantastic reasons that we stopped rowing to laugh at it.
“She pleased us as a woman, too; and La Toque, who never rowed, and spent the whole day seated at her side in the helmsman’s seat, one day answered the usual question: ‘Why are you called Mouche?’ by saying:
“ ‘Because she’s a little blister-fly.’
“Yes, a little buzzing fever-bearing cantharis, not the classic poisoned cantharis, gleaming and sheathed, but a little red-winged cantharis who was beginning to trouble the entire crew of the Feuille-à-l’Envers strangely.
“What senseless jests were perpetrated, though, on the leaf where this Mouche had alighted!
“Since the arrival of Mouche in the boat, N’a-qu’un-Œil had assumed a superior and preponderant role among us, the role of a gentleman who had a woman among four others who have not. He abused this privilege sometimes to the point of exasperating us by embracing Mouche under our eyes, seating her on his knees at the end of a meal, and by various other prerogatives as humiliating as irritating.
“We had made a separate place for them in the dormitory by a curtain.
“But I soon realised that my companions and I must be turning over the same arguments in our bachelor heads: ‘Why, by virtue of what law of exceptions, on what inadmissible principle, should Mouche, who appeared unembarrassed by any sort of prejudice, be faithful to her lover when women of better classes were not faithful to their husbands?’
“Our reflection was justified. We were soon convinced of it. We only ought to have done it earlier, to save us from regret for lost time. Mouche deceived N’a-qu’un-Œil with all the other sailors of the Feuille-à-l’Envers.
“She deceived him without difficulty and without making any resistance, at the first word of request from each of us.
“Prudish folk are profoundly shocked, my God! Why? What fashionable courtesan who has not a dozen lovers, and which of those lovers is stupid enough to be in ignorance of it? Is it not the fashion to spend an evening with a celebrated and sought-after woman, as one spends an evening at the Opéra, at the Français or the Odéon, because they are playing the minor classics there? Ten men combine together to keep a cocotte who finds it difficult to share out her time, as they club together to own a racehorse whom no one rides but a jockey, the equivalent of the amant de cœur.
“From motives of delicacy, we left Mouche to N’a-qu’un-Œil from Saturday evening to Monday morning. The days on the river were his. We only betrayed him during the week, in Paris, far from the Seine, which, for rowing men like us, was almost no betrayal at all.
“The situation was peculiar in this one way, that the four robbers of Mouche’s favours were fully aware of the way they were shared out, and talked about it among themselves, and even to her, in veiled allusions that made her laugh heartily. Only N’a-qu’un-Œil seemed to know nothing about it; and this special position produced a certain awkwardness between him and us; it seemed to set him apart, isolate him, raise a barrier across our old confidence and our old intimacy. It gave him in our eyes a difficult and rather ridiculous part to play, the part of deceived lover, almost the part of husband.
“As he was very intelligent, and possessed of a peculiarly malicious wit, we sometimes wondered, not without a certain uneasiness, whether he had not his suspicions.
“He took care to enlighten us, in a fashion that was very painful for us. We were going to dine at Bougival, and we were rowing vigorously, when La Toque, who wore that morning the triumphant aspect of a satisfied man and, sitting side by side with the helmswoman, seemed to be pressing himself against her a little too freely in our opinion, halted the rowing, crying: ‘Stop.’
“Eight oars were lifted out of the water.
“Then, turning to his neighbour, he demanded:
“ ‘Why are you called Mouche?’
“Before she could reply, the voice of N’a-qu’un-Œil, seated in the bows, observed dryly:
“ ‘Because she settles on every sort of carrion.’
“There was profound silence at first, and a sense of embarrassment followed by an attempt at laughter. Mouche herself remained quite unmoved.
“Then La Toque ordered:
“ ‘All together.’
“The boat shot forward again.
“The incident was closed, the air cleared.
“This little adventure occasioned no change in our habits. Its only effect was to reestablish the cordiality between N’a-qu’un-Œil and ourselves. He became once more the honoured proprietor of Mouche, from Saturday evening to Monday morning, his superiority over us having been firmly established by this definition, which closured, moreover, the period allotted to questions about the word ‘Mouche.’ We contented ourselves for the future with the secondary role of grateful and attentive friends who profited discreetly on weekdays, without any sort of competition among us.
“Everything went very well for about three months. But all at once Mouche adopted, towards all of us, strange attitudes. She was less gay, nervy, ill at ease, almost irritable. We were continually asking her:
“ ‘What’s the matter with you?’
“She answered:
“ ‘Nothing. Leave me alone.’
“The truth was revealed to us by N’a-qu’un-Œil one Saturday evening. We had just sat down to table in the little dining room that the proprietor of our pothouse reserved for us in his wayside inn, and, soup over, we were waiting for the fried fish, when our friend, who was also apparently anxious, first took Mouche’s hand, and then spoke:
“ ‘My dear comrades,’ said he, ‘I have a very grave communication to make to you, which will perhaps occasion lengthy discussions. We shall have time, however, to argue between the courses. Our poor Mouche has announced a disastrous piece of news to me, bidding me at the same time to pass it on to you.
“ ‘She is enceinte.
“ ‘I add only two words.
“ ‘This is no time to desert her, and any attempt to settle the paternity is forbidden.’
“The first effect of this news was blank amazement, a sense of disaster; and we looked at one another, feeling a desire to accuse someone. But whom? Oh, whom? I have never felt, as sharply as in that moment, how treacherous is this cruel jest of nature that never allows a man to know beyond shadow of doubt whether he is the father of his child.
“Then, gradually, we experienced a certain sense of comfort and consolation, born contrariwise from a vague feeling of solidarity.
“Tomahawk, who hardly ever spoke, expressed this dawning serenity by these words:
“ ‘Faith, so much the worse, union is strength.’
“The gudgeon came in, borne by a scullion. We did not fling ourselves on it, as was our custom, because we were still disturbed in mind.
“N’a-qu’un-Œil went on:
“ ‘In these circumstances, she has had the delicacy to make full confession to me. My friends, we are all equally guilty. Give me your hands and let us adopt the child.’
“The decision was carried unanimously. We lifted our arms towards the dish of fried fish and took the oath.
“ ‘We will adopt it.’
“At that, in that moment, saved, delivered from the dreadful weight of anxiety which for a month had been torturing this dear wanton little waif of love, Mouche cried:
“ ‘Oh, my friends, my friends! You are so kind … so kind … so kind. … Thank you all!’
“And she wept, for the first time, in our sight.
“Henceforth we talked in the boat about the child as if it were already born, and each of us showed an interest, with an exaggerated air of anxious concern, in the slow, regular change in our helmswoman’s figure.
“We stopped rowing to ask:
“ ‘Mouche?’
“She replied:
“ ‘What now?’
“ ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’
“ ‘Boy.’
“ ‘What will he be?’
“Then she let her imagination take flight in the most fantastic fashion. She gave us the most interminable narratives, amazing inventions, stretching from the day of his birth to his final triumph. He was everything, this child, to the artless, passionate, loving dreams of this extraordinary little creature who now lived chaste among us five men, whom she called her ‘five papas.’ She saw him and described him as a sailor, discovering a new world greater than America, a general, regaining Alsace-Lorraine for France, then an emperor, founding a dynasty of wise and generous sovereigns who bestowed on our country lasting happiness, then a scientist, just discovering the secret of making gold, then that of eternal life, then an aeronaut, inventing means to visit the stars and making of infinite space a vast playground for men, the realisation of all the most unforeseen and most magnificent dreams.
“God, how gay and amusing she was, poor little thing, until the end of the summer!
“It was the twentieth day of September that destroyed her dream. We had been lunching at Maison-Lafitte, and we were passing Saint-Germain, when she felt thirsty and asked us to stop at Pecq.
“For some time now, she had been growing heavy, and this annoyed her very much. She could no longer leap about as before, nor jump from the boat to the bank, as she was used to doing. She still tried, in spite of our cries and our efforts; and twenty times, but for our arms outstretched to catch her, she would have fallen.
“This particular day, filled with just such bravado, as sometimes proves fatal to ill or tired athletes, she was rash enough to try to get on shore before the boat stopped.
“Just as we were coming alongside, without anyone being able to foresee or prevent her movement, she stood up, made a spring, and tried to jump on to the quay.
“She was too weak, and only the top of her foot touched the edge of the stone quay; she slipped, hit her stomach full on the sharp corner, gave a loud cry, and disappeared in the water.
“The whole five of us plunged in together, and brought out a poor swooning creature, pale as death, and already suffering frightful pains.
“We had to carry her without delay to the nearest inn, where a doctor was summoned.
“Throughout the ten hours during which her premature labour lasted, she bore her abominable torture with heroic courage. We were standing miserably round her, on fever with grief and fear.
“Then she was delivered of a dead child; and for some days more we had the gravest fears for her life.
“At last one morning the doctor said to us: ‘I think she is safe. She’s made of steel, that girl.’ And we entered her room together with glad hearts.
“N’a-qu’un-Œil, speaking for all of us, said to her:
“ ‘You’re out of danger, little Mouche, and we’re very happy.’
“Then she cried in front of us for the second time, and, her eyes swimming in tears, she stammered:
“ ‘Oh, if you knew, if you knew … how unhappy … how unhappy I am! … I shall never be comforted.’
“ ‘But why, little Mouche?’
“ ‘Because I killed him, I killed him! Oh, I never meant to! How unhappy I am!’
“She was sobbing. We stood round her, very upset, not knowing what to say to her.
“She went on:
“ ‘Did you men see him?’
“With one voice we answered:
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘It was a boy, wasn’t it?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘He was beautiful, wasn’t he?’
“We hesitated in some doubt. Petit-Bleu, the least scrupulous of us, decided to affirm:
“ ‘Very beautiful.’
“He was ill-advised, for she began moaning, almost howling with despair.
“Then N’a-qu’un-Œil, who perhaps loved her more than any of us, thought of a happy conceit to quiet her, and kissing her eyes, that her tears had dulled, said:
“ ‘Be comforted, little Mouche, be comforted, we’ll make you another one.’
“The sense of humour that was bred in her bones woke suddenly, and half convinced, half joking, still all tears and her heart contracted with pain, she asked, looking at all of us:
“ ‘Promise?’
“And we answered together:
“ ‘Promise.’ ”