The Hole
Inflicting blows and wounds sufficient to cause death.
Such was the charge upon which master Léopold Renard, upholsterer, made his appearance at the Assizes.
Present also were the chief witnesses, the woman, Flamèche, widow of the victim, and Louis Ladureau, cabinetmaker, and Jean Durdent, plumber, who had both been called.
Near the criminal sat his wife, dressed in black, a little ugly creature looking like a monkey in woman’s clothes.
And this is how Renard (Léopold) unfolded the drama:
“I tell you, it is an unfortunate accident of which I was all along the chief victim and which I didn’t plan at all. The facts speak for themselves, your Worship. I am a decent man, a workingman: I’ve carried on business as an upholsterer in the same street for sixteen years, known, liked, respected, esteemed by all, as the neighbours have deposed, even the janitress, who isn’t altogether a fool. I like work, I like thrift, I like decent people and decent amusements. That has been my ruin, so much the worse for me: since it was not my fault, I still respect myself.
“Well, every Sunday for five years my wife here and I have been in the habit of spending the day at Poissy. It gets us out into the fresh air, not to speak of pleasing our taste for river fishing—which we love as much as much as—as much as spring onions. It was Mélie who gave me the taste for it, the wretch, and she’s crazier about it than I am, the little beast, so that she’s responsible for all the mischief in this affair, as you’ll see in a minute.
“I’m strong and gentle, I am, without an ounce of wickedness in me. But as for her, oh, Lord, she looks as mild as milk, she’s a little thin thing; and, well, she’s nastier-tempered than a polecat. I don’t say that she hasn’t some good points: she has, and useful ones in trade. But her disposition! Ask the next-floor people, and even the janitress who gave me notice the other day—she can tell you things.
“Every day she kept abusing me for my quiet ways. ‘I wouldn’t stand for this! I wouldn’t stand for that.’ If I listened to her, your Worship, I’d have been in three fights a month.”
Mme. Renard interrupted him: “Go on talking: he laughs longest who laughs last.”
He turned towards her defiantly.
“Oh, well, I can give you away since you’re not up for trial, you’re not.”
Then, turning to the president again:
“I’ll go on, then. So we went to Poissy every Saturday evening to be able to start fishing the next morning at daybreak. It’s a habit of ours that’s become second nature, as they say. Three years ago this summer I discovered a place, such a place! You should see it, shady, eight feet of water at least, maybe ten, a hole, look you, with hollows under the bank, a regular lurking-place for fish, a paradise for the fisher. This here hole, Mr. President, I could consider as mine, since I was its Christopher Columbus. Everyone in the district knew that, no one disputed it. They said: ‘That’s Renard’s place,’ and no one would come there, not even M. Plumeau, and it’s well known, and no offence meant to say it, that he pinches other people’s places.
“So, sure of my rights, I used to go back there as a proprietor. On Saturday, the moment I arrived, I went aboard the Dalila with my old woman. Dalila is my Norwegian boat, a boat I had built for me at Foumaire’s place, what you might call both light and safe. I say, we get aboard Dalila and we set our bait. As for baiting, no one can do it like me—and, well, my pals know it. Do you want to know what bait I use? I can’t tell you. It has nothing to do with this accident, it’s my secret. More than two hundred people have asked me about it. I’ve been offered drinks, fried fish and pickled fish, to make me talk. You should see the carp rise. Yes, people talk to me like a Dutch uncle to get the secret out of me. There’s only my wife knows it … and she wouldn’t tell it any more than me! Isn’t that so, Mélie?”
The president interrupted him.
“Come to the point as quickly as possible.”
The accused went on:
“I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it. Well, on Saturday the 8th of July, we left by the 5:25 train, and before dinner we went to set our bait, like we did every Saturday. The weather promised to be fine. I said to Mélie: ‘Thumbs up for tomorrow.’ And she answered: ‘It looks like it.’ We never have any more to say to each other.
“And then we came back and had dinner. I was happy and thirsty. That’s to blame for the whole thing, Mr. President. I said to Mélie: ‘Well, Mélie, it wouldn’t be a bad notion if I had a bottle of nightcap.’ That’s a thin white wine we’ve christened that because if you drink too much of it, it keeps you from sleeping and takes the place of a nightcap. You understand.
“She answered: ‘You can do as you like, but you’ll be ill again; and you won’t be able to get up tomorrow.’ What she said was true, it was sensible, it was prudent, it was farsighted, I grant you that. But all the same, I couldn’t restrain myself; and I drank my bottle. That began the whole trouble.
“Well, I couldn’t sleep. God, it kept me awake until two o’clock! And then, pouf, I fell asleep, but I slept so that I couldn’t have heard the angel blow the last trump on the day of judgment.
“To cut a long story short, my wife woke me at six. I jumped out of bed, pulled on my trousers and jersey as quick as I could; a dash of water on my ugly mug and we jumped into the Dalila. Too late. When I reached my hole, there was someone there. Such a thing had never happened before, Mr. President, never in all the three years. It felt as if I’d had my pocket picked under my nose. I said: ‘Damn and blast it!’ And then my wife began to nag at me. ‘You and your nightcap. Get out, you drunken swine. You great beast, I hope you’re satisfied.’
“I had nothing to say: It was all true.
“All the same, I tied up near the spot, to try and get what fish were left. Maybe the man wouldn’t have any luck and then he’d clear off.
“He was a little skinny fellow, in white ducks, with a big straw hat. He had his wife with him too, a fat woman who was sitting sewing behind him.
“When she saw us installing ourselves near the spot, she muttered:
“ ‘Is this the only place on the river?’
“And my wife, who was furious, answered: ‘Decent folk find out what’s what in a place before pushing themselves into other people’s preserves.’
“As I didn’t want a row, I said to her:
“ ‘Hold your tongue, Mélie, let them be, let them be, we’ll see what happens.’
“Well, we drew Dalila up under the willows, and we stepped ashore and began to fish side by side, Mélie and I, right alongside the two others.
“At this point, Mr. President, I must go into details. We hadn’t been there five minutes before our neighbour’s line was tugged twice, three times, and then, look you, he got a carp, fat as my thigh, not quite so fat maybe, but nearly. My heart jumped; a sweat broke out on me, and Mélie said to me: ‘Look, you gaumless idiot, do you see that?’
“At this moment, M. Bru, the grocer from Poissy, who knows a bit about gudgeon, came past in his sailing-boat and shouted to me: ‘Has someone taken your place, M. Renard?’ ‘Yes, M. Bru,’ I answered. ‘There are some lowbred people in this world who don’t know what’s what.’
“The little cotton-back beside me pretended not to hear, and his wife the same, his great fat wife, a cow of a woman.”
Once more the president interrupted: “Be careful what you say. You are insulting Mme. Flamèche, the widow, here present.”
Renard began excuses. “I beg pardon, my feelings made me forget myself.
“Well, not a quarter of an hour passed before the little cotton-back got another carp—and another right on top of that, and, five minutes later, another.
“I tell you there were tears in my eyes. I could see Mme. Renard was boiling with rage: she went on at me all the time. ‘Look, you miserable fool, can’t you see, he’s robbing you of your fish? Can’t you see? You’ll not get anything, not even a frog, not a single thing, nothing. Oh, my hands itch to get at them, only to think about it.’
“I kept saying: ‘Wait till noon. The poacher will go away for lunch, and I’ll get my place back.’ Because, Mr. President, I lunched on the spot every Sunday. We carried provisions in the Dalila. Ouch! Twelve struck. He had a bird wrapped up in newspaper, the scoundrel, and while he was eating, he got another carp, he did.
“Mélie and I swallowed a few bites, next to nothing, we hadn’t the heart to eat.
“Then I began to read my paper to digest my lunch. I read Gil-Blas every Sunday like that, in the shade on the bank of the river. It is Colombine’s day, as you know, Colombine, who writes the articles in Gil-Blas. I always make Mme. Renard angry by pretending that I know Colombine. It’s not true, I don’t know her, I’ve never seen her, but never mind, she knows how to write; and then she has a very pointed way of putting things, for a woman. She pleases me, she does: there aren’t many can write like her.
“Well, I began to chip my old woman, but she got angry right away and was soon angrier. So I held my tongue.
“It was at this moment that our two witnesses here, M. Ladureau and M. Durdent, arrived from the other side of the river. We know them by sight.
“The little man had begun fishing again. He had so many bites that I fairly shook with it, I did. And his wife was saying: ‘This is a mighty good spot, we’ll always come here, Désiré.’
“I felt a cold shiver down my spine. And Mme. Renard kept on saying: ‘You’re not a man, you’re not a man. You haven’t the spirit of a chicken.’
“ ‘Look here,’ I said suddenly; ‘I’d rather get away from here, I shall do something silly.’
“Then she whispered, as if she was holding a red-hot iron under my nose: ‘You’re not a man. You’re going to run away now, are you, you’re going to surrender the place? Run away, then, you bloody quitter.’
“She’d got me there. However, I didn’t make a false move.
“But the other fellow got a bream, oh, I’ve never seen such a fish. Never!
“And then my wife began to talk aloud, as if she was just thinking. You can see how clever that is. She said: ‘You might say they were stolen fish, since we baited the place ourselves. They ought at least to hand over a little of the money we spent on bait.’
“Then the little cotton-back’s fat wife began to talk too. ‘Are you referring to us, madame?’
“ ‘I’m referring to stealers of fish who profit by the money spent by other people.’
“ ‘Are you calling us stealers of fish?’
“And so they began to explain themselves, and then they came to words. Lord, they’d plenty, the sluts, and rare shrewd ones. They screamed so savagely that our two witnesses, who were over on the other bank, began shouting for fun: ‘Hi, you over there, a little silence. You’ll spoil your men’s chances of fish.’
“The fact is that the little cotton-back and I were as still as two stocks. We sat there, our noses down to the water, as if we didn’t hear them.
“But, God bless us, we could hear all right. ‘You’re no better than a liar.’—‘You’re no better than a trollop.’—‘You’re no better than a drab.’—‘You’re no better than a slut.’ And so on, and so forth. A sailor couldn’t have taught them anything.
“All at once I heard a noise behind me. I turned round. It was the other woman, that fat creature, falling on my wife with her parasol. Bang! bang! Mélie got two whacks. But she was in a rage, was Mélie, and when she’s in a rage, she hits out. She grabs the fat woman by the hair, and then, smack, smack, smack, slaps rained down like bullets.
“I’d have left them to it, I would. Let women deal with women, and men with men. There’s no need to mix your quarrels. But the little cotton-back came on like a devil and tried to jump on my wife. But no, no, that’s too much, my friend. I caught the little fellow one with my fist. And thwack, thwack. One to the nose, one in the wind. He threw up his arms, he threw up his legs and fell on his back right into the river, in the middle of the hole.
“I would certainly have fished him out, Mr. President, if I had had time right then. But to cap all, the fat woman was getting the better of it, and she was handling Mélie pretty roughly. I know I ought not to have rescued her while the fellow was getting his belly full of water. But I didn’t think he would be drowned. I said to myself: ‘That’ll cool him.’
“So I ran to separate the women. I got thumped and scratched and bitten. Lord, what a pair of devils!
“To cut a long story short, it took me five minutes, perhaps ten, to separate those two diehards.
“I turned round. There was nothing there. The water was as smooth as a lake. And the men on the other side were shouting: ‘Fish him out, fish him out.’
“Easily said, but I can’t swim, I can’t, let alone dive!
“At last, after a good quarter of an hour of it, the lockkeeper came, and two gentlemen with boathooks. They found him at the bottom of the hole under eight feet of water, as I said, but there he was, the little cotton-back.
“I swear those are the facts. On my word of honour, I am innocent.”
The witnesses having sworn to the same effect, the accused was acquitted.