’Toine
I
Everybody for ten leagues round knew old ’Toine, “Big ’Toine,” ’Toine-Ma-Fine, Antoine Mâcheblé, also nicknamed Brulot—the tavern-keeper of Tournevent.
He had given celebrity to that little hamlet, hidden in a wrinkle of the valley which sloped down to the sea—a poor little peasant-village composed of ten Normandy cottages surrounded by ditches and trees.
They stood—all those houses—as if trying to shrink out of sight among the tall grass and reeds of the ravine—behind the curve which had given the place its name, Tournevent. They seemed to have hunted for this shelter for themselves, just as those birds that hide in plowed furrows on days of tempest seek to shelter themselves from the great wind of the sea, the ocean-wind—rough and salty—which gnaws and burns like fire, which dries up and destroys like the winter frosts.
But the entire hamlet seemed to be the property of Antoine Mâcheblé, nicknamed Brulot, also very often called ’Toine, and ’Toine-Ma-Fine, because of a certain phrase that was forever in his mouth:
“My fine is the best in all France.”
His fine was his cognac, let it be understood.
For twenty years he had been slaking the thirst of the country with his fine and his brûlots; for whenever anybody would ask him:
“What had I better take, Father Antoine?”
He invariably responded:
“A burnt brandy, son-in-law;—it warms up the tripes and clears up the head;—nothing better for the inside!”
He also had the habit of calling everyone “son-in-law”—although he never had a married daughter, nor even a daughter to marry.
Yes, indeed! everybody knew ’Toine Brulot, the biggest man in the canton, and even in the whole arrondissement. His little house seemed ridiculously too narrow and too low to contain him; and when you saw him standing at his door, as he would do for a whole day at a time, you could not have helped wondering how he would ever manage to get inside again. But inside he would get—somehow or other—every time a customer came; for it was ’Toine’s acknowledged right to levy a treat upon everyone who drank in his house.
The name of his tavern, painted upon the sign was “Au Rendezvous des Anis”; and a good name it was, seeing that Father ’Toine was the friend, sure enough, of everybody in the whole country. Folks came from Fécamp and from Montivillers to see him and to joke with him and to listen to his talk; for that big fat old fellow could have made a tombstone laugh. He had a way of his own of joking at folks without making them mad—a way of winking his eye to express what he never said—a way of slapping his own thigh when he got to laughing, so funny that at every slap he was bound to make you also laugh with him, whether you wanted to or not. And then it was good fun only just to see him drink. He would drink every time anybody asked him, and drink everything offered him—with a look of joy in his mischievous eye—a joy of twofold origin, inspired first by the pleasure of being treated, and secondly by the delight of piling away so many big coppers paid down as the price of the fun.
The jokers of the neighbourhood used to say to him:
“Why don’t you drink up the sea, Pap ’Toine?”
He would answer:
“There’s two things prevent me—first thing is that it’s salty, and then besides it would have to be bottled, because my abdomen isn’t elastic enough for me to trust myself to drink out of such a cup as that.”
And then you ought to have heard him quarrelling with his wife! It was better than a play! Every single day during the whole thirty years they had been married they used to fight regularly. Only ’Toine would just joke, while his wife would get really mad. She was a tall peasant woman, who walked with great long steps like a crane—and whose slabsided, skinny body supported a head that looked like the head of a mad owl. She spent her whole time in raising chickens in a little backyard behind the tavern; and she was renowned for her skill in fattening fowl.
Whenever they gave a big dinner at Fécamp, up the coast, it was always considered essential to eat one of Mother ’Toine’s boarders—otherwise it would be no dinner at all.
But she had been born in a bad humour, and she had remained all her life cross with everything and everybody. And while she was ill-humoured with the world in general, she was particularly ill-humoured with her husband. She was mad at him for his good humour, for his renown, for his good health, and for his fatness. She called him a good-for-nothing, because he was able to make money without doing anything;—she called him a hog, because he ate and drank as much as ten ordinary men;—and she never passed a day of her life without declaring:
“Wouldn’t he look better in the pigpen, a beggar like that!—Makes my stomach sick to see the fat of him!”
And she would go and scream in his face:
“Wait!—you wait a bit! We’ll see what’ll happen to you!—we’ll see soon enough! You’ll bust like a grain-sack, you big, puffed-up good-for-nothing!”
Then ’Toine would slap his fat stomach, and laugh with all his might, and answer:
“Eh! Mother ’Toine, my old plank—you just try to fatten up your chickens like that—you just try it on for the fun of the thing!”
And, pulling up his shirtsleeve to show his enormous arm, he would cry:
“Now there’s a wing for you, mother!—that’s what you can call a wing.”
And the customers would yell with delight, and thump the table with their fists, and stamp the earthen floor with their feet, and spit on the ground in the craziness of their merriment.
The furious old woman would yell again:
“Wait a bit!—you just wait a bit. … I know what’s going to happen to you;—you’ll bust like a grain sack!”
And off she would go, pursued by the laughter of the customers.
’Toine was indeed wonderful to behold—so heavy and thick and red and puffy he had become. He was one of those enormous beings whom Death seems to select to amuse himself with—to practise all his tricks and jokes and treacherous buffooneries upon, so that his slow work of destruction may be rendered for once irresistibly funny. Instead of showing himself in his ordinary aspect to such a one, this rascally old Death forbears to manifest his presence in grey hairs or in withered limbs or in wrinkles or in that general crumbling down which makes folks exclaim—“Bigre!—how changed he is!”—instead of thus acting, Death takes pleasure in fattening such a man, in making him monstrous and absurd, in colouring him up with red and blue, in puffing him out, in giving him an aspect of superhuman health; and all those deformities which in other beings seem pitiable or ghastly, become in his person laughable, droll, amusing.
“Wait a bit!—wait a bit!” repeated Mother ’Toine, “we’ll see what you’ll come to yet!”
II
Well, it came to pass that ’Toine got a paralytic stroke. They put the colossus to bed in the little chamber behind the partition of the barroom—so that he could hear what the folks were saying on the other side, and could talk with his friends; for his head was all right, although his body—the enormous body, impossible to move or to lift—was stricken with immobility. At first it was hoped that he would be able to move his big legs again; but this hope vanished in a very short time; and ’Toine-Ma-Fine passed his days as well as his nights in bed—the bed that was only made up once a week, with the assistance of four neighbours, who lifted out the tavern-keeper by his four limbs, while the mattress was being turned.
He kept his good humour still; but it was a different jollity from that of the old times—more humble, more timid—and he was childishly afraid of his wife, who kept yelping all day long:
“There!—the big hog;—there he is, the good-for-nothing, the lazy lout, the nasty drunkard! Ah! the nasty fellow, the nasty beast!”
He never answered her any more. He would only wink his right eye when her back was turned, and then turn himself over in bed—the only movement in his power to make. He called this exercise “taking a turn to the North,”—“taking a turn to the South.”
His great amusement now was to listen to the gossip in the tavern, and to shout dialogues through the partition whenever he could recognize the voices of friends. He would yell:
“Hey, son-in-law!—that you, Célestin?”
And Célestin Maloisel would answer:
“That’s me, Pap ’Toine. So you’re on the way to gallop again, eh, you old rascal?”
’Toine-Ma-Fine would answer:
“Not to gallop—no! not yet! But I’ve not lost flesh; the old shell’s solid as ever.”
After awhile he began to call his most particular friends into his room; and they kept him company pleasantly enough—though it worried him a great deal to see them drinking without his being able to join. He kept saying:
“What kills me, son-in-law—what just kills me is not being able to taste my fine, nom d’un nom. As for the rest, I don’t care a doggone—but it just kills me to think I can’t take a horn.”
And the owl-face of old mother ’Toine appeared at the door. She screamed:
“Look at him!—look at him now, the lazy big lummox that has to be fed—that has to be washed—that has to be cleaned like an overgrown hog!”
And when the old woman was not there, a red cock would sometimes jump up on the window, stare into the room with his little round carrion’s eye, and crow sonorously. Sometimes also, one or two chickens would fly in as far as the foot of the bed, to look for crumbs.
’Toine-Ma-Fine’s friends soon abandoned the barroom for the bedroom—where they would assemble shortly after noon every day, to chat at the fat man’s bedside.
Helpless as he was, that devil-of-a-joker ’Toine, he could make them all laugh still. He would have made Old Nick himself laugh, the old humbug. There were three men in particular who came to see him every day: Célestin Maloisel, a tall lean fellow, a little crooked like the trunk of an apple tree; Prosper Horslaville, a dried-up little man, with a nose like a ferret, mischievous and sly as a fox; and Césaire Paumelle, who never said anything himself, but had lots of fun for all that.
They used to get a plank out of the yard, place it on the edge of the bed, and they would play dominoes pardi—great old games of dominoes, which would last from two o’clock until six.
But Mother ’Toine soon made herself insufferable. She could not endure to see her big fat lummox of a husband still amuse himself, and playing dominoes in bed; and whenever she saw they were going to begin a game, she would rush in furiously, knock the plank over, seize the dominoes and take them into the barroom;—declaring that it was bad enough to have to feed that great lump of tallow without seeing him amuse himself just for spite—just to torment the poor folks who had to work hard all day.
Célestin Maloisel and Césaire Paumelle would bow their heads to the storm; but Prosper Horslaville found great fun in teasing the old woman, in exciting her still more.
One day that she seemed more than usually exasperated, he cried out:
“Hey, mother!—do you know what I’d do if I was in your place—eh!”
She waited for him to explain himself, and watched his face with her owlish eye.
He said:
“Say, that man of yours never’s going to get out of bed, and he’s as warm as an oven. Well now, if I was you, I’d set him to hatching eggs.”
She stood speechless for a moment, thinking he was making fun of her—closely watching the thin cunning face of the peasant, who continued:
“Yes, I’d put five eggs under one arm, and five under the other—just the same time as I’d put them under a hen to set on. Them things does be born of themselves. When they’d be hatched, I’d take your old man’s chicks and give them to the hen to take care of. Tell you, mother—that way you’d soon have a slew of chickens running around!”
Astonished, the old woman said:
“But can that be done?”
“Can it be done? I’d like to know why it couldn’t be done. If you can hatch eggs in a warm box, why couldn’t you hatch them in a bed?”
The old woman was greatly impressed by this reasoning, and she went off, more thoughtful than usual, and quite calmed down.
Eight days later she walked into ’Toine’s room one morning with her apron full of eggs. And she said:
“I’ve just put the yellow hen in the nest with ten eggs under her. Now here’s ten for you. See that you don’t break them.”
’Toine, completely dumbfounded, asked:
“What do you want now?”
She answered:
“I want you to hatch them—you good-for-nothing.”
He laughed at first; but when he found she was serious he got mad, he resisted, he positively objected to letting her put the eggs under his arms to be hatched.
But the old woman cried out in a passion:
“Then you shan’t have a bit of grub until you take them. Now we’ll see if you hatch them or not!”
’Toine got uneasy and didn’t answer.
When he heard the clock strike twelve, he cried out:
“Hey, mother—got the soup ready yet?”
The old woman screamed from the kitchen:
“Got no soup for you, you overgrown lazy lout.”
He thought she was only joking, and he waited awhile;—then he begged, implored, swore, took a desperate turn to the North and a desperate turn to the South, hammered the wall with his fist—but he was obliged to yield and to let her put five eggs against his left side. Then he got his soup.
When his friends came, he looked so queer and so uneasy that they thought he must be sick.
Then they proceeded to play the daily game. But ’Toine seemed to find no fun in it, and he put out his hand very slowly—with infinite precaution.
“Got your arm tied up?” asked Horslaville.
’Toine responded:
“I’ve got a sort of a numbness in my shoulder.”
Suddenly they heard somebody entering the barroom. They stopped playing.
It was the mayor and the adjutant. They asked for two glasses of fine, and began to chat about public affairs. As they were talking very low, ’Toine wanted to put his ear against the partition to hear them, and as he gave a sudden “turn to the North,” forgetting the eggs, he found himself lying upon an omelette.
At the sound of the great oath which he swore, the old woman rushed in, and suspecting the disaster, discovered it with one pull at the bedclothes. At first she did nothing;—she was too indignant, too suffocated with fury at the sight of the yellow cataplasm smeared upon her old man’s side.
Then, trembling with rage, she flung herself upon the paralytic; and began to thump him with all her might on the stomach, just as if she was beating dirty linen at the pool. Her fists came down alternately with a dull thud—rapidly as the paws of a rabbit drumming.
The three friends of ’Toine laughed to split their sides—sneezed, coughed, screeched; as the big fat man parried his wife’s attacks with great caution, for fear of breaking the five eggs on the other side.
III
’Toine was vanquished. He had to hatch; he had to give up playing dominoes; he had to give up all active existence;—for the old woman ferociously cut off his rations every time he broke an egg.
So he lived upon his back, with his eyes on the ceiling—motionless—his arms lifted up like wings—while the chicken-germs were warmed against his sides.
He only talked in whispers, as if he were as afraid of noise as he was of motion; and he began to feel an anxious sympathy for the yellow hen that followed the same occupation as himself.
He would ask his wife:
“Did the yellow one eat last night?”
And the old woman would keep running from her husband to her chickens, and from her chickens to her husband—terribly busy with the chickens that were being hatched in the nest and in the bed.
The country folk who knew the story would come, very seriously and full of curious interest to ask after ’Toine. They would enter on tiptoe as if they were coming into a sick room, and say:
“Well, how is it?”
’Toine would answer:
“Well, it’s doing good enough; but it gives me the itch to be so hot;—makes all my skin creep.”
Now, one morning his wife came in, very much excited, and said:
“The yellow one has seven. There were three bad.”
’Toine felt his heart beat. He wondered how many he was going to have.
He asked.
“How long before it’ll happen.”
The old woman would answer angrily—herself anxious through fear of a failure.
“Got to hope so.”
They waited. Friends who knew the time was approaching, became anxious.
They talked about it everywhere; folks went from house to house to ask for news.
About three o’clock in the afternoon, ’Toine fell asleep. He had got into the habit of sleeping half the day. He was suddenly awakened by a tickling under his right arm. He put down his hand and seized a little creature covered with yellow down, which moved in his fingers.
His excitement was such that he yelled, and let go the chicken which began to run all over the bedclothes. The tavern was full of people. The customers all rushed in, and thronged in a circle as if round a mountebank’s performance; and the old woman came to carefully gather up the little bird which had hidden itself under her husband’s beard.
Nobody spoke. It was a warm April day. Through the open window could be heard the clucking of the old hen, calling her chickens.
’Toine, who was sweating with excitement, constraint, and anxiety, murmured:
“I’ve another under the left arm—right now!”
His wife plunged her long thin hand under the covers, and brought forth a second chick. …
The neighbours all wanted to see it. It was passed round from hand to hand, and carefully examined like a phenomenon.
For twenty minutes there were no more births;—then four chicks got out of their shells simultaneously.
And there was a great hum through the assembly. And ’Toine smiled, delighted with his success—beginning to feel quite proud of this queer paternity. You might say what you please, you never saw many men like him! He was a queer case—wasn’t he?
He observed:
“That makes six. Nom de nom!—what a christening!”
And a great burst of laughter went up. A number of strangers entered the tavern. Others were still waiting outside for their chance. People asked each other:
“How many’s he got?”
“Got six.”
Mother ’Toine carried this new family to the yellow hen; and the hen clucked crazily, bristled up her feathers, and opened her wings as wide as she could to shelter the ever-increasing multitude of her little ones.
“There’s another!” yelled ’Toine.
He was mistaken—there were three more! It was a triumph! The last chick burst open its shell at seven o’clock that evening. All the eggs were hatched. And ’Toine, wild with joy, free again, glorious, kissed the little creature on the back—nearly smothered it with his lips. He wanted to keep that one in his bed—just that one—until next day, feeling seized with a natural affection for the tiny thing to which he had given life; but the old woman took it away like the others in spite of his supplications.
All those present were delighted, and as they went home they talked of nothing else. Horslaville, the last to linger, asked:
“Say, Pap ’Toine—going to invite me to fricassee the first, eh?”
The face of ’Toine grew radiant at the idea of a fricassee; and the fat man answered:
“For sure, I’ll invite you—for sure, my son-in-law.