Guignol's Band Read online

  I’m telling you all these details because subdued in memory they lie lightly on the years… they gently enchant you to death, that’s their advantage. There’s sorcery for you, really there, tangible, lined by the water!… I’m warning you!… A lot of good it’ll do you!… Let’s forget it!…

  After the strings of houses, after the unvarying streets through which I gently accompany you, the walls rise up… the warehouses, all-brick giant ramparts… Treasure cliffs!… monster shops… phantasmagoric storehouses, citadels of merchandise, mountains of tanned goatskins enough to stink all the way to Kamchatka! Forest of mahogany in thousands of piles, tied up like asparagus, in pyramids, miles of materials!… Rugs enough to cover the moon, the whole world… all the floors in the universe!… Enough sponges to dry up the Thames! What quantities!… Enough wool to smother Europe beneath heaps of cuddly warmth… Herrings to fill the seas! Himalayas of powdered sugar… Matches to fry the poles!… Enormous avalanches of pepper, enough to make the Seven Floods sneeze!… A thousand boatloads of onions, enough to cry through five hundred wars… Three thousand six hundred trains of beans drying in covered hangars more colossal than the Charing Cross, Nord and Saint-Lazare stations put together… Coffee for the whole planet!… Enough to give a lift during their forced marches to the four hundred thousand avenging conflicts of the fightingest armies in the world… never again sitting, snoring, exempt from sleep and eating, hypertense, storming, exalted, dying in the charge, hearts unfolded, borne off to superdeath by the hyperpalpitating superglory of powdered coffee!… The dream of the three hundred fifteen emperors!…

  Still more buildings, more enormous, for the loads of cheap meat, preserved carcasses in dry freezers, in mustard sauce, in prodigious venison, myriads of sausages with chopped rind as high as the Alps!… Corned-beef fat, giant masses that would cover Parliament and Leicester and Waterloo so that you wouldn’t see them stuck underneath, they’d be swamped so fast! Two mammoths all stuffed with truffles just transported from the River Love, preserved, intact in ice, refrigerated for twelve thousand years!…

  I’m now talking about jam, really colossal sweetness, forums of jars of mirabelle plums, surging oceans of oranges, rising up on all sides, overflowing the roofs, fleet-loads from Afghanistan, sweet golden Turkish delights from Istanbul, pure sugar, all in acacia leaves… Myrtles from Smyrna and Karachi… sloes from Finland… Chaos, vales of precious fruits stored behind triple doors, incredible choice of flavours, exquisite sugared Arabian Nights’ magic in amphora jars, eternal joys for childhood promised from the depths of the Scriptures, so dense, so eager that sometimes they crack the wall, they’re squeezed in so thick, burst the sheet metal, roll into the street, cascade right into the gutter! In pleasant torrents and delights!… Then the mounted police come charging in, clear the area, the view, lash the looters with blackjacks… It’s the end of a dream!…

  Immediately on the other side of these docks there’s the big violent sweep of air whirling in from the green heights of the valley in Greenwich… the big bend in the river… the gusts from the sea… from the pale-dawn estuaries below… after Barking… lying just below the clouds… where the tiny cargoes come up… where the waves break against the jetties, splash, fall back, swoon into the mud… The ebbing tide. It all depends on the kind of thing you like!… I say it in all simplicity!… The sky… the grey water… the purplish shores… it’s all so soothing… No control of one or the other… gently drawn round… in slow circles and eddies, you’re always charmed farther off towards other dreams… all to expire in lovely secrets, towards other worlds getting ready in veils and mists with big, pale and fuzzy designs among the whispering mosses… Are you following me?

  Farther off in the current towards Kindall, you see the worrying barges, cutters and sloops ready to tack, loaded to list… All the morning’s vegetables, the whole cargo of “perishables”, carrots, potatoes, cauliflowers, high as the yard, doubling in the wind, struggling broadside towards the city, Housewives’ Cape!… Not much traffic at the moment, except the citrus fruits, bargefuls, tide downstream around seven o’clock!… Water up to the arches, as far as the channel of Major Bridge when the weighbridge loosens up, lifts, grinds, breaks in two!… The Australian Mail sweeps in with high, slow majesty, strutting to the river, its black bow cutting clean through the spray, its frilly train of a thousand waves, rippling off, lapping the pebbles…

  A few more steps towards the pier, please!… And then a detour outside the tide gate and here we are again at the towing… the sticky passage, all slimy, seaweed, watch out!… A bit lower down, on the pebbles, we inch forward on eggs!… Feeling our way!… Here and there… Now we’re in front of a tunnel… Better say a kind of sewer, we go down into it, we’re swallowed up! We climb the dozen steps… and we come out right into a pub… Not much, but still and all roomy! A pub that can hold, all the shutters closed, around forty or fifty people… You’ve got to know how to get there… Better arrive at low tide, that way no one sees or knows, or at night from a boat, high tide, and easy does it now!… It’s picturesque!

  The Dingby Cruise, the pub I’m telling about, the name on its licence, between Colonial Docks and Trom.

  Not much of it’s left, I can tell you right now, it ended in a disaster, you’ll hear about it as you keep reading.

  Besides, now with the bombs probably nothing’s left at all, even the ashes must have blown away… It’s too bad! I’ve got to remember about everything! I’d have gone back to take a look!

  Really a pretty orderly pub and well known around the three piers, and not bad, nor criminal, there were much worse kinds!… Mostly dockers, regular customers, workers, with a handful of smugglers, naturally, you always find some. A small school of hoodlums.

  The boss wasn’t talkative. Agreeable, obliging, but reserved. He didn’t get confidential… You’d start the talking… His gestures which always amazed me, a knack of catching glasses, sometimes four or five at a time, in the air, like flies, juggling them! Never breaking a saucer, trapeze artist… Must have been a performer at one time, rope dancer, not allowed now on the public stage, a fine profession lost… Besides his pub, did some pawnbroking on the side for the drunks, handled dope a little too. I can’t deny that. He took commissions, deals that had to be handled just right and never the slightest slip-up! Discreet with the cops! Never a word out of him! That’s rare in the underworld.

  We hung out regularly in the joint, at least in the early days. The place was practical for us, right near the Wapping buses and yet in the centre of the docks… It was a rare location. You could get away by the bank when the dicks from the Yard came around, when you heard their graceful steps… their shoes squeaking… all over the cobblestones… As for the others, the River Police, when they were snooping around the pylons with their motorboats, ptup! ptup!… Sly motor… velvet fart… slip through faultlessly… makes you want to crap… would last more than an hour, the time for their job, to go up to the locks and then back… Always that to the good! What rats, I see them, mangy rats between river and bank, I never could stand them… the supreme scum, earth and waves!… Real water garbage!… The River Police!… Beyond the bounds of treachery!… And I’m not telling everything!… I boil with rage thinking about them!… I get steamed up!… I go haywire just talking about them!… At the memory!… It’s not polite!… Shame, shame!… Sorry!… No way to act I realize!… Not very artistic… or reasonable… I bring you back to the table… I welcome you!… I offer you something! Inside with everyone… I’m not going upstairs… I’m setting you up on the main floor… It’s a long room, that’s all… with partitions for the pub… dark, sticky, but warm around the stove… you appreciate it during the season… the boss handles the orders himself… Prosper can manage it… He doesn’t need bouncers like the Mile End saloons… at La Vaillance for example…

  You cough slightly when you come in because of the thick smoke… also because it’s the custom… it’
s opaque all the way to the back of the room… and as far as the bay window on the Thames… the little wide panes… Got to get right against them to see clear… Prospero Jim’s at the bar… He’s squint-eyed but he sees his people all right… He’s a flash size-up artist… He’s not too keen on me… He must be a little jealous…

  “The rope, you understand?” he reminds me… “That tells everything… Right, my boy? The rope! That’s the whole story!…”

  Talking about his old job perks him right up… dancer in the Bordington Company, the big worldwide circus, a month in every city, record sell-outs, always the same triumph, flowers, cigars and girls galore… He had just about one joke, always the same, about the sun. When it was pouring outside he never let up with it…

  “Lovely weather, my lord! Lovely smile! London sun! Don’t you think so?”

  He’d shoot it from the bar at everyone who came in, that was his Italian’s revenge, they called him Ravioli, he came down hard on the Zs.

  “Here, you zee, it only rains twize a year!… But zix monthz at a time!”

  He knew all about the river, the people, the ways, the trafficking, just as he did about his pub and his customers. He was always suspicious of newcomers… he was afraid of anything that prowls… He wasn’t a bad sort, but soured because of the climate… he made dough, that was all… He wanted to go back to the sun… Home to Calabria, and well-heeled! That was his plan… It didn’t happen by itself… There were hard deals!…

  “Big? Fat?” he’d ask me.

  That was how he felt me out. I could see what he was insinuating. If I’d got something from the boat. If I’d answered right off, I’d have done myself harm… Had to grunt at him just so, “Ooh!… Oh!…” Anxious, not slobbering… a good impression… our way of talking, French style, did us a lot of harm… Answered, “Hm! Hm!” He’s got a good opinion of me… We’re going to sit down in the daylight at the long table against the window… time passes… the customers doze a bit… Some of them even snore… It’s the fatigue, and then the smoke and the stout dulls you… A pint in each fist… It’s a sort of manoeuvre… They’re waiting for the whistle to blow again at the Poplar wharves, for the noise to start up again, shrieking, for the trucks to unload… then a dash to the storerooms! Tearing away everywhere! Disappearing into the works, the big uproar starts again, they’re sweating away inside, grunting with effort, knocking themselves silly, groaning, working punch-drunk at full steam! Chnooff!… Chnooff!!… Chnooff!!… The crane winds up, swings, carries off the slops!… It goes up! Down! It dusts! A whirl of junk! Still got time to see how things’re shaping up! The tide starts floundering out around eight o’clock… The clients don’t gab much!… They’re sort of dozing with fatigue… they’re waiting… Just have to be on the lookout from time to time, to keep an eye on things, on the flats beyond… towards the trees… the break around the bend… towards Greenwich after Gallions Rock where the ships come up with the pilots on the ebbing tide… Nor’-west-nor’-west… little ones first right at the head… the measly plunderers, the caravan… the big ones afterwards, the mastodons, the steamers, the sober buzzing with triple-echoed sirens… the hoarse one… the bassoon, the ailing… the Indias… The P&Os… they blast out!… Majesty!… What Lords! The mail boat! The clients tear out of the joint! A rush to the moorings!

  The ship’s pulling in!… The pub empties in a second!… All the clients on the rungs!… To the sculls! And I know you!… At the stem! At the rails!

  The mate’s looking out from up above.

  “Fifty going up!”

  The mate bawls out to the echo…

  “Two extra!…”

  Go to it, riff-raff! Jump windwards!… Getting crushed! Killing themselves on the ropes!…

  The dockers climb up.

  The big propeller’s churning at their arses!… Prroof!!… Prroof!!… Prroof!!… Grinding through the mush! Bulging bubbles!…

  Telegraphing… from the bridge: ding! Ding! Ding!…

  “All astern!”

  Easy does it! Big tremble!… Nearing the dock!… Groans at the side!… Slowly pulls in… Tucks in there, tiny, enormous… docks!… It’s ready!… Oof! It’s over!… A big bellyful of sigh… Oof! Oof! Over! Over! Big little boat!… Sad, the end of the music… Sorrow comes down on it!… Back to port!… All tied up everywhere by a thousand ropes… Pain covers everything over… blots it out… Stop!

  * * *

  Cascade was at home and in such a boil that no one dared open his mouth. After all he liked his crew and the gals in particular. There were nine of them around him, some nice, some big, some skinny, and two who were pretty awful to look at, Martine and La Loupe, I got to know them well later on, they always had the best earners, his champions of charm, what scarecrows. Men’s tastes are a hash, they stick their noses anywhere, they bring back cockeyes, hags, they think they’re cream puffs, that’s their affair, it’s not yours, they’ll never know, so let ’em screw.

  They twaddled away, a regular birdhouse, jabbering, squealing, enough to make you dizzy, on edge for a fight, you couldn’t hear yourself. Cascade wanted it to stop, he had a speech ripe, important things. He was dashing around in shirtsleeves, he was yelling for it to stop, for them to shut up. A pearl-grey form-fitting vest, riding breeches, a spit curl flat against his forehead, nicely twisted down to his eyebrows, he still looked pretty good, he stood his ground all right, he’d stopped trying to be a ladykiller, just a little with his moustache, his handlebars, he must’ve been quite slick in the old days! But he was getting grey, he’d changed, especially since the big worries, the beginning of the war, he couldn’t stand screeching, especially the girls’ yapping, he’d fly right off the handle.

  There were decisions to be made…

  “After all, I can’t pimp for all of you!… Goddamn it!”

  They were laughing at his troubles.

  “I’ve got four of my own! That’s enough! That’s my load! Am I Le Chabanais?* I don’t want any more, Angèle! You hear me? I don’t want another single one!”

  He was refusing women.

  Angèle must have smiled. Her man looked comical yelling away. A serious woman Angèle, his real one, who ran his stable, she had a tough time.

  “I’m not crazy, Angèle! I’m not Pelican! Where’s it going to end? Where’m I going to hide them all if this goes on? What do I look like? What’s got to be has got to be! All right! But what the hell! Let it stay as is! The Sharp wasn’t beating his brains out… he cleared out just two days ago… he’d been looking for me, the fairy… starts bending my ear… He tries to reason with me: ‘Take mine, Cascade! You’re a pal! The only one I’ve got confidence in! I’m a-off to war!’ he tells me. ‘I’m a-off to fight!’… Well go!

  “‘You’re a pal! I know you! It’s a break!’ No sooner said than done!… Satchel! The gentleman beats it, doesn’t even turn around! A job lot, a gal on my hands! Poor Cascade! One better! No time to grunt! I’m all swelled up! ‘I’m a-off to war!’ That’s all there’s to it! Cool as a cucumber! ‘I’m in it all right,’ he tells me, ‘the Sappers! 42nd Engineers!’ All is forgiven! The gentleman gives another encore! The gentleman looks like a young man! The gentleman’s getting rid of his worries! Woman trouble for me, and how!… I say to myself ‘The Sharp saw me! He’s taking advantage of the circumstance! He’s appointing me good-hearted manager!’ I didn’t like that kind of trick! Let me tell you I was pretty sore! I left and went towards the Regent… I said to myself, ‘I’m going to wake up the bookie, got an idea… Four o’clock! That’s the time for the Royal! Pay-off time! I’m going to drop in and get my money from him! A wad! Stuttering Phil owes me a pile! He’s not in much of a hurry! I’m going to scare the hell out of him!’ Who do I bump into at the door but Jojo!… He goes at me right away… in some state!… What heat! I say to myself he’s drunk!… Not at all!… He’d just enlisted! Another one! He was shooting his mouth
off… ‘Cascade,’ he says, ‘take my Pauline!’… Begs me just like that!… He grabs hold of me!… ‘You’ll be doing me a favour!… And also Josette and Clémence!’… Ah! That was the limit, I started gagging! ‘Wh-wh-what?’ I said… He didn’t let me finish… ‘I’m leaving tonight! I’m joining the 22nd in Saint-Lô!’… Like that! Bang! No time to say ouch!… He grabbed me… strangled me!… In the stomach!… I couldn’t refuse him!…