Guignol's Band Read online

  “‘You’ll send me my share! You’ll keep your little fifty!’ That’s the way he talked to me!… ‘But keep an eye on Pauline,’ he comes back and says… ‘She goes to sleep on blonds!… Break her ribs, you’ll be doing me a favour!… She’s not lazy, but you’ve got to reason with her a little!… Well, I’m going, pal!… Say hello to the boys… The train leaves at midnight!’… ‘Don’t get killed!’ I answered… And that makes two!… I had a mean look on my face!… The situation was getting worse… I sat down… I ordered a vermouth… Sluts!… They don’t let me breathe! Along comes Poigne, who sits down at the next table… I act a little deaf at first, she shakes me, calls me… Poigne, you know, from Piccadilly! The one who does the bar with her daughter, she starts plaguing me… ‘Cascade, I’m counting on you!’… Another one!… She wasn’t listening to my opinion… ‘Take care of my kid and her cousin! Neither of them has a passport!… I’m going to meet my guy in Fécamp, he’s been away for three weeks, he’s setting up a house in Brittany, I don’t know where yet, but it’s nice!’ That’s how she begins… ‘It’s for the Americans! You’re not leaving! Do me the favour!…’ ‘Of course, of course!’ I answered! Yours truly a sucker again!… I couldn’t refuse her either… Poigne’s a remarkable woman, not many like her, few like her in the world! A real model for pimps!… Regular and simple and sociable, no sleeping around! Straight as a die, obliging and everything! I’ve known her twenty-two years!… I said, ‘All right, bring your slaves around!… But watch out for the mixtures!… I don’t want them spoiling my babes! I’ve got enough trouble holding ’em… Vice is the death of work!… A little dykish, all right!… But too much is too much!’… That’s how I talked.

  “‘I agree, Cascade,’ she answers. ‘Beat ’em up! Don’t be shy! It’s all right! I know your principles!’… I said to myself, good! War profits!… Now are they going to leave me the hell alone?… Still and all they all ought to be gone by now, joined their ferocious outfits! Drums, trumpets and goddamn!… In Berlin right this very minute! Mustn’t have any women dragging along!… Phoney fighters! Don’t be silly Nénette!… Along comes La Taupe!… Who does she talk to me about? Guess! Little-Arm Pierrot! He was just nabbed! Three years in the clink! Another bang on the head! And the lash too! Good news! Little-Arm Pierrot! An angel! In the jug in Dartmoor! Could be! Since Friday! Damn it, they come whining to me again, that there’s not a guy around, that I’ve got to act as lawyer!… They’re counting on me!… His saviour!… His friend!… His brother!… And so on and so on!… Another twenty-five pounds for yours truly! And I inherit again!… Two girls and cute! La Taupe and Raymonde!… Two hard workers!… My lucky star!… Promise made, promise kept! Bring the dames along! It’s Pierrot’s first slip-up! Tough luck, I say! Things not getting better! His first muff! I can sniff trouble! No mistake about Pierrot’s women, with their vices and what not, if they make three pounds a day it’s the end of the world!… He’s passing ’em on to me cheap! I was the one who sold ’em to him. I know something about ’em!… They weren’t broken in yet!… I wasn’t going to say anything! A man in need… Of course!… Still they cost three hundred quid all raw and I’m not talking about linen! Before I’d get my money back from the bitches, Pierrot’d be wearing a wig, he’d have made a pile of slippers over there on the moor! Beg your pardon! His women won’t have any more customers… I could fatten ’em up for twenty-five years! I know ’em, nothing’ll help ’em! You’d think they ate fog!… Dried-out string beans!… Well, there’s got to be some like that!… It’s a pain in the arse to have ’em back! They’re just the servant-girl type! And what about Quenotte? Another fine yegg, the one who put ’em on my hands!… Boy do I remember that bird!… Came from Bordeaux! With that accent, and the way he hit the bottle!… Quenotte! Boy! What a crook!… His women were no better than he was!… That’s a type I don’t like!… Women pickpockets!… Business is business!… Mustn’t mix one line with another! But watch out, I’m getting mixed up!… I’m getting lost, can’t help it!… Then along comes Max… He jumps at my neck… I was in the middle of thinking…

  “‘I’ll take the saucers,’ he shouts. ‘Listen to me, Cascade! Listen to me! I’m leaving tonight!’… Another one, I think. ‘Where for?’ I ask… I’d stopped being surprised… ‘I’m joining up in Pau!’…

  “‘In Pau?’ I laugh… Everyone at the table busts out laughing… ‘Naked!* His mug tight.

  He jumps up sore! He starts raving… ‘Dopes! Dopes!’ he yells… ‘You gang of fairies! You got nothing in your pants! Rejected!… Aren’t you? Rejected!’

  “You’d think he was talking to me… Ah! That’s the limit!… But I wasn’t keeping him from leaving! Why’d he insult me?… Another one for Alsace-Lorraine! It gives me a bellyache! Goodbye! A bang on the bean!… I didn’t want to hear the rest!… I cleared out… I jumped up from my seat! I tore out! Right in front of me!… Like all sixty!… I thought I was saved!… Keep quiet! I went into Berlemont’s… Bob was at the bar with Bise… I didn’t want them to talk to me, I dashed through the alley with the tailor shops, came out on the other side, Soho… Who do I run into? You tell me! The one chance in a thousand!… Into Picpus and Berthe, his gal!… The one from Douai!… I know her all right! She’s a ball and chain! A gift! I don’t want any! I say to myself he’s going to stick me with her! It’s my day, it’s the style!… Bang! Doesn’t fail!… He takes me in hand… ‘Ah, you loafer, you wouldn’t do that to me!’… He wants to kid me along!… He begs me!… ‘You’re the only one left and the wops… they’re going to take the bread out of our mouths!… You’re our last hope! Cascade! They’re going to take away all our breadwinners!… If you drop your friends, they’ll be the only ones left and the Corsicans! We’ll be done for!… It’ll be awful!… It’ll be death!… Doesn’t that get you?… Where’s your heart?’… It was sure as shootin’!… He was strangling me!… ‘What about you, you rats?’ I shoot back… ‘Why’re you running away?… panic?’… ‘You, you’ve got varicose veins and albumin!’ he answers… ‘You can talk calmly!…’

  “I’d told him once.

  “‘You, you’re all drunk!’ I snapped. ‘And sick and dead, crazy drunk! You’ve been eating bugle!’

  “I wasn’t satisfied in the end.

  “He wanted to reason with me anyway.

  “‘Don’t you understand the blues?… That we’re in the dumps?… Don’t you realize anything?… The blues? Want me to make a drawing for you? We’re mopey! Don’t you get mopey?… Take a look at the guys around you!’ He mentioned Le Bubu, La Croquette, Grenade, Tartouille, Jean Maison and the Sharp… They left in order to get there!… That’s proof!…

  “‘And my brother who’s on leave got the military medal… He’s in the Cahors Regiment!’…

  “‘So what? What does that prove? That it’s the one who gets most wacked up!… You’ll all croak and feet first! That’s where your brains are! Not up there! Down there! I’m telling you!… And with shit on your kisser!’

  “‘All right,’ he says, ‘go on, work yourself up, Cascade! It does you good! I won’t get sore!… But take Berthe! I swear that’s all I’m asking!… But then it’s definite, you know her! I’m putting her in your hands!… It’s hell getting her to take care of herself but God knows she needs it!…’

  “It’s true she was dragging around a bad dose of syph, the kind you don’t see often… I knew all about it… that she couldn’t get rid of it! The doctors, boy! They’d lap up her case! Sores all over ’er!… Berthe had cost her weight in gold just for injections, buboes… But that was his affair, wasn’t it!… Sometimes three months easily in the hospital for a bubo… Times when she was rotting away everywhere, chancres even in her ears… Berthe and Picpus, they’re a whole world!… Got to see how he handles her when there’s really an argument… He once broke three of her ribs!… Always because she’s stubborn and won’t go to the doctor… Women who don’t take care of themselves are repulsive!�
�� ‘I don’t want to go for my blood test!’… What bellyaching!… Wah!… Wah!… All blah!… What crap!… Me, I go to the doc all right!… And not since yesterday!… For fifteen years! Regular! I haven’t skipped a single time!… Health first!… Why the hell should the women get out of it? Because they just don’t feel like it? You listening? ‘Ah! so I don’t wash my arse!… I’m pretty, people like me!’… What you get for picking up kitchen maids! They’re plain filthy! They drag around!… Get full of muck! Never in a hurry! Never put their arse in water!… I’m keeping the lot and that’s that! Syph and the rest!… Never see a bidet if their men weren’t always after ’em, rough with ’em. They’d rot from head to foot! Ah! The customers don’t realize the trouble a woman means!… The way they’re so anxious to be sick and disgusting! Nice and veiled, all primped up, always natty! But when it comes to the squoosh! The hell with that!… They don’t give a good goddamn!… Berthe’s worse than the others!… Really got to have class, and more!… It’s not every pimp! Hmph! When it comes down to knowing his goods!… I’m telling you!… Picpus insists right off… ‘Take my Berthe!’ He hands me a line… He’s dead set on it!… ‘Take her on trial!… She makes whatever she wants at the Empire… You won’t have trouble! Fifty-fifty!’ Still and all it hurts bad to see a pal leave that way when no one asked him for anything…

  “I argue with him all the same.

  “‘What are you running away for, you poor dope? You want to leave your place to the others? There’s a real boom on now! You can rake in all you want!… It’s lousy with dough!… Never had so much work in London! Ask Red!… Been with us thirty years! Never saw the likes! You make a pile in a single day! Furloughs all over the place! The girls come back loaded with dough!… You’ll have your house in Nogent! You’ll be able to leave in six months… Just a little patience!… You’ve got your chance!… Now you beat it! It’s a gold mine! You’re getting dumb! Dopey! You’re hurting me, Picpus! Go on, get your equipment! You disgust me! That’s what! You make me sick!’

  “What else could I say? That’s how I talked!… He wasn’t even listening!… He starts all over about his girl!… Both of them were there, Berthe and Picpus, on the pavement… They sure looked like dopes!… ‘Go on!’ I said. ‘Get away! That’ll do! You’re crazy! It’s over!… Let me have your punk! I don’t want to take advantage of your weakness!… But be careful! No finagling and no monkey business! If she double-crosses me while you’re away, I’ll hand her over to Luigi!… He asked me for some!’

  “I knew she couldn’t stand him.

  “Luigi the Florentine! He knows how to train them!… He sure can handle his women!… Picpus is velvet compared to him… You’ve just got to see Luigi’s bunch! Both hands, all his fingers broken!… Smack!… That’s it! At the edge of the pavement at the first slip-up!… Streetwalker! Smack! She gets it!… Penance!… Not a murmur!… You’ve just got to see his bread-winners… I assure you they watch their step! They’re on their toes… They don’t take their gloves off!… They do Tottenham. I assure you they don’t feel like laughing! Berthe! That burp! Soon as you talk about Luigi… He almost pimped for her once! You can imagine!… ‘No! No! No! Cascade! I’ll be all right!… I swear! I’ll never bother you!’

  “‘All right! All right, Berthe! We’ll see!’… That’s how I talked… I wasn’t very encouraging…

  “‘Beat it, you! It’s agreed!… Only you’re just a worm! And don’t forget it! That’s all I’m saying!’

  “‘I don’t give a damn as long as you give her back to me! I’m crazy about her!’

  “It’s like dope, I tell you!

  “‘When I get back it’ll be cushy!’ He was slobbering and raving. He talked to me like the Salvation Army!… ‘What we need is real Victory! Alsace-Lorraine, my boy! I want to see Berlin, you old sourpuss!…’

  “That’s how he talked!…

  “‘Balls! That’s what you’ll see!… You’ll spit your little guts out… France has been getting along without you! There’re already seven or eight million over there getting smashed up! Ten thousand a day kicking the bucket, big dopes like you! A little pimp like you isn’t going to change things! Remember what I’m telling you!… You’ll be just a crap in the hay… You won’t even be seen any more!… Your lousy war’s either lost or won… You’re just a blank!… Glamour!… Do you have to die for that? Anybody asking your advice?’

  “‘You’re talking crap, Cascade, you don’t know a thing!… You going to keep her for me? Yes or no? My Berthe? My love?’

  “We’d have kept on arguing.

  “‘Go on!’ I said. ‘You’re raving! You’ve got it coming to you! Let the damned Fritzes knock hell out of you!’

  “Another stripe on my arm!… I get all the luck! I’m running a garage! Got all the chickens! I’ve got a head, et cetera!… Where’m I going to put ’em?… It worries me!”

  Big Angèle was listening to it all, she could take his temper… she saw her man getting worked up… there were pros and cons… She could have put a word in… because after all she had a right to… being his woman and not since yesterday… since always, practically… The others?… Just little understudies to the big-shot gals… She’d come back from America just two weeks before with a nice roll of dollars and a cute little number she’d picked up in Vigo, just like that, at the port, a kid, a little flower girl, prettyish, but still shy, not used to it yet, she’d been pushed into it right away, the city, the mob, the cars, it was all too dark for her, the sky and the pavement, there wasn’t enough sun! It was hell and high water getting her out on the street… Another complication… The Portuguese was in the dumps. Cascade didn’t even look at her, just to see what she was like!… He even wanted to ship her back!… “I don’t want any wet blankets around!… I’m unlucky enough myself!”… And he blew up again!… He got sore at everyone again! At the war that screwed up everything! At the way things were done! At the cops! At people! At the little Portuguese! Big Angèle, who hadn’t said anything, suddenly spoke up.

  “You’re too good-natured, Cascade!… You’re too good-natured!”

  What was that she said?… Boy! Did that half-arse remark set him off! What a sock he took at her! Smack! Enough to stagger a donkey!… She sat down in a daze!…

  “I do what I can, Cascade! I do what I can!”

  More wailing.

  That made him scream at her! He was stamping with rage!

  And since we were standing there and watching, we irritated him too. He yelled at us.

  “There!” he says. “There’re my henchmen!… Indeed, gentlemen, indeed! I’m very kind… The gentlemen certainly think so too!… They’ve got good reason for running after me… The Queen!… Tootsy-wootsy Cascade! That’s how I am! Wait my little rascals! There’s some for you too! You’ll get a look at the police! You’ll get a look at Matthew!… He’s coming back in a little while!… It’s a promise!… It’s agreed!… The Inspector from the Yard… Sergeant Matthew! Indeed! Indeed! That’s pretty! That’s fine! A scandal! The gentlemen make a scene right in Mile End! Ah! There’s going to be shit to pay in five minutes! Inspector Matthew hasn’t digested the hat!… I might as well tell you… Sergeant Matthew doesn’t like wise guys! Matthew the Bull, Sergeant Matthew of the Yard, Inspector Matthew, who does he come to see?… Me, of course!… Damned sure!… That was all I needed!… We met at the Haymarket… He gets in front of me at the ticket window… He puts a pound on Chatterton… And it wasn’t the favourite!… It surprised me a little about him… I didn’t make any remark!… He was the one who buttonholed me… I let him start talking…

  “‘Say, Cascade!… Don’t you know anything? There’s a war on, my dear!… There’s a war on!…’

  “A dumb remark.

  “‘Again?’ I said… That gets him! It’s a peculiarity of his! Always the same gag since he saw my certificate!… Discharged, class of ’87… that I did my time… my seven year
s! That I’m not going to start all over!… I’m not bonkers! Like the others!… That kind of gab, nuts to that!… They know me at the Consulate… at the Yard too!… Besides I’ve got my albumin… with a check-up and everything… just let ’em try and kick me out!… That Matthew won’t get my hide, he’d sure like to see me yanked in!… For me to clear out! Ha! Small-timer!… He’d treat me to a drink in Waterloo!… After that… he can have the cuties!… Big-shot dealer and everything! The police don’t worry them!… Hypocrites!… All the gals in bunches for the Corsicans!… For the Belgians!… For anyone!… Ah! That matter! Business fine!… I know what that fox’s got in the back of his mind! I haven’t been on the Strand since yesterday! Beg your pardon!… No fog!… He says to himself… he’ll be drunk like the others… They’re all wacked up at the moment… they’re all bitten by the war!… I’m going to make him ashamed!… He’ll beat it!… Zim! Boom! Patriotic, those frogs! Beg your pardon!… A bone!… Just wait!

  “‘Your papers!’ he asks… he’s getting sore… my papers? Papers are in order I’ll have you know!… Mr Cascade!… Papers!… Papers!…

  “‘Here, Inspector.’

  “‘All real Frenchmen enlist!’ he starts off, looking at me.

  “‘I agree!… I agree!… I grant you, Inspector!… I’m not contradicting… They leave their places to the clients… Seems to be the fashion!… But that’s pure nuts, isn’t it? Stark madness! In my opinion!… Don’t you think so Inspector?’

  “‘I don’t think so, Cascade!… I don’t think so!…’

  “‘The pretty war’ll go on without me, Inspector!… I feel comfortable with you, Inspector!… No reason for me to leave you!’ And I just keep jabbering away at him!…