The Bark Tree Read Free Page A

7:40? Come on, dig your elbow into that obstructionist’s stomach; step on that charming girl’s toes—otherwise you’ll miss your more or less express train, and if you look at that woman you’ll miss the slow one. The flat entity only misses the faster one; the slow train is still waiting. He’s made it. No more habits here, the faces aren’t the same, the 7 o’clock commuters are an unknown world to the 6 o’clock commuters, and he is one of the latter. He knows neither the little man with a moustache whose jagged-edged straw hat is threatening to bite a tall man next to him who is dozing with his mouth open, nor those two girls absorbed in a book-based-on-the-movie, nor that mother and brat, the latter watching two flies coupling on his grazed knee, because he took a hell of a spill down the escalator at the Pigalle metro station, what a business that was, nor that blond young man staring fixedly at the landscape as it goes by. He has a feeling he saw the young man in the metro earlier, but he isn’t sure. Now he’s thinking about his cat, about whose assassination he is in despair. He counts up the proofs of affection the animal used to give him. For instance, it used to wait for him every evening on the little wall, by the gate. A dirty beast has killed it. He thinks of its corpse, its hide, its skin that Ma Tyrant is busy tanning. The flat entity becomes indignant, he rebels. And he tells himself so.
    Instead of being cut out like a tin soldier, his contours are starting to soften. He is gently expanding. He is maturing. The observer can clearly perceive this, but can see no outward reason for it. He now has in front of him a being who is endowed with a certain consistency. He notes with interest that the features of this being endowed with a certain reality are slightly convulsed. What can be happening? This silhouette is a prize specimen.
    The kid murmurs something to his mother; everyone guesses what it is. The little man with the moustache has gotten into a conversation with his neighbor; he informs him in pensive tones that the weather was oppressive and stormy, but that the storm just now cooled the air. The listener agrees. Then, by association of contiguous ideas, he talks to him about journeys into the stratosphere.
    Between two stations, without any explanation, the train slows down, and then stops. Heads abruptly appear at the windows; the ones on the right-hand side have to retire into their shells immediately, under penalty of decapitation, because a train is going by in the other direction, but it’s going pretty slowly at that. There must have been an accident. Indefinite delay. This news provokes something of a stir in the compartment. The brat takes advantage of it to get out and piss. The man with a mustache loses his listener, who’s gone to sleep for good.
     
    —oooooo—oooooo—
    Narcense and Potice are following a woman. That, actually, is Potice’s main activity; his conquests are multiple. A benevolent conformist, he doesn’t despise his fellow men, and thinks about them as little as possible. He detests it when some great event occurs and interferes with his ploys. This particular day seems to him to be just as good, if not better; than yesterday; he doesn’t really know, though, he doesn’t give it much thought. But he doesn’t worry about tomorrow. He collects women.
    Whereas Narcense, he’s an artist; neither a painter, nor a poet, nor an architect, nor an actor, nor a sculptor, he plays music, to be more precise, the saxophone; and he does this in night clubs. At the moment, he’s out of work anyway, and is looking for a means of earning his daily bread by the exercise of his abilities, but he can’t manage it. He’s beginning to get worried. Today, at about 4 o’clock, he met his old friend Potice, who persuaded him to join him in pursuit of a woman he had chosen out of all the thousands of others; he’d only seen her from behind; her face was doubtful. Risky. 5