Mornings he is usually too weak to do any work. His arm! That poor broken crutch of an arm! I wonder sometimes when I see him twisting it around the back of his neck how he will ever get it into place again. If it weren’t for that little paunch he carries he’d remind me of one of those contortionists at the Cirque Medrano. All he needs is to break a leg. When he sees me sweeping the carpet, when he sees what a cloud of dust I raise, he begins to cluck like a pygmy. «Good! Very good, Endree. And now I will pick up the knots.» That means that there are a few crumbs of dust which I have overlooked; it is a polite way he has of being sarcastic.
Afternoons there are always a few cronies from the pearl market dropping in to pay him a visit. They’re all very suave, butter-tongued bastards with soft, doelike eyes; they sit around the table drinking the perfumed tea with a loud hissing noise while Nanantatee jumps up and down like a jack-in-the-box or points to a crumb on the floor and says in his smooth slippery voice — «Will you please to pick that up, Endree.» When the guests arrive he goes unctuously to the cupboard and gets out the dry crusts of bread which he toasted maybe a week ago and which taste strongly now of the moldy wood. Not a crumb is thrown away. If the bread gets too sour he takes it downstairs to the concierge who, so he says, has been very kind to him. According to him, the concierge is delighted to get the stale bread — she makes bread pudding with it.
One day my friend Anatole came to see me. Nanantatee was delighted. Insisted that Anatole stay for tea. Insisted that he try little grease cakes and the stale bread. «You must come every day,» he says, «and teach me Russian. Fine language, Russian … I want to speak it. How do you say that again, Endree — borsht? You will write that down for me, please, Endree…» And I must write it on the typewriter, no less, so that he can observe my technique. He bought the typewriter, after he had collected on the bad arm, because the doctor recommended it as a good exercise. But he got tired of the typewriter shortly — it was an English typewriter.
When he learned that Anatole played the mandolin he said: «Very good! You must come every day and teach me the music. I will buy a mandolin as soon as business is better. It is good for my arm.» The next day he borrows a phonograph from the concierge. «You will please teach me to dance, Endree. My stomach is too big.» I am hoping that he will buy a porterhouse steak some day so that I can say to him: «You will please bite it for me, Mister Nonentity. My teeth are not strong!»
As I said a moment ago, ever since my arrival he has become extraordinarily meticulous. «Yesterday,» he says, «you made three mistakes, Endree. First, you forgot to close the toilet door and so all night it makes boom-boom; second, you left the kitchen window open and so the window is cracked this morning. And you forgot to put out the milk bottle! Always you will put out the milk bottle please, before you go to bed, and in the morning you will please bring in the bread.»
Every day his friend Kepi drops in to see if any visitors have arrived from India. He waits for Nanantatee to go out and then he scurries to the cupboard and devours the sticks of bread that are hidden away in a glass jar. The food is no good, he insists, but he puts it away like a rat. Kepi is a scrounger, a sort of human tick who fastens himself to the hide of even the poorest compatriot. From Kepi’s standpoint they are all nabobs. For a Manila cheroot and the price of a drink he will suck any Hindu’s ass. A Hindu’s, mind you, but not an Englishman’s. He has the address of every whorehouse in Paris, and the rates. Even from the ten franc joints he gets his little commission. And he knows the shortest way to any place you want to go. He will ask you first if you want to go by taxi; if you say no, he will suggest the bus, and if that is too high then the streetcar or the metro. Or he will offer to walk you there and save a franc or two, knowing very well that it will be necessary to pass a tabac on the way and that you will please be so good as to buy me a little cheroot.
Kepi is interesting, in a way, because he has absolutely no ambition except to get a fuck every night. Every penny he makes, and they are damned few, he squanders in the dance halls. He has a wife and eight children in Bombay, but that does not prevent him from proposing marriage to any little femme de chambre who is stupid and credulous enough to be taken in by him. He has a little room on the Rue Condorcet for which he pays sixty francs a month. He papered it all himself. Very proud of it, too. He uses violet-colored ink in his fountain pen because it lasts longer. He shines his own shoes, presses his own pants, does his own laundry. For a little cigar, a cheroot, if you please, he will escort you all over Paris. If you stop to look at a shirt or a collar button his eyes flash. «Don’t buy it here,» he will say. «They ask too much. I will show you a cheaper place.» And before you have time to think about it he will whisk you away and deposit you before another show window where there are the same ties and shirts and collar buttons — maybe it’s the very same store! but you don’t know the difference. When Kepi hears that you want to buy something his soul becomes animated. He will ask you so many questions and drag you to so many places that you are bound to get thirsty and ask him to have a drink, whereupon you will discover to your amazement that you are again standing in a tabac — maybe the same tabac! — and Kepi is saying again in that small unctuous voice: «Will you please be so good as to buy me a little cheroot?» No matter what you propose doing, even if it’s only to walk around the corner, Kepi will economize for you. Kepi will show you the shortest way, the cheapest place, the biggest dish, because whatever you have to do you must pass a tabac, and whether there is a revolution or a lockout or a quarantine Kepi must be at the Moulin Rouge or the Olympia or the Ange Rouge when the music strikes up.
The other day he brought a book for me to read. It was about a famous suit between a holy man and the editor of an Indian paper. The editor, it seems had openly accused the holy man of leading a scandalous life; he went further, and accused the holy man of being diseased. Kepi says it must have been the great French pox, but Nanantatee avers that it was the Japanese clap. For Nanantatee everything has to be a little exaggerated. At any rate, says Nanantatee cheerily: «You will please tell me what it says, Endree. I can’t read the book — it hurts my arm.» Then, by way of encouraging me — «it is a fine book about the fucking, Endree. Kepi has brought it for you. He thinks about nothing but the girls. So many girls he fucks — just like Krishna. We don’t believe in that business, Endree…»
A little later he takes me upstairs to the attic which is loaded down with tin cans and crap from India wrapped in burlap and firecracker paper. «Here is where I bring the girls,» he says. And then rather wistfully: «I am not a very good fucker, Endree. I don’t screw the girls any more. I hold them in my arms and I say the words. I like only to say the words now.» It isn’t necessary to listen any further: I know that he is going to tell me about his arm. I can see him lying there with that broken hinge dangling from the side of the bed. But to my surprise he adds: «I am no good for the fucking, Endree. I never was a very good fucker. My brother, he is good! Three times a day, every day! And Kepi, he is good — just like Krishna.»
His mind is fixed now on the «fucking business.» Downstairs, in the little room where he kneels before the open cabinet, he explains to me how it was when he was rich and his wife and the children were here. On holidays he would take his wife to the House of All Nations and hire a room for the night. Every room was appointed in a different style. His wife liked it there very much. «A wonderful place for the fucking, Endree. I know all the rooms…»
The walls
