The next morning, Feuilly went to the market looking for Mme Mirès despite his original agreement to meet her behind the synagogue. He did not like the idea of her loitering somewhere; it seemed far worse for her reputation than if he "happened" to run into her at the market. And anywhere near the synagogue seemed the worst possible place for a Jewess to meet clandestinely with a Christian. The market was quite public, but the talk would have to be worse if it looked like a plot rather than a happenstance. Thus he dared look for her among the stalls of the marché St-Jean in advance of the agreed time. She was with the cheesemonger where he had first spotted her, failing to agree an acceptable price. "Do you need help with that basket, madame?" he asked, scaring her out of her skin.
Yet she did not send him away, her expression softening into a smile when she saw it was merely him. "Do you have four sous? I thought I would buy supplies for us, but I have come up short."
Feuilly rummaged in his pockets, excited to have this chance to play the gallant. His heart sank when she refused the 83 centimes he could produce.
"Only the four, if you please. You must keep something for yourself."
"It should be for the man to pay."
"You are not wooing me, so I'll take nothing more than your share."
"It must be more than four." She accepted seven. "I meant no offense," he pleaded.
"I know." But she would not let him carry the basket or take his arm as they walked through the busy streets. Her presence was the only intimacy she permitted.
"Ada said to meet her at the Gymnase. Unless she doesn't like the look of the queue, then she would go on to the Ambigu. But she's desperate to get into the Gymnase."
Luckily, Ada and Laforêt were at the Gymnase as planned, zealously guarding their place in the queue. "Budge down! I told you we had two friends coming!" she barked at the people next to her behind the wooden barrier. At least she greeted Mme Mirès with a smile. "Hand me the basket and the boys will help you over the rail. I should have known he'd bring you. He doesn't know any other girls." To Feuilly's surprise, this comment was neither directed at him nor cutting in the least. It was a bare statement of fact, delivered with a warmth he had never heard from her. What was she playing at? he wondered. Mme Mirès would not have to know there was anything wrong between them, but he would have preferred that Ada treat him decently in private before she trotted her manners out in public. It would have confused him less.
Laforêt helped steady Mme Mirès as she balanced on the rail, Feuilly helping her swing her legs over the top without putting her petticoats on display. She seemed doubtful about the project until it it proved successful. Feuilly climbed in after her – the theatre rails could be vaulted if there were more space, and they were practically made to be climbed over in any case.
"You didn't meet Thierry before, did you?" Ada asked Mme Mirès. "Thierry Laforêt, Madame – oh dear, I don't think I know your Christian name. Or your husband's Christian name. And you're not even Christian," she had to add in embarrassment. "I'm sorry!"
Feuilly rather enjoyed seeing Ada flustered, even if it was just for a moment before Laforêt stepped in to rescue her. "I've heard your name plenty, Mme Mirès. Nice to meet you properly, instead of just in Feuilly's drawings. I share the room with him."
"Ah, you are the friend."
"The room is so much better than when you saw it," Ada told her, recovering her poise. "They finally have furniture. But they need a woman's influence so badly. Leave it to men: they've been there more than six months and they still have no curtains!"
Feuilly did not particularly like the implication of this turn of the conversation, and from her expression, neither did Mme Mirès. It was his own fault, perhaps, for not having made clear to Laforêt to make it clear to Ada that he had no intention of courting a Jewess. "We have to be up with the sun anyway, so it doesn't matter," Feuilly said, his intended good humour lost in the need to put a stop to the entire line of conversation. "I'm here to escort madame to the theatre, not to ask her to decorate my room. If we wanted curtains, we'd have done something about it by now. If you think we need curtains, why haven't you helped us out?"
"I'm the one who owns a broom. You'd be living in abject filth if it weren't for me."
Feuilly thought her far too satisfied with her role when she had never wielded that broom outside her own door, but he changed the subject rather than argue in the middle of the street. "It looks like we'll definitely get in." There were perhaps twenty people ahead of them, while the queue behind kept growing.
"One of my girlfriends thought she wouldn't come until noon. I don't know if she'll make it. But she has a student who can afford to pay later in the week, if they haven't already finished off his allowance, so I don't feel too sorry for her."
"How large is the theatre?" Mme Mirès asked.
"Over a thousand."
"But it's probably like a first night, where the actors give out most of the tickets to friends and the claque," Feuilly said. "They might get a hundred of us in; maybe they'll even give us the whole gods. But there's not going to be over a thousand of us filling any of these theatres."
"Really? How do you know?" Ada asked.
He suddenly wished he had kept his mouth shut. He was supposed to have run away from home in the provinces to be an artist; how could he admit to having been a supernumerary more than once and seen how tickets were distributed, down to the arguments backstage over the author's share? If he lied and said he knew claqueurs, Ada would never let him hear the end of it. "Common knowledge, I thought," he finally answered.
"Maybe in your circles," she said insinuatingly, at least temporarily back to the Ada he expected. "Well, if it's true, then I was very clever to insist we come so early."
"Thank you for the invitation, but would you not have preferred to be with your friends?" Mme Mirès asked.
"Too many of them are still playing around with students. They're friends for the dance hall."
"She's ashamed of me," Laforêt tried to explain.
"I am not! None of their men have real jobs, either. Half of them aren't actually students, just boys who still get money from their fathers."
"Like M. Feuilly?"
"I get money from no one," he explained quickly, before Ada could exercise her wit.
"In any case, Thierry isn't anything like the men they go with, so it would be embarrassing for him."
"Nicette Longin was halfway to marriage with a turner, if I remember rightly."
"He went back out on his tour of France and quit writing. She took up with a scene changer at the Italian opera a few months ago."
"So that's where she is today. I thought it strange she wasn't already here."
"What did your husband do, if I can ask?"
"He was a tailor," Mme Mirès replied to Ada. "Close work for no money."
"And what is it you do?"
"I used to help him, but now it's plain sewing however I can get it. What of you?"
"Embroidery. You must be so bored in Paris! No husband and no money. It's quite sad, I think – one always thinks of Jews as rich."
"We cannot all be Rothschilds, just as you cannot all be dukes and duchesses."
"The Jews are just like the Greeks, or any other people, really," Feuilly tried to explain. "If they were only rich bankers, they would be a profession, not a people. If Christ says the poor are always with us, then every race must have their poor as well as their rich. And Christ was speaking of the Jews because he was one, right?"
"You read too much," Ada told him. "Plain sewing is so tedious, isn't it? Half my friends are barely keeping themselves on it outside the flower season. Is your employer a Jew? Do they squeeze their fellows like they squeeze us?"
"I wouldn't know. I think employers must be employers, no matter what the religion. My father-in-law's employer does not treat him well, I don't think, and he is also Jewish. I get most work from a German woman I think might be a Protestant."
"I don't think anyone came here today to discuss work," Feuilly told them. Ada pulled Mme Mirès into a discussion of bonnets instead, leaving the men to themselves for the moment. "What is Ada's problem today?" he asked Laforêt.
"I have no idea. She's never been this nice to you."
"I've never seen her be this nice to you, to be frank."
"She's treating your girl like one of her friends, which is what you want, isn't it?"
"She's not my girl, and I don't trust yours an inch, with ample reason, I think you can agree." But the women were chatting in good humour.
By ten, the street was very crowded and the gendarmes were actively directing traffic. The hopeful spectators behind the barrier were pushed closer together in order to keep the boulevard clear for the passing carriages.
Mme Mirès peeked out into the crowd. "Perhaps I should not have come."
"I haven't said anything to offend you, have I?" Ada worried. "I don't know any Jews, so I've probably said so many terrible things without even knowing it."
"No. I haven't talked like this since I was a girl. I had not realised I missed it. But if anyone I knew were to see me . . ."
"You don't really want to be seen on M. Feuilly's arm?"
"It isn't that, precisely. I am expected to marry again, and I must, for I have been so lonely, but I bring nothing but myself to a marriage, so you may imagine that offers have not been forthcoming. And none shall ever come if I am known to parade myself about town in the company of young Christian men. M. Feuilly is a very kind young man, but he is a Christian."
"We've been through this before," Feuilly explained to Ada.
"Then we'll fix that right up," Ada insisted. "You're with me, and the boys are with themselves. You know me from work. All perfectly innocent."
"It is kind of you to be so willing to lie for a stranger, mademoiselle."
"I've met you twice now, so you're not a stranger. If Feuilly's not a stranger, I can't be."
At noon, they broke their fast. Ada had also brought a basket, and they shared around a bottle of watery wine, though Mme Mirès declined to share in the sausage Ada offered. "I must not. It is not permitted to eat of meat and milk in the same meal."
"Jews are odd."
But to Feuilly's relief, Mme Mirès laughed. "Yes, we are. When I first came here, Albert took me to the Vaudeville, and one of the pieces had a stage Jew. I thought, 'This writer knows nothing of my people! No one in Bordeaux speaks like that!' And then I met a few more shopkeepers and understood: the writer knew the worst of my people here after all."
"Is religion really a topic for polite discussion?" Feuilly asked.
"Fine. Is Bordeaux where you come from?" Ada asked Mme Mirès.
"Yes. We were married there. Albert came to Paris first, to find more work, then he sent for me. His parents followed a year later."
"You can't have been here very long, then."
She thought for a moment. "Seven years, now, which must be quite some time."
Ada struggled to swallow her obvious shock; Laforêt did not bother. Feuilly was less surprised, since he had believed Jews married young, and she had now merely confirmed something he had always wondered. "You must have been a child!"
"I married at sixteen. There was no point in waiting longer."
"You must think us terribly light, unmarried at our age." Why Ada should be concerned that a Jewess think her light, Feuilly did not know, but she was certainly taking it as a personal flaw.
"Not at all. Christians must have their own ways of doing things. It is your country, so you have your freedom," she tried to explain. "You may take the time to enjoy it. We do not have that freedom, so we make the best of what we have. A married woman can at least go to the market, can help her husband in his work outside the home. A girl must stay at home for her protection. So I suppose I have my freedom now, for I have not been sent home to my parents or pushed to live with my husband's family."
"That is very, very sad."
She shrugged. "It is what it is. I miss my husband, but it was not the marriage it should have been. We never had children, and children are the point of marriage, are they not? We brought no more of our people into the world, and that is a failure. I should like to try again, while I still might, but it must be hard to take such a risk on a woman who has already failed in her duty of making a home and family."
Feuilly half listened as the women chatted of their homes and families. Ada was from a village in the Cher, not far from where Laforêt had grown up before his family moved to the departmental capital of Bourges. Perhaps that was part of the attraction, that they were countrymen even in the restricted sense peasants would understand, though they both seemed plenty citified to Feuilly. More interesting was that poor Jews seemed to care more for their history than the poor French did, for Mme Mirès was able to explain the flight from Spain under the Inquisition and share some phrases of the Jewish patois she had grown up speaking in Bordeaux. Her French was excellent, he thought, for someone who had not properly used it until migrating to Paris.
A little after one, as the crowd was starting to push everyone up against the doors, the theatre manager stepped outside. "The only available seats are in the amphitheatre!" he cried to the anxious spectators. "Once all places in the amphitheatre are filled, no one else will be permitted in." He moved down the queue, making his announcement over and over.
"Looks like you were right," Laforêt told Feuilly.
"Common knowledge, like I said. Yes, Ada, you were absolutely right to arrive this early," he told her before she could start preening again.
"Three in a row, three in a row!" the manager cried as he came back up the queue to his place inside.
"Everybody take hands," Laforêt ordered. "We don't want to get split up."
"There are four of us," Mme Mirès noted with worry.
"Go between Ada and Feuilly. I'll stand behind Ada. Take hands and it will work."
It was rare that Laforêt had taken charge of anything in Feuilly's experience, but he was never wrong when he did take charge. Feuilly's experience had been generally in the wings themselves, rarely in the gods where one had to pay. Perhaps Laforêt's knowledge was left over from his days as a compagnon. Surely that was the last time he might have had both money and mates with whom to spend it.
At one-thirty, the doors opened, but they were kept back. People from the far end of the queue, it appeared, were being escorted outside the barrier and into the theatre, brandishing tickets to taunt those who had waited all day. Some of the waiting spectators cursed at these actors' friends who dared so publicly take advantage of their free tickets in the pit and boxes. One woman in the queue threw something at a woman being escorted in, hitting her square in the back of the head to cheers from the audience. At least the crowds in the street, who had no chance at all of seeing a play, were able to get a show. "I had not expected it would become so crude," Feuilly apologised to Mme Mirès.
"It is not right that we are passed over like this as we have waited patiently and accepted that we must climb directly to the top. I have been in Paris longer than you; I have seen an angry crowd before. They will calm down when we are allowed in. I am sure of it."
When the first people were finally waved through and the queue started to move, everyone seemed to take the opportunity to push forward. Laforêt was right – hold hands, refuse to be separated, and move as swiftly as possible were the order of the day. Gendarmes were already stationed at the head of each aisle; ushers kept repeating "down front and to the end, down front and to the end", trying to fill every space on the long benches as quickly as possible without the bother of a ticket. Ada's initiative granted them seats in the very first row of the amphitheatre. They were among the gods indeed, so close to the ceiling, yet with a view those behind them could not command. They managed to arrange themselves so that the women sat between the men, Mme Mirès protected by Ada on one side and Feuilly on the other. Ada grabbed Laforêt's hand. "I've never had such good seats. Never! Oh, isn't the house beautiful?"
The benefit to the actors having so many tickets was that the pit was full of its usual inhabitants and women in lovely dresses filled the boxes. It was a poorer audience than usual of an evening, perhaps, but it was an audience that gave a whiff of the typical glamour to the three hundred or so people crammed into the gods.
The doors had barely closed when the theatre manager took to the stage, announcing his best wishes for the king and thanking the king for his benevolence and good will in ordering the performances for the day. One rowdy somewhere behind them booed, but that only put the audience and the gendarmes on alert. One more unfortunate sound, and it was possible they might remove anyone, whether or not he was the boor who did not know how to choose his time and place. It was to be a truncated performance: instead of four dramas, they would perform only three this afternoon. Groans followed, though the manager succeeded in hushing everyone enough that he might announce the bill. "You are privileged to be at our very first performance of a new piece, Windows for Rent. Let us be kind to the company who have worked so hard to bring it to the stage this afternoon."
The set began with the well-received The Secret Door. Some excellent rhymes pushed the story along, and a bumbling valet produced the requisite gales of laughter. Feuilly laughed as loudly as anyone, and then promptly felt ashamed for finding something he knew must be trash so terribly amusing. What would the students think of him, enjoying a vaudeville several months old, when he ought to have been at the Théâtre française, where some sort of classical work on King David was the piece to be performed in celebration of the coronation?
But the valet was funny. And the girls were whispering to each other about the dress worn by the actress playing the young lover, so the costumes were as impressive as the poetry, which was not terrible. He could have gone to the Théâtre française had he wanted to, but he had chosen to come to the Gymnase. Because the Gymnase had amusing plays. And the play was amusing. There were no students here to second-guess his taste. And it was probably to Bahorel's taste, but students were allowed to like both high theatre and low: it was their right as students.
In the heat of the crowded theatre, jackets and neckerchiefs had come off before the first piece even concluded. Feuilly held out as long as he might, even if Laforêt had stripped to his shirtsleeves almost immediately, but by the end of the piece, he could not take it anymore. No one was gentlemanly in the amphitheatre, not amid so much heat and breath. Ada was fanning herself furiously; Mme Mirès leaned over the parapet, trying to catch a breath from below, though only the heat of the other hundreds of souls rose to the gods. She did not at all look askance when he stripped off his coat and rolled up his sleeves in the heat; indeed, by midway through the second piece, she had pulled her neckerchief from her bosom to mop the sweat from her face.
He gave himself fully over to the vaudeville with Windows for Rent. While other theatres might be celebrating the king, Feuilly was glad he had come to the Gymnase. Here, the celebration was of the people of Rheims. It was disappointing that the greedy man who sought to cash in by renting his windows on the parade route for a very high sum was brought down in the end, but Feuilly found him the most interesting character in either of the plays. Why shouldn't a man with something to sell get a good price for it? He was surprised that, upon the entrance of the artist into the crowded open house the supposedly good man was offering, Mme Mirès leaned in and asked, "Did you wish you could go to Rheims to paint the coronation?"
"I fear my talents do not lie in crowds. There was nothing that interested me in the king's return to Paris yesterday."
"You saw the parade?"
"It was a very poor parade. It would never have made a good painting. Maybe inside the church, but they won't let anyone like us try our hand at it. Those pictures must be done by the professionals."
Yet the final piece, Charlatanism, was easily his favourite. Feuilly remembered it had received terrible reviews, and now he saw why. The character of a theatre critic produced gales of laughter from the very knowing audience in the pit and boxes. If every audience were so kind to the authors of the piece, the critics must have been embarrassed to have been sitting in such plain sight. Though the piece was ostensibly about a young doctor making a name for himself by inventing diseases that only he could cure, the main plot could hardly compete with the satire of the theatre critic. Imagining the real critics faces was worth the six hours in the queue. It was as if he had been granted the smallest return to one of the best parts of his childhood, taking part in the theatrical community at war with the critics.
The girls did not seem to enjoy the final piece as much as they had enjoyed Windows for Rent, but it had proved a diverting afternoon for all the company, perhaps for everyone in the amphitheatre – one in which he had at last not thought at all about work and money, or more accurately, the lack thereof. How lucky some people were, that they could consider themselves out of money and still afford a ticket in the gods to take them out of themselves for an evening.
"Thank you so much for inviting me!" Mme Mirès cried when the curtain came down for the last time. "I have not had such fun in so long. I shall pay for this, but just now I don't care! Is this how it ought to be?"
"Yes!" Ada told her. "This is freedom. Hey!" she screamed at someone behind her. "Hands to yourself! Can't you see I'm taken?"
Laforêt's face darkened. "Which was was he?"
"Hell if I know. Felt a hand on my bum but never saw who it was."
He stood on the bench. "Oi! Who's getting handsy on my girl?!"
"Come down," Feuilly told him. "You look a fool and whoever it was is gone."
"Is that an invitation?" someone called down to him, unseen in the crowd.
"It's over," Ada told him. "I didn't see it, so there's no use fighting anyone. Better me than Madame."
"Gabrielle," she finally, rather shyly, introduced herself.
"You see, we are friends. I'll see you home. The boys can follow us. Then you won't be seen in direct company with Christian men. Christian women can't corrupt you, can they?"
There was plenty of jostling on the stairs, but they made it outside without anyone further molesting the women. "Come on, let them be girls," Laforêt told Feuilly, holding him back. "Keep an eye out, but don't follow too close. You know where you're going, yeah?"
"I think I'm probably more experienced than you are at following someone without getting caught following them."
"Do I want to know how many terrible things you've done?"
"No. Do you think Ada wants something from Mme Mirès to use against me?"
"You are taking her much too seriously."
"I overheard her talking to you once. She knows something's up."
"Well, yes, she does keep accusing you of being a fancy boy, but I think that's it. And she's done that plenty to your face."
"What hasn't she been doing to my face? I need to know. It's all behind me now, I swear. This is completely separate."
"Can it be that separate if you wouldn't know a Jewess otherwise?"
"Ada took money from that drawing, too. When I get a little money again, I might try picking up someone else from a market, see if it works again. Models aren't cheap, and Duret won't take anything until I put more work into figures."
"What does that mean?"
"I need a girl who will let me draw her naked, loads of times, from every angle. That's the long and short of it. It's about knowing how a figure is under the clothes instead of drawing clothes that happen to have a person in them. If that makes any sense."
"You might find someone at a market who'll let you draw her, but not naked."
"Story of my life. Every idea works out at first then turns to shit."
"Including seducing a Jewish widow?"
"I have no intention of seducing her. I'm not a Jew, nor am I rich, so what good am I to her? She's lonely as anything and her husband's mother has never really liked her: those are her real troubles as far as I can tell. If Ada really wants to be friends with her, that's better for her than anything I could ever be, in any guise. If Ada doesn't want to be friends with her, then what is she playing at?"
"She will laugh at you for having nothing better than your Jewess to bring today, but beyond that, I honestly don't know."
"I am grateful, I hope you know. Ada is neither your fault nor your problem."
"You were wrong, by the way. Spring's pretty much gone, and she hasn't even let me kiss her."
"Then what have I been watching all day?"
"Her show for everyone in the theatre. How else can she go safely when she hasn't replaced me? If I could just get steady work! I didn't expect it to take this long."
"Neither did I. First time I walked out, it was because I had a job. Second time, I decided I had to leave, and I had a job within weeks. How damned many more months is it going to take? I have to be going to the wrong cafés, looking in the wrong places. By rights, I should have been buying her sweets and lemonade, regardless of my intentions, instead of splitting the price of a grisette's cutlet at the market this morning."
"Do you think about going back?"
Feuilly shook his head. "I think I burned those bridges, which is all for the best. I can't keep going in and out. One has to make a choice, and it isn't as if the other path really goes anywhere but the scaffold. I've slept under bridges before; maybe I'm not too old to do it again."
"It can't come to that, can it?"
"Anything can come to that, honest or criminal."
Ada had left Mme Mirès at her door and turned back in their direction. "The Jewess is the best you could do?"
"What else did you expect?"
"I give you credit. I didn't think you could even pull the Jewess back. She's not bad. I actually like her. I never thought I'd ever talk to a Jew, much less have to decide if I like her or not. What on earth does she see in you?"
"Someone who spoke kindly to her, I think."
"She won't come out to the fêtes tomorrow, which I think is really too bad. An attractive woman her age should be married, and that'll never happen if she stays home all the time. But I suppose she must do things the way her people want them done."
"Her age?" Laforêt asked. "She's not that much older than we are if she married at sixteen and has been in Paris seven years."
"Twenty-four, probably? I hope to be married myself by then."
"So I have four years?"
"If you're lucky."
"What were you talking about just now?" Feuilly asked.
"You. And her odious concierge."
"How do those go together?"
"You were seen, he's a lecherous bastard, and there will be consequences," she explained to him slowly, as if he were an idiot. "Unfortunately, I don't know anyplace in the Jewish quarter she ought to move to because I'm not a Jew."
"Is he really going to try something?"
"Who knows? Some of them just look and talk. Others touch. But god help you with those ones if you're ever late with the rent."
"You really do like her."
"I don't wish a man like that on anyone, whether or not I like them. You find the oddest people."
"You've never met anyone else I know."
"I don't have to. You, a Jewess, Thierry – who else do I need to meet?"
"He's making friends with students."
"You said you weren't a snitch."
"If you keep it up, one day you'll meet her friends, and then she'll know everything anyway. Maybe her friends already know your friends."
Feuilly sighed. Laforêt was right. "It's only two. One is a chap who hangs around the Poles – Mlle Sophie's father and his friends. Laforêt has told you about Mlle Sophie, hasn't he?" He could not be entirely certain, since it did not really behoove a man to mention the girl he fancied to the girl he was going with, but Ada nodded. He had probably mentioned everyone in the workshop at one time or another. "The other is a medical student I met at the Salon who just likes to talk about art. It may be odd, but it isn't wrong."
"The one who talks about art, can he get you a job somewhere?"
"No. He doesn't know anyone, he just likes to talk about art."
"Then what good is he?"
"I don't know anyone else I can talk about that sort of thing with. You're already laughing at me."
"You shouldn't want to talk about that sort of thing!"
"You didn't mind when you made two francs because I care about that sort of thing."
"That's work."
"And how else am I going to get more work if I don't learn more about it?"
"You don't have to have an answer for everything."
"You don't have to tease me about everything."
"But you make it so easy!"
"Do I?"
"Well, look at yourself."
"I give up. You don't like me, you don't want to like me, and you amuse yourself kicking me around. Fine. If this is what it is, this is what it is. Have fun behind my back. Just quit it to my face. I'm tired of it. On this side, it isn't that much fun."
"Fine. I'll let you alone."
"Really?" Feuilly was surprised and skeptical it had worked.
"If you answer one question."
"One question?"
"Just one. But it has to be a real answer."
There were so many questions that could destroy everything if answered honestly, but did Ada really know enough to hit on any of them? "One question," he stalled.
"Just one," she answered airily, now playing the innocent.
"Let him alone," Laforêt tried to reluctantly order her. Feuilly was grateful for any attempt to help, but it was obvious it would do no good.
"One question, you accept the answer, and it's over and done," Feuilly bargained.
"Agreed."
"Are you sure?" Laforêt asked him.
"Has to be done, right? Not in public. Quiet and clear, no misunderstandings."
"You're taking this far too seriously," Ada told him.
"Not if I'm to hold you to your promise." He dared not take it flippantly, even if she thought she meant it as a final joke. There were too many ways it could go wrong if he were not prepared for anything.
"He has a point," Laforêt agreed.
"Fine." They were close to home in any case.
Safely in the room he shared with Laforêt, Ada making herself at home on the bed as if it were a divan, Feuilly dropped a chair in front of her and prepared for his execution. Laforêt lounged at the door, as if he were guarding the place, an attitude Feuilly might have found laughable if he were not so worried what Ada might come out with. "The question?" he prompted a little argumentatively when she did not spit it out right away.
She leaned forward, her face very close to his. "If you're not a fancy boy, then what's the deal with your hair?" Then she sat back, satisfied.
That was all? He leaned back and laughed in relief. She looked offended that he was laughing at her, but he did not care. He took a moment to let it down and shake it out before answering. "Because I don't like it short."
"That's not a real answer," she argued. "You always have it tied back, so it isn't as if it matters."
"You always have your hair pinned up under your cap – why don't you cut it off like the Breton women and make a little money while you're at it since it doesn't matter?"
"You're not answering. You know damned well it's not the done thing for men, so why do you do it?"
Bloody hell, he thought. She wanted a full answer, and he had promised to give one. He looked to Laforêt for help, but none was forthcoming. "It's not a quick answer."
"Good."
"You don't actually think I'm a fancy boy, do you? I mean, do I look like I'm trying to look like a woman?"
"I never said you were a he-she!"
"How do you know the difference between fancy boys and he-shes?"
"I have eyes in my head. You're not answering."
It was no good – he would have to say something. He shrugged it off as casually as he could and said, as flippantly as possible, "I didn't have a proper haircut until I was fourteen or so, and I never got used to it, so I gave up the pretense. I don't particularly like the done thing, but the truth is I never got used to it. If I'd been brought up to it, maybe it wouldn't have felt so wrong. That's all it is." Somehow, he had ended up more serious than he had intended.
She laughed, possibly because he had become so sober. "What, are you a wolf boy?"
"That's another question."
"No, it isn't. You haven't finished answering. You can read, so you're not actually a wolf boy. So what is it really?"
He had run out of lies – or of plausible ones, anyway – so he admitted the truth. "Overgrown gamin."
Was her horror that he was so patently low, or that she knew just what that meant? He dared not consider that it might merely be shock. "What does Thierry owe you for?"
"That's a different question," Laforêt interrupted. "An entirely different question that I've already answered."
"No you haven't!"
"I kept him from going crazy in the police depot. Not because I'd ever been locked up before, because I hadn't, but at least there were two of us. I was there, and I was a friend. That's all. He owes me, too, and he knows it. Now, I've answered two questions, so we're done."
"No, we're not. I think you're lying," Ada suddenly decided. "First I saw you, you nearly fainted because you were hungry. And no street brats can read."
"I hadn't been on short rations in a long time, and I misjudged the difference in need between a boy of sixteen and a man of twenty. As for the reading, I was hardly the only kid sleeping in building sites who knew my alphabet." Some of the others were ones he had taught, but others had come down in the world; the difference did not really matter.
"You're nothing like anyone."
"Right. I tried to be – got a job at the Lesage chemical mill out la Villette way when I was fourteen or so. Cleaned myself up, cut my hair, worked fourteen hours a day. The shit life and the shit work didn't take. So hell with it, right? Might as well be a dandy of my own stamp and at least know it's my own life. That's been more than your answer, so are we done?"
Laforêt followed her across the hall. "Are you done with him now?" Feuilly heard her ask.
"He hasn't said anything today I didn't already know about. I can pick my own friends, you know."
Feuilly got up to watch from his own doorway.
"No, you can't,"Ada told Laforêt.
"He can look after himself," Feuilly insisted.
Neither she nor Laforêt looked in the least surprised or upset that he was eavesdropping. "No, he can't." She turned back to Laforêt. "You can't. You know it's true."
"Yes, I can," he started to complain.
"If you could, if you had any sense, you'd never have left the brotherhood."
"There were principles at stake!"
"You only had three more towns! Then you could have resigned properly, with honour. But no, you couldn't be a man and swallow your weakness. You had to wallow in it, like a child!"
"I left without debt, without accusation, and without going over to the gavots like a traitor. That was honourable. It's my life to live, not the devoirants'!"
"You'd never have said such a thing if he hadn't said it just now."
"I have my own intentions. I never hid them, and you didn't care when we met!"
"It was childish. Both of us were childish. You can't just decide not to do the done thing. Look at the two of you. You both reek of childishness. No wonder you never have any luck at the dance halls. They can smell it on you. Lightness and failure. You're both still boys, not men."
"I've had plenty of luck with girls," Feuilly argued. "Christ, girls who thought me good looking are half the reason I got fed for years."
"Girls as light as you, maybe. You think I haven't seen you at the dance halls? You're boys without money, so what good are you in the world? And you're worst of all. You'll ruin Thierry."
"Isn't your thesis that he ruined himself by leaving his brotherhood? That happened long before I met him working for Cartoux, and since Cartoux hired both of us lightweights, we can't be all that worthless."
"What's 'thesis'?" she asked suspiciously.
"Your guiding idea. Your argument. The one thing you are trying to support with all this evidence. Your thesis is that Laforêt ruined himself by leaving the devoirants before his time. You try to prove that by telling me that he has not done well in the past few months since losing his job that required no special apprenticeship anyway and that his very being expresses his failure in life. If that were the case, then whether or not I have given him any ideas is neither here nor there, since I didn't meet him until a few months before we all got sacked."
"Are you trying to help?"
"If she's going to insult us both, the least she could do is be accurate about it. I don't care if you hate me," Feuilly told Ada. "I just want you to shut up about it and quit reveling in it yourself. You have so much fun hating me, but it isn't exactly fun on this side, so hate me all you like, but keep your nose in your own business. Laforêt can choose his own friends, whether you like them or not."
"I still don't believe you." She turned back to Laforêt. "If he keeps up with the students, you need to get away from him. Don't lose your head." She slammed the door just as Laforêt was about to say something.
"She meant that literally, didn't she?" Feuilly confirmed.
"She'll get off it in a few days." Behind their own closed door, Laforêt admitted, "She goes off like this from time to time. I think today it's because this is the only chance I've had to take her to the theatre in two years. The last time, it was because making fans suddenly wasn't good enough, since a very skilled joiner earns a lot more. Which is how I got the clap from Fanny Rosier. I didn't mean to drag you into it again."
"Why do you keep dragging yourself through it?"
"She'll think better of it soon enough. And who else is ever going to want anything to do with me?"
"Is this what a marriage is, only living together and shouting over the heads of your kids instead of me?"
Laforêt shrugged. "It's what happens when the shouting is over, isn't it? I don't know."
"You have parents."
"I left home at twelve; hell if I remember what their marriage looked like. I remember my mother didn't like the move to Bourges, but she kept her mouth shut about it."
"Unlike Ada."
"I think she gave me the time of day initially because there was no way I'd try to move her to some village. And if I wanted to move her to a town, it'd be back home. She wouldn't be an outsider. Everything revolves around her."
"She does rather make a point. I haven't decided yes or no on the students."
"There's politics, not just art, isn't there?"
"Of course. Who wants to talk about art with a fanmaker unless he has other interests?"
"Be careful. I don't want to get interrogated again."
"I'm keeping you out of it, I swear. Just help me by keeping Ada off my back."
"I'll see what I can do."
