24.
At the end of my first week on the tramway I went to collect my pay at head office. I went in the company of Virginie Patate, and afterward we made our farewells. She was leaving Chantiers-Porchefontaine to serve as inspectress on another line. My eyes misted up when I embraced her. But that didn't last long, because I also had a new source of joy, which was to pay my dear mistress for the first time the small sum we had agreed on for my room and board. I hurried off to take it to her, and I told her I hoped it would help her out of the tight spot she was in, for which I was very sorry. "Thank you, my good Bécassine," replied Madame. "Don't worry yourself over my little financial woes. As the proverb says, 'Silver wounds are not mortal.'"
I didn't know that saying, but I liked it so much that I went around repeating it like a parrot. I quoted it to Maria when she was unable to balance the kitchen accounts and was grumbling that she would be ten sous out of pocket. She wasn't long in sending me out for a walk. I don't think my proverb was a hit with her. I sang it while strolling in the park on Sunday, which I have off. I had no notion of the trick those words would play on me the next day on my tram in the hour of the trees.
But I realize I have spoken to you about the hour of the children, of the soldiers, of the housewives, but not the hour of the trees. That requires a little explanation. A few metres from our terminus begins the Bois des Gonards. Poor people have always gone there to collect the deadwood. The fuel shortage has made them more greedy. They started to cut branches and shrubs, and little by little people who are more well off have joined them. Now there's a veritable crowd in there chopping away.
At the start, to get past the octroi, people concealed their logs and their bundles of branches. Then they grew bolder. They didn't hide anything. They didn't even remove the leaves. Those who lived at a distance took the tram. And thus, around sunset, you had the hour of the trees. My car was like a rolling forest. My passengers disappeared behind a mass of foliage, which required me to address them in phrases like this: "Now, birch, squeeze up beside the oak to make room for this hazel that wants to get on."
25.
Or: "Tell me, fir, is it with or without a connection that you wanted to go?" Or again: "Pack yourself down a little, holly, you scratch me every time I go past." That holly who gave me all my troubles, I know his face, and it's not good. Imagine an old vagrant, all muddy, with eyes full of malice. He cuts in the woods to resell, and probably supplies the florists, because he never takes anything but holly. As soon as he's in the tramcar he barricades himself behind his prickles.
He tries to make himself forgotten to get out of paying his fare. If you come to charge him he extends a note for 100 sous over his hedge of prickles, pretending that he doesn't have any coin, and hoping you won't be able to break the bill. He knows, the brigand, that we don't always have that much.
The Monday after Virginie left, emboldened to see me working alone, he said, "No change," without even showing his bill. I had no coin either, so I said, "That's fine, you can pay me tomorrow. Silver wounds are not mortal."
The next day the same thing happened. On Wednesday, it got worse. A crowd climbed aboard the tram, nothing but guys like my vagrant, probably comrades rehearsed by him. I could glimpse them, as they were obliged to peer through their branches as they stepped up.
As soon as they were in the car they were camoflaged again. Without even waiting for me to collect the fares, they yelled out together, "Silver wounds are not mortal." I'm not stingy about money, and at that moment I laughed. I gave them their tickets all the same.
But that evening I told the story to Maria. She said to me it was a train that led straight to ruin, and she calculated that if it continued one more day I would not be able to pay Madame on Saturday. The notion of defaulting on my arrangement with my mistress got me so angry, you have no idea. So, when, on Thursday at the hour of the trees, the comedy of "No change" and "silver wounds" started up, I opened the door to the forward platform and asked Father Lemboîté to stop the car and come with me.
And I cried, "Those who are without money will exit right away. As well, I see a gendarme in the road with whom I would like to have a word about this business." And without a doubt I was very terrible, because it was as if a rush of wind passed over the forest. All the trees shook, all the leaves trembled, and those who had brought them on board were so eager to be gone that many left their cuttings behind. So that those wouldn't go to waste, Lemboîté and I each took half.
I had the pleasure of offering my portion to Madame, for which she compensated my troubles, as well as the sous I had lost. The proverb is true: Silver wounds are not mortal, but you must choose carefully the people you tell it.
26.
One thing has bothered me since I've been on Chantiers-Porchefontaine, and it's that I don't know why everyone calls my driver Lemboîté. I have often wanted to ask him, but each time I just stand there with my mouth open.
"Eh, well, what?" he says. "What do you want from me?" "I want ... I don't want anything, m'sieur Lemboîté." "Then why do you stand there with your eyes like headlamps?" He turns his back and shrugs. The passengers laugh and tell jokes. It's too much for me. He's a nice, kind man, and easy to get along with, and yet he intimidates me, probably because of his huge moustache and his gruff manner.
It's not as though we lack opportunities to talk. Every day at the stroke of noon, Father Lemboîté passes the tram over to his back-up. He surrenders his lever, his wire, his boom, with as much feeling as if he were abandoning them for ten years. Then he turns to me and says, "To the soup, fare-collector. Now is the time to put some electricity in the motor." That's his way of announcing lunch.
We go to a little restaurant near the station. We find a table and sit head to head for a good forty minutes. We might have a conversation, and air our notions about people or whatnot, if Father Lemboîté is in a talkative mood. If he is not, he says, "Blather, it's a waste of time. Do what you're doing. When I'm driving my tram, I drive. When I'm eating, I eat. When I'm at a table to chew, I chew." And he doesn't stop chewing, except to call over the lady manager to complain about the size of the portions, which he always finds too small.
She doesn't keep her tongue in her pocket, our innkeeper. If she is in good humour, everything goes well. She brings a second portion. If she's in a bad mood, Father Lemboîté hears some hard truths. The other day she was like horsehair. She called him a glutton, and added that it was disgraceful to go out to lunch every day with a young girl and not say a word to her, that it was hardly an example of French gallantry. I expected him to get angry, and, as I don't love disputes, I got up to leave. But he took the reproof well.
He told me to seat myself again. "It's true, my poor girl, you're hardly likely to have any fun around me. Don't blame me. All I know is my tram and my electricity. I don't know how to make conversation. An old guy like me, what do I have to talk about?"
27.
"Well, tell me about yourself," I responded, emboldened to see him so meek. "You promised to explain your surname, but you haven't done it yet. That's something you could talk about, if you like." He paid his bill, and offered to pay mine too, which made me all confused, for it seemed like the genuine French gallantry.
We went out into the square. Then, after pacing up and down, he said, "You want to know why I'm called Lemboîté? It's simple. It's because that's what I am, emboîté, boxed in. I stay on my rail, I follow my track, I'm boxed in, you see. It's been that way my whole life. I haven't been the master of my own movements since I began in the days of the omnibus, very young. I guided the cheval de renfort up and down the Rue des Martyrs. The côtier that's called. You wouldn't know about that, you're too young."
"After that I drove the Paris-Versailles tram. The beginning of the confinement and reduction of liberty. There was still a bit yet. I cracked the whip, I groomed my horses, I cried endearments to those that pulled well and insults at the laggards. But, now, with the machine there's nothing to get mad about or yell at. It either works or it doesn't work. There's either electricity in the wire, or not. What do you want me to do? I can do nothing."
At my first breakdowns I became agitated, I was roiled, I hauled the boom around, I studied the motor from every angle. I don't do that anymore. In our work you learn patience and philosophy. Look at the people around us. They go, they stop, they pass on the right, they pass on the left, at their pleasure, however they fancy. I go straight ahead. I travel on my track. I'm so used to it That I don't pay attention to the places I drive my tram. The stops, the departures, the switches, are all at the behest of the fare-collector. My work, to me, is to be boxed in. As long as I remain boxed in, there is nothing to say. What do you think about that, young Bécassine?"
What I thought, I won't confess to you. I said to myself that Father Lemboîté is something like his lever, whereas I, the fare-collector, have command, and can send the tram where I please. Then I felt a great puff of pride and straightened up to my full height. He doesn't intimidate me at all, that brave Father Lemboîté. I even said to him, a little dryly, to speed up, when it came time to take the tram from his back-up. It was pride all the same. I've read someplace that pride is always punished. I just hope mine isn't punished too severely.
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