54.
Ah well! The ministries made us wait a lot less than I expected. We had a reply in eight days. And I wasn't put in front of the firing squad. Carmencita didn't renew her persecutions. She even spoke to me amiably. I came into this sweetness, I think, because one day I had said in front of her that Lemboîté had managed the affair. "Lemboîté," she had asked. "Is that the military man from the Troupes Vaillantes?" Then, turning to the portrait of Gonzalès, she had added, "A brave military man like you, colonel. You also were of the Troupes Vaillantes!"
Then, one day, the postman delivered a letter covered with I don't know how many rubber stamps, authorizing us to get our replacement part from a factory in Billancourt. Maubec, after he had read it, told me, "It's frightful the way things work in the Administration. I know for a fact that it would be simplest for us to get the part for 10fr. 50 in Versailles where there's a depot. But there's also one in Perpignan. The Administration is just as likely to send us to the Pyrenees as Baillancourt for it! But it doesn't do to say they're complicating things." I thought he made a good case, even though I'm not one for complaining and criticizing, which are signs of a bad heart.
We waited until Lemboîté's next day off to make our journey, and, one fine morning, the three of us took the tram, Lemboîté, Maubec, and myself. Lemboîté was very astonished and a little embarrassed to be on the tram without anything to do. He said, "There you go. I'm a layabout. I'm the landed gentry." He was used to being at the front end, and, out of habit, he kept an eye on what was happening up there. And then , as there were some departures that were too brusque and some hills where the car struggled for lack of momentum, he began to grumble. She had the air of an apprentice, our driver, very nice, but too young and timid. She ought to have stayed home to make soup for her husband and her offspring whose picture she had in a brooch, and that would have been better value for everyone including the tramway. No longer able to hold back, Lemboîté opened the door and cried, "Firmly on the handle, easy on the brake!" As this advice did nothing but confound the young woman more, he added, "I'll show you how!" It was he who drove us to Billancourt, and pretty well. The passengers remarked, "That's no apprentice, that's the real thing, that one. He knows his work." Myself, I was proud of my old friend as if I were his fare-collector again, and he, content, repeated, "My rail, for me, is to work. I was out of my rail, but now I'm on track."
55.
It was hardly more than a five minute walk from the tram station to the factory, an enormous factory, with I don't know how many thousand workers and how many miles of workshops. To get our replacement part it was necessary to bring out the ministerial paperwork and add on about a dozen signatures. And when our chief paid the 10fr. 50, it started off another round of formalities. Once all that was over, Maubec asked about a tour of the factory. The employee with whom we were dealing said that it was not generally done, but, given our status as mobilized staff, he could make an exception for us. Father Lemboîté was thrown in for good measure.
No, truly, just like when I was a little girl reading fairy stories, I could never have imagined seeing the things I saw on that visit. Picture these scenes from the underworld: roaring ovens big enough to roast an ox in; melted metal cooling in channels like rivers of fire; and then, a little further on, peaceful workshops, conpletely silent, tidy, as polished as a salon. The workers at their tables had only to push a button for their machines to do the job. If I had a set-up like that for my sewing machine, instead of pedalling like a cyclist going uphill, maybe I'd have more of a taste for couture.
After that, we looked around the metalworking shops. There, very smoothly, without any sense of difficulty, they planed the huge metal rods, making metal shavings as pretty as anything, all shiny and curled up. I picked one up, and was inclining toward putting it in my pocket as a souvenir, when the foreman came over with an air, ah! an extraordinary air.
56.
Seeing the expression on his face, I came to a complete standstill with the metal shaving in my hand. He looked the situation over, then gave a great sigh and said, "The inspecter is not here. That's fortunate for you, otherwise you would not be able to avoid a court martial." At first I thought it was a joke, considering that, since we arrived, he hadn't stopped dropping witticisms and writhing in laughter along with Maubec and Lemboîté, whom he had made his friends immediately, and who would slap him on the back and call him a devilish wag. He saw what I was thinking, and said, "I'm not joking. I'm going to prove it." He pointed me to a notice posted on the wall. You should understand that when I read it my hair stood up like a porcupine's quills. It said that the factory was property of the army, and that to take the least thing from it was not just theft, but treason, and that according to articles such and such of the penal code and the military code, it exposes you to all sorts of troubles, each one more terrifying than the rest. No sooner had I read this than a dread came over me. I ran to the corner of the workshop where I had picked up the shaving and put it back in precisely the same spot, and I made sure the nearby workers saw it. "See," I told them, "I put it back. Please tell the inspecter, if you're talking to him." They seemed a bit surprised.
By the time that was done, my companions had left. When I rejoined them it seemed as if they were cutting short a conversation that involved me in some way. All three were enjoying a laugh. Lemboîté and Maubec were slapping the foreman's back even more than before. "I'm on the right side of the law," I said. "I returned the shaving, and I'll cut off my hands before I take anything else, even if it's worth a hundredth of a hundredth of a cent." I said this, standing beside a big heap of coal in which there was, like all coal these days, more coaldust than good big lumps. Just as I was saying these words, there was a gust of wind that lifted up a flurry of coaldust. I felt something land inside my eyelid, which started me dabbing and rubbing at my eye.
"Is it bad?" asked Maubec. "Not too," I replied. "It's not serious. It's not anything to bother about." But immediately I had a panicky thought. I cried, "But, yes, it is something to bother about. It could be serious!" Then, pulling my eyelids apart with my fingers I asked my companions to look in my eye, to try to see what was there, whether it was coaldust or a speck of coal. Lemboîté said, "I don't have my spectacles. I don't see anything."
57.
"It's gray," said Maubec. "A bit of coaldust." "It's black," disagreed the foreman. "Coal." They debated a while, and then Maubec looked again and came around to the view that it was a piece of coal. "Ah! My God!" I cried. "Coal! We have to remove it very carefully, so that nothing falls out and gets lost." They tried their best, but, lady, they didn't have a nurse's hands. They couldn't get it out, which made me unhappy, but my preoccupation tormented me more. I repeated, "Coal! Ah! My God! What a catastrophe! It's heartrending!" Without realizing it, I had raised my voice. I groaned, I nearly cried. Some of the workers gathered around and said I should go to the factory infirmary, and so they led me there.
By rubbing my sore eye I had inflamed the other. I had to grope my way along like a blind person. I guessed at, rather than saw, the presence of the doctor. "Monsieur," I said, "I beg you, don't lose my piece of coal. Save it for me." He had me sit down. I didn't feel the water that the kind nurse squirted on my eye to wash it out. Beside her, the doctor, smiling, held a paper with a black dot the size of the head of a pin on it. "Here is the precious coal." "Oh! Yes, monsieur," I replied. "Very precious. It could land me in jail. I thank you with all my heart for what you have done, and I will say your name in my prayers." Without leaving them time for questions, I ran back to the coal heap, and returned the little black speck of coal. Then I gave an ooph of relief.
Just then Lemboîté, Maubec, and the foreman rejoined me. "Truthfully," said Lemboîté, "you made some faces. It was good comedy." That made me mad. "But, unhappily, what I had in my eye was State-owned coal belonging to the army. If they had not been able to remove it, I would have taken it out with me, and been worse than a thief. Then, a tribunal, prison. And that is what you call a comedy!" I stopped, a little ashamed to have spoken in that tone, telling myself that I was going to make them angry. Not at all. He and the others laughed like the blessed. I looked on in surprise, when, out of nowhere, a received a slap on the back that almost knocked me to the ground. It was the foreman, calling me a devilish wag. I still don't know why.
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