Everything about that fellow intrigued me, but I was extremely shocked one day to go into my bedroom and find the dwarf in my bed enjoying a deeply relaxing siesta.
It turned out, I later discovered, that the giant’s lodging was always a terrible pain to resolve but the reverse was the case with the dwarf: his tiny size meant people said: “He can sleep anywhere … It’s a cinch …
Thus, that man’s resting-place was always in doubt. They shifted him all over the shop depending on where they found space. He never had a set bed and had had to put up with that situation so often that all beds were much of a muchness as far as he was concerned. By night or day you could find him in any of the bedrooms. Right then it was my turn and I found it to be most disagreeable.
In any case I decided to wake him up; however, as I failed using solely verbal means, I decided to remove the blanket that was covering almost all his body. The dwarf was sleeping like a log, wearing ineffably small, laughable T-shirt and pants — a real cutie. I thought his breath stank slightly of cheap wine.
Although I had exposed his body, he didn’t budge. I then tried every means to restore him to the land of the living, but as I didn’t make the slightest headway, I grabbed him and deposited him in the passage along with his clothes that he’d meticulously folded on a bedroom chair. I rang the bell and while I ordered clean sheets terrible howls went up in the passage.
The dwarf had at last woken up and was clamoring loudly. He was shocked to find himself transplanted into the passage. He had come to in the filthiest of tempers. He let out a stream of swear words and spine-chilling curses. As he was much the worse for drink — as I soon confirmed — I was afraid he might lose his temper and inflict grievous damage. I decided to go into the passage and try to soothe him. I stood up to him and said what had to be said. I told him that I found his intrusion into my bedroom space absolutely unacceptable.
“Do you really think it is right to use someone else’s bed and room?” I asked the dwarf who was struggling to put his feet into his tiny trousers.
“I am not to blame …” he said, in a gloomy, cavernous voice that a bout of whimpering soon interrupted; “it was the landlady who pointed me to your room. She thought you’d be out, like every afternoon.” And then he continued after a pause: “My name is Theodore, at your service … Do please accept my humble …”
His eyes glistened and he almost burst into tears.
I couldn’t say what had caused that transformation. The rabid, bizarre dwarf had turned into a wet rag. Perhaps alcohol had softened him, perhaps he was responding to my reasonable complaint.
The experience led me, personally, to believe that the effect of alcohol can have many sides; sometimes what a drunk thinks is black suddenly turns white. Irony doesn’t exist for a drunk. Everything unravels in dazzling flashes that can create, at any moment, situations that are definitive, rock-hard, set in concrete.
There was a happy ending. When I went into the kitchen, I found the dwarf sitting on the lap of the landlady who was playfully tweaking the ends of his mustache, to everyone’s loud laughter. The moment he saw me, the little monster contracted his body and rebutted her pleasant caresses. His expression became sterner than usual and he seemed really upset by the situation he reluctantly found himself in. It was a display of respect that compensated for the fact I had found him in my bedroom enjoying an unforgivable snooze.
The presence of the band in the lodging house produced the musical cacophony I’ve tried to describe. That unbearable situation was compounded by a neverending influx of visitors into the flat. The musicians received a countless number, and you know the kind of visits artists get, they came at any hour of the day or night; then the friends returned a second time with their friends; the doorbell never stopped ringing; the endless noise of footsteps in the passage … the interminable conversations in bedrooms … There was a time when there was no control over who was coming in and going out; those departing opened up for the newcomers, you could always find complete strangers in the neighborhood, dubious characters that could just as easily have come to steal as to look after someone who was ill. It was a strange situation that bypassed the landlady completely, because she was so sold on the musical arts.
Roundabout that time I became ill. An attack of flu that kept me in bed, a logical consequence of the hours spent out in all weathers, in streets and squares, driven out by the musical din. A friend visited me — a friend of quite some standing, older than myself, with very close, endearing ties to me. I watched him walk in — escorted by a maid — smiling radiantly and ready to help. I had a temperature of 38.5 and felt soporific. When I saw he wasn’t carrying his hat or walking stick, I screamed: “Are you off your rocker?”
“Not yet!” he replied with a grin.
“You usually bring a walking stick, don’t you?”
“That’s right. I take my hat and stick with me everywhere … You know me, don’t you?”
“Where have you left them?”
“In the umbrella stand in the lobby … why get so alarmed about that?”
The way I glanced at the maid was enough to send her running off. By the time she reached the umbrella stand, she registered that the hat and stick had flown.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” I asked in a relatively coherent, though feverish state, and not totally with it.
I don’t remember what he answered.
In fact we didn’t have a minute’s peace in that lodging house until that entire musical troupe, giant and dwarf included, set off on another one of their fabulous tours in their wonderful canary-yellow bus.
Counterpoint
My eyes suddenly opened and I was shocked to find myself under that low ceiling in a strange, purple light. It lasted a second: an abrupt jolt of the train cleared my head and woke me up. The first movement I make every day when I come back to life is to stretch out an arm, grab a cigarette and smoke it, stretched out on my back. I mechanically pulled my arm out of the couchette. It fell into the void … While I retrieved my hand and put it in the pocket of my jacket that was hanging over my feet, I thought what a highly uncomfortable place a sleeper is for a man of sedentary ways. Reclining in my bunk, taking my first puff, I looked through the crack between the window and the curtain. Two lights shone outside illuminated by a distant, hazy glow I took to be the moon.
I tried to lie so I could have a relaxed smoke when I remembered that a traveling companion was sleeping in the couchette underneath. I was tempted to put out my cigarette. Then I thought it was more than likely he was sleeping like a log. I peered down. The hazy purple light in the compartment was bathing my companion’s face in a mauve sheen. He was flat out with his two hands behind his neck and deep in the dark I could see two open, motionless eyes.