for many former humiliations by ordering a young lawyer or engineer to sweep his room or empty his pail.
Sergeant-Major Giudici, who had always had underlings, promptly found it natural to entrust Simon with errands to the sombre bars on the streets that cross Boulevard de Port-Royal beneath iron bridges, linking the Mouffetard to the Broca and Santé neighbourhoods.
Simon at first endured with extreme impatience the obligation to act as the sentimental messenger and intermediary of a non-commissioned officer who was basically nothing but a pimp. He then told himself, recalling certain sergeants he had known at Clignancourt, that a procurer is at least better than an invert or a brute, and that this complicity would give him the right to demand of the Sergeant-Major, with the proper degree of insolence, certain favours and the right to lie low when he felt like it. Besides, Giudici had a kind of lazy affability which his smile, his Bastia accent and his colonial lies endowed with considerable charm. Simon ended by taking pleasure in his brief passages through a frivolous, turbulent and lax universe, of which he had hitherto had no suspicion and which never yielded up to him its true secrets. He would have been no intellectual if he had not been sensitive to all changes of scene and capable of romanticizing them: he was naively astonished to find himself in Rue Pascal, just as he would have marvelled to see himself in China or Peru.
So Simon would go into some bar, which would usually be painted in melancholy colours, and would ask at the counter whether Madame Jeanne or Madame Lucie was there: when she was absent, he would say that he would call again; when she was there, he would deliver a message from Giudici. The Sergeant-Majorâs lady friends would welcome him with the mechanical familiarity common to whores and soldiers.
â Youâre Sergeant-Major Giudiciâs orderly? he would be asked.
â Not exactly, Simon would reply. Just one of his men.
â You wonât leave without a little drop of something . . .
He would sip drinks that filled him with the greatest mistrust while Madame Jeanne, or Madame Lucie, read the letter. Sometimes the recipient would exclaim:
â Oh, the swine! the swine! You can go and tell your sarge from me that he can just bugger off, and heâd better not set foot in here again! Not ever!
Some days, everything would go off peacefully and Simon would sit down and listen patiently, overcome by the paralysis that affects you when you are having a shoeshine or a haircut, to the rambling confidences of the Luxemburger girl from Rue Saint-Jacques or the mulatto girl from Rue des Feuillantines, as if these stories had been a kind of sweet, purring message. The women had tangled lives and an extraordinarily pernickety concern for their dignity, their amour propre , for absurd points of honour, like points of honour in the days of the Hundred Years War.
One evening, a young woman brought Simon back in a taxi to the barrack gates, all the way from the café in the 12th opposite the 46th Infantry barracks where he had gone to meet her. It was April, night was beginning to fall, the air was sharp and blue, it was pretty cold for the time of year. Simon, who was growing numb in that spring coolness, said nothing because those exuberant women intimidated him sufficiently for him to be convinced he was not attracted by them. Suddenly he felt a burning hand alight on his thigh and fumble at the buttons of his uniform breeches; he made to push it away, but a rather husky voice said:
â Just relax, my darling . . . Itâll warm you up. The driver canât see a thing â as you see, heâs got no rear-view mirror . . .
Simon released the wrist he was grasping and surrendered himself, till he was shaken by a pleasure whose violence shattered him and gave him ideas about the skill of whores that he had always regarded as mythical. In the darkness, he
Sergeant-Major Giudici, who had always had underlings, promptly found it natural to entrust Simon with errands to the sombre bars on the streets that cross Boulevard de Port-Royal beneath iron bridges, linking the Mouffetard to the Broca and Santé neighbourhoods.
Simon at first endured with extreme impatience the obligation to act as the sentimental messenger and intermediary of a non-commissioned officer who was basically nothing but a pimp. He then told himself, recalling certain sergeants he had known at Clignancourt, that a procurer is at least better than an invert or a brute, and that this complicity would give him the right to demand of the Sergeant-Major, with the proper degree of insolence, certain favours and the right to lie low when he felt like it. Besides, Giudici had a kind of lazy affability which his smile, his Bastia accent and his colonial lies endowed with considerable charm. Simon ended by taking pleasure in his brief passages through a frivolous, turbulent and lax universe, of which he had hitherto had no suspicion and which never yielded up to him its true secrets. He would have been no intellectual if he had not been sensitive to all changes of scene and capable of romanticizing them: he was naively astonished to find himself in Rue Pascal, just as he would have marvelled to see himself in China or Peru.
So Simon would go into some bar, which would usually be painted in melancholy colours, and would ask at the counter whether Madame Jeanne or Madame Lucie was there: when she was absent, he would say that he would call again; when she was there, he would deliver a message from Giudici. The Sergeant-Majorâs lady friends would welcome him with the mechanical familiarity common to whores and soldiers.
â Youâre Sergeant-Major Giudiciâs orderly? he would be asked.
â Not exactly, Simon would reply. Just one of his men.
â You wonât leave without a little drop of something . . .
He would sip drinks that filled him with the greatest mistrust while Madame Jeanne, or Madame Lucie, read the letter. Sometimes the recipient would exclaim:
â Oh, the swine! the swine! You can go and tell your sarge from me that he can just bugger off, and heâd better not set foot in here again! Not ever!
Some days, everything would go off peacefully and Simon would sit down and listen patiently, overcome by the paralysis that affects you when you are having a shoeshine or a haircut, to the rambling confidences of the Luxemburger girl from Rue Saint-Jacques or the mulatto girl from Rue des Feuillantines, as if these stories had been a kind of sweet, purring message. The women had tangled lives and an extraordinarily pernickety concern for their dignity, their amour propre , for absurd points of honour, like points of honour in the days of the Hundred Years War.
One evening, a young woman brought Simon back in a taxi to the barrack gates, all the way from the café in the 12th opposite the 46th Infantry barracks where he had gone to meet her. It was April, night was beginning to fall, the air was sharp and blue, it was pretty cold for the time of year. Simon, who was growing numb in that spring coolness, said nothing because those exuberant women intimidated him sufficiently for him to be convinced he was not attracted by them. Suddenly he felt a burning hand alight on his thigh and fumble at the buttons of his uniform breeches; he made to push it away, but a rather husky voice said:
â Just relax, my darling . . . Itâll warm you up. The driver canât see a thing â as you see, heâs got no rear-view mirror . . .
Simon released the wrist he was grasping and surrendered himself, till he was shaken by a pleasure whose violence shattered him and gave him ideas about the skill of whores that he had always regarded as mythical. In the darkness, he
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