Paul Morand: The Man in a Hurry

“What a scatterbrain you are, girl! You never listen to serious conversations, your head’s upside down. Haven’t we said over and over again that this money was never discovered? Hedwige, get the cards quickly! A pack of fifty-two; I’m going to see what they have to tell me… and also an aspirin, no, some paraffin in a little verveine instead. You’ll find some in the small medicine cupboard. Fromentine, get a move on!”

A spluttering sound could be heard coming closer and the platter of peppers with corn made its entrance. Angélique, sweating from the kitchen fumes, a cotton scarf around her head, a magnificent enchantress, was holding the pan, the handle of which she had wrapped in a lace handkerchief so as not to burn her fingers; Fromentine, like a choirboy, was carrying the can of oil, the palm oil that was an essential ingredient of the Boisrosés’ diet.

Once lunch was over, Madame de Boisrosé, her pack of cards in her hand, started weeping again while playing “Napoleon’s Tomb” at the same time.

“My adorable little Mamicha,” said Hedwige, cosseting her, “don’t cry any more, we’ll take care of all your worries.”

“I’m mourning your poor Papa who loved us so; his last thought was for us, you can be sure of that. Ah, what a great heart and what a mind!”

“So where could Papa have hidden those millions of francs?” Angélique asked dreamily. “In a hole in the wall, or in a hollow olive tree?”

“He gave them to his mistress, of course,” Madame de Boisrosé wailed tartly. “To that whore who hoodwinked him. His last thought was for her, no doubt about it, and his last will too.”

“Things like that shouldn’t be allowed. What Papa did was disgraceful.”

“Don’t say that, Angélique, don’t show disrespect to your father. Hilarion was not a wicked man, but he was weak with women; they took advantage of him! One after another, the whole gang of them were there… and he didn’t even get a good meal!”

“I’ve got an idea,” Hedwige announced. “I’m going to go and find the purchaser, this Monsieur Pierre Niox. I shall explain to him that this business is illegal and since he must be an honest man—”

“Honest? An antique dealer? Look at your uncle!” cried Bonne. “That’s a ridiculous plan.”

“Are you going to forbid me?”

“No, I don’t forbid you. Look under the bed, Fromentine, the jack of clubs is missing.”

FOR YEARS Pierre’s household duties have been performed, and performed badly, by Chantepie. Lame from having fallen off a ladder, dressed in clothes that are too long for him, his tie askew, slow and undignified, squalid and penniless, an eavesdropper and someone who is insistent without being over-zealous, Chantepie is the link that connects the domesticated chimpanzee to the domesticated man. A committed capitalist, Chantepie goes out every afternoon to check the Stock Exchange prices; and also, since his food is paid for at a fixed rate, to squabble with the animals over the scraps from the horse butcher on which he survives. Pierre kicks him out of the house at least once a month, but Chantepie refuses to leave, offering to stay without any wages, which disarms his master. Furthermore, Chantepie lends him money and their accounts are so muddled that Pierre doesn’t have time to examine them and so he settles them all in a single payment. The patient man always wears down the impatient one.

“Chantepie, my slippers!”

His slippers have not been polished, any more than his clothes have been brushed, his breakfast prepared, the logs sawn or the wine put into bottles. Rather than see him dawdling over these duties, Pierre attends to them himself; Chantepie follows behind listlessly, makes comments from a distance and watches as the lightning storm passes by. Pierre thunders and roars, but Chantepie doesn’t hear him because he is deaf. He lives locked into his own deafness just as Pierre is locked into his own frantic pace: all disabilities are prisons. It is due to his imperturbable lethargy that Chantepie has been able to remain with Pierre, who would have driven any other servant mad.

Chantepie was nothing more than the ghost of a former hotel manager; his instincts were wholly antiquated. He neither stole nor pilfered; he would even have preferred to die of hunger when confronted with delicacies, like an elderly dog that is used to retrieving without biting. He never made use of his master’s cellar to get drunk, but drank a foul pear cider sent to him from the depths of his native Brittany. A few drops would be enough to make him fall over; once on the ground, his rheumatism prevented him from standing up and he would remain there, like a tortoise on its back, until Pierre came to pick him up. Moaning like a child, he allowed himself to be moved as he whined, “Monsieur is so kind!”

For all these reasons, Pierre kept Chantepie, or more precisely, Chantepie kept Pierre.

The impatient man washing himself is a sight to behold.

“What delays us so much,” Pierre says to himself in a loud voice, “is that we only do one thing at a time. And that we hesitate between various actions. It has taken me twenty years to devise a system for myself and to improve my speeds, but how many gaffes I still make: I remove my pyjamas to get into the bath; I then realize that I have left the soap on the washstand… Chantepie, my soap!”

And Chantepie brings some logs.

“I put my pyjamas back on because I am cold; I trip over myself because my shoes get caught in my trouser leg.”

“Monsieur should always wear slippers,” observes Chantepie, who indulges his master’s quirks, “much time would be saved; monsieur would be able to get his foot in and out more quickly.”

“We shall have to do away with these pointless vestiges,” Pierre goes on. “Let’s start by numbering each movement: one , remove the razor blade and take advantage of the fact that my legs are of no use to me at that moment to flex my instep, which will lessen the time spent on my physical exercises; two , screw the razor with my right hand between my thumb and index finger, while the left hand squeezes the sponge in the hot water; three , shave in the bath and thus avoid the time wasted with the water.”

Pierre is famous among his friends for the speed at which he shaves himself, two minutes twenty-eight seconds, a record that has never been beaten.

“ Four , comb your hair while drying yourself at the same time… No, let’s pause a moment, because putting a shirt over your head means having to comb your hair twice. Chantepie, put on a record, and quickly!”

Pierre always has music playing, having read in books by Bedeau that it speeds up human efficiency.

“Having shirts that button up from top to bottom? Madness! Eight buttons means eighteen seconds lost each day. I’ve already got rid of sleeve buttons and those dickey shirt-fronts that waste your time, and there’s no point in replacing them with other buttons. Putting your shoes on while doing your tie up at the same time, that’s child’s play. And now for trousers. All my trousers are fitted with zip fasteners.”

“The days that the zips get stuck, monsieur loses an hour,” Chantepie remarks, “and I get the blame.”

“Buy me some mechanic’s overalls!”

“That’s not what monsieur should be wearing! A man like monsieur…” Chantepie sighs as he pretends to sweep with a broom that hasn’t a single bristle.

Ever since he was at the lycée , Pierre used to dazzle his friends not so much on account of his high marks but because he already had as many braces as he did pairs of trousers, ready to be put on simultaneously. The others, with their single pairs, were well behind their impetuous classmate. Pierre had learnt at an early age the lesson of Fregoli’s dazzling displays on the stage of the Olympia, and he remembered his childish admiration when the brilliant performer would suddenly loom up stage right dressed as a conductor, vanish again while still continuing to talk to himself, only to reappear stage left thirty seconds later wearing a low-cut dress; at the end of the show, the backdrop curtain would be raised revealing, hanging from strings, 101 amazing costumes surrounded by an array of accessories: the conductor’s tailcoat along with the white gloves and the baton, and the ball gown together with the fan and the reticule. At military school, the squad of trainee officers traditionally remained in bed when the morning drum sounded and did not get up until the order came: “Everyone downstairs!” In Polytechnique jargon, that was called dressing in “quick-time”. Pierre owed his popularity to the fact that, although he was last out of bed, he was the first one downstairs. It was the absolute tops, “super quick-time”; he had achieved this pre-eminence through a whole series of inventions: collar attached to the tunic, boots full of talcum powder worn without socks; he also went to bed half dressed. Later on, he resorted to lighting a cigarette while unfolding his newspaper, to opening his post while making a phone call, with the receiver held to his ear by a raised shoulder beneath his chin.