Exercises in Style (9 page)

I’m not used to writing. I dunno. I’d quite like to write a tragedy or a sonnet or an ode, but there’s the rules. They put me off. They weren’t made for amateurs. All this is already pretty badly written. Oh well. At any rate, I saw something today which I’d like to set down in writing. Set down in writing doesn’t seem all that marvellous to me. It’s probably one of those ready-made expressions which are objected to by the readers who read for the publishers who are looking for the originality which they seem to think is necessary in the manuscripts which the publishers publish when they’ve been read by the readers who
object to ready-made expressions like “to set down in writing” which all the same is what I should like to do about something I saw today even though I’m only an amateur who is put off by the rules of the tragedy the sonnet or the ode because I’m not used to writing. Hell, I don’t know how I did it but here I am right back at the beginning again. I’ll never get to the end. So what. Let’s take the bull by the horns. Another platitude. And anyway there was nothing of the bull about that chap. Huh, that’s not bad. If I were to write: let’s take the fancy-pants by the plait of his felt hat which hat is conjugated with a long neck, that might well be original. That might well get me in with the gentlemen of the French Academy, the Café Flore and the Librairie Gallimard. Why shouldn’t I make some progress, after all. It’s by writing that you become a writesmith. That’s a good one. Have to keep a sense of proportion, though. The chap on the bus platform had lost his when he started to swear at the man next to him claiming that the latter trod on his toes every time he squeezed himself up to let passengers get on or off. All the more so as after he’d protested in this fashion he went off quickly enough to sit down as soon as he’d spotted a
free seat inside as if he was afraid of getting hit. Hm, I’ve got through half my story already. Wonder how I did it. Writing’s really quite pleasant. But there’s still the most difficult part left. The part where you need the most know-how. The transition. All the more so as there isn’t any transition. I’d rather stop here.

asual

I get on the bus.

“Is this right for the Porte Champerret?”

“Cantcher read?”

“Pardon.”

He grinds my tickets on his stomach.

“Ee yar.”

“Thanks.”

I look around me.

“I say, you.”

He has a sort of cord round his hat.

“Can’t you look what you’re doing?”

He has a very long neck.

“Oh look here, I say.”

Now he’s rushing to get a free seat.

“Well well.”

I say that to myself.

I get in the bus.

“Is this right for the Place de la Contrescarpe?”

“Cantcher read?”

“Pardon.”

His barrel organ functions and gives me back my tickets with a little
tune on them.

“Ee yar.’

“Thanks.”

We pass the gare Saint-Lazare.

“Hm, there’s the chap I saw before.”

I incline an ear.

“You ought to get another button put on your overcoat.”

He shows him where.

“Your overcoat is cut too low.”

That’s true enough.

“Well well.”

I say that to myself.

iased

After an inordinate delay the bus at last turned the corner and pulled
up alongside the pavement. A few people got off, a few others got on. I was among the
latter. I got shoved on to the platform, the conductor vehemently pulled a noise-plug
and the vehicle started off again. While I was engaged in tearing out of a little book
the number of tickets that the man with the little box was about to obliterate on his
stomach, I started to inspect my neighbours. Nothing but males around me. No women. A
disinterested look, then. I soon discovered the cream of this surrounding mud: a boy of
about twenty who wore a little head
on a long neck and a large hat
on his little head and a pretty little plait round his large hat.

What a ghastly type, I said to myself.

He wasn’t only a ghastly type, he was a quarrelsome one as well.
He worked himself up into a state of indignation and accused a perfectly ordinary
citizen of laminating his feet every time a passenger went by getting on or off. The
other fellow looked at him severely, trying to find an aggressive retort in the
ready-made repertory that he no doubt lugged around with him through the varying
circumstances of Life, but he was somewhat out of his depth that day. As for the young
man, he was afraid he was going to get his face slapped, so he took advantage of the
sudden liberation of a seat by precipitating himself upon it and sitting on it.

I got off before he did and couldn’t continue to observe his
behaviour. I was deciding to condemn him to oblivion when, two hours later, me in the
bus, him on the pavement, I saw him in the Cour de Rome, looking just as deplorable.

He was walking up and down in the company of a
friend who must have been his arbiter of elegance and who was advising him, with
dandyesque pedantry, to reduce the space between the lapels of his overcoat by having a
supplementary button united to it.

What a ghastly type, I said to myself.

Then the two of us, my bus and I, continued on our way.

Glabrous was his dial and plaited was his bonnet,

And he, a puny colt—(how sad the neck he bore,

And long)—was now intent on his quotidian chore—

The bus arriving full, of somehow getting on it.

One came, a number ten—or else perhaps an S,

Its platform, small adjunct of this plebeian carriage,

Was crammed with such a mob as to preclude free passage;

Rich bastards lit cigars upon it, to impress.

The young giraffe described so well in my first
strophe,

Having got on the bus, started at once to curse an

Innocent citizen—(he wanted an easy trophy

But got the worst of it.) Then, spying a vacant place,

Escaped thereto. Time passed. On the way back, a person

Was telling him that a button was just too low in space.

In that meridian S, apart from the habitual smell, there was a smell of
a beastly seedy ego, of effrontery, of jeering, of H-bombs, of a high jakes, of cakes
and ale, of emanations, of opium, of curious ardent esquimos, of tumescent venal
double-usurers, of extraordinary white zoosperms, there was a certain scent of long
juvenile neck, a certain perspiration of plaited cord, a certain pungency of anger, a
certain loose and constipated stench, which were so unmistakeable that when I passed the
gare Saint-Lazare two hours later I recognised them and identified them in the cosmetic,
modish and tailoresque perfume which emanated from a badly placed button.

ustatory

This particular bus had a certain taste. Curious, but undeniable. All
buses don’t have the same taste. That’s often said, but it’s true.
Just try the experiment. This one—an S, not to make too great a mystery of
it—had the suspicion of a flavour of grilled peanuts, not to go into too great
detail. The platform had its own special bouquet, peanuts not just grilled but trodden
as well. One metre 60 above the trampolin, a gourmand, only there wasn’t one
there, would have been able to taste something rather sourish which was the neck of a
man of about thirty. And twenty centimetres higher still, the refined palate was offered
the
rare opportunity of sampling a plaited cord just slightly
tinged with the flavour of cocoa. Next we sampled the chewing gum of dispute, the
chestnuts of irritation, the grapes of wrath and a bunch of bitterness.

Two hours later we were entitled to the dessert: an overcoat button .
. . a real delicacy.

actile

Buses are soft to the touch especially if you take them between the
thighs and caress them with both hands, from the head towards the tail, from the engine
towards the platform. But when you find yourself on this platform, then you perceive
something rougher and harsher which is the bar or hand-rail, and sometimes something
rounder and more elastic which is a buttock. Sometimes there are two of these and then
you put the sentence into the plural. You can also take hold of a tubular, palpitating
object that disgurgitates idiotic sounds, or even a utensil with plaited spirals that
are softer than a rosary, silkier than barbed wire, more
velvety
than rope, and slenderer than a cable. Or your finger can even touch human clottishness,
slightly viscous and gummy on account of the heat.