Drifting

Author: J.-K. Huysmans

Translator: Brendan King   Cover design: Marie Lane  

Sample Chapter

The waiter put his left hand on his hip, rested his right hand on the back of a chair and swayed on one foot, pursing his lips..
'Well now... that’s a matter of taste,' he said. 'If I was in Monsieur's place, I'd order some Roquefort.'
'Alright, bring me the Roquefort.'
And M. Jean Folantin, sitting at a table cluttered with plates of congealed leftovers and empty wine bottles whose bottoms had left their imprimatur in purple on the cloth, grimaced, certain that he was going to eat a wretched cheese; his expectations were not disappointed: the waiter brought a kind of white lace marbled with indigo, evidently cut from a cake of Marseilles soap.
M. Folantin picked at the cheese, folded his napkin, got up, and was bowed out by the waiter who closed the door behind him.Once outside, M. Folantin opened his umbrella and hastened his step. The keen razor of cold that had cut ears and nose to the quick had given way to the fine strop of a beating rain. The hard, glacial winter which had gripped Paris for three days was relenting, and the melting snow trickled and gurgled away beneath a sky swollen and sodden with water.
M. Folantin was fairly galloping along now, thinking of the fire he’d lit at home before going to eat his fill at the restaurant.1 To tell the truth, he wasn’t without a certain apprehension; unusually, that particular evening, laziness had prevented him rebuilding the bonfire his concierge had prepared from top to bottom.'And coke is so difficult to get going,' he thought; he rushed upstairs, went in,'To think there isn’t a housekeeper or janitor who knows how to lay a fire,’'he groaned, and placing a candle on the floor – without even taking off his overcoat, his hat still on his head – he emptied out the grate, then filled it again methodically, leaving room for air in his construction. He lowered the vent, lit matches and paper, and stripped off his outdoor things.
Then he let out a sigh: now his lamp was making a loud burping noise.
'Great, there’s no oil! That’s all I need now, it’s just one thing after another!' And, despairingly, he contemplated the wick he’d just wound up between the burner’s jagged, soot- covered teeth, a wick that was dried-up and yellow.
‘This life is intolerable,’ he said to himself as he looked for scissors; he trimmed the lamp as best he could, then he threw himself into an armchair and lost himself in his thoughts.
It had been a bad day; he’d been in a black mood since the morning when the head of the office where he’d worked as a clerk for the last twenty years had reproached him, rudely, for arriving later than usual.
M. Folantin had bristled and, pulling out his old pocket- watch,2 remarked in a dry tone: 'Eleven o’clock precisely.'
The chief clerk had, in his turn, drawn a sturdy stem-winder from his pocket.
'Eleven twenty,' he replied, “I set it by the Stock Exchange.” And with a contemptuous air, he'd deigned to excuse his employee, taking pity on the antique piece of clockwork Folantin was holding.and saw not a single flame in the fireplace.'To think there isn’t a housekeeper or janitor who knows how to lay a fire,'he groaned, and placing a candle on the floor – without even taking off his overcoat, his hat still on his head – he emptied out the grate, then filled it again methodically, leaving room for air in his construction. He lowered the vent, lit matches and paper, and stripped off his outdoor things.
Then he let out a sigh: now his lamp was making a loud burping noise.
'Great, there’s no oil! That’s all I need now, it’s just one thing after another!' And, despairingly, he contemplated the wick he’d just wound up between the burner’s jagged, soot- covered teeth, a wick that was dried-up and yellow.
‘This life is intolerable,’ he said to himself as he looked for scissors; he trimmed the lamp as best he could, then he threw himself into an armchair and lost himself in his thoughts.
It had been a bad day; he’d been in a black mood since the morning when the head of the office where he’d worked as a clerk for the last twenty years had reproached him, rudely, for arriving later than usual.
M. Folantin had bristled and, pulling out his old pocket-watch,2 remarked in a dry tone: 'Eleven o’clock precisely.'
The chief clerk had, in his turn, drawn a sturdy stem-winder from his pocket.
'Eleven twenty,' he replied, 'I set it by the Stock Exchange.'And with a contemptuous air, he'd deigned to excuse his employee, taking pity on the antique piece of clockwork Folantin was holding.
M. Folantin saw in this ironic way of exonerating him an allusion to his poverty and he made a pert riposte to his superior, who, no longer accepting the watch’s senile wanderings as an excuse, drew himself up and in menacing terms reproached M. Folantin again for being late.
The day, badly begun, had continued to be unbearable. He’d had to copy interminable letters in a dim light that dirtied his paper, to draw up voluminous tables and listen at the same time to the chattering of a colleague, a little old man who, his hands in his pockets, loved the sound of his own voice.
This man would recite the whole of the morning newspaper, and spin it out still further with opinions of his own; or rather he’d criticise the expressions of the editors and cite others he’d have been happier to see in the place of those he’d dispatched; and he interspersed these observations with details about the poor state of his health, which, nevertheless, he declared was improving slightly, thanks to the constant application of pilewort3 and to regular cold baths.
Listening to these fascinating pronouncements, M. Folantin ended up making mistakes; the lines in his report were all bunched up and the figures ran riot over the columns; he had to scratch out whole pages and squeeze in new lines, which was a total waste of time because the chief clerk sent his work back and ordered him to do it again.
Finally the day ended and, under a heavy sky, in the midst of wind and rain, M. Folantin had to wade through fondants of slush and sorbets of snow, in order to reach his lodgings and his restaurant, only to find that, on top of it all, the dinner was execrable and the wine was like ink.
Feet frozen, squeezed inside boots stiffened by showers and puddles, skull white hot from the gas burner hissing above his head, M. Folantin had barely eaten anything and even now bad luck wouldn’t let him be; his fire was faltering, his lamp was smoking, his tobacco was damp and kept going out, staining the cigarette paper with yellow nicotine.
A great depression gripped him; the emptiness of his narrow life became apparent, and as he stirred the coals with his poker, M. Folantin, leaning forward in his armchair, his forehead resting on the mantelpiece, began to review his forty- year Way of the Cross,4 stopping in despair at each Station.
His childhood had not been the most prosperous; for generations the Folantins had been penniless; family records did mention, back in the distant past, a Gaspard Folantin who had made almost a million in the leather trade, but the chronicle added that after having squandered his fortune he was left insolvent; the memory of this man was still vivid in the minds of his descendants, who would curse him, citing him to their sons as an example not to be followed, and forever threatening them that if they frequented cafés or ran after women, they would die in poverty like him.
The fact is that Jean Folantin was born in disastrous circumstances; the day his mother’s lying-in came to an end, his father possessed nothing but a handful of coppers. An aunt, who though not a midwife was expert in that kind of work, helped bring forth the child, cleaning his face with butter and, to save money, powdering his thighs with some flour scraped from a crust of bread in lieu of talcum. “So you see, my boy, you come from humble stock,” his Aunt Eudore5 would say, acquainting him of these petty details, and from an early age Jean didn’t dare hope for any kind of good fortune in the future.
His father died very young and the stationer’s he ran in the Rue du Four6 was sold to pay off the debts incurred during his illness; mother and child found themselves on the street; Madame Folantin moved into lodgings and became a shop assistant, then a cashier in a draper’s, and the boy was sent to boarding school; even though Madame Folantin was in a truly wretched situation she obtained a bursary for the child and deprived herself of everything, saving money from her meagre monthly salary in order to meet the expense of future examinations and diplomas.

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