The Pedlar
To our still young and inexperienced minds, how many fleeting associations, trifling things, chance meetings, humble dramas that we witness, guess at, or suspect, become as it were, guiding threads that lead gradually to a knowledge of the desolating truth about life.
As I dream idly of the past while roaming aimlessly about the country, my head in the clouds, little forgotten things, grave and gay, flash constantly through my mind and then take their flight like the hedge-birds on my path.
This summer as I was wandering along a road in Savoy that overlooks the right bank of the Lake of Bourget, gazing upon the mass of shimmering blue water, water of a most unusual blue, pale, and streaked with the slanting rays of the setting sun, my heart was stirred with the emotion I have always felt, since childhood, for the smooth surface of lake, river, and sea. On the other bank of the immense watery plain whose ends stretched away out of sight—one in the direction of the Rhône and the other towards Bourget—the high jagged mountain rose to the last peak of the Dent-du-Chat. On either side of the road grapevines reached out from tree to tree, smothering the slender branches round which they twined under their leaves; spreading over the fields in green, yellow, and red garlands dotted with clusters of black grapes, which swung gaily between the tree-trunks.
The road was dusty, white, and deserted. Suddenly a man bending under a heavy load stepped out from the grove of tall trees that encloses the village of Saint-Innocent, and came in my direction, leaning on a stick. As he approached I saw he was a hawker, one of those wandering pedlars who sell from door to door throughout the countryside, and suddenly a memory of bygone days, a trifle, flashed into my mind, simply a meeting at night between Argenteuil and Paris when I was twenty-five.
At that time boating was the pleasure of my life. I had a room at a cheap eating-house in Argenteuil, and every evening I caught the civil-service train, that long slow train which deposits at station after station a crowd of fat, heavy men carrying small parcels, whose unattractive figures are due to lack of exercise, and the shocking fit of their trousers to the chairs provided in government offices. The train, which smelt of offices, cardboard boxes and official documents, landed me at Argenteuil, where my yawl awaited me, ready to skim over the water. With long strokes I set off for Bezons, Chatou, Epinay, or Saint-Ouen, where I dined. Then I went back, put away my boat, and, when there was a full moon, started off on foot for Paris.
Well, one night, on the white road, I saw a man walking in front of me. Oh, I was constantly meeting those night travellers of the Parisian suburbs so much dreaded by belated citizens. This man went slowly on before me, weighed down by a heavy load.
I soon overtook him, my footsteps echoing on the road. He stopped, turned round, then crossed the road as if to avoid me. As I was hurrying by he called out: “Hullo! Good evening, sir.”
I replied: “Good evening, mate.” He went on: “Are you going far?”
“To Paris.”
“You won’t be long, you are going at a good pace. I can’t walk quickly, my load is too heavy.”
I slackened my pace. Why was the man talking to me? What was he carrying in that big bundle?