The Quiet Man

FRANCE The Ouiet Man

/ knew a man once did a girl in

Any man might do a girl in

Any man has to, needs to, wants to

Once in a lifetime, do a girl in.

Well he kept her there in a bath

With a gallon of Lysol in a bath . . .

Nobody came,

And nobody went

But he took in the milk and he paid

the rent.

--T. S. Eliot's Fragment of an Agon

Like Eliot's Anyman, Charles Cle, at 61, began to have mordant thoughts about Felicie Crippa, who had been his mistress for 13 years. A soap and perfume salesman, Cle lived with Felicie in a cozy, two-room Paris apartment just down the street from Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. He was a quiet man, always neatly dressed, always polite to his neighbors. Felicie was a short, plump, sad-eyed widow with bobbed greying hair. Eleven months ago she disappeared. Cle explained, "Felicie has gone to Italy. Life is much easier there. I will soon join her." But to occasional callers who rang the bell and asked for her, Charles Clement was more truthful: "Madame cannot be disturbed. She is in the bathtub."

Recently, chatting with his concierge, Cle grumbled that his business was doing poorly, that he was fed up with life and kept going because of his old mother, who lived in the country. Last month a telegram informed him that his mother had died. Ten days later, Cle disappeared as completely as had Felicie.

Last week tenants complained of a persistent stench coming from the Cle apartment. Policemen broke down the door. Charles Cle lay on the couch, his wrists slashed, a bullet in his temple. All the furniture was broken, picture frames and glassware smashed on the floor. In the bathroom, police found the tub covered with plywood boards and a mattress. In it was the decomposing body of Felicie Crippa, eleven months dead of head wounds. Instead of Lysol, Cle had poured several gallons of Eau de Cologne into the water.

Police found a letter to the commissioner of police. Cle was anxious that the commissioner understand why he had wrecked his apartment. He had not acted from remorse, sadism or simple vandalism, wrote Cle, but "because I do not want to leave anything to our French government, which is leading the nation to its ruin. . . I believe it is better to die quickly, rather than suffer slow death in the chaos of modern democracy."

Of the murder of his mistress, Cle said not a word.

He didn't know if he was alive and the girl was dead

He didn't know if the girl was alive and he was dead

He didn't know if they both were alive or both were dead

If he was alive then the milkman wasn't and the rent-collector wasn't

And if they were alive then he was dead.

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