Viper's Tangle

by François Charles Mauriac

  “My mother lived to the age of eighty, and she had attacks much worse than yours.”

  One morning, I found myself better than I had been for some time. I was very hungry, and the stuff they gave one to eat in that boarding-house was uneatable. I decided to go and lunch at a little restaurant in the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where I liked the cooking. The bill there caused me less astonishment and anger than at most of the other eating-places, where I generally sat down in terror of spending too much.

  A taxi deposited me at the corner of the Rue de Rennes. I took a few steps to test my strength. All went well. It was barely noon. I decided to go and drink a glass of Vichy at the “Deux Magots.” I sat down inside, on the bench up against the window, and looked out casually at the boulevard.

  I felt my heart miss a beat. On the terrace, separated from me by the thickness of the glass, those narrow shoulders, that bald patch, that hair going grey at the nape, those round ears, sticking out from the head....There was Hubert, with his short-sighted eyes reading a paper and his nose nearly touching its pages.

  Obviously he had not seen me coming in. The beating of my weak heart calmed down. A frightful joy possessed me: I was spying upon him, and he did not know that I was there.

  The last place where I should have expected to see Hubert was on a cafe terrace on the Boulevards. What was he doing in this part of Paris? He had certainly not come there without some definite object. I had nothing to do but wait, I paid for my Vichy at once, so that I could get up and leave as soon as might be necessary.

  Clearly he was expecting somebody. He kept on looking at his watch. I thought I had guessed who was going to manoeuvre among the tables to reach him, and I was almost disappointed when I saw Geneviève’s husband getting out of a taxi.

  Alfred had his straw hat on the side of his head. Away from his wife, that fat little man in his forties reverted to type. He was wearing too light a suit, and was shod in too bright shoes. His provincial idea of elegance contrasted with the quiet clothes of Hubert, who, as Isa said, “dressed like a Fondaudège.”

  Alfred took off his hat and mopped his shining forehead. He swallowed the aperitif that was brought him at a gulp. His brother-in-law was already on his feet, looking at his watch. I prepared to follow them. No doubt they would take a taxi. I would take another and try to follow them: a difficult matter. Still, it was a good deal in itself to have discovered that they were in Paris.

  I waited to go out until they were at the edge of the pavement. They made no sign to any chauffeur, and crossed the square. Still talking, they went towards the church of Saint-Germain-des-Près. What a surprise, what a joy! They went into the church. A policeman, who sees a thief walking into a trap, does not experience a more delightful feeling than the one that nearly choked me, at that moment.

  I took my time. They might turn round; and, if my son was short-sighted, my son-in-law was sharp-eyed. Despite my impatience, I forced myself to wait two minutes on the pavement; then, in my turn, I entered the porch.

  It was a little after midday. I advanced with precaution into the almost empty nave. It did not take me long to assure myself that those for whom I was looking were not there. For a moment that idea flashed through my mind that perhaps they had seen me, and that they had only come in to throw me off the scent and had gone out by one of the side doors. I went back on my tracks and made my way along one of the lateral aisles, that on the right, hiding behind the enormous pillars.

  Suddenly, in the darkest part of the apse, with their backs to the light, I saw them. Sitting on chairs, they hemmed in a third person, with humble, drooping shoulders, whose presence did not surprise me. It was the very man whom I had just expected to see gliding towards the table of my legitimate son. It was my other son, that poor larva, Robert.

  I had foreseen the possibility of this betrayal; but I had not let my mind rest upon it, through sheer weariness, sheer laziness. From our very first meeting it had struck me that this sorry creature, this born slave, lacked guts, and that his mother, haunted by memories of trouble with the police, might advise him to come to terms with the family and sell his secret at the best possible price.

  I looked at the back of that idiot’s head. He was firmly embedded between those two gentlemen of substance, one of whom, Alfred, was what is called good-hearted—though at the same time very keen on his own interests, taking a short view, but it paid him—and the other, my dear little Hubert, was a grasping fellow, with a decisive air of authority about him, which he got from me, and against which Robert would be powerless.

  I observed them from behind a pillar, as one watches a spider trapping a fly, when one has already made up his mind to destroy both spider and fly. Robert was hanging his head lower and lower. He had probably begun by saying to them: “Share and share alike....” He thought he had the whip hand. But, by the mere act of making himself known to them, the fool had put himself in their power, and there was nothing for him to do but take what he could get.

  And I, witness of this struggle which I alone knew to be useless and futile—I felt like a god, ready to crush these feeble insects in my powerful hand, to grind these entangled vipers under my heel; and I laughed.

  Scarcely ten minutes had passed before Robert had not a word left to say. Hubert was doing all the talking. No doubt he was issuing his orders; and the other assented with little nods of his head, and I saw his submissive shoulders getting rounder and rounder. Alfred, for his part, lounging on his straw-seated chair as though it were an armchair, with his right foot cocked up on his left knee, had tilted himself backwards, with his head thrown back; and I could see his fat, shining face, bilious and black-bearded, upside down.

  Finally they got up. I followed them, keeping in concealment. They walked slowly, Robert in the middle, hanging his head, as though he were wearing handcuffs. Behind his back, his coarse red hands plucked at a soft hat, of a dirty, faded grey.

  I thought that there was nothing left to surprise me. I was wrong. While Alfred and Robert went on to the door, Hubert plunged his hand into the holy water font, turned towards the high altar, and made a large sign of the Cross.

  I was in no hurry now. I could take my time. What was the use of following them? I knew that that very evening, or the next day, Robert would at last press me to carry out my plans.

  How should I receive him? I had plenty of time to think about it. I was beginning to feel tired. I sat down.

  For the time being, what was uppermost in my mind, what suppressed everything else, was the feeling of irritation caused by Hubert’s action. A girl, of modest bearing and not much to look at, put a hat-box down on the floor beside her and knelt down in the row of chairs in front of mine. I saw her in profile, with her head a little bent, her eyes fixed on that same distant little door which Hubert, his family duty accomplished, had just so gravely saluted. The girl smiled a little, and did not stir.

  Two seminarists entered in their turn, one of them very tall and very thin, who reminded me of Abbé Ardouin; the other short, with a face like a doll. They knelt down side by side, and they, too, seemed stricken into immobility.

  I looked at what they were looking at; I tried to see what they were seeing. “In fact,” I said to myself, “there is nothing here but silence, coolness, and the smell of old stones in shadow.” Again the face of the little milliner’s assistant attracted my attention. Her eyes were closed now; her lids, with their long lashes, reminded me of those of Marie on her death-bed.

  I felt at one and the same time quite close, within reach of my hand, and yet at an infinite distance away, an unknown world of goodness. Often Isa had said to me: “You, who see nothing but evil....You, who see evil everywhere....” It was true, and it was not true.

  Chapter XVI

  I had lunch quite light-heartedly, almost gaily, in a state of well-being such as I had not known for a long time, just as though Robert’s betrayal, instead of upsetting my plans, worked to their advantage.

  A man of my age, I s
aid to myself, whose life has been threatened for years, does not seek remote reasons for his ups and downs of humour. They are organic. The myth of Prometheus signifies that all the sorrows of the world have their seat in the liver. But who dare proclaim a truth so lowly?

  I was not in pain. I digested my underdone slice of broiled meat. I rejoiced that the helping was generous enough to save the expense of getting something else as well. I should have some cheese to follow: the most nourishing thing, at the cheapest possible price.

  What attitude should I adopt towards Robert? I must change the direction of my fire. But I could not fix my mind on these problems. In any case, what was the good of restricting myself to a fixed plan? It was much better to rely upon the inspiration of the moment. I did not dare to admit what pleasure I promised myself in playing, like a cat, with that wretched country mouse. Robert was a thousand miles from suspecting that I had unearthed the mine....

  Am I cruel? Yes, I am. Not more than anybody else, than all the others, than children, than wives, than all those (I am thinking of the little milliner’s girl whom I glimpsed at Saint-Germain-des-Près) than all those who are not on the side of the Lamb.

  I went back in a taxi to the Rue Brèa, and lay down on my bed. The students who populate that boarding-house were on holidays. I could take my rest in complete calm. Nevertheless, the glass half-door, covered with a dirty screen, deprived that room of any intimacy. Several little wood-carvings of the Henri II bed had come unstuck, and were carefully assembled in the bronze-gilt waste-basket which adorned the fireplace. Sheaves of stains displayed themselves on the shining, watered wall-paper. Even with the window open, the smell of the ornate night-table, with its red marble top, filled the room. A cloth with a mustard ground covered the table.

  The whole setting pleased me as a microcosm of human ugliness and pretentiousness.

  The rustle of a skirt awakened me. Robert’s mother was standing at my bedside, and the first thing I saw was her smile. Her obsequious air would have sufficed in itself, even if I had not known anything, to put me on my guard and warn me that I had been betrayed. A certain kind of politeness is always a signal of betrayal.

  I smiled back at her, and assured her that I was feeling better. Her nose had not been so gross, twenty years before. At that time she possessed, by way of population for her mouth, those fine teeth which Robert has inherited from her. But today her smile shone out over a complete set of false teeth.

  She must have been walking fast, and the acrid odour of her strove victoriously with that of the table with the red marble top. I begged her to open the window as widely as possible. She did so, came back to my side, and smiled at me again.

  Now that I was feeling better, she wanted to tell me that Robert put himself at my disposal, for “the business.” As it happened, the next day, Saturday, from noon onwards, he would be free. I reminded her that on Saturday afternoons the banks were shut. Then she said that he could get leave on Monday morning. He would have no difficulty about obtaining it. In any case, he need not worry about his employers any longer.

  She seemed surprised when I insisted that Robert should hold on to his job for the next few weeks. She took her leave with the assurance that she would accompany her son to see me the next day. I begged her to let him come by himself; I wanted to talk to him a little, to get to know him better....

  The poor fool could not conceal her anxiety. She was afraid, no doubt, that her son would give himself away. But when I speak with a certain air, nobody dreams of disputing my decisions. It was unquestionably she who had pushed Robert into coming to an understanding with my children. I knew that timid, fearful fellow too well to have any doubts about the uneasiness into which the step that he had taken must have plunged him.

  When the wretch came in, during the morning of the next day, I saw at the first glance that my expectations were surpassed. His eyes were those of a man who has not slept. The way in which they looked at one was shifty. I bade him sit down, and was concerned about his appearance. In short, I showed myself affectionate, almost loving.

  I described to him, with all the eloquence of a great lawyer, the life of felicity that opened before him. I evoked the house and the ten-hectares park which I was going to buy for him at Saint-Germain. It was going to be furnished throughout in “period” style. There would be a fish-pond, a garage for four cars, and lots of other things which I threw in as ideas came into my head.

  When I talked to him about the cars, and suggested to him one of the leading American makes, I saw a man in agony. Clearly he was under contract not to take a halfpenny while I was alive.

  “You need not worry about this,” I told him; “the transaction will go through under your own name. I have set aside, with the object of handing them over to you on Monday, a certain number of securities which will give you an income of a hundred thousand francs a year. Even with that, you needn’t care what happens. But most of the liquid fortune is still in Amsterdam. We might make a trip there next week, to put all our affairs in order....But what’s the matter with you, Robert?”

  “No, Monsieur, no,” he stammered, “nothing before your death....I really wouldn’t like it....I don’t want to deprive you of anything. Please don’t insist; you’re only hurting me.”

  He was leaning up against the wardrobe, with his left elbow in his right hand, rubbing himself against the corners. I fixed upon him those eyes of mine which used to put so much dread into my adversary at the Law Courts, and, when I was the advocate of the injured party, never left my victim until he collapsed in the witness-box into the arms of a policeman.

  At bottom, I forgave him. I experienced a sense of deliverance. It would have been terrible to end my days with that larva. I did not hate him. I intended to throw him away without hurting him. But I could not restrain myself from playing with him a little longer.

  “What fine feelings you have, Robert! How nice it is of you to be ready to wait until I am dead! But I cannot accept such a sacrifice on your part. You shall have it all, starting on Monday; by the end of the week the greater part of my fortune will be in your name.”

  He was about to protest.

  “It’s a case of take it or leave it,” I added, coldly.

  Refusing to meet my eyes, he asked me for a few days more to think it over. Just time to write to Bordeaux and get his instructions, poor fool!

  “You surprise me, Robert, I must say. This attitude of yours is strange.”

  I thought I was looking less fierce; but my eyes are sterner than I am myself. Robert stammered in a ghost of a voice:

  “Why are you staring at me like that?”

  I mimicked him despite myself as I replied:

  “Why am I staring at you like that? And you—why can you not look me in the face?”

  Those who have the habit of being loved instinctively do all the things, and say all the words, that attract people. And I—I am so used to being hated and making people afraid that my pupils, my eyebrows, my voice, my laugh make themselves the obedient accomplices of this awful gift of mine and act in advance of my will. So the wretched fellow wriggled about under a stare which I wanted to express forgiveness. The more I laughed, the more the sound of that mirth impressed itself upon him as a sinister omen.

  Just as one finishes off an animal, I questioned him point-blank.

  “How much did they offer you, the others?”

  I addressed him in the familiar second person singular, and that familiarity, whether I intended it or not, conveyed more contempt than friendliness. He stammered: “What others?”—a prey to an almost holy terror.

  “The two gentlemen,” I told him, “the fat one and the thin one...yes, the fat one and the thin one.”

  I wanted to make an end of it. I felt a horror of prolonging the scene—just as when one dare not put his heel on a centipede.

  “Pull yourself together,” I said to him finally. “I forgive you.”

  “It wasn’t I who wanted to do it...it was....”
<
br />   I put my hand over his mouth. I could not have endured to hear him accusing his mother.

  “Hush! No names!...Come now, how much did they offer you? A million? Half a million? Less than that? It’s not possible! Three hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand!”

  He shook his head piteously.

  “No, an annual income,” he said in a low voice. “That was what tempted us. It was safer. Twelve thousand francs a year.”

  “Starting from today?”

  “No, starting from when they got the inheritance....They hadn’t foreseen that you would want to put everything in my own name at once....But is it too late?...It’s true that they could prosecute us...unless we hide ourselves from them....Oh, what a fool I’ve been! I am well punished....”

  He cried—an ugly sight—sitting on the bed; one of his hands hung down, huge, swollen with blood.

  “After all, I am your son,” he sobbed. “Don’t let me down!”

  With an awkward movement, he tried to throw his arms round my neck. I freed myself, but gently. I went over to the window, and spoke to him without turning round.

  “You will receive, beginning on August 1, fifteen hundred francs a month. I shall take immediate steps to have this income paid to you for life. If you die before her, your mother will have the reversion of it. My family, of course, must not know that I discovered the plot at Saint-Germain-des-Près.” The name of the church made him jump. “I need not tell you, at the least indiscretion on your part, you will lose everything. In return, you will keep me informed of anything that may be planned against me.”

  He knew now that nothing had escaped me, and what it would cost him to betray me again. I gave him to understand that I did not want to see either him or his mother again. They were to write to me poste restante, at the usual post-office.