I am not blaming her. She has worn herself out trying to protect me. She is not the only one.
It even makes me wonder, sometimes, if I wasn’t marked with a sign that women — certain women — recognized, and that has made them want to protect me against myself.
That is nonsense, of course. But looking back on one’s life one is tempted to say:
‘That happened just as if …’
There is no question that Mama, after the incident of the little bitch, was frightened. She was well versed in such matters, her husband having been regarded as the most rabid skirt-chaser of the county. How many times would some neighbour come to her saying:
‘My poor Clemence, it’s your husband again — did you know that he’s got the Charreau girl with child?’
For my father was always, quite shamelessly, getting them with child, ready later on, if necessary, to sell another parcel of land. He was not particular, young or old, prostitutes or virgins.
And that, in effect, was the reason for getting me married again.
I have never protested. Not only have I never protested, but I have never been conscious of being held in leash. And that, as you will see, is very important. I am not a rebel, I am just the opposite.
All my life, I think I have told you this many times before and I repeat it, all my life I have wanted to do what was right, simply, calmly, for the satisfaction of duty done.
Does this satisfaction have a bitter after-taste? That is another question. I should rather not answer it right away. Often, towards evening, I have found myself looking up at a colourless sky — a sky washed out, as it were — and thinking of my father lying at the foot of the haystack.
Don’t tell me that because he drank and ran after women he was not doing his best. He was doing the best he could, the best allowed him.
As for me, I was only his son. I represented the second generation. As you represent the third. And if I talk about myself in the past tense, it is because, now that I am on the other side, I have gone so far beyond all such contingencies!
For years and years, I did everything that was expected of me, without reluctance, with a minimum of cheating. I was a conscientious country doctor notwithstanding the incident of the little bitch.
And I even think I am a good doctor. When I am with my more learned or more solemn colleagues, I joke or am silent. I don’t read the medical reviews. I don’t go to medical conventions. Confronted by a disease, I am sometimes embarrassed and I make up an excuse for going into the next room to consult my textbook.
But I have a flair for disease. I hunt it down as a dog hunts down game. I smell it. The very first day I saw you in your office at the Palais de Justice, I …
You are going to laugh at me. All right! I shall tell you anyhow: look out for your gall bladder! And forgive this sudden professional vanity, or rather, plain vanity. Can’t I have a little something left, as I used to say when I was a child.
All the more so, since we are now coming to Armande, my second wife, whom you saw on the witness stand.
She was admirable, everybody said so, and I speak without the least irony. Perhaps, rather too much the ‘wife of a La Roche-sur-Yon physician’, but one cannot blame her for that.
She is the daughter of what we still call at home a landed proprietor, a man who owns a certain number of farms and who lives in the city on his income. I am not sure if he belongs to the real nobility or if, like most of the country squires of the Vendée, he simply thought fit to add a de to his name. In any case, he calls himself Hilaire de Lanusse.
Did you think she was beautiful? I have heard it repeated so often that I no longer know what to think. And I am quite ready to believe it. She is tall, she has a good figure, now on the stout rather than the thin side.
Mothers at La Roche-sur-Yon are always telling their daughters:
‘You should learn to walk like Mme Alavoine …’
She glides, you noticed that. She moves, as she smiles, with such ease and naturalness that you think it must be a secret.
At the beginning Mama used to say:
‘She carries herself like a queen …’
You saw what a profound impression she made on the court, on the jury, and even on the reporters. While she was on the stand, I saw people looking me over curiously and it wasn’t difficult to guess what they were thinking:
‘How could such a lout have a wife like that?’
It is the impression we have always given people, she and I. I should say that it is the impression she has always given me as well, and I have been a long time getting rid of it.
Have I really got rid of it? I shall probably come back to this later on. It is very complex, but I think that I have finally come to understand.
Do you know La Roche-sur-Yon, if only from having passed through it? It is not a real city, not what in France we call a city. Napoleon created it from scratch for strategic reasons, so it lacks that character which the slow contributions of centuries have given to our other cities, the vestiges of numerous generations.
On the other hand, we lack neither space nor sunlight. In fact there’s rather too much of both. It is a dazzling city, with white houses along the wide — too wide — boulevards, and right-angle transverse streets eternally swept by breezes.
As monuments, first of all there are the barracks — and they are everywhere. Then the equestrian statue of Napoleon in the centre of the vast esplanade, where men look like ants; the Prefecture, so harmonious in its shady park …
That’s all, your Honour. One business street to supply the needs of the peasants who come to town for the monthly fairs, a tiny theatre flanked by Doric columns, a post office, a hospital, thirty or so doctors, three or four lawyers, notaries, real estate agents, dealers in farm machinery and fertilizer, and a dozen insurance salesmen.
And two cafés, each with its habitués, opposite the statue of Napoleon and a few steps away from a Palais de Justice with its inner courtyard like a cloister; a few bistros, abounding in good smells, on the market-place, and you’ve made the rounds of the town …
We settled down there in May in a house that was practically new, separated from a quiet street by a lawn and clipped hedges. A locksmith came and fastened a handsome brass plate to the iron gate, bearing my name and the information ‘General Practitioner’ and my office hours.
For the first time we had a formal drawing-room, a real drawing-room with white wainscoting more than shoulder-high and decorative panels over the doors, but it was several months before we could afford to furnish it. Also, for the first time, we had an electric buzzer in the dining-room to ring for the maid.
And this time we engaged a maid right away, for it would have been improper for my mother to be seen doing the housework. Naturally, she did it anyway, but, thanks to the maid, honour was saved.
It is curious that I can scarcely recall that first maid. She must have been very nondescript, neither young nor old. My mother affirms that she was devoted to us and I have no reason for thinking otherwise.
I have a vivid recollection of two enormous lilac bushes covered with blossoms on either side of the iron gateway. Here the patients entered, and their footsteps could be heard on the gravel walk which was indicated by a green arrow and led, not to the main entrance of the house, but to the door of my office, equipped with an electric bell. In this way I was able from my office to count my patients as they arrived, and I must say that for a long time I counted them with a certain anxiety for I was not at all sure of succeeding in the city.
Everything turned out very well. I was satisfied. Of course our old furniture did not suit the new house but that gave us, Mama and me, a subject of conversation, and we would spend evening after evening discussing what we would buy as soon as the money began to come in.
I knew my colleagues before I came to settle there, but only in the way a little country doctor knows the doctors of the district.
We would have to invite them to the house. All my friends sa
id that it was the thing to do. We were both very much frightened, my mother and I, but we nonetheless made up our minds to give a bridge party and to invite at least thirty people.
Does it bore you, perhaps, my telling you all these little details? The house was turned topsy-turvy for several days. I took charge of the wines, liqueurs and cigars; Mama attended to the sandwiches and petits fours.
We wondered how many would come, and everybody came, even one extra person, and that person, whom we had never met before, whom we had never heard of before, was Armande.
She came with one of my colleagues, a laryngologist, who had taken upon himself the task of keeping her diverted, for she was a widow who had lost her husband about a year before. Most of my friends at La Roche-sur-Yon were doing the same thing, taking her out in turn, trying to cheer her up.
Was it really necessary? I have no idea. I don’t judge anyone. I shall never judge anyone again.
All I knew is that she was dressed in black with touches of mauve and that her blond hair was arranged with exceptional care and formed a heavy and sumptuous mass.
She spoke very little, but she made up for it by looking at everything, seeing everything, especially what she should not have seen, and a little smile would play on her lips, as for example when Mama served tiny little sausages — the caterer had assured her that it was the latest fashion — with our heavy silver forks, instead of sticking them on toothpicks.
It was because of her presence, because of that vague smile which kept playing over her face, that I suddenly became conscious of the emptiness of our house, our few sticks of furniture indiscriminately scattered about now appeared to me absurd, and our voices seemed to reverberate against the walls as in an empty house.
Those walls were almost bare. We had never owned any pictures, we had never thought of buying any. At Bourgneuf our house was decorated with photographic enlargements and calendars. At Ormois I had had framed some of the reproductions published in the art reviews which pharmaceutical companies get out especially for the medical profession.
There were a few of them still hanging on our walls, and it was during this first reception of ours that it occurred to me that my guests, since practically all of them received the same reviews, would recognize them.
It was Armande’s smile that opened my eyes. And yet that smile was imbued with the utmost goodwill. Or should I say with an ironic condescension? I have always had a horror of irony and I don’t understand it. In any case I felt extremely uncomfortable.
I did not wish to play bridge, for at that time I was not even a middling good player.
‘Of course you must,’ she said, ‘I insist. I want you to be my partner. You’ll see, it will go very well …’
Mama bustled about in agony at the thought of a possible faux pas, at the thought that she might shame me. She apologized for everything. She apologized too much, with a humility that was embarrassing. It was obvious that she wasn’t used to this sort of thing.
In my whole life I have never played as badly as I did that night. The cards swam before my eyes. I forgot the bids. When it was my lead, I would hesitate, look at my partner, and her smile of encouragement would make me blush all the more.
‘Take your time,’ she would say. ‘Don’t let these gentlemen fluster you …’
There was the matter of the smoked-salmon sandwiches which were much too salty. As we had not tasted them, my mother and I, we fortunately knew nothing about it that evening. But the next day my mother picked up I don’t know how many of these sandwiches which had been surreptitiously dropped behind the furniture and curtains.
For several days I kept wondering if Armande had tasted them. I was not in love with her. I never dreamed such a thing possible. The recollection of her simply exasperated me, and I was angry with her for having made me conscious of my clumsiness, if not a lack of breeding. And especially for having done it with that cordial air of hers.
It was the next day at the café where I was in the habit of going almost every evening for an apéritif before dinner that I found out a few details about her life.
Hilaire de Lanusse had four or five children, I don’t remember just how many; all of them were married by the time Armande was twenty. She had taken successive courses in singing, dramatic art, music and dancing.
As often happens with the youngest child, a family nucleus no longer existed when she really began to take her place in life and she found herself as free in her father’s big house, Place Boildieu, as in a boarding-house.
She had married a musician of Russian origin, who had taken her to Paris, where she lived with him for six or seven years. I know him from his photographs. He was young, with an extraordinarily long narrow face, nostalgic and infinitely sad.
He was tubercular. In order to take him to Switzerland, Armande had claimed her portion of her mother’s estate and they lived on this money for another three years, alone in a chalet in the high mountains.
He died there, but it wasn’t until several months later that she came back to take her place in her father’s house.
I didn’t see her again for a week, and if she was often in my thoughts, it was only because her memory was linked to that of our first party, and because in this recollection I looked for the criticism of our behaviour, that of my mother and myself.
One late afternoon when I was having an apéritif at the Café de l’Europe, I saw her through the curtains, walking along the pavement. She was alone. She walked without seeing anyone. She was wearing a black tailored suit, cut with an elegance and a simplicity not often seen in small provincial towns.
I was not in the least moved. I simply remembered the sandwiches dropped behind the furniture, and the thought was extremely disagreeable.
A few days later at another bridge party given by another doctor, I found myself at the same table with her.
I am not familiar with Paris customs. But at home each doctor, each person belonging to the same milieu, gives at least one bridge party a year, which in the end brings us together two or three times a week at one house or another.
‘How are your little girls? I hear you have two adorable little girls.’
Someone had been telling her about me. I was embarrassed, I wondered what they could have said.
She was no longer a girl. She was thirty. She had been married. She knew from experience much more of the world than I, who was a trifle older, and this was perfectly apparent in her slightest remark, in her attitudes, in her way of looking at me.
I had the impression that she was, in a way, taking me under her wing. And she did, indeed, take my part in the bridge game that evening over the question of a finesse I had ventured at random. One of the players was discussing it:
‘Admit,’ he said, ‘that you were lucky. You had forgotten that the ten of spades had been played …’
‘Not at all, Grandjean,’ she declared with her usual serenity. ‘The doctor knew it very well. The proof is that in the previous trick he discarded a heart, which he would never have done otherwise.’
It wasn’t true. She knew that I knew it. And I knew that she knew.
Do you understand what that meant?
A short time after this, when we had met not more than four times in all, my elder daughter Anne-Marie went down with diphtheria. My daughters, like most doctor’s children, acquired during their childhood every one of the infectious diseases.
I was unwilling to send her to the city hospital, which at that time I did not consider up to standard. There was not a bed available in any of the private hospitals.
I decided to quarantine Anne-Marie at home and, as I did not want to take the responsibility myself, I called in my friend the laryngologist.
Dambois, that’s his name. With what passionate interest he must have read all the newspaper accounts of my trial! He is very tall and thin, with an excessively long neck, a prominent Adam’s apple, and the eyes of a clown.
‘What we’ll have to find first of all,’ he said,
‘is a nurse. I’ll do some telephoning in a minute, but I very much doubt if I’ll succeed …’
There was an epidemic of diphtheria throughout the Department and it was not even easy to get serum.
‘In any case, it is out of the question for your mother to continue to nurse our little patient and to take care of your younger daughter at the same time. I don’t know just what I am going to do, but I’ll take care of it. Don’t you worry, old man …’
I was in a state of collapse. I was frightened. I didn’t know what I was doing. To tell the truth, I left everything to Dambois, I had no will of my own left.
‘Hello! … Is that you, Alavoine? … This is Dambois …’ It was hardly half an hour since he had left the house.
‘At last I’ve found a solution. As I thought, not a nurse to be had, not even at Nantes, where the epidemic is even worse than here … Armande, who overheard me telephoning, has offered of her own accord to nurse your daughter … She is used to sickness … She is intelligent … She has the necessary patience … She will be at your house in an hour or two … Just set up a camp bed for her in our little patient’s room … Not at all, old man, it’s no trouble to her at all … quite the contrary … Between ourselves, I confess I’m delighted, it will be something to occupy her mind … You don’t know her … People imagine because she is always smiling that she got over it … My wife and I, who see her every day, who know her intimately, we realize that she is completely demoralized, and, I tell you this confidentially, for a long time we thought it would finish badly … So no scruples …
‘If you really want to put her at her ease, you will treat her like an ordinary nurse, pay no attention to her, and show her that you have confidence in her as far as the patient is concerned …
‘I’ll hang up, old man, because she’s downstairs now, waiting for your answer before going home to pack her bag … She’ll be at your house in an hour or two …
Act of Passion Page 6