So the scene had started, with Lucien’s astonished face at seeing his mother appear with the uniform, and with his question “why are you bringing me that?” She had carefully laid it out on the bed. The maid followed, bringing the cap and gloves. He expected to see his father appear with the sword and his sister with the boots. But no. Not yet. The maid relieved herself of the gloves and hat, not by placing them on the bed, but by handing them to Madame Bourcier who didn’t want to leave the preparations to anyone else’s care. She savored getting ready almost as much as the gatherings themselves. Nothing pleased her more than a handsome tailcoat or evening jacket hung on the back of a chair, polished shoes at its foot, a white, placket-front shirt on the seat, and on the shirt, a beautiful cravat, and a top hat if possible. She found a particular beauty in these things, like a well-set table, or a pastry made in the best tradition. All the more reason she should have been sensitive to the uniform laid out on Lucien’s bed—it hadn’t even crossed her mind that this was the way officers’ uniforms were laid out on their coffins.
When they had coffins.
Once the maid left, Lucien, who had finished arranging some papers on his table, got up and came over to his mother limping, a limp from a bullet in the knee that would never go away. But this injury wasn’t the one that had changed him. The hit to the lung had been much more serious—it was a miracle he’d escaped. After months in the hospital, he was stronger again, strong enough anyway to carry out the plan he had slowly developed while he was bedridden. The limp aside, he had the air of a totally sound and healthy man. On the short side, with broad shoulders, his whole person radiated the mastery and gentleness particular to men who inhabit a worldview of their own, whether it is given or permanently won. His face was still very youthful—Lucien wasn’t yet twenty-five—and though there was no question of finding a wrinkle, there was still something around his eyes that didn’t belong to youth or age: subtle traces guessed at rather than perceived, accumulations of sorrow and wisdom.
Right then, he knew exactly what he wasn’t going to do, and he would say so. “Look, Maman,” he said, laying an affectionate hand on her shoulder, “what does it really matter to you, in the end?” He gave a sweet smile.
His father, Monsieur Bourcier, a heavy, sullen man, and his younger sister Marthe, a dry, thirsty, ungrateful character, had been standing behind the door from the beginning of the scene, not really sure what it was about. They were a bit too late to get a sense of the heated exchange between mother and son, but as soon as they learned Lucien wouldn’t wear his uniform, they had protested, vigorously taking up Madame Bourcier’s cause. Marthe accused Lucien of not knowing “how to please,” and the father scolded his son for being too independent, which was to say, uncharitable. Lucien hadn’t responded to that, except to shake his head a little, which seemed to indicate that he didn’t put much stock in that kind of comment. The father paced the room, his hands at his back, thinking up new arguments, which was his usual strategy in household spats. But why bang his head against the wall! Wasn’t he a living example? Had he gone through such antics this morning to put on his nice starched shirt, his tailcoat, to knot his white cravat around his apoplectic neck? Of course not,
he had done it with pleasure. Marthe stayed by her mother, who didn’t give an inch when Lucien repeated, “in the end, Maman?”
And he looked for her glance, ready to laugh it off if she’d only let him.
She was bitter: “Don’t make fun of me.”
He walked away, still limping. But he didn’t smile. Once again he’d proved how capable his mother was of crushing all good will and smiles. “Too bad,” he muttered.
“Come now,” his father said, “surely you have a reason?” Planted in front of his son, his hands still at his back, he braced his legs, pressing his weight to the floor, becoming one with it like a piece of furniture.
What could he say?
“No answer?” said his father.
“He’s pigheaded,” said the girl.
A silence.
“Come now, what does this mean, not speaking?”
Lucien thought and finally admitted, “In any case, I’m not going to this ceremony.”
“What did you say?”
Lucien didn’t repeat it.
“Are you serious?” his mother asked.
“Oh, let him go!” said Marthe. “He’s already about to. All this, it’s against us.”
Lucien gave Marthe a look that was devoid of tenderness. Here’s another one who knows exactly what she’s doing, he thought. But it would be better if she kept her mouth shut sometimes. He might be willing to make an effort to spare his mother and father, but he wasn’t at all sure he’d do the same for Marthe. If she pushed him, he’d tell her exactly what he thought.
“Don’t you think,” said Lucien, “that it’s horrible to fight the day before I have to leave for a long time?” He was thinking probably forever, but he didn’t say that.
Monsieur and Madame Bourcier looked at each other in astonishment. What was this new tone in their son’s voice?
“Faker!” said Marthe.
He pretended he hadn’t heard and repeated, “Listen . . . don’t you think it’s horrible?”
His father had taken on the heavy, imposing look he used for lecturing his students. There was something primitive, animal in him, something curiously unintelligent, that made even the simplest words seem as if they came with difficulty. The man couldn’t even write a letter without drafting it ten times.
“Horrible . . .you dare use that word!”
“But you don’t have an answer?”
The mother interfered. “This isn’t the point, Lucien. It’s not about fighting. Why can’t you do me the favor of . . .”
“Surrendering,” Marthe interrupted.
“Quiet!” said the mother. “I beg you to be quiet. That wasn’t at all what I was going to say.”
“Oh I’ve had enough of this!” Marthe cried. She was ready to stomp her feet and claw at him if need be. Clawing might have done her some good.
“Have you thought of the scandal this will create?” said his mother. “Everyone’s counting on you. And you refuse to show up! Is that it, is that really what you said? You refuse? Did he really say that, Papa?”
His father shrugged. “Evidently!”
“Listen,” said Lucien, “there’s not the slightest chance you’ll convince me to change my mind. Since that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to forget it . . . and talk about something else?”
This time the girl really did stamp her foot. “Oh, oh, oh!”
“Is that your final word?” said his mother.
“You’re sticking to it, eh?” said Monsieur Bourcier.
Lucien was leaning on the table, hands in his pockets, his shoulders a little slumped, and he looked at them one after the other. Impossible.
They had arrived at a lag in the scene, not the breaking point, but a time of rest and recuperation after the first skirmishes, when all parties involved in the conflict still thought they could turn it their way. But it was already too late. What had started the fight was forgotten. No one gave any more thought to the uniform stretched out on the bed like a piece of evidence, but for another trial. Since Lucien had so firmly expressed his determination, there was nothing left to say. There was nothing to do but look elsewhere for things to feed the fire that was burning, and there was fuel for each of them, stored up in abundant reserve over the years. Enough to ignite a whole furnace. The trouble was that a phoenix always rose from the ashes—in bourgeois families, these bonfires never cleared the air. He knew this from long experience. When they’d said everything, they still never got to the bottom of it. Once they hurt in such subtle ways, these arguments never lost their venom. They could be reused again and again, equally painful the hundredth time as the first, and finally, as he’d seen so many times, they could kill with a slow poisoning. And that was what they called family life, the sweetness of the hearth and al
l that garbage! When you realized what a load of hypocrisy and wickedness their world rested on . . . Because of course a scene like this one, so trivial, would be fought in the name of the noble things they pretended could justify it—in the name of Love, as the war was in the name of Justice. In less than a minute, Lucien knew, his mother would try to con him with sentiment, demand that he obey her, calling on his filial love, and if Lucien didn’t give in, she’d simply say he was a bad son. His sister, once again, would pretend to be shocked that a brother she’d loved so much and done so much for (what? he wondered) could treat her with such “contempt.” As for his father, he’d resort to his role as head of the family, but fortunately without being at all compelling, unless he called Lucien a guttersnipe, as he’d done not too long ago. But he’d get over that. He could only hope they’d stick to arguments of nobility, to which Lucien could turn a deaf ear. But if they spoke of family interests—it wasn’t impossible—he felt he’d lose all patience.
Deputy Faurel would pull strings for the dean.
“You’ve really changed, Lucien,” said Madame Bourcier, letting herself fall into a chair as if overcome.
Yes he had changed. What did they want him to do about it?
“You’ve become hard.”
He nodded, without saying anything. She took it as agreement and said, “At least you’ll admit it?”
“It’s not that simple, Maman.” He regretted answering. If he went along with her, all would be lost.
“You have no more respect.”
He wanted to say that her point was invalid because how could he respect his mother for what he hated in other people?
His father and Marthe stood behind the chair where Madame Bourcier had collapsed, hands on her knees, wounded, and the way she pressed her neck into the back of the chair gave her horsey, chalky face, really her whole pose, the air of high-and-mighty victimhood. Tall and dressed in black from her neck to the tip of her toes, the rest of her was completely white—her hair, her cheeks, her lips, what you could see of her ears, and even her eyes, which were usually blue, but such a pale shade! Her hands, too, were white against the black silk of her dress. His father had put a hand on the back of her chair, looking very embarrassed. He gave every sign of wishing to be somewhere else, not having to intervene in this argument. But he couldn’t abandon his wife.
The three of them made a perfect group for a portrait. But no one dreamed of laughing, not even Lucien, the only one who could have been capable of humor. If his father wished to be out of there, Marthe on the other hand was desperate to say her piece, and she took advantage of the silence that descended to assert that there was one true thing at the bottom of all this—Lucien didn’t love them anymore.
“Once again, Marthe, I’m begging you to be quiet!” cried Madame Bourcier.
“Oh,” said Lucien, “if that’s what she wants . . .” He was beginning to hit his limit.
“It’s not your place to speak about these things,” Madame Bourcier continued, without moving, to address Marthe, who was biting her lip. “If someone has the right to speak here, I imagine it’s me. Your father and I. Yes, it’s true, Lucien doesn’t love us anymore. He’s succumbed to influences that have pulled him away from us, he’s . . . against us,” she said. And Lucien understood that she was about to go into one of her fits. He’d seen this phenomenon a hundred times, not just in his mother’s case, but from many women who made scenes. Not only watched, but felt. Though Madame Bourcier hadn’t made the slightest movement, not even a wiggle of her pinky finger, and even if her appearance was unchanged from a moment ago, he suddenly sensed emanating from her a subtle electricity which filled the room, rolling in waves, creating a very different state from the atmosphere of annoyance and anger they had already reached—a state of angst.
Was she aware of this disorienting power she had over people? If she sensed anything, it was only the signs of an impending breakdown, the long-awaited end to the scene. Madame Bourcier plunged into a new phase, a sleepwalker’s reverie, saying the kinds of things people only dare to say in dreams, asserting with a total lack of pity or embarrassment everything she secretly thought about her son. He was a bad son, of course, and that accusation summed up all the others. But she described her grievances in detail, proving to have an exceptional memory, which became even sharper when she slipped into this emotional state. Her problems weren’t just from that day, and the question of the uniform was just one bitterness thrown in with the others. She took up again what she called, in a calm voice, the cross of Lucien’s early childhood. Even as a young boy there had been a thousand signs of his black heart. He hadn’t been affectionate or obedient, wrapped up in himself, sullen, you would have thought she was treating him like a child martyr, but the exact opposite was true. And as he grew up his evil tendencies had only grown larger and more complicated. Heaven knew why she had loved him, coddled him, pampered him as if he were a prince’s child. Everything he’d asked for, he’d been given, never refused him a pleasure, never denied money when he was a student. He had gone to the front, that was understood, he’d been wounded and taken for dead, but that was just doing his duty, and he wasn’t the only one. He didn’t need to take such pride in it, such a desire to bend other people to his will, which wasn’t anything in the end but arrogance. And then she turned to the real grievance of the moment, which had nothing to do with the question of his uniform—that of his departure for England, which he said he wanted to visit, but he hadn’t explained why. What was he going to do in London? They’d never thought there was anything for him in that city. He’d never studied English. He’d chosen philosophy, gotten his degree, a path he’d been led down by Monsieur Merlin, who he’d been to see again yesterday, she knew, and who had a despicable influence on him. She wished Lucien had never met him, that no one had ever met that teacher of disorder, that enemy of family and society who didn’t believe in God or the devil and who spit evil around him like a tubercular man spits germs. A danger to the public. She forbade Lucien to see him again. But forbidden! What did forbidden mean to Lucien! She’d lost all power over him. He was leaving for England, which was to say—did he think she was so stupid?—that he was giving up his studies after all the sacrifices they’d made for him. Well then, he could go, he could get out!
All of this was issued in a mechanical tone, without the shadow of a gesture, the words coming out of her mouth one after the other like coins from a minting machine. The anxiety had reached its peak. Lucien hadn’t lost his self-control, but he was unsettled, like his father and like Marthe, by a silent anxiety that was at once a violent desire to flee and a powerlessness to stop the flood of words in which so many lies slithered, that she could never bear to say, Lucien knew, except that she’d forget them entirely and immediately, as if they were dreams or hypnosis. It wasn’t true that he’d been a bad child, it wasn’t true that he ever wanted to make anyone think his mother was torturing him. She had to know that. The truth was that he’d been crushed like all the children, then again as a young man and a grownup, one of those whose life had been stolen in bits before they tried to take it wholesale. That’s what he would have said if he’d thought for a second that he needed to justify himself or that his mother could have understood. But she couldn’t, she never would. It was bad luck they were parting on bad terms, since with a different set of circumstances they could have parted amicably, sweetly led up to the moment of separation by the hand of hypocrisy. After all, that would have been better for her. She would have suffered less. He pitied her, believed she was truly unhappy. But what could he do for her? Nothing. The reasons she suffered were detestable, which didn’t prevent Lucien’s compassion or love for her. But he couldn’t sacrifice anything to her, and certainly not the fate he had chosen. She had actually guessed! There was something clairvoyant about her, since, even though he’d said nothing, had spoken of his trip as a vacation, she knew he was leaving with another idea in mind, and in any case, he was giving up the illustrious car
eer they’d prepared for him since childhood. No, in fact, he was not going to be a professor. He would leave the official philosophies there with that dress uniform that became him so well! And as for Cripure, who his mother thought was a teacher of disorder, she would have been totally surprised to learn that Lucien thought Cripure was one of them, and that the influences she lamented so bitterly came not from him but from a few comrades in arms whose names would have meant nothing to her—men who’d shown him his calling and his true self. During these reflections he’d been sorting the papers scattered over the table, the ones he’d been organizing when his mother entered. She took the gesture as a provocation, which didn’t stop Lucien from continuing, with an appearance of total calm, torn as he was by stress and sadness. It was a terrifying spectacle—this old woman abandoned in her chair talking nonstop as though she were insane. Since the start of her speech, the two others had become shadows, dancing, grimacing, futile, wanting to cover their ears since they couldn’t stop the harpy from screeching, circling her like two people possessed. There was nothing to do but wait and hope that this nervous breakdown would, in a great epileptic shout, bring an end to this general torture. But it was slow in coming.
When Lucien had finished sorting his papers, learning many new things about himself, most notably that he was a miser—seeing as he was taking several thousand francs with him—he took his suitcase, shoved everything in there, and pulled on his overcoat.
“Farewell,” he said.
No one tried to stop him. His mother kept speaking. He went out, carrying his little suitcase. He didn’t need much where he was going. What a shame, he thought, his steps limping down the corridor, what a terrible shame.
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