The Thibaults

by Roger Martin Du Gard

  “Couldn’t you have run after them?” Rachel asked.

  “They had gone too far.”

  The police clerk looked up from his papers..

  “Well, can you describe their appearance?”

  “I’m not sure about the gentleman. The lady, I know, wore dark clothes; looked thirty or thereabouts. The baby had a steam-engine. Yes, I’m sure about that detail—a little locomotive. Well, when I say ‘little’ I mean about that size. He was dragging it behind him. You’re taking it all down?”

  “That’s all right. Anything more?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rachel was already near the door. But M. Chasle did not follow her. Leaning on the counter, he stared at the clerk.

  “There’s another little detail.” A deep blush came over his face. “I rather think I made a slight mistake when I handed in the money this morning. Yes.” He paused and wiped his brow. “I rather think I made over two notes, didn’t I? Yes, yes. I’m sure of it now. That was a little mistake—an oversight, I should say. Because … well, you know … the money I found wasn’t exactly that. It was a single note, a thousand-franc note, do you see?” His face was pouring with sweat and once again he passed his handkerchief over his brow. “Make a note of that, now that I remember it—though, in a way, it comes to the same thing, really.”

  “It doesn’t come to the same thing by any means,” the clerk replied. “On the contrary, it’s an important point. The gentleman who lost a thousand-franc note might have come to us a dozen times but we shouldn’t have given him back the two five-hundreds.” He stared at M. Chasle disapprovingly. “Look here, have you your identification papers with you?”

  M. Chasle fumbled in his pockets.

  “No.”

  “This won’t do at all. I regret it, but under the circumstances I cannot let the matter drop. An officer will go with you to your residence and your concierge will have to certify that the name and address you gave are not fictitious.”

  A mood of resignation seemed to have come over M. Chasle, for, though he continued to mop his face, his expression was serene, almost cheerful.

  “Just as you please,” he said politely.

  Rachel burst out laughing. M. Chasle cast a mournful glance at her; then, after a moment’s hesitation, he nerved himself to approach her and address her haltingly.

  “Sometimes, Mademoiselle, there lies beneath the plain coat of a mere nobody a nobler heart—and when I say ‘nobler’ I mean ‘more honest,’ too—than under the silk lapels of one of the great ones of the earth, for all his name and titles.” His underlip quivered; no sooner had he spoken than he regretted the outburst. “I don’t mean that for you, Mademoiselle, nor for you, officer,” he added, turning without the least timidity towards the policeman who had just entered.

  Rachel left M. Chasle and the policeman to their explanations in the concierge’s room and went up to her flat.

  Antoine was waiting for her on the landing.

  She was far from expecting to meet him there and, when she saw him, a sudden thrill of pleasure made her half close her eyes, but hardly showed at all upon her face.

  “I rang and rang. I’d almost given up hope,” he confessed.

  Gaily their glances met and their lips smiled a mutual avowal.

  “What are your plans for this morning?” he asked. He was delighted to find her so smart in her summery tailor-made and flower-trimmed hat.

  “This morning! But it’s after one. And I haven’t had lunch yet.”

  “Nor have I.” He came to a sudden decision. “Will you have lunch with me? Say yes!” She smiled, charmed by his eagerness, as of a greedy child who has not learned self-control.

  “Say yes!”

  “All right then … yes!”

  “Good!” he exclaimed. He took a deep breath. She opened the door of her flat.

  “Just a moment; I must let my charwoman know, and pack her off home.”

  As he waited alone outside her door, his emotion of that morning when she had moved towards him came back in all its intensity. “Ah, how she gave me her lips!” he murmured, and was so carried away that he steadied himself with his hand against the wall.

  Rachel returned.

  “Come along! I’m ravenous!” she cried, with a smile of almost animal eagerness.

  “Would you rather go down by yourself?” he ventured awkwardly, “I can join you in the street.”

  She burst out laughing.

  “By myself? Why? I’m quite free and make no secret of anything I do.”

  They entered the Rue de Rivoli. Once again Antoine observed the easy rhythm of her steps; she seemed to dance along rather than walk.

  “Where would you like to go?” he inquired.

  “Why not try that place over there? It’s getting late, you know.” She indicated with her parasol a small restaurant at the street corner.

  The room on the mezzanine was empty; small tables were alined in a semicircle beside the windows that opened onto a covered-in arcade and, extending downwards to the sidewalk level, lighted the room from an unusual angle. Here the air was cool, the twilight never varied. They sat down facing each other with the air of two children starting to play a game.

  “Why, I don’t even know your name!” Antoine suddenly exclaimed.

  “Rachel Goepfert. Age: twenty-six. Chin: oval. Nose: medium …”

  “And all her teeth?”

  “See for yourself!” she laughed, falling upon the sliced sausage in the hors d’oeuvre dish.

  “Better be careful. I suspect garlic in it.”

  “What about it?” she laughed again. “I’m all for anything that’s low!”

  Goepfert … A Jewess, very likely; and, with the thought, a dusty residue of his upbringing stirred in Antoine’s mind, adding a spice of the exotic, a piquant independence to the adventure.

  “My father was a Jew,” she announced as if she had read the young man’s thought.

  A white-cuffed waitress brought the menu.

  “A mixed grill?” Antoine suggested.

  A most unexpected smile, which obviously she was unable to control, lit up Rachel’s face.

  “What are you smiling at? It’s jolly good. A lot of tasty things from the grill—kidneys, bacon, sausages, cutlets …”

  “With water-cress and puffed potatoes,” the waitress put in as a garnish.

  “I know. That’ll do for me.” The merriment which she had momentarily repressed seemed once again to sparkle in her enigmatic eyes.

  “What will you drink?”

  “Beer, please.”

  “So will I. Off the ice.”

  He watched her nibble the leaves of a tiny raw artichoke.

  “I love things with a taste of vinegar,” she confessed.

  “So do I.”

  He wanted to resemble her and could hardly refrain from breaking in with a “So do I!” after each remark she made. In all she said and did she was the woman of his dreams. She dressed exactly as he had always wished a woman to dress. A necklace of old amber was round her neck, and the heavy beads hung in long translucent ovals like pulpy fruit, huge Malaga grapes or golden plums aglow with sunlight. Behind the amber her skin took on a milk-white sheen that stirred his senses. Gazing at her, Antoine felt like a starved jungle creature whose raging hunger nothing, nothing could ever quiet. As he recalled their kiss, the pressure of her lips on his, his pulses raced. And here she was, under his eyes—the selfsame Rachel!

  Two mugs of foaming beer were set before them. He and she were equally impatient to taste it. Antoine amused himself by timing his gestures with hers, never taking his eyes off her; at the same moment as he felt the soapy, pungent brew lapping his tongue and thawing on it, an icy draught flowed cool on Rachel’s tongue—and it was as if their mouths were mingled once again. The emotion left him dazed with pleasure and a minute passed before he caught what she was saying.

  “… and those women treat him like a menial.”
r />   He pulled himself together.

  “What women?”

  “His mother and the servant.” He realized that Rachel was speaking of the Chasles. “The old woman always addresses him as ‘Woolly Head’!”

  “Well, you must admit that she’s not far out.”

  “No sooner is he back than she starts badgering him about. Each morning he has to clean their shoes—even the child’s shoes—on the landing.”

  “What, the old boy?” Antoine smiled as he recalled another picture: the worthy Chasle writing to M. Thibault’s dictation or solemnly receiving in his employer’s stead some colleague from the Institute of Moral Science.

  “And they join forces to bleed him dry; why, they even filch the money from his pockets, pretending they’re brushing his coat before he leaves. Last year the old woman signed I.O.U.’s for three or four thousand francs, forging her son’s signature. The old man nearly fell ill with the shock of it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Why, he forked up of course. In six months, by installments. He dared not give his mother away.”

  “And to think we see him every day, yet nothing of that sort ever entered our heads!”

  “You’ve never been to his place before?”

  “Never.”

  “Nowadays their home looks poverty-stricken. But you should have seen how the little flat looked even two years ago; with the tiled floor, the panelling and cupboards, you’d think you were back in the time of Voltaire. Inlaid furniture, family portraits, even some fine old silver plate.”

  “What’s become of it?”

  “The two women disposed of it behind his back. One evening when the old man came home the Louis XVI davenport had decamped; another day it was the tapestry, the easy chairs, the miniatures. They even sold the portrait of his grandfather’—a fine figure of a man in uniform, with a cocked hat on his head and a map open in front of him.”

  “A distinguished soldier, perhaps?”

  “Yes, he’d made a name for himself. He saw service under Lafayette in America.”

  He noticed that she was voluble, but had the knack of expressing herself well. The details she gave had local colour. Obviously she had brains, but, above all, a mental outlook, a gift for noting and remembering facts, that pleased him.

  “He never breathes a word of complaint,” Antoine remarked, “when he’s with us at home.”

  “No doubt—yet I’ve come across him time and time again when he’d crept out onto the stairs to hide his tears.”

  “Well, I’d never have believed it!” he exclaimed, and there was such vivacity in his look and smile that her thoughts veered from her narrative towards the young man himself.

  “Are they really so terribly hard up?” he asked.

  “Not a bit of it! The two old women are hoarding all the money; they’ve hidden it away somewhere. And, I assure you, they’re lavish enough where they themselves are concerned; but they read him a curtain-lecture if he dares to buy a few gumdrops. The stories I could tell you of what goes on in that flat! Aline wanted—guess what!— to get the old fellow to marry her. Don’t laugh! She nearly brought it off, too. The old woman was backing her up. But, luckily enough, one day they fell out.”

  “And Chasle, did he agree?”

  “Oh, he’d have ended by giving in, because of Dédette. That child is all the world to him. When they want to squeeze something out of him they threaten to send her away to Aline’s home in Savoie; then he starts crying, and gives way all along the line.”

  He hardly heard what Rachel was saying; he watched the movements of the mouth that he had kissed—a well-shaped mouth, fleshy at its centre and clean-cut as an incision at the edges. When in repose, the corners of her lips lifted a little, poised in a smile that was not mocking but serene and gay.

  So far were his thoughts from the sorrows of M. Chasle that he murmured under his breath: “I’m a lucky chap, you know!” and blushed.

  She burst out laughing. Last night beside the operating-table, she had gauged this man’s true worth, and now she was enchanted to discover that he was half a child; it brought him nearer to her,

  “Since when?” she asked him.

  He equivocated.

  “Since this morning.”

  Yet it was true enough. He recalled his feelings when he left .Rachel’s place and plunged into the sunlight of the streets; never had he felt in such fine fettle. In front of the Font-Royal, he remembered, the traffic had been dense, but he had launched himself athwart it with amazing coolness, murmuring to himself as he threaded his way through the moving maze of vehicles: “How sure of myself I am, how well I have my energies in hand! And some people tell you there’s no free will!”

  “Let me help you to a fried mushroom,” he suggested.

  She answered him in English.

  “With pleasure.”

  “So you speak English?”

  “Rather! Si son vedute cose più straordinarie.”

  “Italian, too. How about German?”

  “Aber nicht sehr gut.”

  He reflected for a moment. “So you’ve travelled?”

  She repressed a smile. “A bit.” There was an enigmatic quality in her voice that made him scan her face intently.

  “What was I saying …?” he murmured vaguely.

  But their words little mattered—there was a strange telepathy at work, in every look and smile, in their least gestures and their voices.

  After a long look at him she exclaimed:

  “How different you are today from the man I watched last night!”

  “I assure you it’s one and the same man.” He raised his hands still stained with iodine. “But just now I can show off my surgical abilities on nothing better than a cutlet.”

  “I had a good look at you last night, you know.”

  “And what was your impression?”

  She was silent.

  “Was it the first time you’d witnessed a performance of that kind?”

  She stared at him, hesitated, then began to laugh.

  “The first time?” she echoed, and her voice implied: I’ve seen a good many things in my time! But she turned the question adroitly.

  “And do you have operations like that every day?”

  “Never. I don’t go in for surgery. I’m a physician, a child-specialist.”

  “But why aren’t you a surgeon? With your ability …”

  “I suppose it wasn’t my vocation.”

  They were silent for a moment; her words had conjured up a vague regret.

  “Pshaw! A doctor or a surgeon!” he exclaimed. “People have a lot of false ideas about ‘vocations.’ Men always imagine they have chosen their vocation. But it’s circumstances …” She saw his face masked for a moment by the resolute look which had so deeply moved her at the child’s bedside. “What’s the good,” he continued, “of raking up the ashes? The path we have chosen is always the best one, provided it enables us to go ahead.” Then suddenly his thoughts returned to the handsome girl seated in front of him and the place that in a few brief hours she had made for herself in his life. A shade of apprehension crossed his face. That’s all very fine, he thought, but first of all I must make sure this business won’t handicap my work, my future… .

  She saw the shadow on his brow.

  “You’re terribly headstrong, I should say.”

  He smiled.

  “Look here, don’t laugh at what I’m going to tell you. For many years my motto was a Latin word, Stabo: I will stand firm. I had it stamped on my note-paper and the first pages of my books.” He drew forth his watch-chain. “I even had it engraved on this old seal which I still wear.”

  She examined the pendant he showed her.

  “It’s very pretty.”

  “Really? You like it?”

  She caught his meaning and handed it back to him.

  “No.”

  But he had already undone the clasp.

  “Do, please… .”

  “
But what’s come over you?”

  “Rachel. To remind you …”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything.”

  “Everything?” she repeated, her eyes still fixed on his, and laughing heartily.

  Adorable she looks just now, he thought. It’s charming too, that unrestrained smile of hers, that almost boyish smile. She was as different from the “professionals” he had known as from the girls or married women who had crossed his path in society functions or at holiday resorts, and whom he always found intimidating, seldom attractive. Rachel did not intimidate him; he met her upon an equal footing. She had the pagan charm and even a little of the frankness one finds in harlots who like their calling; but in Rachel that charm had nothing furtive or vulgar about it. How delightful she is! he thought, and saw in her more than an ideal playmate; for the first time in his life he had encountered a woman who might be a friend, a comrade, to him.

  The idea had been simmering in his mind all the morning and he had built a castle in the air, a new design of life, in which Rachel had her place. One thing only was lacking: the consent of the other party to the contract. And now he was burning with childish impatience to take her hands and say: “You are the woman I have waited for. I want to have done with casual adventures. But, as I loathe uncertainty, I’d like our mutual relations settled once for all. You shall be my mistress. Let’s fix things up accordingly.” Now and again he had conveyed a hint of such designs and let fall a word or two touching their future, but always she had seemed to miss his meaning. Knowing her non-committal attitude was deliberate, he hesitated to let her into his plans.

  “This is a nice place, isn’t it?” she observed, nibbling at a cluster of crystallized red-currants which stained her lips with carmine.

  “Yes, it’s worth making a note of. In Paris you can find everything, even the atmosphere of a country town.” He pointed to the empty tables. “And no risk of meeting anyone.”

  “Don’t you want to be seen with me?”

  “Oh, come now! I was thinking about you, of course.”