When she finally joined him, he did not ask any questions. He wheeled the push-chair along. The ground was littered with flowers and pieces of coloured paper. There were children besieging the yellow carts of the Italian ice-cream vendors.
‘If your mother starts getting at me …’
‘She won’t say anything to you. You mustn’t take any notice.’
They greeted the passers-by who smiled at them. Désiré knew everybody, all the names you could see over the shop windows, even people who had left the district but who came back on the parish feast-day like prodigal sons, carrying babies they were proud to show to their old neighbours.
‘What did I tell you, Désiré? We are too early. They are still at table.’
‘What does that matter?’
A long table had been set out in the courtyard in the Rue Puits-en-Sock. Another table was laid in the kitchen. Sooner or later, somebody would have the idea of counting the people gathered around impassive Old Papa: thirty-seven, including twenty-two grandchildren and Chrétien Mamelin who, together with his old friend Kreutz, would go and sit outside on the pavement, between the two shops.
Everybody was looking his best, their cheeks pinker, their eyes brighter than usual. They kept coming in and going out. The women had put on some eau-de-Cologne or scent.
‘Good afternoon, Françoise.’
‘Good afternoon, Élise.’
Nobody knew that it was the last time this gathering in the Rue Puits-en-Sock would be complete. The mother, dressed in grey as usual, with her grey hair in bandeaux, was the only person who never sat down for a single moment, for there was always somebody who was hungry.
Exactly ten days from now, when everybody least expected it, she would suddenly feel dizzy, there, in that kitchen of hers, in front of her stove of which she was so proud.
There would be nobody there but Old Papa, sitting in his armchair.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Papa. I’m going upstairs for a minute. If it starts to burn on the stove …’
‘Get along with you, my girl.’
Nobody had ever thought that anything like that might happen. For the first time in her life she would go to bed at four o’clock in the afternoon, all alone, and when Cécile came home a little later, it would be her cries that would give the alarm. They would call in the doctor. They would send for Désiré, Lucien, Arthur. Only Mère Madeleine would be unable to come, for nuns were forbidden to return to their old home, even when their parents were dying.
At ten o’clock at night, however improbably it might seem to them all, it would be over.
Nobody, today, had any suspicion of this. Now a daughter, now a daughter-in-law would unbutton her blouse to feed a baby. Thirty people at least, of all ages, went to and fro in the yard and in the kitchen. The Kreutz sisters came along to have a piece of tart. There were so many tarts that people began to wonder whether they would all be eaten, and every time somebody ate a piece it meant another plate to be washed.
‘Give me an apron, Cécile. I’ll help you…’
It made your head spin to have so much happening at once, and the babies in their prams started crying because there was not always time to attend to them.
The men smoked cigars and drank liqueurs. The children were shared out among the parents. The bigger ones were taken out for a ride on the roundabouts and were bought ice-creams and cheap toys, usually paper windmills spinning round at the end of sticks or else balloons made of goldbeater’s skin.
People had scarcely finished eating before it was time for them to start again and groups lost track of one another, eyes became feverish, almost wild.
‘Where’s Loulou?’
Loulou was Charles Daigne’s daughter; she was of the same age as Roger.
‘I think she’s gone out with Catherine.’
There were things to see everywhere. The whole district was in holiday mood. And on all sides you could hear the music of the roundabouts and the noise of the shooting-galleries.
‘Do you want me to warm the bottles?’
Then there was supper which started at six o’clock, a ham which Désiré’s mother had cooked the day before and which was eaten with lettuce and mayonnaise.
The men in particular were not the same as on other days, because they had smoked cigars and drunk liqueurs. Heaven knows where they had been when they had gone out earlier.
‘Get along with you, Arthur …’
Arthur always exaggerated.
The feast-day smell grew fainter. The dust became thicker and thicker. The sun had vanished and the world was slowly turning purple, with perspectives of frightening depth.
Eyes were smarting and bodies growing weary, especially the little children’s bodies, and yet it was the children who clung to the enchantment of it all.
Élise had backache, but she said nothing. All this eating nauseated her and once she wondered if she ought not to go into a corner to be sick. Not for a single moment did she feel at home.
‘Come along with us for a walk round the fair.’
‘No, Cécile. It’s nice of you, but really, I’d rather not.’
Cécile was married to a locksmith, a good-looking man with a waxed moustache who, on Sunday mornings, right up to the time for eleven o’clock Mass, wore a contraption to train it. His name was Marcel. He had the aggressive look of a handsome, common young man. Élise did not like him. In the whole family, in her opinion, the only person who was any good was Françoise.
When the gas had to be lit, although it was still light outside, it revealed, beneath the blue haze formed by the cigar-smoke, piles of dirty plates, coffee stains, pieces of tart, and the remains of the ham.
‘Désiré.’
She tried to get him to come outside. He did not understand. He was at home here. He was talking about Monsieur Monnoyeur and everybody was listening to him because they knew he was the most intelligent and the best educated of them all.
She signalled to him. He finally noticed and asked aloud:
‘What is it?’
Anywhere else he would have guessed straight away, but here he had already turned back into a Mamelin.
‘Is anything wrong?’
She felt like crying. Her head was spinning. Her hand went out as if to hold on to a table.
‘Come outside for a minute.’
How discreet it was! Everybody watched them going out. In the yard, next to the bronze pump, next to the children who eyed them too, she stammered:
‘I don’t feel very well. Listen: you can stay. I’m going home with the child.’
‘Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down for a while?’
How could he possibly suggest such a thing? Lie down, her, in her mother-in-law’s bedroom, for instance, or in the bedroom of Cécile and Marcel who lived in the house! Why, the smell by itself would be enough to make her sick! They were clean, of course, but that didn’t alter the fact that every person, every house had its particular smell. And what if she was going to be ill, and couldn’t get up straight away?
Ugly little creases appeared near the sides of her nose. Désiré gave in.
‘Let’s go.’
‘No, you stay! Yes, I insist. What will they say if you leave them on a day like this?’
‘Come along. I’ll explain to them.’
‘No. I mean it, Désiré! I haven’t the courage to go back into the kitchen. Bring me my hat and my gloves. They are by the coffee-mill. Tell them …’
She was tired out. She leaned against the pump and closed her eyes. Désiré, in the kitchen, tried to joke in order to conceal his embarrassment.
‘Élise doesn’t feel well. She’s very sorry. It’s fatigue. She isn’t very strong, you know, she isn’t used to so much noise.’
His mother remained as cold as marble.
‘You aren’t coming back?’
‘I may do. But if she really isn’t well …’
‘Take a few slices of ham at least. What are you looking for? H
er gloves?’
Élise was the only one who had come with gloves. Catherine, for all that she was wearing a black silk dress for the first time, had not even put her hat on to walk the three or four hundred yards from where she lived.
‘Good night, Mother. Forgive us. Good night, everybody.’
‘Good night, Désiré.’
Élise was outside in the yard. Although nobody could see her through the fake stained glass, she turned towards the kitchen, gave the ghost of a forced smile, and murmured:
‘Good night. Thank you…’
They went along the whitewashed passage. Chrétien Mamelin, in the falling darkness, was still smoking his pipe in the company of his accomplice Kreutz. They had taken a couple of chairs out of the shop. They were at home on this pavement where, in front of the shops, there were other groups like their own watching the young people dancing.
‘What’s the trouble?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
‘But you must feel something?’
‘Don’t be cross with me, Désiré. If only you knew…’
The truth, the real truth, was that her back was not aching as much as it did on a wash-day, for instance. If for a moment she had felt like being sick, that had passed. She could have stayed.
It was rather a moral anguish that had taken hold of her in the midst of that merry family, that vulgar, cordial disorder in which they were all so happy.
In which they were wallowing, as she would say to Valérie later. They had no refinement, no feelings. Nobody had noticed that she was doing all the washing-up and, when somebody had suggested that she should go to see the fair, it was too late, the others had already gone out two or three times. She would not have gone, but she would have liked a little consideration.
The noise diminished as they came nearer to the Rue Pasteur and the feast-day smell grew fainter in the dark. The gas-lamps were alight.
‘Are you really ill?’
So much the worse for him! She felt the need to take her revenge. There was nothing to lead her to suppose that what she was saying was true.
‘I think I’m going to have a miscarriage.’
‘But … What? … You’ve never said anything to me about it…’
‘I was waiting to tell you. I could feel there was something wrong…’
‘Do you want me to go to get Doctor Matray?’
‘It would be pointless. It probably won’t happen for some time.’
She was being spiteful, and she knew it. She was spoiling his day, his last real Mamelin day, but a devil was urging her on.
‘How long has it been?’
‘Two months.’
‘And you have kept quiet all that time!’
He didn’t understand. At home, things were managed much more simply. He took out his key, opened the door, and picked up the child who was much heavier than the little push-chair. He felt sorry for his wife, of course. He was worried. All the same, he bore Élise a grudge. He could sense that she was putting on an act in which he preferred not to believe. He turned round to watch her coming upstairs, and he felt sure that it was on purpose that she walked more laboriously than was necessary, stopped on the landing and leaned against the wall.
‘Élise.’
She smiled, that smile which she always put on when she wanted to say:
‘Don’t worry about a poor creature like me! I’m used to suffering. When I was only five years old, I was a wretched orphan …’
He lit the lamp, and changed the child who was wet.
‘Oughtn’t you to go to bed?’
‘You haven’t had your supper.’
Then he exclaimed:
‘And what about the ham?’
He was right: there were the slices of ham his mother had given him. The last ham she would have cooked for the whole family, and of which, like this, he would have his share after all. He was the favourite. They were talking about him in the Rue Puits-en-Sock. They were saying:
‘Poor Désiré!’
Bengal lights were going up all over the district and, above the fair, there hung a thick pall of smoke of a reddish yellow colour. The firing in the shooting galleries went on. The music from the various roundabouts intermingled.
‘Élise.’
‘It’s nothing. It’s already gone.’
She had been lying earlier on. She had felt an urge to take her revenge on the Rue Puits-en-Sock, on the Mamelins who exasperated her. She had been unable to think of anything better than to fall ill, to go off in the middle of the festivities, and, outside, as she had still felt something of a grudge against Désiré, she had taken the opportunity to speak to him about her pregnancy.
She was sorry now that she had. She watched him coming and going, attending to the child, tidying everything up in the flat, and she was seized with a superstitious fear. Why had she talked about a miscarriage? What could she have been thinking about? She had thought that her pregnancy was not enough, she had made up something else, she had wanted to be utterly unhappy, utterly pitiful in face of the coarse joy of the Mamelins.
And if, now, to punish her? …
‘Dear God, please may nothing bad happen to me. Please may what I said just now not come true.’
Suddenly humble, she called out:
‘Désiré.’
Poor Désiré who flew into a panic straight away and did his best to help!
‘Forgive me, Désiré. I’ve been wicked. I’ve spoilt your parish feast-day.’
‘Of course you haven’t.’
‘Go back to them now. I insist. There’s still time. I heard your mother asking if you were coming back. They must be talking about you now. They all detest me.’
‘You just imagine things. Try and rest.’
And, as he had not read the paper yet, he settled down under the lamp, in his shirtsleeves. For a long time she saw him smoking his pipe, in a cloud of smoke, with a sidelong glance now and then towards the bed, then a glance towards the child’s cradle. He was no longer as anxious as he had been.
She pretended to be asleep.
‘Dear God, please may … Forgive me for what I said just now …’
She was frightened. She fell asleep frightened, and it was daylight when she suddenly opened her eyes and felt for the body lying next to hers.
‘Désiré … Quick … Run and get Doctor Matray!’
CHAPTER NINE
FRANÇOIS MARETTE was dead. It appeared that he was not an ordinary police constable but a sergeant.
Since the death of her mother-in-law, Élise had got into the habit of collecting death notifications, and announced each decease in a sorrowful voice:
‘You know, Désiré, that sprightly old gentleman we always used to meet in the Rue de la Commune…’
Were there really more deaths this autumn than in previous years? Or did she think that a long death-roll would make each case of mourning less painful?
She was wearing the veil again, the one she had worn for her mother, a veil which was so thick that you could scarcely recognize her, and so long that when the wind caught it suddenly on a street-corner Élise felt as if her hair were being pulled out.
Désiré had only had to change his tie. Every year Élise bought him one for his name-day, in a distinguished colour, mauve or violet, and she fastened it once for all on a celluloid hanger. They had taken the black tie from the left-hand drawer.
‘People are wondering, Désiré, if he didn’t commit suicide. Ever since his son was involved in that business, he had gone all neurotic; he was just the shadow of what he’d been before.’
People said too that Marette had had a cancer of the stomach.
‘Madame Pain’s sister lives next door to their house in the Rue du Laveu, a little house which they had built themselves and which they were paying off by annual instalments. It seems it’s awful.’
Why should it have been more awful than, say, Madame Mamelin’s death in the house in the Rue Puits-en-Sock?
The
leaves were falling. Winter overcoats had been taken out of the wardrobes. It was not All Saints’ Day yet but already you met people with colds, including Madame Pain whose nose was as smooth and red as a cherry. The streets were brighter and looked dangerous, covered as they were with a fine dust which the wind blew along a few inches from the ground.
‘It’s because of the pension…’
Désiré did not understand, and was listening with only half an ear to this story of the Rue du Laveu into which a pension had now been introduced. His mother was dead. It was not a dramatic happening. It was not something people talked about. It was a gap, a gap every day, every morning, for he no longer went round by the church of Saint-Nicolas and the Rue des Récollets to spend a few minutes in the kitchen with the fake stained glass. He could if he wanted to. Cécile, who had married Marcel Wasselin, had stayed in the house with her father.
‘If they proved that he had committed suicide, you see, who knows if his wife would get the pension?’
Was it grief after what his son had done? Was it the cancer of the stomach? Was it because of his resignation, which he had tendered very abruptly, when people had started pointing him out in the street? François Marette had got into the habit recently of going for a walk every day along the Quai des Pitteurs, a long way from his home, in one of the few places where the quays of the Meuse had no parapet. For hours on end, in complete silence, puffing away at his meerschaum pipe, he would watch the anglers.
It was possible that he had had a fainting fit. It was also possible that he had committed suicide.
‘Like that, his wife will have her pension all the same!’
Élise pursued her train of thought.
‘It’s not enough to live on. It’s scarcely enough for the bare necessities. Luckily the house belongs to them.’
Mourning had made her frailer, more girlish, you might say, with her cloud of fair hair.
‘Madame Pain told me … Are you listening? She told me that Madame Marette had decided to take in some lodgers, some students. She’s already found one who’s paying thirty francs a month for a room, even though the Rue du Laveu is so far from the University!’
Pedigree Page 15