Pedigree

by Georges Simenon

  It wasn’t her fault. Marthe had forgotten. She had forgotten everything she had said against Désiré when Élise had announced that she was getting married. She had forgotten that she had not even given her sister a present. There had not been a proper wedding, it was true, because Élise had still been in mourning. Nobody had been invited. But the Schroefs could have sent something, however small.

  Marthe had forgotten. Perhaps she had also forgotten the scene the day before. If not, she pretended to have forgotten it.

  ‘Roger! Roger! Mind the lovely bedspread.’

  ‘Oh, let him be. Go on playing, darling. Don’t listen to your mother.’

  What did it matter? When it was torn, they would buy another. And with a conspiratorial wink she added:

  ‘He can afford it.’

  Poor Marthe, she was so kind. She would give you all that she had. She would even give you her nightdress if you asked for it. But later on she would throw it back in your teeth with hard words, words that hurt!

  The worst of it all was that you never knew whether it was when she had had a few drinks that she was her real self or when she was sober.

  Seeing that they would have to come again, now that they were no longer on bad terms, Élise decided to tell Roger:

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t accept anything from Aunt Marthe.’

  But Aunt Marthe insisted on filling his pockets, just as she filled the shopping-bag of Poldine, the wife of their brother Franz, who was an inspector at the Herstal armaments factory.

  The two women and the two men came together in the dining-room, which was already full of smoke. Hubert was drawing contentedly on his cigar. Peace had been restored to his house.

  However there were certain details which only Élise noticed. For instance, when she had passed the drawing-room door, she had caught sight of a table laden with cakes, biscuits and bottles. The guests had not arrived. The Mamelins were not real guests and they were being kept in the dining-room until the others came.

  Désiré was talking insurance. Hubert had started questioning him, for he never wasted an opportunity, and Désiré didn’t understand, he thought Hubert was talking to him as he would to anyone else, and he felt proud at being asked for advice.

  Élise could scarcely bear it. Now and then she longed to whisper to him:

  ‘Let’s go, Désiré. You don’t understand that we’re out of place here.’

  They were in the way! They weren’t wanted any more. The guests, the real ones, were expected, and they were taking their time. They had plenty. Three o’clock. Nobody knew what to do any more. Hubert had gone downstairs to the glazed office to get a briefcase containing his fire-insurance policies, and Désiré went through them, giving his opinion, while the women stayed with the children in the playroom. The little friends, the daughter and sons of Roskam, the big dressmaker, had not arrived either.

  ‘It would be better if we left you, Marthe.’

  Dusk was falling when they heard a ring at the bell.

  ‘I tell you, Marthe …’ Élise repeated anxiously.

  ‘That really would be the limit! You’re my sister, aren’t you?’

  The lamps were lit in the drawing-room. Greetings were exchanged on the landing. The Mamelins heard the childish voice of a tiny little bald man, who was an important cheese-merchant and had the same accent as Schroefs. They both came from the same village in Limbourg. His wife’s fat pink arms reminded you of their old dairy-shop, a little shop all in white marble. They had no children.

  ‘Do sit down. A biscuit? A glass of port?’

  Élise, after all the trouble she had taken to persuade Désiré to come, did not know how to tell him that they ought to go and made signs to him which he failed to understand.

  After Monsieur Van Camp, the cheese-merchant, Monsieur Magis, who ran a restaurant in the Rue Saint-Paul and who, like old Marette, had cancer of the stomach, arrived.

  ‘A cigar? With pleasure!’

  Legs were stretched. Désiré thought that this was his day, that he was the great man of the gathering, because people were questioning him all the time about insurance problems, and because on that subject he knew more than anybody else. He juggled with figures, answered queries, and offered advice which would save all three of them, Schroefs and Magis and Van Camp, thousands of francs.

  ‘Your health, Monsieur Mamelin. You were saying that in the case of a fire covered by a Class B policy …’

  Everybody in the insurance world knew that Désiré Mamelin had never made a mistake, that he had never needed to consult a ready-reckoner or the terms of a policy. He was like a conjuror who had never bungled a trick.

  ‘You would lose twenty per cent because article eight stipulates that an extra premium is necessary for …’

  He was the great man, that was certain! These business men who were so sure of themselves were little children compared with him and humbly asked his advice, looking knowingly at each other.

  It got to the point where Hubert Schroefs, irritated by all the noise coming from the playroom, called out for the door to be shut.

  ‘And what if the risk had increased in the meantime without an additional clause being inserted in the policy?’

  The Mamelins were gathered together in the Rue Puits-en-Sock, and for the first time Désiré was absent, for the first time Chrétien Mamelin, not waiting for the traditional tea and home-made cakes, had gone for a walk with his friend Kreutz.

  Élise was happy and worried at the same time. She could feel things. She wished that Désiré could feel things too. He was given a third glass of port.

  ‘Désiré!’ she said imploringly.

  He did not hear her. And a little later, when they were going home through the dark streets, it would be Désiré, with the boy perched on his shoulders, who would congratulate himself on his day.

  ‘They understood what I was telling them! Their policies are as badly drawn up as they could be!’

  She did not dare to say anything. What was the use? Those were things the Peters could understand, but not he.

  The fire had gone out. She lit it again. They had brought home some liver pudding from Tonglet’s.

  ‘I thought your sister Marthe did everything she could to be nice.’

  She could not explain to him. And what would be the point of making him share the bitterness of that empty afternoon in which they had only played walking-on parts?

  ‘Help yourself, Désiré. I’ve already taken two slices. I assure you I’m not hungry any more.’

  The Schroefs had not asked them to stay to dinner. Just as they were leaving—she did not dare tell Désiré—Marthe had slipped two tins of sardines into her bag, all that she had been able to pick up as they were going through the dark shop.

  ‘Take them! You need to keep your strength up. Don’t tell Hubert.’

  She had felt embarrassed all the way home by those two icy tins which she did not know how to hide, and once she was in the flat, she had slipped them under the child’s mattress.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ÉLISE and Julie Pain had installed themselves with the children on a bench in the Place du Congrès, just opposite the Rue Pasteur, so that by looking round every now and then they could make sure that nobody was ringing their door-bells.

  It was a bright March day, the sun was shining, silvery clouds were sailing across the sky, and a clear, sharp light accentuated the details of the scene.

  The children, Roger and Armand, were squatting on the ground, playing with the gravel and the fine dust as if it were sand.

  The two women chatted together in low voices, speaking in little whispered phrases. Élise knitted. Julie Pain did not know how to do anything with her hands.

  ‘If you only knew how it irritates me, Désiré, to see those two motionless hands!’

  They often shook their heads, with a smile tinged with melancholy, and yet they were not sad, indeed they may have been happy, for this was what they were like—they had become friends stra
ight away—and they waited until the children came out of the Friars’ school in the Rue de l’Enseignement before going to make up their fires, drink a cup of coffee and eat a slice of bread and butter.

  ‘Don’t hit Armand with your spade, Roger!’

  There had been many afternoons, and there would doubtless be many more, similar to this one, more or less sunny, but just as quiet, for it was only at rare intervals that a tram crossed the Place du Congrès, and you could count the passers-by in the six streets radiating from it. Now and then, for a few moments, the pavements were deserted, and you had the feeling that the first person to venture out on them was ashamed of the noise his footsteps made.

  ‘The worst of it all, you know, Julie …’

  Roger and Armand were just babies who were still dressed in pinafores. Roger’s pinafore was blue, for he was dedicated to the Virgin.

  Armand, who was the elder of the two by only a month, was much fatter, and very placid, with the dark slit eyes of a Mongol. Wherever you put him, he stayed there as long as you left him. Once Élise had made so bold as to say:

  ‘Do you think it’s normal, Julie?’

  They had nearly fallen out over that. Élise did not mention it any more. It was like the way Julie Pain had of disposing of the child by leaving him sitting on the doorstep all day, with his little bottom touching the stone. Whenever you went down the Rue Pasteur, the Pains’ door was open, Armand was sitting there, and you could make out Julie in the half-light of the kitchen, unless she was gossiping at a neighbour’s.

  ‘The worst of it all, you know, Julie, ever since my accident, has been the pains in my stomach. Sometimes, at night, I feel as if I was being torn up inside.’

  Now this moment was to remain engraved for ever in a certain memory. Roger, who had just knocked over his bucket of gravel, had looked up at the bench. The picture he saw, the piece of life which offered itself to his gaze, the smell of the square, the fluidity of the air, the yellow bricks of the house on the corner—all the other bricks in the district were red or pink—Godard’s empty butcher’s shop on the opposite corner, the newly painted wall of the church club at the end of the Rue Pasteur, all that constituted his first conscious vision of the world, the first scene which would accompany him, just as it was then, through life.

  His mother would always be that woman he saw from below, still dressed in black, in half-mourning as from today, with a lace collar round her neck, a jabot held in place by a locket and billowing over her chest, and lace at her wrists, a bare-headed woman with fair hair which curled and quivered in the March breeze.

  He gazed at her. He listened. He tried to understand and his forehead creased. Finally he spoke.

  ‘Why does your stomach hurt?’

  Startled, Élise looked furtively at Julie. They never paid sufficient attention to the children!

  ‘Go on playing, Roger!’

  ‘Why does your stomach hurt?’

  ‘Because I carried a tub of washing that was too heavy for me. You know, the tub I wash you in.’

  He thought for a moment and accepted the explanation. Élise heaved a sigh. Finally, as if not attaching any importance to it, in a very casual manner, the child started raking the gravel again with his wooden spade.

  No doubt he would not remember everything. However, hence-forth, in the Rue Pasteur flat, there were two eyes and two ears more than before, and only time would make a final selection from all the sights, sounds and smells. Henceforth, when she threaded her way along the narrow pavements of the Rue Puits-en-Sock where so many tram accidents happened, when she went to buy fifty centimes’ worth of chips, a couple of chops or half a pound of pudding, when she complained of this or that, or when, from the fruit market, she looked through the windows of the café for Félicie’s bright, slim silhouette, Élise was no longer alone.

  The first picture to remain in the boy’s mind was the Place du Congrès on a March day, two women on a bench, an empty butcher’s shop, Élise who had put on a white collar for the first time for months, and Julie Pain with her ridiculous red-tipped nose, her waist so high up that she walked like a stork.

  The first problem which Roger was to turn over in his little head was this stomach which hurt, he could not understand why, this woman’s stomach which had been mysteriously injured. It would become even more tragic and mysterious when Élise seized every opportunity to say:

  ‘If you don’t behave yourself, a carriage will come to fetch me.’

  A cab had stopped one evening in front of a nearby house, to take to the clinic an old man who had been buried a few days later. The child had seen it.

  ‘Where will it go, the carriage? Will it take me?’

  ‘No, not you. It will come to take me to hospital.’

  ‘What will you do in hospital?’

  ‘Have an operation.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘My stomach.’

  He did not cry. He kept quiet. He turned his thoughts over for a long time, and now and then he darted quick glances at that swollen stomach which his mother’s princess dress accentuated.

  At night, before dropping off to sleep, when, through the half-open door, the oil-lamp in the kitchen peopled the bedroom with moving shadow-figures, he sometimes asked questions from the depths of his bed.

  ‘It isn’t coming to fetch you, is it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The carriage.’

  The sound of a horse’s hoofs on the cobblestones of the street froze him all of a sudden. He listened in terror, not breathing again until he was sure that the carriage had not stopped, until the noise had finally faded away into the distance.

  ‘Does your stomach hurt, Mother?’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  She was embarrassed in front of Désiré, who often reproached her with her mania for complaining.

  ‘Just like your sisters! It’s in the family! If every one of you were given a castle and a million francs you’d still fall into each other’s arms and cry!’

  The world would grow imperceptibly, picture by picture, street by street, question by question.

  ‘Why don’t you carry me?’

  ‘Because I’m tired …’

  ‘Why are you tired?’

  ‘Because I’m a woman.’

  ‘And isn’t Father tired?’

  ‘Your father’s a man.’

  A woman.

  People stopped Élise in the street because of the child. The magistrate’s housekeeper rushed out every time she passed and always had some sweets ready for him.

  ‘It’s too good of you, Madame Gérard. You’re spoiling him.’

  ‘He’s so sweet, so mischievous! His eyes really talk to you, Madame Mamelin!’

  ‘You can’t imagine how tiring he’s getting! It isn’t so much that he’s heavy to carry. There are children his age who are heavier than he is. But he asks questions from morning till night. Sometimes it’s quite embarrassing. Look! He’s listening to us now. He can understand everything we’re saying.’

  She was wrong. He wanted to understand, but what he wanted to understand was not always what people said, it was other mysteries Élise never thought of, subtle things often, which he did not dare to talk about, as if he knew that this was his personal domain, into which nobody else could penetrate.

  For instance, there was something which went up and down in the sky on certain days. The kitchen window formed a big blue rectangle. He sat on the floor, on the brown blanket with the floral pattern, the blanket which was put down on Saturday afternoon when the flat was cleaned and which, folded in four or eight, was used by him during the week.

  He stared at this plain blue rectangle, and all of a sudden—he had never been able to determine the precise moment when it began—something transparent, a long, curling shape, left one corner of the rectangle and zigzagged towards another, sometimes staying motionless for a moment before being swallowed up by the infinity hidden by the window-frame.

 
What was it? He did not dare to ask. He was convinced that even his father did not know. Perhaps he was the only one to see this living thing?

  ‘Why don’t you go on playing, Roger?’

  ‘I am playing!’

  When he remained motionless, Élise was always afraid that he was ill.

  ‘Are we going to go for the chops?’

  ‘It isn’t the day for chops.’

  ‘What is it the day for?’

  ‘It’s the day for fish.’

  Why was it the day for fish? And when Léopold came and sat down by the fire, why was his mother different?’

  ‘Anybody been?’ Désiré asked when he came home.

  ‘No.’

  And what about Uncle Léopold? Probably she had forgotten. He reminded her.

  ‘Uncle Léopold came.’

  She blushed, and moved her saucepans about on the stove.

  ‘Oh, yes. He just looked in for a moment. I’d completely forgotten.’

  ‘Is he keeping well? And Eugénie?’

  Why did Élise dart that glance at the child? Why did she speak in a low voice, as she did with Madame Pain?

  ‘Just imagine, she’s found a post quite near here, in the Rue de la Province, in a boarding-house.’

  ‘Who’s Eugénie, Mother?’

  ‘Nobody, Roger.’

  ‘Who’s nobody?’

  He had finely drawn features and little eyes; he already creased his eyelids.

  ‘And I should so much have liked to have a child with big eyes! They’re so beautiful, big eyes are! He has to go and have the same eyes as Louis of Tongres.’

  On Sunday, nowadays, they went to the Schroefs’ in the Rue des Carmes. Nearly every time, Élise was in a state of nerves and a quarrel broke out before they set off. For no particular reason, because of her hat which she could not manage to put on straight, because of her hair which did not stay up, because of the pins which were too long or too short, or because of the princess dress which Désiré spent ages trying to do up.

  ‘You’re hurting me, you know you are. Dear God! Why is it that you aren’t capable of doing up a dress?’