Would he fall back on Stievens, who had money too and was probably the most expensively dressed of them all? Stievens was almost as isolated as he was. He was even an undesirable. At the Carré, the boys nudged each other as they pointed to his mother and sister who looked like a couple of tarts.
Father Renchon was standing by himself next to the sunny wall. Perhaps he had guessed what had just happened. It was so as not to embarrass Roger that he pretended to be watching a game of prisoners’ base when the latter unconsciously turned towards him.
Roger decided to go to the theatre by himself. He had already gone there on Sunday, but he had just taken a seat in the stalls, for he had not had his suit, which Cortleven had had to alter to fit him. He had marked out the box where he was going to sit, the first one, practically on the stage. He would sit with his arm on the crimson velvet ledge, his hand dangling in space, and he would be one of the first to applaud every couplet, with a hint of nonchalant condescension and knowing glances at the actors.
‘I say, Mamelin …’
Verger, who had run up to him, stood there getting his breath back. He was a thin boy, with a pale, bony face, who looked older than he was and had the reputation of being immoral. He was not exactly rich, but he was not poor either, or the son of a clerk. His father was an important house-painting contractor.
‘Is it true that you’ve got a box at the Renaissance and that you’re looking for somebody to go with you?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Leclerc. He’s just told me that if I wanted to go to the theatre this afternoon, you’d got some seats you didn’t know what to do with. Will you take me along?’
It was as if every word had been carefully chosen to wound him. With a bitter taste in his mouth, Roger stood silent and motionless, looking at the swarming yard through his half-lowered lashes. He sensed that somewhere Chabot and Leclerc were watching him, that perhaps Father Renchon too was looking at him, and he had to make an effort to keep his face impassive and then to say in a natural voice:
‘If you like.’
Who could tell who would be sent him if he were foolish enough to refuse Verger?
‘What time is it?’
‘Two o’clock.’
‘Have you got the tickets already?’
He said yes, but it was not true. It did not matter. He would get them at the box-office. Perhaps they had thought that he had got hold of some complimentary tickets? Soon they would be stopping boys at random and saying:
‘Would you like to go to the theatre? If so, go and ask Mamelin.’
He was disgusted, with himself and the others, and he longed to be in his bedroom so that he could cry. Because he could not, he tensed himself, and his face became pointed like Élise’s at certain times, his smile aggressive. He had nothing to say to Verger, who was no friend of his.
Once, only once, over a year ago now, they had gone together one Thursday afternoon to the home of Lafont, a boy who was already seventeen and whose father ran a big shoe-shop. Lafont had taken them up to his bedroom. His face flushed and his eyes shining, he had promptly shown them some obscene photographs on which he had commented in the coarsest possible language. He had got the maid to bring up some wine. They had heard his mother and sisters moving around the flat and the shop bell ringing every five minutes.
Why, when Lafont had brushed against his back, had he put himself on the defensive, as if he had scented a trap? He remembered the faces of his two classmates, Lafont sickly and excited, with shining eyes which had revolted him, Verger pale and apparently a prey to an obsession.
Suddenly Lafont had started indulging in exhibitionism; for all that Roger had turned away, he had kept on finding him stubbornly planted in front of him.
What excuse had he found for going away? He could remember only that he had left with the distinct impression that after his departure the other two were going to go on with their disgusting games.
‘Have you seen the revue already?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it good? Are there some tarts in it?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Where shall we meet?’
‘Outside the theatre, at two o’clock.’
Luckily the bell went then, for he would have been unable to find anything else to say. He felt a pang of remorse as he caught sight of poor Neef dragging his hobnailed boots along as he took his place in the line after spending the break circling round Roger. The poor fool probably imagined that now that Mamelin was dressed like the others he would not deign to speak to him any more.
It was another of Father Renchon’s lessons, a geography lesson this time. It was of no importance. Roger looked out of the open window and his gaze, lost in the distant chaos of the rooftops, grew harder and harder. That morning, his father had said nothing when he had seen him dressed in new clothes from head to foot. The day before, when Roger had displayed his red silk tie which he had just bought, Désiré had felt it for a moment.
‘It was a cut-price bargain, you see. Otherwise, I couldn’t have had it for six francs. It seems there’s a flaw in it, but it doesn’t show.’
Élise, who was always on the look-out for bargains, had believed him. She had even asked:
‘You didn’t see a darker one for your father?’
The tie, which he had bought in the smartest shirt-shop in the Rue du Pont-d’Ile, had cost forty-five francs. During the past week, in francs as well as marks, and notes of both low and high denominations, Roger had taken about two hundred francs out of the till in the Rue Puits-en-Sock.
On Sunday morning, he had nearly been caught. The shop had been empty. Roger was coming away from the till and thrusting his hand in his pocket when he had a feeling that somebody was watching him. Looking up, he had seen his grandfather standing at the kitchen door. For perhaps a tenth, a hundredth of a second, he had thought that all was lost, and he had been on the point of throwing himself on his knees when he had remembered the chocolates. He had passed his left hand over the trellis and had somehow managed to say with a little nervous laugh:
‘I think I should be able to treat myself to one on a Sunday, shouldn’t I, Grandfather?’
Had old Mamelin been taken in? Had he seen the boy’s first movement? Had he suspected the truth? He had said nothing, but had bent down to make the ritual sign of the cross on his grandson’s forehead and then gone slowly upstairs to see Cécile.
Since he had handed over his business to Marcel in return for board and lodging and five francs’ pocket-money a week, he had withdrawn further and further into the background, avoiding the kitchen where everybody gathered, and living from morning till night among the wooden heads in the back-shop. When he went out, it was to take the air with his friend Kreutz.
Roger had promised himself not to take any more money out of the till, and this time he meant it. He had been too frightened. Fear was the most appalling and the most degrading feeling there was. He had just over a hundred francs left. He would go to the Renaissance with Verger. He would buy some expensive cigarettes he had hankered after when he had still been at the Collège Saint-Louis and which you could find only in a shop in the Rue de la Régence, delicate ladies’ cigarette which you could see, with their gold tips, through the red cellophane wrapping.
If Chabot had gone with him, or somebody else from the Fragnée group, he had promised himself to send the box-attendant to buy some flowers. After the ballet which concluded the second act, he had planned to throw them, as if it were the most natural gesture in the world, to a little dancer in the second row who had the touching face of a sickly street-urchin.
Would he do the same for Verger? Perhaps. Not so much for Verger’s sake as because the latter would not fail to tell the others about it.
He had promised himself too much from that afternoon. Now he was in a hurry to be living it, indifferent to everything around him. At last the bell rang, and once again he avoided Father Renchon, although it was rarely that a day went by withou
t his exchanging a few words with him. In the yard he waited for Neef, the only one who went his way, Neef-the-peasant who could not get over his classmate’s yellow shoes.
‘Where did you find those shoes?’
‘In the Rue de la Cathédrale.’
‘They must have cost a lot.’
‘Two hundred and eighty francs.’
‘Your suit’s jolly smart! Who made it for you?’
‘Roskam … Let’s go into Mariette’s and have some ice-cream … Yes, I’ll pay …’
Chabot and Leclerc went past on their bicycles without stopping. Anybody might have thought it was on purpose that there was not a single pupil from the third form in Mariette’s that day. The elder Neef must have had money, but he did not give any to his son. The tall young man stood there, ill-at-ease, working out the price of the ice-cream he was licking with a respectful tongue while Roger affected an off-hand manner, saying ‘Mariette’ like an old customer, and sampling sweets which he took here and there from the bowls.
‘How much do I owe you, Mariette? The chocolate-almond ice was terrific.’
He pulled all the notes out of his pocket at once, pretended to select one at random, and picked up his change with an indifferent air.
‘See you tomorrow, Mariette.’
On the way out, he looked at his reflection in a mirror and made an effort to smile at himself.
‘You’re sure she gave you the right change? You didn’t even look. I don’t know how to pay you back, but if you’d come to Beaufays one Sunday my sisters would be delighted. I talk to them about you so often that they know all about you and keep asking me when you’re going to come to see them.’
His sisters probably looked like him. They were all three older than he, none of them was married, and one of them, the eldest, Laurence, had a slight squint. Neef had already told him all this, and also that since his mother had died, his father had taken to drink.
Roger went along the Rue de la Cathédrale on purpose to see the posters of the Théâtre de la Renaissance at the corner of the Rue Lulay.
‘That’s funny! I’m going there this afternoon.’
‘They say it’s very good.’
‘I know. I’ve been already.’
‘And you’re going again?’
Come now! He had to. He could not help it. He knew that it was ridiculous, but he started talking about the little dancer, whom he had seen only from a distance, as if she had already granted him her favours, mentioning the second-act flowers and the box which was practically on the stage.
While he was talking away like that, in front of an admiring and envious Neef, there was not a single moment that he did not feel unbearably sad.
CHAPTER SIX
IT MUST have been between three o’clock and four, about the time when the rain was falling so hard that they had heard all the traffic come to a stop in the street and they had had to light the gas. Roger had a very clear recollection of what had preceded the rain. The sun was shining, but its bright rays, of a deep reddish yellow, boded no good; you could feel a menace in the air, and now and then a big, fast-moving cloud intercepted the light for a few seconds, casting a great, shifting shadow over the town.
He could recall in all its sordid details his cousin Gaston’s room, on the second floor of a house in the Rue Gérardrie. He was sitting at the table, from which they had removed the cover, and the mirror on the wardrobe door showed him his reflection, without his jacket, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his hair already untidy. His gaze was rather set, his movements brusque and jerky, but you could not say that he was drunk.
He had never been drunk in his life. The only memories of his which bore a vague resemblance to memories of drunkenness were those of New Year’s Day, when, at his grandfather’s, he had been entitled, like the men, to a drop of Kempenaar. At the beginning of the afternoon, you hurried over to Coronmeuse, where, in Aunt Louisa’s drawing-room, next to the open piano, you drank some sweet Touraine wine and ate some crescent-shaped biscuits. Sometimes you had to stop again, on the way home, at the house of some distant relative. It depended on whether you managed to slip past without being seen. It was already dark. You drank quickly, standing up; you ran for the tram, whose light, travelling through the darkness of the town, struck Roger as sicklier than usual; and then, in the Schroefs’ drawing-room, you still had to sip the warm wine with a sparkling ruby trembling in the middle of the glass.
Coming back to Outremeuse, he was heavy with a feeling of well-being. He had hardly any supper and soon sank into the infinite softness of his bed.
It was entirely different this time. He had begun by being pale, tense and aggressive, and putting the exaggerated confidence of a music-hall juggler into his gestures, he had first of all smashed a glass, and then stamped on the pieces on the floor.
‘Pass me the Chartreuse, Gaston, so that I can taste the difference between that and the Benedictine.’
There was madness in the air; he could feel it and it excited him. There they were, Gaston Van de Waele and he, in a furnished room in the Rue Gérardrie, a room rather like those in the Rue de la Loi, but shabbier and not so clean. Lined up on the table were the oddly shaped bottles and glasses which they had just bought; on the floor there was a demi-john in a wickerwork casing.
The air was saturated with alcohol, but they did not dare to open the window, for fear that the people across the street would see what they were doing. The door was locked and bolted, and they gave a start when they heard footsteps on the stairs; but the callers invariably knocked on the door of the fortune-teller who lived on the other side of the landing.
One after the other, using the same glass, they sipped a greenish drink, smacked their lips, and looked unsmilingly at one another.
‘Is there any difference?’
‘Of course there is! This one has a smell of toothpaste the other hasn’t got, but the taste is the same.’
‘What if we added a few drops of essence?’
So far, Roger was aware, even distinctly aware, of the place where he was. The Rue Gérardrie was a peculiar street which he did not know very well. Right in the centre of the town, a stone’s-throw from the Rue Léopold where he had been born, it attracted only country people, principally on account of its restaurants furnished with bare tables where you could bring your own food and buxom waitresses served eggs and bacon and tarts as big as cart-wheels. The shops sold material for farms and poultry-yards, and in the windows you could see plaster eggs, packets of powdered pig-food, and strange-looking baskets whose purpose was a mystery to the townsfolk.
It was here, very naturally, that this Fleming, Gaston Van de Waele, had settled on his arrival from Neeroeteren. Although he had money, pretensions to smartness, bought the most expensive suits and wore patent-leather shoes, it was only here that he felt at ease.
Unlike Roger, who grew steadily paler, he became redder and shinier in the face as the afternoon wore on. He began to look positively repulsive. Though he was only eighteen, he looked older; he was already a man, a sort of bull so full of sap that it oozed out of every pore. His highly coloured skin was stretched over bloated flesh, his thick lips looked like freshly cut meat, and he had protruding eyes and a big, shapeless nose with flared nostrils under a low forehead where the hair practically met the eyebrows.
An animal tormented by crude instincts. And when, dressed in his navy-blue suit, with an excessively white collar round his neck, he capped everything by putting on kid gloves, it seemed that this civilized shell was bound to crack under the pressure of his muscles.
It was he who lived with his mother and his brothers and sisters in the house at Neeroeteren where Élise’s parents had lived and of which Léopold had done an oil-painting. His father had been deported to Germany for doing some smuggling at the beginning of the war, because you only had to cross the canal in front of the house to find yourself on Dutch soil.
Was everything already beginning to get confused? There was a clap of thunder, jus
t one. There would be no more. As if it were some sort of signal, the hail started falling, hailstones bouncing on the window-sill and the sky growing so dark all of a sudden that in every house people rushed to light the gas. The proof that Roger still had all his wits about him was that he said:
‘Pull the blind down, Gaston. With the light on, they can see us from across the street.’
After that, however, he lost track of time and began to get the succession of events mixed up. He was living in an increasingly incoherent world, and now and then, seeing himself all of a sudden in the mirror, in the midst of a chaos of glasses, he burst into frenzied laughter.
‘I say, do you think the chap will want to try all the bottles?’
His cousin Gaston had brought in from Neeroeteren, in the course of several tram-rides, one hundred and fifty litres of alcohol which they had made out there by distilling rotten potatoes and corn. Instead of selling it fairly cheap as industrial alcohol, he had had the idea of turning it into brandy and liqueurs.
They had gone together into a shop in the Rue de la Casquette where an Armenian sold essence which, so he declared, made it possible to manufacture at home, without any special apparatus, brandy or rum, Benedictine, Chartreuse, bitters and curacao.
Luckily Roger was there, for Gaston would have been incapable of making head or tail of the leaflet which they had been given together with the tiny bottles; and now they were making liqueurs as fast as they could, trying out all the various essences, moving about in a fog of alcoholic fumes, taking a sip here and there, and discovering in all their concoctions the same underlying taste of rectified alcochol.
What did that matter? Roger had already found a buyer, for Gaston, who showed plenty of confidence in other respects, was afraid of approaching people. He had stayed outside in the street. It was Roger who had gone into a dozen little cafés.
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