He didn’t breath a word – he was no longer even listening. He was obsessed by this single thought: he had to leave, and he could already see himself in the regiment. He would exchange his jacket for a uniform with copper buttons, they would thrust a rifle into his hands, and there, in sun, wind and rain, he’d have to force himself to juggle with it. Then he thought of the rest periods, of walks regulated by the clock, in the streets at night, without a sou to buy himself a glass of wine or a crust of bread; he thought of the nauseating barracks, of going to bed without so much as a goodnight from his sweetheart, of waking in the morning without hope. But daily life in the garrison seemed to him more distressing still; before him now unfurled endless forced marches. He saw himself worn out by fatigue on the route, tired, broken, sweating under his pack, dragging himself along at the back of the troop with guard dogs running around; he heard himself called a good-for-nothing, a slacker; he saw himself fallen in a ditch, picked up, and thrown into the back of a wagon and, with the exaggeration that such anxieties engender, he imagined himself lying in a hospital, dying, while his comrades grumbled, annoyed at the sound of his death throes.
Désirée was very moved; she held out her glass to him to clink glasses, but their hands trembled and the dancing wine splashed on the table in large drops. They put their glasses down without having the heart to even take a sip. They were embarrassed, no longer knew what to say. Auguste stared at the tips of his fingernails, Désirée contemplated the young man’s delicate hands and the sight of these girl’s hands upset her. The thought that they would have to bear the same heavy loads as the fists of stronger men appalled her.
The other girl kissed her boyfriend, consoled him, wiping his nose with her handkerchief, swearing her eternal love for him, and she was no doubt in good faith at that moment.
They didn’t have the courage to drink a second bottle to the health of the patient, and Désirée, who was already very late, left, sick at heart, full of pity for her new friends.
When she returned home, Vatard was unbuttoning his braces with a melancholy air. Any other day she would have trembled before her father; this particular evening, she passed him without even noticing the look of thunder on his face, and once enclosed in her room, with that unconscious joy which results from the misfortune of others, she told herself that she was wrong to complain, that all in all she was happy, since however little she could see him, Auguste was at least still in Paris, near her, and not going off like the other young man to Landes, in the depths of southern France.
XIII
The evening Désirée spent on the Rue du Cotentin was worth three days’ respite to her father. If it wasn’t exactly a return to the flow of idle chatter that had once fluttered its wings against the windowpanes, at least now Vatard had only to put up with stifled sobs and silent gestures of irritation. His daughter became calmer, eating a little, practically drinking again, no longer staring around cagily with dark, angry eyes. The following morning, when the excitement of the night before had worn off, she’d expected an avalanche of reproaches. But her father had made no allusion to her returning so late at night. She was grateful to him for this and her tears ceased.
But this resigned calm didn’t last long. She quickly forgot the sadness of the conscripted soldier, made no more comparisons between her fate and that of others, and once again bemoaned the restrictions placed on her liberty in the evenings.
As for Céline, she continued to be insufferable. In the mean time, Anatole had disappeared. Rumours circulating around the workshop pictured him living in concubinage with some corset-maker, so she had reason to be calmer, and she was in fact less scared, but she was still in a foul mood. Now it was her painter she was cross with.
First of all, he would hardly ever take her out, didn’t give her any fun, would leave her sitting in a corner, bored, like some animal you know is there but which has already been fed. She had nothing to do except twiddle her thumbs, get up, sit down, dust a piece of furniture, patch a pair of breeches, or boil some water. Such distractions seemed insufficient to her. She began to wish that her lover needed something, so she could go outside, refresh her eyes in the open air and chat with the concierge on the way back up.
And what’s more, he wasn’t very generous, even though he must be less broke than he claimed, because he was always bringing back bits of old tapestry, tattered stoles, and glazed pots with broken handles or holes in the bottom, a pile of odds and ends fit only for the rubbish bin. He was really stingy! Fond of his own home comforts he never refused himself anything, but if she liked a piece of jewellery or wanted a dress, he wasn’t interested. Sometimes he would take her out for dinner, or pay for a seat at the theatre, but as to money, as to giving her any cash in hand, never. It seemed as if he wouldn’t treat her to anything unless he had a share in it himself.
Then one fine day he stopped taking her to the restaurant. What with her mania for ordering rabbit and picking its carcass clean with her bare hands, with her way of tucking in her napkin, of filling the glasses right to the brim, of laughing and fidgeting about in her chair, of dabbling around in the food with her fork looking for little onions, she was getting on his nerves.
Another fine day he stopped taking her to the theatre as well. Her childish glee, clapping her hands and bouncing on the seats, jumping up and leaning over the balustrade, carelessly kicking the surrounding seats, her habit of fiddling with the opera glasses and smudging the lenses, of eating apple and orange candy sticks, made him cringe.
Moreover, it was even worse the following day. She’d feel compelled to recount the whole play to him from the first scene to the last, going into raptures about the leading man’s acting, about the heroine and her white dress, about the castle and forest stage set, about the people seated near them, about the boxes, about the usherette, about everything. The ridiculous observations that she peppered her narrative with exasperated him, and he hurled himself at his paintbox, trying to absorb himself in his work in order not to listen to her anymore.
When they were out walking together she was perhaps even more tiresome; she would stop every five minutes in front of clothes shops, would eat cakes and apple turnovers and then borrow his handkerchief to wipe her fingers, would force him to halt and watch those interminable games of shuttlecock that shopkeepers in shirt-sleeves play on summer evenings down destitute side streets. Sometimes she’d drag him to the more opulent quarters, as she liked to stroll like a lady down arcades lined with shops and along the newly built boulevards. The painter detested the Palais-Royal and the grands boulevards, mostly because of her, as she’d loll around in front of jewellery displays, enthusing over anything with a Parisian label on it, making abominable remarks about the style of some perfume bottle placed in a small carriage of gilded bronze, or about a pendulum clock topped by a hunting scene, or miniatures of the Vendôme column or the Luxor obelisk at eighteen francs a piece; she’d giggle in front of framed advertisements, expressing the desire to see him wear a tie-pin in his cravat like those she was admiring – an enamel dog’s head or a postage stamp mounted on a golden pin.
All things considered, she behaved less idiotically on the outer boulevards. Since there was nothing to see, there was no reason for her to make any observations. Nevertheless, even though she often kept quiet, everything about her irritated him, from the way she drank her diluted cassis, licking her lips with her tongue, to the way she begged him for puffs on his cigarette so she could blow smoke through her red sugar-candy pipe, everything, right down to the manner in which she pomaded her hair, or shook her fake coral earrings, or showed off the silver ring she wore on her little finger.
He resorted to the pretext of being busy with work and excused himself from going out. Then Céline really got bored. What probably annoyed her most of all about the way Cyprien was behaving was the benevolent disdain he had for her. He treated her like a child one gives a comforter, a picture or a plaything to, in order to make it keep still. When she’d finished go
ing through one portfolio, he’d take it away and place another in front of her, and crushed with boredom, she’d spend hours flicking through his collection of prints and etchings, sick at heart at having to look at these funereal images, regretting that no one had enlivened these black and white scribbles with some delicate colours, with apple-green or pink.
But this was nothing as long as she was alone with her lover, then it was simply insufferable; when he had friends over, it became humiliating.
They’d be there, a whole crowd of people laughing like geese whenever she ventured to throw in a word. One day, she told them about having seen, in the Rue de la Cherche-Midi, a really nice picture: a little boy in his nightshirt kneeling on a prie-dieu. They asked how much it would cost to have it framed, spoke of cold-cream, of cucumbers, of rose-petal pomade, made as many jokes as they could about this ‘little man’ praying. When they’d all had their fun, her lover had kissed her hand with feigned respect, saying: ‘Céline, you’re wonderful, you’re really too much, my girl!’
Yet there was no need to burst out laughing like that. Wasn’t this picture of a poor child in his nightshirt better than all their canvases, those unfinished daubs in which you couldn’t make out a thing? Wasn’t a nice, shiny picture like that what they should have been painting? One evening, pushed beyond endurance by all these men provoking her to make her talk, she told them frankly her thoughts on literature and painting. They could be summed up like so: in a novel she wanted to read about crime, in a painting to look at something nice. She was rewarded with fits of laughter.
Only on one occasion had she been listened to with something like attention, when she’d begun to describe the quarrel that had arisen between her boss and the foreman.
The owner was, it seemed, a good man who looked after the business side of things but who knew nothing about the work of a bookbindery. The foreman was a rogue of the worst kind who had made himself indispensable by firing all the good workers, mixing up piles of books, hiding sheets of paper, and burying covers in remote corners. Whenever he was absent or off sick there was complete confusion. No one could find a thing. So he took advantage of the situation, continually asking for raises, demanding that they hire his son, a frightful reprobate who’d been chased out of all the other workshops for misconduct, and the owner would back down, feeling faint after such disputes, preferring to submit to all these affronts rather than witness the collapse of his firm. Whenever the work became more urgent or more plentiful, the foreman’s demands increased in proportion. The other employees were well aware of these shabby tricks. The women generally blamed the foreman; the men, who despised him, freely admitted that he behaved like a scoundrel but deep down they were delighted at the humiliations he inflicted on the boss.
To cut a long story short, after having scoured the city in search of an experienced worker who’d served at least ten years in the bindery trade, the boss found the right man and had taken his revenge by firing the foreman and his son in one fell swoop.
Once launched into her tale, Céline had become eloquent, her eyes lit up, her hands gesticulated. With her words she conjured up the seething rabble of bindery workers, with a striking adjective she sketched out a portrait of the foreman, a likeness of the boss, she brought their arguments, their furious rages to life, describing the whole workshop listening with bated breath to their outbursts, and then laughing and making fun of them. ‘That’s just how it is,’ cried her listeners, ‘so true to life!’ And the painter had seemed charmed, had taken his mistress out the next day for a stroll; he’d treated her decently for once, like an important person.
Céline told herself that she’d probably been very witty without realising it, and she wanted to do it again.
She began to blather out all the gossip, all the tittle-tattle of the workshop; but either the stories were too threadbare or Céline had lost her manner, her knack of showing them off. They listened to her with a bored air, and as soon as they thought she’d finished, they spoke about something else, and didn’t bother with her any more.
The rest of the evening stretched out, dull and dreary.
Their moments alone together became as pitiful as these social gatherings. They hardly exchanged a word. Some evenings they’d stare at one another for hours, and, to break the silence, Céline would blurt out questions to which he didn’t know how to respond.
He would randomly throw in a yes or a no.
She would begin again, searching for the right words, trying to speak properly; she’d spout innumerable blunders, talking about ‘he who plays the piper’, about ‘rose pips’ and ‘Lebanon zebras’ growing in the garden, about being ‘beagle-eyed’, and she’d quote proverbs backwards, she’d enthuse about the terracotta monkeys dressed as lawyers on display in the arcades of the Palais-Royal, and say how she was related to a very talented young man, an artist who sketched portraits in charcoal from photographs, and she’d ask her painter if he could do that as well; then, abruptly changing the conversation, she’d question him: ‘Listen, you know Gamel’s daughter — yes, you do know her, I’ve talked to you about her — well, she’s getting married.’
He merely shrugged his shoulders.
‘You’re not very friendly this evening.’
‘Well, you subject me to a whole load of nonsense, what the devil do you want me to do?’
‘That’s nice, now we can’t even talk anymore. I’m not saying another word.’And, sitting tight-lipped, she tapped her fingers on her knees, staring into space, muttering to herself and chewing her fingernails.
Scenes such as this would be repeated almost every evening. The painter’s rages would begin as soon as Céline walked though the door. For the twentieth time he’d beg her not to drape her bonnet over the corner of a picture frame, and she’d just as stubbornly refuse to hang it on the coat stand or on the back of a chair; the frame would tilt noticeably, hanging unevenly against the wall, and she would insist that it wasn’t important, that her hat wasn’t damaging the gilding, that it didn’t matter if the picture wasn’t straight.
What’s more, she couldn’t do anything right. Sometimes, when she made a graceful movement like some woman nonchalantly getting out of a chair, he’d shout at her to stay still. She’d freeze, bewildered, standing awkwardly. So he’d put his sketchbook back down, saying dejectedly: ‘Go on, you can move now; I’ve disturbed you for nothing.’
Invariably, the argument would turn acrimonious and Céline, becoming more vocal, would hurl all her annoyances, all her grievances, back in his face, reproaching him for not being like he was in the early days of their relationship, and he had the impudence to agree; she’d get more and more carried away and yell insults at him. Then he’d look at her out of the corner of his eye, feeling a growing desire to throw her out, but from want of courage, from fear of being obliged to go in search for sex when he could have it at home, from having grown accustomed to someone moving around in his studio and making a noise, he would hold his tongue, silently swallowing his anger. She was exasperated at having such a lover, but she held on to him despite everything; he intimidated her a little, and she had a kind of respect for his city air, his white hands, the fine linen sheets of his bed. In his apartment she imbibed a certain air of elegance, which made her feel proud. She sincerely considered herself to be better off than all her friends, and she had only a haughty contempt for common love affairs, such as that between her sister and Auguste.
One day at the workshop she had unthinkingly hiked up her dress in order to show off the silk stockings Cyprien had given her, and the silent envy of her friends had delighted her. The only thing was they got their own back by making spiteful comments, joking about her dresses and scarves, which were not exactly new. ‘Should be all or nothing,’ one of them said. ‘What does that say about you,’ shouted another, ‘silk stockings in old boots!’ So Céline kept telling herself, ‘I’ve got to get Cyprien to buy me a dress.’ Oh, it was so exasperating! He really should have spared her the shame o
f having to ask. Yes, but he no longer even seemed to notice that her clothes were in such a poor state.
One fine evening she gathered every ounce of courage she had and, stammeringly, fumbled out: ‘I’ve waited…I didn’t want to…this is so annoying…but, well look…you see, the seams of this dress are going…it’s splitting at the elbows and under the arm…I’ve been wearing it for so long. But I don’t have any money, it’s the dead season, there’s been no work for weeks.’
He led her over to his desk, opened the drawer and split the thirty francs he had left with her. She flung her arms around his neck and went into lengthy explanations about her new dress. Taking everything into account, she couldn’t afford one like those she had seen at the Bon Marché, they were too expensive; she’d simply buy some alpaca at forty-nine sous a metre; she’d need a piece 8 metres long by 1.2 metres wide; to avoid the expense of braid and trimmings she’d make do by fashioning pleats from the same material; and she gaily began counting on her fingers, staring up at the ceiling with a contemplative, idiotic expression.
The Vatard Sisters Page 16