A Life (24 page)

A quarter of an hour later they caught sight of them coming back; and presently they met up with them.

The Comte, red in the face, sweating, laughing, happy, triumphant, was holding the reins of his wife's quivering mount in his iron grip. She was pale, her face tense and unhappy; and she was supporting herself with one hand on her husband's shoulder as if she were about to faint.

That day Jeanne understood how deeply the Comte was in love.

After that, during the following month, the Comtesse seemed more joyful than she had ever been. She came to Les Peuples more frequently, always laughing and throwing her arms round Jeanne in sudden rushes of affection. It was as though some mysterious delight had descended upon her life. Her husband, too, was a picture of happiness: he could not keep his eyes off her, and  tried at every moment to touch her hand, her dress, in a redoubling of the passion he felt for her.

One evening he said to Jeanne:

'We are very happy at the moment. Gilberte has never been so loving as she is now. The bad moods have gone, the angriness. I feel that she loves me. Until now I was never quite sure.'

Julien, too, seemed changed, more cheerful, no longer so impatient, as if the friendship between the two families had brought peace and joy to each.

Spring was unusually early and warm.

From mild morning till warm, peaceful dusk, the sun was starting the whole surface of the earth into life. A process of sudden, powerful, simultaneous germination was under way, one of those unstoppable upsurges of sap, like a desperate longing to be reborn, that nature seems to display sometimes in exceptional years, and when it would appear as though the whole world itself were being rejuvenated.

Jeanne felt vaguely unsettled by this fermenting of life around her. She would grow suddenly faint at the sight of a tiny flower in the grass, experience moments of delicious melancholy, hours and hours of dreamy lassitude.

Then she was overtaken by fond memories of the early stages of her love; not that she felt any return of affection for Julien, all that was over, well and truly over; but her whole body, caressed by the breeze and penetrated by the smells of spring, grew restless, as though her flesh were responding to some invisible and tender appeal.

She took pleasure in being alone, abandoning herself to the sun's warmth, suffused through and through by indeterminate and serene sensations, a sensual satisfaction that left no room for thought.

One morning, while she was dozing in this state, she suddenly had a vision of that sunny gap in the dark foliage, in the little wood near Étretat. That was where, for the first time, she had felt her body thrill at the presence of the young man who then had loved her; that was where he had first given mumbled expression to the timid longings of his heart; and that was where, also, she  had thought herself in sudden contact with the radiant future of her hopes.

And she wanted to see that wood again, to make a sort of sentimental, superstitious pilgrimage there, as if a return to that place should effect some change in the direction of her life.

Julien had departed at dawn, she knew not whither. So she had the Martins saddle up the little white horse which she sometimes rode now; and off she went.

It was one of those days that are so peaceful that nothing seems to stir, not a blade of glass, not a single leaf; everything seems to have come to rest for ever, as if the wind were dead, as if even the insects had vanished.

A supreme, burning stillness descended from the sun, imperceptibly, like a haze of gold; and Jeanne contentedly let her horse carry her along at a walk, soothed by its gait. From time to time she would look up to see a tiny little white cloud no bigger than a pinch of cotton wool, a wisp of vapour just hanging there, forgotten, left all alone up there in the midst of the blue sky.

She descended the valley that leads down to the sea through the great archways in the cliff known as the Portes d'Étretat, and slowly she came to the wood. Sunlight was flooding down through the green foliage that was still sparse. She looked in vain for the spot, wandering up and down the narrow paths.

Suddenly, as she was crossing a broad avenue, she caught sight of two saddled horses tethered to a tree at the far end, and recognized them at once; they belonged to Gilberte and Julien. Having begun to weary of being on her own, she was pleased at this unexpected meeting, and put her mount to the trot.

When she had reached the two horses, which were standing there patiently as though accustomed to these long waits, she called out. There was no reply.

A woman's glove and the two riding-crops were lying on the trampled grass. So they must have been sitting there and then gone off somewhere, leaving their horses behind.

She waited for a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, puzzled, wondering what could be keeping them. As she had dismounted and was standing quite still, leaning against a tree trunk, two little  birds, not seeing her, landed on the grass right next to her. One of them was hopping agitatedly round the other, its wings raised and quivering, chirping and bobbing its head; and suddenly they mated.

Jeanne was taken by surprise, as though she were ignorant of such things. Then she said to herself. 'But, of course, it's spring,' whereupon another thought occurred to her, a suspicion. She looked again at the glove, the crops, the two abandoned horses; and quickly she remounted her horse, filled with the irresistible desire to get away.

She was galloping now, as she made her way back to Les Peuples. Her mind was busy, working things out, assembling the facts, putting two and two together. How had she not guessed sooner? How had she not noticed? How had she not understood why Julien was absent so frequently, why he had become the elegant gentleman once more, why he had become less irritable? She remembered too how tense and abrupt Gilberte had been, her exaggerated playfulness, and, more recently, the kind of rapt ecstasy in which she had been living, and which had made the Comte so happy.

She put her horse to the walk, for it was time for some serious reflection and the rapid pace prevented her from thinking straight.

After the initial shock her heart had become almost calm again: she felt no jealousy or hatred, only contempt. She scarcely thought about Juliennothing surprised her now where he was concerned; but the double betrayal by the Comtesse, by her friend, sickened her. So everybody, then, was perfidious, mendacious, insincere. And tears sprang to her eyes, for sometimes one weeps as bitterly over the passing of illusions as over the dead.

She resolved nevertheless to pretend that she knew nothing, to shut her heart to passing affections, and to love only Paul and her parents from now on; and to present a calm exterior in the presence of everyone else.

Immediately on returning home she rushed to her son, carried him off to her room, and kissed him madly for an hour without interval.

Julien returned home for dinner, charming and all smiles, full of goodwill and consideration.

'Are Papa and Mama not coming this year?' he asked.

She was so grateful to him for this kind thought that she almost forgave him her discovery in the wood; and filled all at once with the overwhelming desire to see, as soon as possible, the two people she loved most in the world after Paul, she spent the whole evening writing to them, to hasten their arrival.

They sent word that they would return on 20 May. It was now the 7th.

She awaited them with growing impatience, as though she felt, beyond even her daughterly affection, a new need to associate once more with honest souls; to be able to talk and lay bare her heart with people of wholesome character, untainted by infamy, whose whole life, in every action, thought, and wish, had been lived with decency.

Her feeling now was of a sort of isolation, the isolation of her own righteous conscience among all these people whose conscience was failing them; and although she had learnt instantly how to dissemble, and even though she welcomed the Comtesse with hand outstretched and a smile on her lips, she was aware that this sense of vacuity, this contempt for human beings, was growing within her and gradually taking her over; and every day the local gossip would fill her soul with yet more disgust, and lower still further her opinion of mankind.

The Couillards' daughter had just had a child, and the marriage was about to take place. The Martins' servant-girl, an orphan, was pregnant; a young girl who lived nearby, aged fifteen, was pregnant; and a woman whose husband had died, a poor, sordid woman with a limp and called the Muddy Widow because she was so revoltingly dirty, she too was pregnant.

One was forever hearing about yet another pregnancy, or about the amorous escapade of some girl, or some peasant wife and mother, or some rich, respectable farming gentleman.

The hot spring weather appeared to have caused the sap to rise as much in men as in plants.

And Jeanne, whose deadened senses had ceased to respond,  whose bruised heart and sentimental soul alone seemed to be stirred by the warm and fecund breeze, who dreamed, exaltedly but without desire, passionate in her dreams but dead to all carnal need, was astounded by all this filth and bestiality, which filled her with repugnance and which she was coming more and more to despise.

The coupling of human beings now provoked her to outrage, as though it were unnatural; and if she harboured a grudge against Gilberte, it was not because she had stolen her husband, but for the very fact that she too had sunk into this universal mire.

She, after all, was not of coarse peasant stock, at the mercy of base instinct. How could she possibly have given herself in the same way that these brutes did?

On the very day when her parents were due to arrive, Julien stirred her feelings of revulsion anew by blithely telling heras though it were something funny and entirely naturalthe story of how the baker, having heard a noise in his oven the previous day, which was not a baking day, had gone to catch what he thought was a stray cat and found his wife: 'and it wasn't bread she was putting in her oven.'

To which he added:

'The baker blocked up the opening; they nearly suffocated in there. It was the small boy from the baker's who went and told the neighbours, because he'd seen his mother go in there with the blacksmith.'

And Julien kept repeating with a laugh:

'Ah, it's the food of love they're giving us, the rascals. It's like something out of La Fontaine.'
*

Jeanne did not dare touch another piece of bread.

When the post-chaise drew up at the bottom of the front steps and the Baron's happy face appeared at the carriage window, the young woman's heart and soul were filled with deep emotion, a tumultuous upsurge of affection the like of which she had never experienced before.

But she was shocked, indeed felt almost faint, when she caught sight of Mama. Over the six winter months the Baroness had aged ten years. Her huge, flabby, pendulous cheeks had turned  purple, as though swollen with blood; the light seemed to have gone from her eyes; and she could no longer move without supporting herself on both arms. Where previously she had simply had difficulty breathing, she now wheezed and found it so hard to catch her breath that it was painfully embarrassing to be near her.

Having seen her every day, the Baron had not noticed this deterioration in her condition; and when she complained of her constant breathlessness and her increasing weight, he would reply:

'Don't worry, my dear, I've never known you any different.'

Jeanne, having accompanied them up to their bedroom, withdrew to her own room to cry, deeply shocked and distraught. Then she went to find her father, threw herself into his arms, her eyes still full of tears, and said:

'Oh, how changed Mother is! What is it? What's wrong with her? Please tell me.'

He was very surprised, and replied:

'Do you think so? Really? But no, I've been with her all the time. I haven't noticed anything wrong with her, I promise you. She's just the same as she's always been.'

That evening Julien said to his wife:

'Your mother's in a bad way. I think it may be serious.'

And when Jeanne burst out sobbing, he said impatiently:

'Come, come, I'm not saying we've lost her. You always exaggerate things so. She's changed, that's all, it's only natural at her age.'

By the end of the first week Jeanne had stopped worrying, having grown used to her mother's altered appearance, and perhaps having suppressed her fears in the way people are always suppressing or refusing to acknowledge their qualms or besetting concerns out of a sort of selfish instinct, a natural desire for peace of mind.

The Baroness, unable to walk properly, now went out for no more than half an hour each day. When she managed one length of 'her' avenue, she could not move another inch and insisted on having a rest on 'her' bench. And when she felt incapable of even getting to the far end, she would say:

'That's enough. My hypertrophy has taken the legs from under me today.'

She rarely laughed now, simply smiling at the things which would have had her roaring with mirth the year before. But as her sight remained excellent, she spent whole days reading
Corinne
or Lamartine's
Méditations
.
*
Then she would ask for the 'memory drawer' to be brought to her. Presently, having emptied out onto her lap the old letters that were so dear to her heart, she would put the drawer down on a chair beside her and replace her 'relics' in it, one by one, having slowly reread each of them. And when she was quite, quite alone, she would kiss some of them, as in secret one kisses the locks of hair belonging to persons now dead and whom once one loved.

Sometimes when Jeanne entered the room unexpectedly, she would find her mother weeping tears of sadness.

'But Mama, what is it?' she would exclaim.

And the Baroness would heave a deep sigh and say:

'It's my relics that do it to me. You know, when you stir up memories of things that were once so good and that are now no more! And then there are the people you'd almost forgotten about, and suddenly you're reminded of them. It's as if you can see them and hear them again, and it has a dreadful effect on you. You'll discover what I mean, later on.'