Act of Passion (6 page)

She smelled of bed, warm flannel, and perspiration. I don't think she suspected my designs. On some pretext or other I would manage to rub against her, to touch her.

'Lucile, my poor girl, you are really too thin, you know.'

I had finally found this excuse for feeling her and she, with a pot in her hands, would not protest.

To reach this point took me weeks, months. After that it took weeks longer before I finally got up courage enough to push her over on to the kitchen table, always at six o'clock in the morning while it was still dark outside.

She got no pleasure out of it herself. She was simply glad to make me happy. Afterwards, when she got up, she would bury her head against my chest. Until the day when, at last, she dared raise her head and kiss me.

Who knows? If her mother had not died, if her father had not been left alone on his farm with seven children, had not sent for her to come home and take care of them, perhaps many things would have been different.

It was shortly after this, perhaps two weeks after Lucile left, while instead of a regular maid we had a woman of the neighbourhood who came in by the day to help with the housework, that the incident occurred.

The postmistress had brought her daughter to see me, a young girl about eighteen or nineteen years old who worked in the city and whose health left much to be desired.

'She doesn't eat. She keeps losing weight. She has dizzy spells. I wonder if her employer doesn't work her too hard ...'

She was a stenographer with an insurance company. I have forgotten her name, but I can see her plainly, more heavily made up than the girls of our region, with enamelled finger-nails, high heels and a headstrong air.

There was nothing really premeditated about it. It is customary in the case of young girls, who often have things to hide from their family, for a doctor to examine them, especially to question them without any witness present.

'We'll just take a look, Madame Blain. If you would like to wait outside for a moment...'

Immediately, I had the impression that the girl was laughing at me and I often wonder if I really had the look of a man haunted by sex. It is possible. I can't help it.

'I'll bet you're going to ask me to get undressed ...'

Just like that, without even giving me the time to open my mouth.

'Oh! It's all the same to me, you know. Anyhow, all doctors are like that, aren't they!'

She took off her dress as though she were in a bedroom, looking at herself in the mirror and afterwards smoothing her hair.

'If you're thinking of tuberculosis, there's no use examining me, I had an X-ray taken last month .. .'

Then, finally turning and facing me:

'Shall I take off my slip?'

'That won't be necessary.'

'As you like. What shall I do?'

'Lie down here and don't move.. .'

'You're going to tickle me ... I warn you I'm terribly ticklish .. .'

As I might have expected, the moment I touched her she began to giggle and squirm.

A little bitch, your Honour. I detested her, and I could see her watching me for any tell-tale sign.

'You can't make me believe that doesn't do anything to you. I am perfectly certain that if it were my mother or some other old woman, you wouldn't find it necessary to examine the same places ... If you could only see your eyes ...'

I behaved like an idiot. She was no novice, I had the proof of that. She had noticed an unmistakable sign of the state I was in and it amused her, she was laughing, her mouth wide open. That is what I see most clearly about her: that open mouth and a little pink pointed tongue close to my face. I said, in a strangely unnatural voice:

'Don't move... Just relax...'

And suddenly she began to struggle: 'Ah no, I should say not... you must be crazy!..'

Another detail I've just remembered, which should have made me more cautious. The cleaning woman was sweeping in the hall behind my office, and from time to time her broom knocked against the door.

Why did I persist when my chances were so slim? In a very loud voice the girl declared: 'If you don't let me go, I'll yell.' What exactly did the cleaning woman hear? She knocked at the door. She looked in, asking: Did you call, Doctor?' I don't know what she saw. I stammered: 'No, Justine... Thank you...'

And when the door closed behind her, the little devil burst out laughing.

'You were frightened, weren't you? Serves you right. I'll get dressed now. What are you going to tell Mama?'

It was my mother who learned of it from Justine. She never mentioned it to me. She gave no sign. But that same evening, or perhaps it was the next day, she remarked in her vague way, as though she were talking to herself:

'I wonder if you haven't made enough money now to think of moving to the city...'

And then, which is characteristic of her, following it immediately with:

'After all, we shall have to go to live in the city sooner or later on account of your daughters, for they cannot go to the village school and will have to be sent to the convent...'

I had not made a great deal of money, but I had made some, and had put it aside. Thanks to the home pharmacy, as we called it - that is, the latitude allowed country doctors in the matter of selling medicines.

We were prosperous. The bit of land my mother had saved from disaster gave us a small income, without counting the wine, the chestnuts, and the few chickens and rabbits it provided, as well as wood for burning.

'You should make inquiries at La Roche-sur-Yon.'

The truth of the matter is that I had been a widower now for almost two years, and my mother thought it prudent to get me married again. She couldn't eternally hire obliging maids who, one by one, would become engaged or would go to the city where they could earn more money.

'There's no hurry but you might begin thinking about it... As for me, you understand, I am happy here and I shall be happy anywhere...'

I also think that Mama hated to see me in plus-fours and heavy boots all the time, like my father, spending practically all my free time out hunting.

I was her chick, your Honour, but I was not aware of it. I was a huge chick, six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds, a monstrous chick, bursting with health and strength and obeying his mother like a little boy.

I am not blaming her. She has worn herself out trying to protect me. She is not the only one.

It even makes me wonder, sometimes, if I wasn't marked with a sign that women - certain women - recognized, and that has made them want to protect me against myself.

That is nonsense, of course. But looking back on one's life one is tempted to say:

'That happened just as if...'

There is no question that Mama, after the incident of the little bitch, was frightened. She was well versed in such matters, her husband having been regarded as the most rabid skirt-chaser of the county. How many times would some neighbour come to her saying:

'My poor Clemence, it's your husband again - did you know that he's got the Charreau girl with child?'

For my father was always, quite shamelessly, getting them with child, ready later on, if necessary, to sell another parcel of land. He was not particular, young or old, prostitutes or virgins.

And that, in effect, was the reason for getting me married again.

I have never protested. Not only have I never protested, but I have never been conscious of being held in leash. And that, as you will see, is very important. I am not a rebel, I am just the opposite.

All my life, I think I have told you this many times before and I repeat it, all my life I have wanted to do what was right, simply, calmly, for the satisfaction of duty done.

Does this satisfaction have a bitter after-taste? That is another question. I should rather not answer it right away. Often, towards evening, I have found myself looking up at a colourless sky - a sky washed out, as it were - and thinking of my father lying at the foot of the haystack.

Don't tell me that because he drank and ran after women he was not doing his best. He was doing the best he could, the best allowed him.

As for me, I was only his son. I represented the second generation. As you represent the third. And if I talk about myself in the past tense, it is because, now that I am on the other side, I have gone so far beyond all such contingencies!

For years and years, I did everything that was expected of me, without reluctance, with a minimum of cheating. I was a conscientious country doctor notwithstanding the incident of the little bitch.

And I even think I am a good doctor. When I am with my more learned or more solemn colleagues, I joke or am silent. I don't read the medical reviews. I don't go to medical conventions. Confronted by a disease, I am sometimes embarrassed and I make up an excuse for going into the next room to consult my textbook.

But I have a flair for disease. I hunt it down as a dog hunts down game. I smell it. The very first day I saw you in your office at the Palais de Justice, I ...

You are going to laugh at me. All right! I shall tell you anyhow: look out for your gall bladder! And forgive this sudden professional vanity, or rather, plain vanity. Can't I have a little something left, as I used to say when I was a child.

All the more so, since we are now coming to Armande, my second wife, whom you saw on the witness stand.

She was admirable, everybody said so, and I speak without the least irony. Perhaps, rather too much the 'wife of a La Roche-sur-Yon physician',
but
one cannot blame her for that.

She is the daughter of what we still call at home a landed proprietor, a man who owns a certain number of farms and who lives in the city on his income. I am not sure if he belongs to the real nobility or if, like most of the country squires of the Vendée, he simply thought fit to add a
de
to his name. In any case, he calls himself Hilaire de Lanusse.

Did you think she was beautiful? I have heard it repeated so often that I no longer know what to think. And I am quite ready to believe it. She is tall, she has a good figure, now on the stout rather than the thin side.

Mothers at La Roche-sur-Yon are always telling their daughters:

'You should learn to walk like Mme Alavoine ...'

She glides, you noticed that. She moves, as she smiles, with such ease and naturalness that you think it must be a secret.

At the beginning Mama used to say:

'She carries herself like a queen ...'

You saw what a profound impression she made on the court, on the jury, and even on the reporters. While she was on the stand, I saw people looking me over curiously and it wasn't difficult to guess what they were thinking: 'How could such a lout have a wife like that?' It is the impression we have always given people, she and I. I should say that it is the impression she has always given me as well, and I have been a long time getting rid of it.

Have I really got rid of it? I shall probably come back to this later on. It is very complex, but I think that I have finally come to understand.

Do you know La Roche-sur-Yon, if only from having passed through it? It is not a real city, not what in France we call a city. Napoleon created it from scratch for strategic reasons, so it lacks that character which the slow contributions of centuries have given to our other cities, the vestiges of numerous generations.

On the other hand, we lack neither space nor sunlight. In fact there's rather too much of both. It is a dazzling city, with white houses along the wide - too wide - boulevards, and right-angle transverse streets eternally swept by breezes.

As monuments, first of all there are the barracks - and they are everywhere. Then the equestrian-statue of Napoleon in the centre of the vast esplanade, where men look like ants; the Prefecture, so harmonious in its shady park ...

That's all, your Honour. One business street to supply the needs of the peasants who come to town for the monthly fairs, a tiny theatre flanked by Doric columns, a post office, a hospital, thirty or so doctors, three or four lawyers, notaries, real estate agents, dealers in farm machinery and fertilizer, and a dozen insurance salesmen.

And two cafés, each with its habitués, opposite the statue of Napoleon and a few steps away from a Palais de Justice with its inner courtyard like a cloister; a few bistros, abounding in good smells, on the market-place, and you've made the rounds of the town ...

We settled down there in May in a house that was practically new, separated from a quiet street by a lawn and clipped hedges. A locksmith came and fastened a handsome brass plate to the iron gate, bearing my name and the information 'General Practitioner' and my office hours.

For the first time we had a formal drawing-room, a real drawing-room with white wainscoting more than shoulder-high and decorative panels over the doors, but it was several months before we could afford to furnish it. Also, for the first time, we had an electric buzzer in the dining-room to ring for the maid.

And this time we engaged a maid right away, for it would have been improper for my mother to be seen doing the housework. Naturally, she did it anyway, but, thanks to the maid, honour was saved.

It is curious that I can scarcely recall that first maid. She must have been very nondescript, neither young nor old. My mother affirms that she was devoted to us and I have no reason for thinking otherwise.

I have a vivid recollection of two enormous lilac bushes covered with blossoms on either side of the iron gateway. Here the patients entered, and their footsteps could be heard on the gravel walk which was indicated by a green arrow and led, not to the main entrance of the house, but to the door of my office, equipped with an electric bell. In this way I was able from my office to count my patients as they arrived, and I must say that for a long time I counted them with a certain anxiety for I was not at all sure of succeeding in the city.

Everything turned out very well. I was satisfied. Of course our old furniture did not suit the new house but that gave us, Mama and me, a subject of conversation, and we would spend evening after evening discussing what we would buy as soon as the money began to come in.