Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (26 page)

On the other hand, if Busch had waited so long it was because he had just endured some weeks of appalling anxiety looking after his brother Sigismond, now bedridden, laid low by consumption. Indeed, for a whole fortnight this bustling man of so many concerns had neglected everything, simply forgetting about all the myriad tangled trails he was following, not even appearing at the Bourse, not tracking down a single debtor, not once leaving the bedside of the sick man, watching over him, caring for him, and changing him, like a mother. For all his disgusting meanness Busch had become quite prodigal, sending for the best doctors in Paris and wanting to pay the pharmacist extra for the medicines, if this could make them more effective; and since the doctors had totally forbidden any work and Sigismond refused to obey, he kept hiding his papers and books. It had become a war of wiles between the two. As soon as his guardian fell asleep, overcome with fatigue, the young man, soaked in sweat and consumed by fever, would find a stub of pencil and the margin of a newspaper and go back to his calculations, distributing wealth in accordance with his dream of justice, granting everyone a share of happiness and life. And Busch, when he awoke, would get angry at finding him in a worse condition, broken-hearted to see him devoting to his dreams what little life was left to him. He had allowed him to play with these fantasies when he was well, as one allows a child to play with puppets; but for him to kill himself with his wild, impractical ideas was really lunatic! At last, having agreed out of affection for his brother to be more sensible, Sigismond had regained some strength and was beginning to spend some time out of bed.

It was then that Busch, getting back to work, declared it was time to settle the Saccard affair, all the more so since Saccard had returned to the Bourse victorious and was once more a person of unquestionable solvency. The report from Madame Méchain, whom he had sent
to the Rue Saint-Lazare, was excellent. However, he was still hesitant about attacking his man directly, and was temporizing, still trying to think of a tactic that would defeat him, when a chance word of La Méchain about Madame Caroline, the lady who ran the household, whom all the local shopkeepers had mentioned to her, set him off on a new plan of campaign. Was this lady perhaps the real mistress, the one who held the keys not only of the cupboards but of the heart? Busch often obeyed what he called the flash of inspiration, giving way to a sudden intuition and setting off in full cry on the merest hint of a scent, ready to wait until later for facts to give him certainty and resolution. And so it was that he went to the Rue Saint-Lazare to see Madame Caroline.

Up in the workroom Madame Caroline was surprised to find herself facing this big, ill-shaven man with a dull, grubby face, dressed in a handsome, greasy overcoat, with a white cravat. He inspected her thoroughly, down to her very soul, finding her to be just what he had hoped for, so tall, so healthy-looking, with her wonderful white hair which seemed to light up her still-young face with a joyous sweetness; and he was particularly struck by the expression of her rather large mouth, an expression of such goodness that he made up his mind at once.

‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I was hoping to see Monsieur Saccard, but I was just told that he’s not here…’

He was lying, he had not even asked for him, for he knew perfectly well that Saccard was out, having waited for him to leave for the Bourse.

‘So I took it upon myself to call upon you, even rather preferring that, for I am not unaware of who it is I am addressing… This is a communication of such gravity and delicacy…’

Madame Caroline, who until then had not asked him to sit down, pointed him to a chair with uneasy haste.

‘Speak sir, I am listening…’

Carefully lifting the skirts of his coat as if fearful of getting it dirty, Busch put it to himself, as a point definitely established, that she was sleeping with Saccard.

‘The fact is, Madame, that this is not at all easy to say, and I confess that at the last minute I am still wondering whether I’m doing the right thing in telling you such a thing… I hope you will see, in this endeavour of mine, only the desire to allow Monsieur Saccard to repair the wrongs of the past…’

With a wave of the hand she set him at ease, having, for her part, realized what sort of person she was dealing with, and wanting to cut short the futile protestations. Anyway he did not insist, but related the old story in considerable detail: Rosalie seduced in the Rue de La Harpe, the child born after the disappearance of Saccard, the mother dying in debauchery and Victor left in the charge of a cousin too busy to look after him, growing up in the midst of total depravity. She listened, astonished at first at this tale she was not at all expecting, for she had imagined it was going to be about some shady financial affair; then she visibly softened, touched by the sad fate of the mother and the abandonment of the child, and deeply moved in her maternal feelings as a woman who had borne no children.

‘But Monsieur,’ she said, ‘are you certain of these things you’re telling me? Really strong proof is needed, absolute proof, in stories of this sort.’

He gave a smile.

‘Oh Madame, there is blinding proof in the extraordinary resemblance of the child to Monsieur Saccard… Then there are the dates, everything fits and proves the facts without the shadow of a doubt.’

She sat there trembling, and he observed her. After a silence he went on:

‘Now you understand, Madame, why I was so reluctant to address myself directly to Monsieur Saccard. For myself, I have no interest in the affair, I came only in the name of Madame Méchain, the cousin, who was placed on the track of the father by the merest chance; for, as I’ve mentioned, the twelve notes for fifty francs each, which were given to the wretched Rosalie, were signed with the name of Sicardot, a fact I do not presume to judge, quite excusable—my word!—in this awful life of Paris! Only, do you see? Monsieur Saccard might have misinterpreted the nature of my intervention… And that’s when I had the inspiration to come and see you first Madame, and leave it entirely to you to decide what should be done, knowing your concern for Monsieur Saccard… There! You have our secret, do you think I should wait for him and tell him everything today?’

Madame Caroline’s emotion was more and more evident.

‘No, no. Later.’

But given the strangeness of this revelation, even she didn’t know what to do. He continued to study her, pleased to see the extreme sensibility that put her in his power, and he was now adding the
finishing touches to his plan, certain of getting more out of her than he would ever have got from Saccard.

‘The thing is,’ he murmured, ‘a decision has to be made.’

‘Well yes, I’ll go. Yes, I’ll go to this property of hers, I’ll go and see this Madame Méchain and the child… It is better, much better, that I should go and see things for myself.’

She was thinking aloud, and resolving to make a thorough investigation before saying anything to the father. Later, if she was convinced, there would be time enough to tell him. Wasn’t she there to watch over his house and peace of mind?

‘Unfortunately it’s quite urgent,’ Busch went on, leading her gently to where he wanted her to be. ‘The poor child is suffering, he is living in abominable surroundings.’

She had stood up. ‘I shall put on my hat and go this minute.’

He also now rose from his seat, and added casually:

‘I haven’t said anything about the little bill that will have to be settled. The child has involved expense of course, and there’s also the money lent to the mother while she was alive—oh! I don’t know how much exactly. I didn’t want to be involved in any of that. All the papers are over there.’

‘Good, I shall see them.’

Then he seemed to be moved himself.

‘Ah, Madame, if you only knew all the peculiar things I see in the course of business! It’s the most honest people who have to suffer eventually for their passions, or even worse, for the passions of their relatives… I could even give you an example. Your unfortunate neighbours the Beauvilliers ladies…’

In a sudden move he had gone over to one of the windows and was directing his ardently curious gaze down into the next-door garden. He had no doubt been planning this bit of espionage ever since he came in, for he liked to know his battlegrounds. In the matter of the promissory note for ten thousand francs, signed by the Count for Léonie Cron, he had guessed right: information sent from Vendôme confirmed what he had imagined: the seduced girl, left without a sou after the death of the Count, with just her useless scrap of paper and consumed by longing to get to Paris, had ended up leaving the paper as a security with the usurer Charpier, for about fifty francs perhaps. But though he had found the Beauvilliers quickly enough, he had had La Méchain scouring Paris for six months without managing to get
hold of Léonie. She had first found a job as a maid in the house of a bailiff, and he had been able to follow her through three other jobs; then, sacked for egregious misconduct, she seemed to disappear, and he had searched in vain through the gutters of the city. What exasperated him still more was that he could not try anything with the Countess until he had the girl, as a living threat of scandal. But he went on nursing the case, and he was happy to be standing there at the window, looking at the garden of the mansion, of which he had previously seen only the façade from the street.

‘Do those ladies also have some trouble hanging over them?’ asked Madame Caroline with anxious sympathy.

He played the innocent.

‘No, I don’t think so… I was simply referring to the wretched situation brought upon them by the bad behaviour of the Count… Yes, I have friends in Vendôme, I know their history.’

And as he at last decided to come away from the window he suddenly, in the midst of his pretended emotion, felt a singular backlash of feeling of his own:

‘Still, when it’s only money troubles! But when death enters a household…’

This time he had real tears in his eyes. He had just thought of his brother, and he was choking. She thought he must have recently lost one of his family, and out of tact asked him no questions. Until that moment she had not been deceived by the base concerns of this personage, who filled her with revulsion; but these unexpected tears convinced her far more than the cleverest tactics would have done, reinforcing her desire to go straight away to the ‘Cité de Naples’.

‘Madame, I can count on you then.’

‘I’m going at once.’

An hour later Madame Caroline had taken a cab and was wandering about behind the Butte Montmartre, unable to find the ‘Cité’. At last, in one of the deserted streets that run through to the Rue Marcadet, an old woman pointed it out to the coachman. At the entrance it was like a country lane, full of potholes, blocked by mud and refuse, pushing on into a stretch of wasteland; and only by looking hard could one just make out the wretched constructions of earth, old planks, and old sheets of zinc, spread around the inner yard like heaps of rubble. On the street a one-storey house, built of breeze-blocks but repulsively decrepit and filthy, seemed to govern the entrance as
if it were a gaol. Indeed that was where Madame Méchain lived, a vigilant owner, always on the watch, exploiting in person her little population of starving tenants.

As soon as Madame Caroline had got down from the coach she saw La Méchain appear on the threshold, enormous, bosom and belly wobbling inside an old blue-silk dress frayed at the folds and cracking at the seams, and her cheeks so puffy and red that her little nose, almost invisible, seemed to be cooking between two braziers. Madame Caroline hesitated, feeling very uneasy, then the very gentle voice, with the rather shrill charm of a rustic flute, reassured her.

‘Ah Madame, you’ve been sent by Monsieur Busch. You’re here for little Victor… Come in, come in. Yes, this is indeed the Cité de Naples. The street is not listed and we don’t have any numbers yet… Come in, first we need to talk about things. My word! It’s so upsetting, and so sad.’

Then Madame Caroline had to accept a tattered chair in a black and greasy dining-room, in which a red stove kept the heat and the smell at a stifling level. La Méchain now went on about how lucky her visitor was to find her in, for she had so much business in Paris that she rarely returned home before six o’clock. Madame Caroline eventually had to interrupt her.

‘Excuse me, Madame, I came about that unfortunate child.’

‘Of course, Madame, I’ll bring him to you… You know his mother was my cousin. Ah! I can certainly say I have done my duty… Here are the papers, and here are the bills.’

She went to a cupboard and pulled out a file of papers, neatly arranged in a blue folder like something from the office of a business agent. She talked on and on about poor Rosalie: she had certainly ended up living a quite disgusting life, going from one man to another, coming back drunk and bloodied after week-long binges. But after all, you had to be understanding, for she had been a good worker until the child’s father dislocated her shoulder the day he took her on the staircase; and with her disability she couldn’t keep herself going in a decent life just selling lemons in the market.

‘You see, Madame, it was in small sums, just twenty or forty sous, that I lent her all that money. The dates are marked: 20 June, twenty sous; 27 June, twenty sous again; 3 July, forty sous. And then, look, she must have been ill at this point, because there’s an endless series of forty sous… Then there was Victor and the clothes I had to get for
him. I’ve put a “V” beside all the expenses for the boy… Not to mention that when Rosalie died—oh! so horribly, with a really filthy disease—he fell completely into my care. Then look, I’ve put fifty francs a month. That’s very reasonable. The child’s father is rich, he can easily spare fifty francs a month for his boy… Altogether that makes five thousand four hundred and three francs; and if we add the six hundred for the promissory notes we reach a total of six thousand francs… Yes, the whole lot for six thousand francs, and that’s it!’

Though turning pale with nausea, Madame Caroline managed a comment.