Pedigree (25 page)

‘The worst of it all, you know, Julie …'

Roger and Armand were just babies who were still dressed in pinafores. Roger's pinafore was blue, for he was dedicated to the Virgin.

Armand, who was the elder of the two by only a month, was much fatter, and very placid, with the dark slit eyes of a Mongol. Wherever you put him, he stayed there as long as you left him. Once Élise had made so bold as to say:

‘Do you think it's normal, Julie?'

They had nearly fallen out over that. Élise did not mention it any more. It was like the way Julie Pain had of disposing of the child by leaving him sitting on the doorstep all day, with his little bottom touching the stone. Whenever you went down the Rue Pasteur, the Pains' door was open, Armand was sitting there, and you could make out Julie in the half-light of the kitchen, unless she was gossiping at a neighbour's.

‘The worst of it all, you know, Julie, ever since my accident, has been the pains in my stomach. Sometimes, at night, I feel as if I was being torn up inside.'

Now this moment was to remain engraved for ever in a certain memory. Roger, who had just knocked over his bucket of gravel, had looked up at the bench. The picture he saw, the piece of life which offered itself to his gaze, the smell of the square, the fluidity of the air, the yellow bricks of the house on the corner—all the other bricks in the district were red or pink—Godard's empty butcher's shop on the opposite corner, the newly painted wall of the church club at the end of the Rue Pasteur, all that constituted his first conscious vision of the world, the first scene which would accompany him, just as it was then, through life.

His mother would always be that woman he saw from below, still dressed in black, in half-mourning as from today, with a lace collar round her neck, a jabot held in place by a locket and billowing over her chest, and lace at her wrists, a bare-headed woman with fair hair which curled and quivered in the March breeze.

He gazed at her. He listened. He tried to understand and his forehead creased. Finally he spoke.

‘Why does your stomach hurt?'

Startled, Élise looked furtively at Julie. They never paid sufficient attention to the children!

‘Go on playing, Roger!'

‘Why does your stomach hurt?'

‘Because I carried a tub of washing that was too heavy for me. You know, the tub I wash you in.'

He thought for a moment and accepted the explanation. Élise heaved a sigh. Finally, as if not attaching any importance to it, in a very casual manner, the child started raking the gravel again with his wooden spade.

No doubt he would not remember everything. However, hence-forth, in the Rue Pasteur flat, there were two eyes and two ears more than before, and only time would make a final selection from all the sights, sounds and smells. Henceforth, when she threaded her way along the narrow pavements of the Rue Puits-en-Sock where so many tram accidents happened, when she went to buy fifty centimes' worth of chips, a couple of chops or half a pound of pudding, when she complained of this or that, or when, from the fruit market, she looked through the windows of the café for Félicie's bright, slim silhouette, Élise was no longer alone.

The first picture to remain in the boy's mind was the Place du Congrès on a March day, two women on a bench, an empty butcher's shop, Élise who had put on a white collar for the first time for months, and Julie Pain with her ridiculous red-tipped nose, her waist so high up that she walked like a stork.

The first problem which Roger was to turn over in his little head was this stomach which hurt, he could not understand why, this woman's stomach which had been mysteriously injured. It would become even more tragic and mysterious when Élise seized every opportunity to say:

‘If you don't behave yourself, a carriage will come to fetch me.'

A cab had stopped one evening in front of a nearby house, to take to the clinic an old man who had been buried a few days later. The child had seen it.

‘Where will it go, the carriage? Will it take me?'

‘No, not you. It will come to take me to hospital.'

‘What will you do in hospital?'

‘Have an operation.'

‘What for?'

‘My stomach.'

He did not cry. He kept quiet. He turned his thoughts over for a long time, and now and then he darted quick glances at that swollen stomach which his mother's princess dress accentuated.

At night, before dropping off to sleep, when, through the half-open door, the oil-lamp in the kitchen peopled the bedroom with moving shadow-figures, he sometimes asked questions from the depths of his bed.

‘It isn't coming to fetch you, is it?'

‘What?'

‘The carriage.'

The sound of a horse's hoofs on the cobblestones of the street froze him all of a sudden. He listened in terror, not breathing again until he was sure that the carriage had not stopped, until the noise had finally faded away into the distance.

‘Does your stomach hurt, Mother?'

‘What on earth are you talking about?'

She was embarrassed in front of Désiré, who often reproached her with her mania for complaining.

‘Just like your sisters! It's in the family! If every one of you were given a castle and a million francs you'd still fall into each other's arms and cry!'

The world would grow imperceptibly, picture by picture, street by street, question by question.

‘Why don't you carry me?'

‘Because I'm tired …'

‘Why are you tired?'

‘Because I'm a woman.'

‘And isn't Father tired?'

‘Your father's a man.'

A woman
.

People stopped Élise in the street because of the child. The magistrate's housekeeper rushed out every time she passed and always had some sweets ready for him.

‘It's too good of you, Madame Gérard. You're spoiling him.'

‘He's so sweet, so mischievous! His eyes really talk to you, Madame Mamelin!'

‘You can't imagine how tiring he's getting! It isn't so much that he's heavy to carry. There are children his age who are heavier than he is. But he asks questions from morning till night. Sometimes it's quite embarrassing. Look! He's listening to us now. He can understand everything we're saying.'

She was wrong. He wanted to understand, but what he wanted to understand was not always what people said, it was other mysteries Élise never thought of, subtle things often, which he did not dare to talk about, as if he knew that this was his personal domain, into which nobody else could penetrate.

For instance, there was something which went up and down in the sky on certain days. The kitchen window formed a big blue rectangle. He sat on the floor, on the brown blanket with the floral pattern, the blanket which was put down on Saturday afternoon when the flat was cleaned and which, folded in four or eight, was used by him during the week.

He stared at this plain blue rectangle, and all of a sudden—he had never been able to determine the precise moment when it began—something transparent, a long, curling shape, left one corner of the rectangle and zigzagged towards another, sometimes staying motionless for a moment before being swallowed up by the infinity hidden by the window-frame.

What was it? He did not dare to ask. He was convinced that even his father did not know. Perhaps he was the only one to see this living thing?

‘Why don't you go on playing, Roger?'

‘I
am
playing!'

When he remained motionless, Élise was always afraid that he was ill.

‘Are we going to go for the chops?'

‘It isn't the day for chops.'

‘What is it the day for?'

‘It's the day for fish.'

Why was it the day for fish? And when Léopold came and sat down by the fire, why was his mother different?'

‘Anybody been?' Désiré asked when he came home.

‘No.'

And what about Uncle Léopold? Probably she had forgotten. He reminded her.

‘Uncle Léopold came.'

She blushed, and moved her saucepans about on the stove.

‘Oh, yes. He just looked in for a moment. I'd completely forgotten.'

‘Is he keeping well? And Eugénie?'

Why did Élise dart that glance at the child? Why did she speak in a low voice, as she did with Madame Pain?

‘Just imagine, she's found a post quite near here, in the Rue de la Province, in a boarding-house.'

‘Who's Eugénie, Mother?'

‘Nobody, Roger.'

‘Who's nobody?'

He had finely drawn features and little eyes; he already creased his eyelids.

‘And I should so much have liked to have a child with big eyes! They're so beautiful, big eyes are! He has to go and have the same eyes as Louis of Tongres.'

On Sunday, nowadays, they went to the Schroefs' in the Rue des Carmes. Nearly every time, Élise was in a state of nerves and a quarrel broke out before they set off. For no particular reason, because of her hat which she could not manage to put on straight, because of her hair which did not stay up, because of the pins which were too long or too short, or because of the princess dress which Désiré spent ages trying to do up.

‘You're hurting me, you know you are. Dear God! Why is it that you aren't capable of doing up a dress?'

She had already felt like crying, possibly before dinner, before Désiré had come home from the Rue Puits-en-Sock. She had planned everything beforehand, and the scene always took place at the very last moment, when the other two thought that at last they were going to set out.

‘I'd better stay behind. You go with the child!'

‘What should I be doing by myself at your sister's?'

‘And what about me when I have to shut myself up for hours in the Rue Puits-en-Sock or at Françoise's?'

‘Oh, come now, Élise! I didn't say that I don't want to go to your sister's. I just said …'

‘No! Leave me alone! You'd better not say any more. Go on! Get out! I'll stay here with Roger.'

‘You know very well they're expecting us.'

‘Is it me they're expecting? No, it's you. Hubert wants to talk to you again about insurance or heaven knows what, to make you do the work he daren't give to his accountant. The last time, you stayed shut up in his office for three hours. If you think that's enjoyable.'

‘You were with your sister.'

Often she undressed and threw herself on the bed, at the end of her tether and at a loss for arguments. Then, a quarter of an hour later, she washed her eyes with cold water, put her dress on again, and stuck her long hat-pins in at random.

‘Can you see that I've been crying?'

They set off. They crossed the Pont-Neuf or the Passerelle. They rang the bell. They whispered while the maid came downstairs.

‘You'll see, the children will have gone out again.'

Why should that matter to Élise? Did she come for the children's sake? Why did she insist that they were invited as stopgaps because the Schroefs were bored on Sundays, because they had no friends, because they were lonely in their big freestone house and Hubert dreaded being left alone with his wife?

‘Listen, Désiré, if Marthe is squiffy, I'm not staying. You do what you like, I'm going.'

‘Ssh!'

Footsteps. As if in obedience to a signal, Élise assumed her bent attitude and her amiable smile, expressing gratitude in advance.

Hubert came to meet them on the landing and they could tell that he had just got up with a sigh of relief from his leather armchair by the gas-fire in the dining-room. That was his corner. The dining-room smelled of cold cigar: he had a cigar-stub between his moustache and his beard.

‘How are you keeping?'

He shook hands with Désiré but scarcely noticed Élise. As for the child, he had probably never spoken to him and would not recognize him in the street.

‘Marthe must be in her bedroom, or in the box-room.'

‘Thank you, Hubert.'

He was dressed in his weekday suit, a long, full jacket in steel-grey, which looked rather like a frock-coat, over a waistcoat crossed by a heavy watch-chain hung with charms. He was wearing his bowler-hat, which he kept on by the fire, out of force of habit, because his life, his real life, consisted of bustling about downstairs, going into the yard a dozen times to supervise the loading of a wagon, climbing the ladders in the huge warehouses, hurrying in and out, watching his men and picking up a tool himself to open a crate which had just arrived.

‘Sit down, Désiré. Have a cigar.'

The newspapers, which he had read from back to front while he had been waiting, were scattered on the table. He regulated the gas, crossed his short legs, and relit his cigar-stub.

‘Well, what news?'

Élise was right, the children had gone out. They had some little friends of their own age, and each in turn gave a coffee-party on Sunday or Thursday. The maid took them, bringing them home at dusk.

Marthe was not ready. On Sundays she lacked the courage to get dressed. She took the opportunity to open cupboards, to change the contents round, to arrange and sort things, without any taste for what she was doing, without any enthusiasm, her feet in soft slippers.

‘Sit down, Élise. I'll have finished in a minute.'

‘Do you want me to help?'

The street itself was calculated to upset the Schroefs, that street which was so busy during the week, full of wagons unloading quarters of various animals in the din from the meat market, and which all of a sudden, on Sunday, was utterly deserted, with not even a cat in it, so that you might have thought that the houses were empty.

‘Is Marthe keeping well?'

Hubert heaved a sigh and looked as if he were going to touch wood.

‘She's in a good period.'

Nobody took any notice of Roger. The women half disappeared into the cupboards stuffed with linen and clothes.