Sunday (12 page)

Hadn't he guessed, and hadn't what had happened been what he wanted? In this way Ada would not hang about in the streets of Mouans-Sartoux and the dance-halls, passing from the arms of one boy to those of another, only to return home one day pregnant.

All this was probably false, but for weeks now he had thought like someone in a fever, enlarging some things in his mind, creating others out of nothing. At certain moments, he became so unsure of himself as to wonder whether it were not he who was in the wrong and Berthe who was right.

It was impossible for things to last like this. It is claimed that a man can live a long time without eating or drinking. It is more difficult to live without one's pride, and his wife had taken his away.

He would never forgive her.

How long did this phase, the most painful of all, last? The same time, more or less, as a real illness, three or four weeks. He had no more points of reference, as he no longer noticed the days.

And it was in an unexpected fashion that he emerged from it. It happened on the hottest Sunday of the year, with cars overtaking on all the roads, the beaches covered with bathers, people storming into the restaurants at Cannes, where they simply could not cater for everybody.

There were customers in shorts, women in bathing-costumes, children crying, and Jean-Claude never stopped uncorking bottles of
rosé.
Some would be asking for the bowls so as to be able to play beneath the terrace, others wanted sandwiches, to go and eat in the mountains.

As on every other Sunday he had put
bouillabaisse
and calamary risotto on the menu, but he hadn't been able to get all the fish he would have liked from the fishermen. He had a leg of mutton in the oven, cold meat in the refrigerator.

From half-past twelve the terrace had begun to fill up and, at the moment when Berthe was about to sit down in her usual corner, two large American cars had drawn up, disgorging a dozen people between the two of them.

'Can we eat?'

Jean-Claude had come in to announce:

'Twelve more lunches.'

Juice from the mutton was draining into the wood of the table, the saucepans were steaming, the air smelt offish, garlic, boiling oil.

'Warn them there won't be enough
bouillabaisse
or risotto for everybody.'

Berthe was serving aperitifs to the new arrivals. They were all talking, laughing, moving about, and Maubi was constantly having to go down to the cellar.

'Madame is asking what she can have to eat.'

He ought to have put aside a helping of risotto, as it was her favourite dish, which she ate every Sunday, but he hadn't done so. The mutton was nearly ready. He was already carving the cold meat he had reserved for dinner.

'Ask her if she would like me to open a tin of something.'

The staff would eat from it as well. It was not the first time.

'What did she say?'

'She would like some
cassoulet.'

In the way of tinned food, apart from sardines, tunny fish, different kinds of fruit in syrup, they had chiefly
cassoulet
and concoctions with
sauerkraut.
It was not the season for eating these things, but they had no choice.

He opened the cupboard, selected one of the large two-litre tins sold specially to restaurants. The label was pockmarked with rust he noticed, without attaching any importance to it, since that often happened.

It was past three o'clock when the terrace finally cleared and the activity died down. Emile, who had hastily swallowed an anchovy here, an olive or crust of bread there, was no longer hungry and, taking off his cap and apron, he emptied a glass of wine before heading for the Cabin.

He had made no sign to Ada. In all the confusion he had hardly noticed her. In the kitchen the staff were beginning to eat, before setting about the mass of washing-up.

This time he slept, exhausted. He had not locked the door. It took him a good while to come to his senses when somebody shook his shoulder, and he did not understand what was happening to him when he saw Jean-Claude, in his white jacket, bending over him.

'Monsieur Emile! . . . Monsieur Emile! . . . Come quickly! . . .'

'What's the matter?'

'Madame . . .'

At first he thought it was an accident, perhaps a dispute with some customers, a brawl.

'She is very ill. She says she is going to die.'

'Did she send for me?'

'I don't know. I didn't go up.'

He crossed through a patch of sun, found the shade again on entering the house. Ada standing at the foot of the stairs. Their eyes met, and it seemed to him the girl's expression was more intense than usual.

'Who is up there with her?'

'Madame Lavaud and Madame Maubi.'

He went up, and at that moment he would have been unable to say what he was hoping. He saw Berthe, bending over a basin beside the bed, her face crimson, trying in vain to vomit.

'You must...' Madame Lavaud was saying. 'Make another effort... Stick your finger in your mouth . . .'

Berthe's eyelids were swollen with tears. Noticing Emile, she stammered :

'I'm going to die . . .'

'Has somebody telephoned the doctor?'

'You realize Dr. Guerini's out in his boat,' replied Madame Maubi. 'It's Sunday.'

'And Chouard?'

'I think my husband has rung him.'

He went downstairs, not sure where he ought to be.

'It must be the
cassoulet
and the heat,' Maubi was explaining. 'I once saw a whole wedding ill on account of the
foie gras,
and two of them even died.'

'Was Chouard at home?'

'He was asleep.'

It was not long before he arrived, pushing his bicycle up the hill, for he no longer dared to drive a car.

'What has she had to eat?'

'We had an overflow of customers. I opened a tin of
cassoulet.'

'Did anybody else have it as well?'

He wasn't sure. He turned to Maubi, who nodded affirmatively.

'The entire kitchen.'

'Nobody else ill?'

Chouard went up. Emile didn't follow him, sat down in the nearest chair and mopped himself.

'We suddenly heard groans,' Maubi was saying. 'Then a voice calling for help . . .'

Once again, Emile's eyes met Ada's.

Was everything resolving itself, just at the moment they least expected it?

He felt no pity for Berthe. He had had none for Big Louis either, when he had died. At Champagne, as a child, he had grown used to people and animals dying, and sometimes his father would kill a calf or a pig in the yard; he himself had learned as a small child to cut the throats of chickens and ducks.

It was more a sort of peace which descended upon him, a sudden relaxation.

His fever was abating. He looked around him with his eyes clear once more, and told himself:

'I mustn't seem to be indifferent or, worse still, relieved.'

To occupy himself, he went into the kitchen.

'What's happened to the empty tin?'

'It's in the dustbin.'

He went and searched for it himself, rummaging without revulsion among the left-overs from the meal, and the guts of the fishes. A short while later, he placed the tin on the table, after sniffing it.

'It doesn't smell.'

There were the traces of rust, but because of the climate most of the tins in the cupboard bore similar marks.

Ada, too, seemed more at ease, but wasn't it from seeing him relaxed at last?

He went and poured himself out a glass of spirits, gave one to Madame Lavaud, who had just come downstairs and was clasping her bosom as if she was going to be ill as well.

'Drink that.'

'Oh, it's not the
cassoulet
I'm afraid of. My stomach will digest anything. It's just seeing her like that . . .'

'What is the doctor doing?'

'He has called for hot water, lots of hot water. I fetched some from the bathroom, and now . . .'

The few customers still left on the terrace were asking what had happened. Jean-Claude didn't know what to say to them.

'Tell them Madame has been taken ill.'

Impatience overcame him, and he ended by going upstairs and listening at the door. He heard nothing but hiccoughs, water being poured into the basin, a little at a time, Chouard's voice repeating monotonously:

'Relax . . . Don't tense yourself. . . There's nothing to be afraid of. . .'

He himself cannot have been at his best at this time of day. Dragged from his siesta, he was almost certainly suffering from a hangover, and Emile went and fetched him a glass of brandy, half-opened the door.

'For you, Doctor.'

They had removed Berthe's clothes, and she had only a Turkish towel round her stomach. Seated in a chair, bent double, with her mouth open, she was staring at the basin placed at her feet, but she had time to raise her eyes towards her husband.

He preferred to shut the door again, a shade paler. He didn't know where to go and, after a quarter of an hour spent wandering from the dining-room on to the terrace and into the kitchen, he decided to start on the dinner.

When he finally heard Chouard's footsteps on the stairs, he went to meet him, with his cap on his head, automatically collected the bottle of cognac on the way.

'How is she?'

'I've given her an injection and she is beginning to sleep. I thought for a moment of sending her to the hospital or to a clinic, but I had a child to get to hospital urgently this morning and I couldn't find a bed free in Cannes or even in Nice. There have been so many car accidents, congestions caused by the sun or bathing in the sea . . .'

Chouard asked in his turn:

'What about the others?'

'The staff hasn't complained of anything.'

To save himself the trouble of shaving, Chouard wore a full reddish beard, and he had immense bushy eyebrows.

'Her father,' he grunted, after emptying his glass, 'was almost as much of a drunkard as I am, and probably her grandfather was as well. She has inherited a bad liver, which doesn't dispose of toxic elements as it should, and I wouldn't be surprised if some day or other she doesn't have to have her gall-bladder removed.'

Emile didn't know what Ada was doing in the room, but she was there.

For a space of a second their eyes met once again.

'Will she pull through?' he asked.

'Today, yes. But next time, I'm not so sure.'

Chouard shrugged his shoulders.

'It's the same old story. She ought to keep to a strict diet, and she won't. One fine day, when she eats a dish which doesn't agree with her

The house was so peaceful, after the excitement of the rest of the day, that it almost seemed like being in church.

Ada was still there, waiting for God knows what, and, as if he were taking a sudden decision, Emile looked at her insistently as though to transmit a message, then blinked his eyelids two or three times.

This had happened eleven months ago and he hadn't once been tempted to turn back. As a result of this fortuitous incident, he had arrived unexpectedly at a conclusion and he could see no other way out.

Straight away, he had regained a certain interior peace. He had still slept, that night, and on the following ones, beside Berthe. When she had woken up, towards three o'clock in the morning, he had helped her to the bathroom and had waited to bring her back to bed.

Next morning, she had said to him in a still lugubrious voice:

'Thank you for looking after me.'

That could no longer touch him. He had rounded a certain point, and hardly even noticed it, and everything that had happened before had lost its importance.

He no longer asked himself any questions. To be more exact, the questions which he asked himself now were precise ones, powerless to trouble him, technical questions in a way.

For example, he had discovered that it would have to take place on a Sunday, so that Dr. Guerini would be out at sea and Chouard would be called in.

The season was already too far advanced. Soon, the tourists would return home, and the calm of autumn, then of winter, would make the thing more difficult, too obvious.

That Sunday, Berthe could have died without most of the customers realizing it, and the burial, three days later, would not have caused any stir.

'What I don't understand is why I should have been the only person to be ill.'

'Chouard told us: because of your liver.'

She stayed in bed all day on Monday, but in the evening she came downstairs to make out the bills of the guests who were leaving.

He had said nothing to anybody, not even to Ada. Between her and him, there had been nothing but a look, and Berthe was not then present.

Yet he would have sworn that, from that moment, Berthe had her suspicions. Granted, she had always kept watch on her husband, but she was doing so now as if a fixed idea was obsessing her.

Did she imagine he had tried to poison her? He knew that she asked questions in the kitchen, and she had had the tin
ofcassoulet
shown to her.

This did not bother Emile, for she would have time to forget it, to reassure herself. And, when he had accomplished what he had decided to accomplish, he certainly hoped she would be past talking about it.

Already before the incident of the
cassoulet,
he had thought of an almost analogous solution, but the solution was a bad one and he had rejected it without further ado.

His idea, in fact, had been to take Berthe out to sea with him. She couldn't swim. He would choose a day with the
mistral
blowing and would steer her out beyond the islands. On his return, he would simply have to say that she had been leaning over the side and had lost her footing.

It was no good. He was a good swimmer and people would ask why he had not fished her out. Besides, he would have had difficulty in persuading his wife, suspicious as she was, to accompany him in the boat.

At the very least, he would have had to get her into the habit of coming out fishing with him, take her often, to start with in calm weather, then, little by little, on rougher seas.

That idea had been dropped a long time ago. It had not even been a plan, merely a sort of daydream.