The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (24 page)

And Mouret, sitting opposite his wife, was quite forgotten. He remained there with his elbows on the edge of the table like a child, waiting for Marthe to have the decency to think of him. She served him last, as an afterthought, giving him small portions. Rose, standing behind her, would intervene when she accidentally gave him a good piece of meat.

‘No, not that bit… You know that Monsieur likes the head. He sucks the small bones.’

Mouret, much diminished, ate like a beggar scrounging food. He could feel Madame Faujas staring at him when he cut himself some bread. His eyes rested for some time on the bottle before he dared fill his glass. Once he made the mistake of drinking a very small amount of Monsieur le Curé’s bordeaux. What a to-do! For a whole month Rose went on at him about those drops of wine. When she made some sweet dish, she cried:

‘Monsieur is not to have any… He’s never paid me a single compliment. Once he told me that my rum pancake was burned and I said to him: “They will always be burnt for you.” Do you hear what I am saying, Madame? Don’t give any to Monsieur.’

Then there were the things intended to annoy him. She gave him the cracked plates, placed one of the table legs in between his legs, left fluff from the tea-towel on his glass, put the bread, wine, salt at the far
end of the table. Mouret was the only one who cared for mustard. He went to the grocer’s to buy his pots but the cook whisked them away regularly, on the pretext that ‘it stank’. Being deprived of mustard was enough to spoil his meal. But what made him despair and took away his appetite completely, was being driven out of his place, the place he had always occupied in front of the window and which was now given to the priest as being the nicest. Now he faced the door. Ever since then it seemed to him he had been eating with strangers, as he was not able to glance up at his fruit trees whenever he took a mouthful of food.

Marthe wasn’t sharp like Rose. She treated him more like a poor relative, to be put up with. In the end she didn’t notice whether he were there or not, hardly ever speaking to him, behaving as though Abbé Faujas was the only one who could give orders in their house. In any case Mouret made no revolt. He exchanged a few polite remarks with the priest, ate in silence, glared at the cook in response to her attacks. Then, as he had always finished first, he would fold his napkin methodically and withdraw, often before dessert.

Rose said he was off his head. When she chatted to Madame Faujas in the kitchen, she explained at great length how it was with her master.

‘I know him through and through, I’ve never been afraid of him… Before you arrived, Madame was scared of him, because he was always shouting and screaming and playing the tyrant. He got on all our nerves, always on our backs, finding fault and poking his nose into everything, wanting to show he was master… Now he’s quiet as a lamb, isn’t he? It’s because Madame has taken charge. Oh, if he was man enough and wasn’t afraid of creating all sorts of trouble, you would hear him sounding off all right. But he’s too afraid of your son; yes, he’s afraid of Monsieur le Curé… You would think he’s a fool at times. But when all’s said and done, he doesn’t get in our way now, so he can do as he pleases, can’t he, Madame?’

Madame Faujas replied that Monsieur Mouret seemed a worthy sort of man to her. His only fault was that he wasn’t religious. But he would certainly see the error of his ways. And the old lady gradually took over the ground floor, going from kitchen to dining room, trotting along the hall and passage. Whenever Mouret met her, he remembered the day the Faujas arrived, when she wore a ragged black dress, and clutched her basket with both hands, craning her neck to
peer into each room, with the serenity of a person visiting a house for sale.

Since the Faujas had started eating on the ground floor, the floor above had been taken over by the Trouches. It was getting noisier up there. Bumping furniture, thumping feet, and shouting could be heard; doors were opened and slammed shut again. Madame Faujas, deep in conversation in the kitchen, would look up with a worried expression on her face. To pour oil on troubled waters, Rose remarked that poor Madame Trouche had a lot of problems. One night the priest, not yet in bed, heard a strange racket on the stairs. He went out with his candle and saw Trouche, blind drunk, crawling upstairs on hands and knees. He lifted him up in his strong arms and threw him into his room. Olympe was in bed quietly reading her novel, occasionally sipping a grog that was on her bedside table.

The priest, pale with fury, said: ‘Tomorrow you pack your bags and leave, do you hear?’

‘Why ever should we?’ Olympe queried, unconcerned. ‘We are fine where we are.’

But the priest interrupted rudely.

‘Shut up! You are a nuisance. All you’ve ever wanted is to do me harm. Mother was right. I shouldn’t have dragged you out of poverty… Now I’m having to pick your husband up off the stairs! It’s shameful. Just think of the scandal if people could see him in that state!… You will leave tomorrow.’

Olympe had sat up, to take another mouthful of grog.

‘Oh no!’ she murmured.

Trouche was laughing. He was merry. He had collapsed into an armchair, completely relaxed and extremely pleased with himself.

‘Don’t let’s fall out,’ he spluttered. ‘It’s nothing, just a little turn, must be the air, very keen you know. Besides, the streets in this damn town are… odd… I tell you, Faujas, they’re very decent boys and girls. Doctor Porquier’s son, he’s there. You a good friend of Doctor Porquier?… Well, we meet in a café behind the prison. It’s run by a woman from Arles, nice-looking, a brunette…’

But the priest, his arms folded, was looking thunderously at him.

‘No, honest to God, Faujas, you’re wrong to hold this against me… I was brought up properly you know… I’m a respectable man, I am. I don’t even take a glass of fruit cordial in the daylight hours in case
I landed you in trouble… But anyway, since I’ve been living here I have been going to my office every day, just like a schoolboy, with my jam sandwiches in my bag; and my word, what a stupid job that is; I am stupid to do it, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m doing you a favour… But maybe no one sees me by night. I can go out at night. It does me good, I’d die if I stayed shut up indoors. In any case there’s nobody around in the streets, they are so… odd!’

‘Drunkard!’ spat the priest between clenched teeth.

‘Don’t you want to make peace?… Then that’s too bad, my dear Faujas. I’m a cheerful sort of fellow. I don’t like black looks. And if you can’t be doing with it, I’ll leave you to your penitent women. There’s scarcely one, only that little Condamin, who is nice, and the Arlésienne’s better-looking than her… You can roll your eyes as much as you like, but I don’t need you. Here, do you want me to lend you a hundred francs?’

And he pulled some banknotes out of his pocket and spread them on his knees, laughing uproariously. Then he flapped them around under the priest’s nose and tossed them up in the air. Olympe jumped out of bed, half-naked. Much annoyed, she picked up the notes and hid them under the bolster. Meanwhile Abbé Faujas looked around in some surprise. He saw liqueur bottles lined up along the chest of drawers, an almost untouched pâté on the mantelpiece, some boiled sweets in an old battered tin. The bedroom was full of recent purchases: dresses were thrown over the chairs; a packet of lace was undone; a smart new coat hung on the catch on the window; a bearskin was spread out on the bed. Next to the grog on the bedside table a small gold ladies’ watch gleamed in a porcelain dish.

‘So who have they been stealing from?’ the priest wondered.

And then he remembered seeing Olympe kiss Marthe’s hand.

‘You wretch!’ he cried. ‘You thief!’

Trouche got up. His wife pushed him on to the couch.

‘Keep quiet,’ she told him. ‘Go to sleep, you need to.’

And, turning to her brother:

‘It’s one o’clock in the morning, so if you are only intending to say vile things to us, you can leave us to sleep… It’s true my husband has no right to get drunk like that, but that’s no reason to treat him badly… We’ve already had words on more than one occasion and this must be the last, do you hear? Ovide… aren’t we brother and sister? Well, as I said, we have to share and share alike… You gorge yourself
downstairs, they cook special dishes for you and between the cook and her mistress, you are in clover. That’s your business. We certainly aren’t going to poke our nose into what you eat, or take the food out of your mouth. We let you steer whatever course you please. So don’t torment us, just allow us to enjoy the same freedom you have… I think we are being very reasonable…’

And as the priest raised his hands in exasperation, she continued:

‘I understand. You are still worried we might spoil your plans… Well, the best way to prevent us spoiling them is not to torment us. When you keep saying: “Oh, if only I’d known, I should have left you where you were…” You are not so powerful in spite of your hoity-toity airs. We are in this as much as you are; we are one family, we must all make our little nest together. If you were willing to do that, it could be really nice… Go to bed. I’ll give Trouche a piece of my mind in the morning: I’ll send him along to you and you can give him your orders.’

‘That’s right,’ murmured Trouche, falling into a drunken sleep. ‘Faujas is a strange cove… I don’t want the lady of the house, I’d rather have her money.’

At this Olympe gave an indiscreet laugh, looking her brother in the eye. She had got back into bed, arranging herself comfortably, propped up on the pillow. The priest, somewhat pale now, was thinking hard. Then he left, without a word, while she went back to her novel and Trouche snored on the sofa.

The next day Trouche had sobered up and had a long conversation with Abbé Faujas. When he returned to his wife, he explained the conditions on which peace had been established.

‘Listen, darling,’ she said. ‘Be good and do as he asks. Try and make yourself useful to him, since he is giving you the means… I pretend to stand my ground when he’s there, but deep down I know he would throw us out on the street like dogs if we pushed him to the limit. And I don’t want to go… Are you sure he’ll let us stay?’

‘Yes, don’t be afraid,’ replied the employee. ‘He needs me, he’ll let us get on with feathering our nest.’

Thenceforth, Trouche went out every evening towards nine, when there was no one in the streets. He told his wife he went to the old quarter to put in a good word for the priest whenever he could. But whatever the real reason, Olympe wasn’t jealous; she giggled at the risqué tales he brought back. She preferred to curl up on her own with a glass or two of something, gorge on cakes in secret, and spend
the long evenings in a cosy bed devouring the old stock of a library she had discovered in the Rue Canquoin. Trouche came back drunk but not incapable. He took off his shoes in the hall and climbed the stairs without making a noise. If he had drunk too much and stank of tobacco and brandy, his wife did not want him in bed next to her. She made him sleep on the sofa. Then it was a silent, wordless struggle between them. He came back to bed with the obstinacy of the drunkard and clutched at the blankets. But he overbalanced, slipped, fell on his hands, and she ended up rolling him into a heap. If he began to shout, she caught him by the throat and looking into his eyes, said:

‘Ovide can hear you. Ovide’s coming.’

So then he was fearful as a child when the wolf is mentioned and would fall asleep mumbling excuses. But as soon as the sun rose he would get washed and dressed soberly, wipe the shameful goings-on of the night before from his blotchy face, and don a tie that, according to him, made him look ‘churchy’. He lowered his eyes when he passed the cafés. In the Work of the Virgin he was held in respect. But it did happen that when the girls were playing out in the yard he would lift a corner of the curtain and look at them with a paternal air, flames briefly dancing under his half-closed eyelids.

The Trouches were still obliged to show some respect for Madame Faujas. Daughter and mother remained constantly at odds, the one complaining about always having been sacrificed to her brother, the other treating her like some lower form of life she should have suffocated at birth. Their teeth sank into the same prey, and they surveyed one another, both refusing to let go, worrying about which of them would manage to hack out the bigger piece of meat. Madame Faujas wanted the whole house; she guarded it, even the sweepings, against the talons of Olympe. When she noticed the large sums of money that the latter was managing to extract from Marthe, she got into a terrible temper. Since her son shrugged his shoulders and acted like a man who was above all this sordid business and thought himself obliged to close his eyes to it, she in her turn had a dreadful row with her daughter, whom she called a thief, as though she had taken money out of her own pocket.

‘I think that’s enough, don’t you, Maman?’ said Olympe losing patience. ‘After all it’s not your purse that’s rattling… At least I only borrow money from her, I don’t get fed by her.’

‘You are a nasty piece of work. What do you mean?’ said Madame Faujas, exasperated beyond endurance. ‘Do we not pay for our meals? Ask the cook, she will show you our account book.’

Olympe laughed out loud.

‘Oh, that’s very funny!’ she went on. ‘I know all about the account book. You pay for the radishes and the butter, don’t you?… Listen, Maman, you stay on the ground floor; I shan’t be disturbing you. But don’t come up tormenting me again or I shall shout at you. You know Ovide has forbidden us to make any noise.’

Madame Faujas went down again, grumbling. That threat of making a noise forced her to beat a retreat. Olympe began to hum a little tune behind her back, to make fun of her. But when she went out into the garden her mother took her revenge, constantly at her heels, looking at her hands, watching her every movement. She would put up with her neither in the kitchen nor the dining room. She had set Rose against her because of a saucepan that had been borrowed and not returned. However, she did not dare attack her in the matter of her friendship with Marthe in case she created a scandal which might have repercussions for the priest.