The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (35 page)

She got up and went on feverishly:

‘I am not confessing, I am telling you what I have done wrong. After the children, I let their father go. The poor man never beat me! I was the one who was mad. I felt burns all over my body and I scratched them, I needed the cold of the tiles to soothe them. And then after each crisis I was so ashamed to see myself naked in front of everybody that I did not dare say anything. If you only knew what terrible nightmares cast me down on the floor! Hell itself was whirling round my head. The poor man made me feel so sorry with his teeth chattering. He was afraid of me. When you were not there any more he did not dare to come near me, he spent the night sitting on a chair.’

Abbé Faujas tried to interrupt.

‘You are killing yourself,’ he said. ‘Do not stir up these memories. God will take account of what you have suffered.’

‘I am the one who sent him to Les Tulettes,’ she went on, gesturing him abruptly to be quiet. ‘You all told me he was mad… Oh, how unbearable life is! I have always been terrified of going mad. When I was a child I felt as if someone was opening my skull and emptying my head. I had what felt like a block of ice behind my forehead. Well, that sensation of deathly cold, I have it again, I’ve always been afraid of going mad, always, always… They took him away. I let them. I didn’t know what I was doing. But since that time I can’t close my eyes without seeing him there. That’s what makes me behave so
strangely, makes me sit staring for hours in the same place… And I know that house, I can see it now with my own eyes. Uncle Macquart pointed it out to me. It’s all grey like a prison, with dark windows.’

She started choking. She wiped her lips with a handherchief and it came away spotted with blood. The priest, with his arms firmly folded, waited for the crisis to end.

‘You know everything, don’t you?’ she ended, with a stammer. ‘I am a poor thing, I have sinned for you… But give me life, give me joy, and I will enter into the divine happiness you promised me without any remorse.’

‘You are a liar,’ the priest said slowly. ‘I know nothing, I was unaware you had committed this crime.’

It was her turn to recoil, her hands together, faltering, fixing terrified eyes upon him. Then, raging, almost fainting, she whispered:

‘Listen, Ovide, I love you and you know it, don’t you? I loved you the moment you arrived… I didn’t tell you. I could see that you didn’t want that. But I knew very well that you guessed my feelings. I was satisfied, I hoped one day we could be happy, in a union that was divine… So it was for you that I emptied the house. I crawled on my knees for you and was your handmaiden… You surely cannot be cruel to the very last. You have consented to everything, you allowed me to be yours, to cast aside the obstacles that separated us. Remember all this, I beg you. Now that I am ill, abandoned, my heart bruised and my head empty, you cannot rebuff me… We have not spoken of it in so many words, I know. But my love spoke for me and your silence answered. It’s the man I am talking to, not the priest. You said there was just a man here—well, I am talking to that man… I love you, Ovide, I love you, and I am dying because of it.’

She was sobbing. Abbé Faujas had pulled himself up to his full height. He drew nearer to Marthe and let her feel the full force of his contempt for women.

‘Oh, wretched flesh!’
*
he said. ‘I was hoping you would see reason, that you would never come to speak of these shameful, filthy things… Yes, it’s the everlasting struggle of evil against the power of the will. You are the temptation from below, the weakness, the Fall. A priest has no other adversary but you and you should be driven out of the church, impure and damned as you are.’

‘But I love you, Ovide,’ she stammered. ‘I love you, help me.’

‘I have already come too near you,’ he continued. ‘If I fail, it will be
you, woman, who have taken away my strength by your desire alone. Get away from me, get thee behind me, you are Satan! I shall beat you to cast out the devil from your body.’

She had slid down and slumped against the wall, in abject terror, before the priest’s menacing fist. Her hair was undone, a large white strand hung over her forehead. When, looking for help in the bare room, she caught sight of the black wooden Christ, she had enough strength to stretch out her hands towards Him, in a passionate gesture.

‘Do not appeal to the cross,’ cried the priest, with a towering anger. ‘Jesus lived a life of chastity, and could die because of it.’

Madame Faujas came back, holding a large basket of provisions on her arm. She put it down quickly when she saw her son in this terrible temper. She took hold of his arm.

‘Ovide, calm down, my child,’ she murmured, stroking him.

And, turning to the devastated Marthe with a look of thunder, she said:

‘Can’t you leave him alone!… Since he doesn’t want anything to do with you, at least don’t make him ill. Come now, downstairs. You cannot possibly stay here.’

Marthe did not move. Madame Faujas had to pull her to her feet and push her out of the door. She scolded her, accusing her of waiting till she had gone out and made her promise not to upset the household any more with such scenes. Then she banged the door shut after her.

Marthe staggered downstairs. She was no longer crying. She was saying over and over again:

‘François will come back, François will turn them all out on the street.’

CHAPTER 21

T
HE
Toulon coach which passed through Les Tulettes, where there was a staging-post, left Plassans at three o’clock. Marthe, driven into action by a sudden thought, did not wish to waste a moment. She put on her shawl and her hat and ordered Rose to get ready straight away.

‘I don’t know what’s the matter with Madame,’ said the cook to Olympe… ‘I think we are going away for a few days.’

Marthe left the keys in the doors. She was in a hurry to leave. Olympe, who saw her off, tried vainly to find out where she was going and how many days she would be away.

‘Well, you needn’t worry,’ she said on the doorstep, in her friendly voice. ‘I’ll look after everything. You will find it all in order on your return… Take your time and do what you have to do. If you go to Marseilles, bring us back some fresh shellfish.’

And Marthe had not turned the corner of the Rue Taravelle before Olympe had taken possession of the entire house. When Trouche came home he found his wife banging doors, ransacking the furniture, rummaging around, humming as she pocketed the objects she was stealing.

‘She’s gone, and her old nag of a maid with her,’ she shouted to him, stretching out in an armchair. ‘Wouldn’t it be good if they both ended up in a ditch!… Never mind, we shall be pretty well off for a while. Oh, it’s good to be on our own, isn’t it, Honoré? Come here and give me a kiss for my pains! We are in our own house, we can do whatever we please.’

Meanwhile, Marthe and Rose reached the Cours Sauvaire just as the Toulon coach was leaving. They were the only passengers. When the servant heard her mistress say to the driver that she would stop at Les Tulettes, she got in reluctantly. The coach had not even left the town before she was already grumbling, saying over and over sourly:

‘And I thought you were going to be sensible at long last! There was me imagining we were going to Marseilles to see Monsieur Octave. We could have brought back some crayfish and some clams… Well, I was wrong! You haven’t changed, you always go to meet trouble, you don’t know what to do next to upset yourself.’

Marthe, half fainting, had collapsed into a corner of the coach. She
was no longer fighting the grief breaking her heart, and now a mortal weakness took possession of her. But the cook did not even look at her.

‘What a nonsensical notion to go and see Monsieur!’ she continued. ‘That’ll be a pretty sight and cheer you up, sure enough! We shan’t sleep for a week. If you are scared in the night I’m darned if I’ll get up to look under the furniture… I’d understand if it was going to do Monsieur any good. But he’ll very likely scratch your eyes out and then do away with himself. I hope they won’t let you in. It’s forbidden, anyhow. See, I shouldn’t have got into the coach, when you asked for Les Tulettes. Maybe you’d not have dared do such a stupid thing on your own.’

A sigh from Marthe made her pause. She turned round to see her pale and struggling for breath, and her anger increased as she pulled down a window to let in some air.

‘That’s right, die on me now, will you? Wouldn’t you be better in bed, looking after yourself? When I think how lucky you were to have nothing but loyal friends around you, and you didn’t even thank the good Lord! That’s the truth, and you know it. Monsieur le Curé, his mother, sister, even Monsieur Trouche, they do all they can for you. They’d go through fire for you, get up at all times of the day and night. I saw Madame Olympe weep, yes, weep, when you were ill the last time. And how do you thank them for their kindness? You hurt them, you leave in that underhand way to visit Monsieur, knowing it will make them very unhappy. For they can’t love Monsieur—he was so cruel to you… Now shall I be honest with you, Madame? Marriage was no good to you, you have grown as wicked as Monsieur. Some days, you know, you are just as bad as him.’

She carried on like this until they got to Les Tulettes, defending the Faujas and the Trouches, accusing her mistress of every kind of villainy. She finished by saying:

‘Those people would be very good masters if they had enough money to have servants! But fortune only favours the wicked.’

Marthe, calmer now, did not answer. She looked vaguely at the skeletal trees as they passed along the road, the vast fields unfolding like pieces of brown cloth. Rose’s rebukes were lost in the bumping of the coach.

At Les Tulettes Marthe made her way to Uncle Macquart’s house, followed by the cook, tight-lipped and silent, shrugging her shoulders.

‘What, is it you!’ cried her uncle, taken by surprise. ‘I thought you
were on your sick bed. I was told you were ill… Well, my dear, you don’t look very well… Have you come to invite
m
e to dinner?’

‘I’d like to see François, Uncle,’ said Marthe.

‘François?’ echoed Macquart, looking her straight in the eyes. ‘You want to see François? What a good wife you are. The poor boy has shouted for you long enough. I saw him from the bottom of my garden, beating the walls with his fists, calling your name… Oh, so you’ve come to see him? I thought you’d all forgotten him over there.’

Big tears welled up in Marthe’s eyes.

‘It wouldn’t be easy to see him today,’ went on Macquart. ‘It’ll soon be four o’clock. And besides I really don’t know if the director would give you permission. Mouret’s not been behaving himself for a while. He breaks everything, talks of setting the place on fire. My goodness! Madmen aren’t always very easy to get on with.’

She listened, trembling. She was about to question her uncle, but then she simply stretched her hands out to him.

‘I beg you,’ she said. ‘I’ve come here on purpose. I absolutely must talk to François today, right away… You have friends in the place, you can get them to let me in.’

‘No doubt, no doubt,’ he muttered, without committing himself to anything definite.

He looked extremely perplexed, not fully understanding the reason for this sudden trip, seeming to mull it over in his own mind, as if it were a private matter. He looked at the cook, who turned her back to him. Finally a thin smile appeared on his lips.

‘Well, if that’s what you want,’ he muttered, ‘I’ll try. Only remember this, that if your mother gets cross you can explain I wasn’t able to stop you… I’m afraid you will do yourself harm. It’s not very pleasant, I can tell you.’

When they left, Rose categorically refused to go with them. She sat down by a fire of vine stumps that was burning in the wide hearth.

‘I don’t need to go and have my eyes put out,’ she said sourly. ‘Monsieur wasn’t that good to me… I’m staying here, I’d rather keep warm.’

‘Then it would be very nice if you got us a jug of mulled wine,’ Uncle Macquart whispered in her ear. ‘The wine and the sugar are there in the cupboard. We shall need it when we get back.’

Macquart did not let his niece in through the main gate of the asylum. He turned left and asked at a small low gate for Alexandre, the
warden, with whom he exchanged a few quiet words. Then, without speaking, all three entered the interminable corridors. The warden led the way.

‘I’ll wait here,’ said Macquart, stopping in a small yard. ‘Alexandre will go with you.’

‘I wanted to be on my own,’ said Marthe, in a low voice.

‘It won’t be much fun for Madame,’ replied the warden with a quiet smile. ‘I’m already running a huge risk.’

He crossed a second yard and stopped outside a small door. Softly turning the key, he lowered his voice and said:

‘Don’t be afraid. He’s calmed down since this morning. We were able to take his straitjacket off… If he gets angry, you will back out, won’t you, and leave me alone with him?’

Marthe went in, trembling, her throat dry. All she could see at first was a pile of clothes huddled in a corner against the wall. The daylight was fading, the hut was lit only by a cellar light which filtered through a grid in a window with wooden shutters.

‘Hullo, old chap!’ Alexandre shouted to him in familiar tones, going over to tap Mouret on the shoulder. ‘I’m bringing you a visitor… I hope you’ll be nice to her.’

He came back and leaned against the door, arms at his sides, and kept his eyes fixed on the madman. Mouret had got up very slowly. He did not seem in the least surprised.

‘Is that you, my girl?’ he asked in his quiet voice. ‘I’ve been expecting you. I was worried about the children.’

Marthe, with knees shaking, looked at him anxiously, silenced by this affectionate welcome. Moreover he had not changed. He even looked healthier, he had put on weight and his beard was trimmed, his eyes clear. His old mannerisms, his old bourgeois self had returned. He rubbed his hands, winked his right eye, walked back and forth, chatting and joking as he did in the old days.

‘I’m perfectly all right, my dear. We shall be able to go home… You’ve come to fetch me, haven’t you?… Have you been looking after my lettuces? By Jove how those slugs love lettuces, the garden was eaten alive with them; but I know a way of killing them… I’ve got plans, you’ll see. We’re not short of money, we can do what we like… Tell me, you haven’t seen old Gautier from Saint-Eutrope while I’ve been away, have you? I bought thirty jars of rough wine for the harvest. I must go and see him… Your memory is like a sieve.’

He continued to tease her, threatening her with his finger in a jocular way:

‘I bet I find everything upside down. You don’t take care of anything. The tools are left lying about, the cupboards are all open, Rose dirties the rooms with her sweeping brush… And what about Rose, why hasn’t she come? Oh, what a woman! There’s one we shall never be able to do anything with. Do you know she wanted to kick me out one day. Yes, she did… The house belongs to her, it’s quite ridiculous. But why don’t you tell me about the children? Désirée is still at her nurse’s, isn’t she? We’ll go and give her a hug and ask if she’s all right. I want to take a trip to Marseilles too because Octave is a worry to me. Last time I saw him, I found him living a very dissolute life. And let’s not mention Serge. He’s too good, he’ll sanctify the whole family… Oh, it does me good to talk about home.’

And he talked and talked, asking for news of each tree in his garden, dwelling on the smallest details concerning the house. He demonstrated extraordinary powers of memory about a host of small details. Marthe was deeply touched by this display of zealous affection and felt he showed great tact in the care he took not to blame her at all, not even making the slightest allusion to what he had suffered. She was forgiven. She swore she would redeem her crime by becoming the submissive servant of this man who was so nobly disposed towards her. Her cheeks were wet with huge, silent tears, and she almost went down on her knees to cry out her thanks to him.

‘Be careful,’ said the warder in her ear. ‘The look in his eyes is worrying.’

‘But he’s not mad!’ she stammered. ‘I swear he’s not mad! I have to talk to the director. I want to take him away immediately.’

‘Be careful,’ repeated the warder roughly, pulling her away.

Mouret, in the middle of chatting, had just turned in on himself, like an animal that has been beaten. He fell to the floor. Then he walked nimbly on all fours around the wall.

‘Oo-hoo!’ he howled.

With a bound he got up and then fell again on his side. There followed a terrible scene. He twisted and turned like a worm, bruised his face with his fists, tore at his flesh with his nails. Soon he was half naked, his clothes in tatters, crushed, bruised, and moaning.
*

‘Get out, Madame!’ cried the warder.

Marthe was rooted to the spot. It was her own self she could see on
that floor. That was how she had thrown herself on to the tiled floor of her bedroom, how she scratched, how she beat herself. And she even recognized her own voice. Mouret moaned just like her. She was the one who was responsible for this wretched creature.

‘He’s not mad!’ she stammered. ‘He can’t be mad!… That would be too dreadful. I’d rather die.’

The warder, seizing her bodily, pushed her outside the door, but she remained there, her ear pressed to the wood.

She could hear the noise of a fight in the hut as if someone was killing a pig. Then a dull thud, like a parcel of wet laundry being dropped. A deathly silence ensued. When the warder came out again, it was almost night. She could see nothing but a black hole through the half-open door.

‘Goddammit, you are a strange one, saying he’s not mad! He nearly had my thumb off, he had it between his teeth… Now we shan’t hear anything from him for several hours.’

As he took her back, he went on:

‘You don’t know how cunning they are in here. They act nice for hours at a time, tell you stories that seem sensible, and then, without any warning, out of the blue, they leap at your throat… I could see that just now he was working up to something when he was talking about his children; his eyes were rolling round.’

When Marthe met Uncle Macquart again in the small yard, she repeated feverishly in a slow, broken voice:

‘He’s mad, he’s mad!’

‘He’s mad, no doubt about that,’ laughed her uncle. ‘Did you expect to find him young and strong? Obviously they haven’t put him in here for no reason… Anyway it’s not a healthy place to be. A couple of hours and I’d go mad too.’

He studied her out of the corner of his eye, watching her for the slightest nervous tremor. Then in his affable manner:

‘Would you like to go and see your grandmother?’

Marthe looked terrified, and hid her head in her hands.

‘That wouldn’t be any trouble,’ he said. ‘Alexandre would have been glad to… She’s there next door; she’s very gentle. Isn’t that right, Alexandre? She’s never given anyone in the house any bother? She sits there looking straight in front of her the whole time. She hasn’t moved for twelve years… Anyway, since you don’t want to see her…’

As the warden took his leave, he invited him to come and have a glass of mulled wine, giving him a conspicuous wink, which seemed to persuade Alexandre to accept. They had to hold Marthe up, her legs giving way at each step. When they arrived, they were carrying her, her face convulsed, eyes open, stiffened in one of these nervous crises which held her for several hours as though she were dead.