The Diary of a Chambermaid (11 page)

‘Look, Célestine, what I said to you just now, I didn’t really mean it. I meant to say something quite different. I meant to say … Oh it doesn’t matter. I’m an old fool. Don’t be angry with me, and above all, don’t tell Madame about it … You’re right. Fancy, if someone
had
seen us, here in the garden.’

I escaped as quickly as I could so as not to laugh. Yes, I wanted to laugh, and yet a quite different feeling was singing in my heart … something—how shall I put it?—a motherly feeling. True, I shouldn’t like to sleep with Monsieur Lanlaire … but one more or less, what difference would it really make? I could give the poor old chap some of the pleasure he’s deprived of, and I should enjoy it as well, for in love it’s perhaps even better to give happiness to others than to receive it yourself. Even when our own bodies don’t respond to their caresses, what a pure and delightful sensation it is to see some poor devil lying enraptured in our arms? Besides, what a joke it would be to spite Madame … I must think about it.

He went on: ‘You’re so sweet … and yet the funny thing is you’re only a servant.’

He came closer to me and speaking to me very quietly: ‘If only you would, Célestine.’

‘Would what?’

‘If only you’d … you know what I mean … Of course you do.’

‘If you are suggesting that I should go behind the mistress’s back and allow you to take liberties with me …’

He mistook the expression on my face … and, his eyes starting out of his head, the veins on his neck all swollen and his lips moist and foaming, exclaimed in a stifled voice:

‘Curse it all! Yes, yes, that’s just what I do mean.’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying, sir.’

‘I just can’t stop thinking of it, Célestine.’

He was scarlet in the face.

‘Oh, if you’re going to start all that again …’

He tried to seize my hand, to draw me towards him …

‘Yes,’ he spluttered. ‘Yes, I am. I can’t help it … because … because … because I’m crazy about you, Célestine. I can’t think of anything else. I can’t sleep. I feel … quite ill … And there’s nothing to be frightened of. Don’t be afraid of me. I’m not a brute. I … I won’t give you a child … God no, that I swear! I … I … we …’

‘Another word, sir, and this time I really will tell Madame … Why, what if someone were to see you now in this state in the garden?’

Monsieur Lanlaire did not go out all day. Having tied up his dahlias, he spent the entire afternoon in the woodshed, savagely chopping up wood for more than four hours. In the linen-room, however, hearing the metallic sound of the sledge ringing on the wedges, I experienced a sense of pride …

Yesterday Monsieur and Madame Lanlaire spent the whole afternoon at Louviers. The master had an appointment with his lawyer, Madame with her dressmaker … some dressmaker, indeed!

I took advantage of this brief respite to call on Rose, whom I had not seen again since that famous Sunday. Besides I certainly had no objection to meeting Captain Mauger.

He turned out to be a regular crackpot, such as you wouldn’t see in a day’s march. Imagine, a carp’s head, with a moustache and a long, grey beard. Very dried up, very nervous and on edge, he can’t stand still for five minutes at a time, and he’s forever at work, either in the garden or in a small room where he does carpentry, singing military songs and imitating the sound of a bugle.

It’s a pretty garden, old-fashioned and divided up into square beds, where he cultivates old-fashioned flowers, the kind that one only comes across nowadays in country gardens belonging to aged parsons.

When I arrived, Rose was comfortably installed in the shade of an acacia tree, sitting at a rustic table where she’d put her work-basket. She was darning socks, while the captain, wearing an old policeman’s cap, knelt on the grass, mending the holes in a garden hose.

I was warmly welcomed, and Rose sent a little servant girl who was weeding a bed of asters to fetch a bottle of cherry brandy and glasses. After I had been introduced, the captain asked me:

‘Well? So the Lanlaires haven’t sacked you yet? You ought to be proud of yourself, working for such a remarkable scoundrel. You have my heartiest sympathy, my dear young lady.’

He went on to explain that once upon a time he and Monsieur Lanlaire had been good neighbours and inseparable friends. But a discussion about Rose had led to a deadly quarrel. Monsieur Lanlaire had reproached the captain for not keeping up his position, and allowing his servant to eat at the same table. Interrupting his account of the quarrel, the captain appealed to me:

‘To eat with me, if you please! And what if I wanted her to sleep with me? Surely I’ve got the right to do as I please? Is it any business of his?’

‘I should think not indeed, captain.’

In a tone of extreme modesty Rose sighed:

‘A man living on his own … surely it’s the most natural thing in the world?’

After this famous discussion, which had almost ended in blows, the two one-time friends spent their time playing tricks on each other and issuing summonses. They hated one another bitterly.

‘For my part,’ declared the captain, ‘every stone I can find in the garden I throw over the hedge into Lanlaire’s. If they happen to fall on his cloches and frames, I just can’t help it, or rather, I’m delighted … the swine! Still you’ll find out for yourself …’

Spotting a stone on the pathway, he rushed to pick it up, crept up to the hedge like a hunter stalking his prey and, with all his strength, hurled the stone into our garden. There was a noise of splintering glass. Triumphantly he returned to where we were sitting, and bursting and spluttering with laughter, hummed to himself:

‘Every time we break a pane, Call the glazier in again …’

Gazing at him with a maternal expression, Rose said to me admiringly: ‘Isn’t he funny? And so young for his age … Just a boy!’

When we’d finished our glass of cherry brandy the captain wanted to show me round his garden. Rose apologized for not coming with us, because of her asthma, and warned us not to be away too long. ‘Besides,’ she said jokingly, ‘I shall be keeping an eye on you.’

The captain showed me his flower-beds, edged with box and filled with flowers. He told me the names of all the finest ones, remarking each time, ‘You wouldn’t find anything to compare with those in that pig Lanlaire’s garden. Suddenly he picked a little orange-coloured flower, most unusual and charming, and turning the stalk gently in his fingers asked me: ‘Have you ever tried eating these?’

I was so surprised by this ridiculous question that I couldn’t answer. The captain insisted:

‘I have. It tastes delicious. I’ve tried all the flowers you can see. Some are excellent, others not so good and some are no good at all … You see, I eat anything!’

He winked, clucked his tongue, patted his stomach and, in a challenging tone of voice, repeated more loudly: ‘I just don’t mind what I eat.’

The way in which the captain proclaimed this strange profession of faith made it clear that his greatest pride in life was to eat anything. I thought it would be amusing to flatter his vanity and replied:

‘And you’re quite right, captain.’

‘Certainly,’ he said, not without pride. ‘And it’s not only plants that I eat … It’s animals as well … animals that no one else has eaten, that they haven’t even heard of. I eat absolutely anything.’

We continued our walk amongst the flower-beds, down narrow alleys hung with clusters of flowers, blue, yellow, red. As he looked at them the captain seemed almost to shudder with delight. His tongue, passing over his cracked lips, made a moist little sound.

‘I’m going to tell you something,’ he continued. ‘There’s not an insect, not a bird, not even an earthworm that I haven’t eaten. I’ve eaten polecats, snakes, rats, crickets, caterpillars. I eat anything. Why, I’m well-known for it round here. If anyone finds an animal, dead or alive, and they don’t know what it is, they say: “Better take it to captain Mauger”. So they do, and I eat it. In winter, especially when there’s a hard frost, we get some very rare birds here. They come from America, or maybe further still. People bring them to me and I eat them. I bet there’s not another man in the world who has eaten as many things as I have. I eat anything.’

Having seen all over the garden we went back to sit under the acacia tree. I was just getting ready to say good-bye when the captain suddenly cried:

‘Wait, there’s something I must show you, something very curious, that I’m sure you’ve never seen.’ And in a stentorian voice he shouted: ‘Kléber! Kléber!’ explaining to me that this was his ferret, a phenomenal creature.

He called again, ‘Kléber, Kléber!’ And there on a branch right above us, showing between the green and golden leaves, was a little pink muzzle and two tiny black eyes, very alive and watchful.

‘I knew he couldn’t be far away. Come on, Kléber. Here!’

The ferret climbed along the branch, reached the trunk and cautiously descended, digging its claws into the bark. Its body, covered with white fur with tawny patches, moved with the subtle, graceful undulations of a snake. It reached the ground and, in a couple of bounds, was on the captain’s knee, who began stroking it with a delighted expression.

‘There’s a good Kléber. There’s my pretty little Kléber!’

He turned to me: ‘Have you ever seen such a tame ferret? He follows me all over the garden, like a little dog. I’ve only got to call him and he comes at once, wagging his tail and his head in the air. He eats with us and sleeps with us—in fact I love the little creature as much as anybody in the world. D’you know, Mademoiselle Célestine, I have refused three hundred francs for him? But I wouldn’t let him go for a thousand francs. No, not for two thousand. Here, Kléber.’

The animal raised its head and looked at its master, then climbed on to his shoulder and, with a charming little movement, curled itself round the captain’s neck like a muffler. Rose said nothing, but she appeared to be on edge.

A monstrous idea suddenly entered my head. I said: ‘I’ll bet you, captain, you’d never eat your ferret.’

The captain looked at me, at first with deep astonishment, then with infinite sadness. His eyes grew quite round, and his lips began to tremble.

‘What, Kléber?’ he stammered. ‘Eat Kléber?’

Obviously, though he was prepared to eat anything, this was something he had never thought of. It was as though a new world had suddenly opened before him.

‘I’ll bet you,’ I repeated savagely, ‘that you won’t eat your ferret.’

Astonished and upset, shocked by some mysterious but invincible feeling, the old captain had got up from the bench where he had been sitting. He was seized by an extraordinary agitation.

‘D’you mind repeating that?’ he stammered.

For a third time, emphatically and pronouncing each word distinctly, I said: ‘I bet you will not eat your ferret.’

‘Not eat my ferret? What are you talking about? Are you saying that I won’t eat it? Is that what you mean? Well, you’re just going to see … I eat anything.’

He picked up the ferret, and, like breaking a roll of bread, he crushed the little creature’s ribs, killing it before it could make the slightest movement. Then he threw it down on the path and shouted at Rose: ‘There you are, you can make a stew of it for me this evening!’ And he hurried away, gesticulating wildly, to shut himself up in the house.

For some minutes I stood there filled with unspeakable horror, utterly overcome by the revolting act I had just committed. I got up to go. I was very pale. Rose went with me and said, smiling:

‘I don’t mind at all what’s just happened. He was getting too fond of that ferret, and I don’t like him getting fond of things. Indeed, he thinks a great deal too much about his flowers already.’

After a short silence she added: ‘But you know, he’ll never forgive you for this. He’s not the kind of man who likes to be challenged. An old soldier like him!’

Then, a few steps further on: ‘You want to look out, my girl … they’re already beginning to talk about you. It seems that somebody saw you the other day in the garden with Monsieur Lanlaire. It’s very unwise of you, I assure you. He’ll be sure to get you in the family way, if it hasn’t happened already. So take care. With that man, remember … one go, and hoopla, you’ve got a baby.’

Then, as she was shutting the gate behind me, she said: ‘Oh well, so long! I suppose I had better go and make that stew for him …’

All the rest of that day I kept seeing the body of that poor little ferret lying in the dust on the path.

That evening at dinner, as I was serving the dessert, Madame said to me very severely:

‘If you’re fond of plums, you’ve only got to ask me and I’ll see whether you can have some. But I won’t have you helping yourself.’

I replied: ‘I am not a thief, Madame, and I do not like plums.’

Madame insisted: ‘I tell you, you’ve been taking them.’

I said: ‘If you really believe I’m a thief, you have only to give me notice.’

She snatched the plate of plums out of my hands.

‘The master had five this morning, and last night there were thirty-two. There are only twenty-five left, and that means you must have taken two of them. Just see that this doesn’t happen again!’

It was true, I had eaten two. She must actually have counted them. No, really … in all my life …

My mother is dead. I heard this morning in a letter from home. Though all I ever got from her was blows the news upset me, and I cried and cried … Seeing me in tears the mistress said: ‘Come, come, what’s all this about?’

And when I told her my mother had died, she went on, in her usual tone of voice:

‘I’m sorry to hear it … but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it. Still, you mustn’t let it interfere with your work …’

That was all … yes, really! She’s not exactly overflowing with kindness …

What upsets me most of all is that I cannot help feeling there is some connection between my mother’s death and the killing of the little ferret … that it is some kind of punishment from heaven. I keep thinking that if I hadn’t made the captain kill poor Kléber, perhaps my mother would still be alive. In vain I tell myself that my mother must have been dead before the business with the ferret… It’s no use, and the idea has haunted me all day.