The Thibaults (96 page)

Jacques remained silent. A flood of painful memories had come back to him: that evening at Maisons-Laffitte, when he had discovered both the love of Gise and the unconquerable physical attraction she awoke in him—that brief, shrinking kiss, snatched in the dark under the lime-trees, the girl’s romantic gesture as she strewed rose-petals over the spot where that shy token of love had passed between them.

Antoine, too, was silent. He would have liked to say something, but he felt tongue-tied and self-conscious. He did, however, attempt by a pressure of his arm to convey to Jacques some such message as: “Yes, I’ve been a damned fool—and how glad it makes me!” His brother reciprocated the pressure. And they understood each other better, that way, than by the spoken word.

They walked on, arm in arm, under the rain. The over-affectionate, unduly prolonged contact was making both of them uncomfortable, but neither dared to be the first to break away. Then, as they came under cover of a wall that screened them from the wind, Antoine put up his umbrella again; thus it seemed as though they had drawn together for the shelter it afforded.

They reached the boarding-house without having spoken another word. But just outside the door, Antoine stopped short, unlinked his arm, and observed in a natural voice:

“Jacques, you surely have lots of things to attend to here. I’d better leave you, hadn’t I? I’ll take a stroll round the town.”

“In this sort of weather?” Jacques asked. He was smiling, but Antoine had caught a fleeting hesitation. As a matter of fact, both dreaded spending the long afternoon together. “No,” he added, “I’ve two or three letters to write, a twenty minutes’ job, and perhaps a business call to pay before five. That’s all.” The prospect seemed to cast a gloom upon his features. With an effort he drew himself up. “Till then I’m quite free. Let’s go upstairs.”

While they were away, the room had been tidied up. There was a roaring fire in the stove. They helped each other off with their overcoats, hung them up to dry before the fire.

One of the windows had remained open. Antoine stepped over to it. Among the multitude of roofs sloping down to the lake a pinnacled tower rose high aloft, its tall spire coated with verdigris and gleaming under the rain. He pointed to it.

“That’s Saint Francis’s Church,” Jacques said. “Can you make out the time?”

On one side of the steeple glowed a red-and-gold clock-face.

“A quarter past two.”

“Lucky fellow! My eyesight’s grown very bad. And I simply can’t get used to wearing glasses, on account of my headaches.”

“Your headaches!” Antoine exclaimed, closing the window. He turned round abruptly. His look of professional interrogation made Jacques smile.

“Why, yes, doctor. I had a spell of fearful headaches and I haven’t quite got over them.”

“What kind of headaches?”

“A throbbing there.”

“Is it always on the left side?”

“No.”

“Any dizziness? Any trouble with your eyes?”

“It’s nothing, really.” Jacques was beginning to be embarrassed by his brother’s questions. “I’m much better, now.”

“Better, be damned!” Antoine was not to be put off so easily. “Look here, I’ll have to give you a thorough going-over… . Your digestion, for one thing, how’s it working?”

Though he had obviously no intention of starting the going-over at once, he unconsciously came a step nearer Jacques, who could not help drawing back slightly. He was no longer used to having people fuss over him. The slightest attention seemed an encroachment on his independence. Almost at once, however, he began to remonstrate with himself. Indeed, his brother’s concern had left behind it a comforting sensation, as though a gentle warmth had been breathed upon some secret fibre of his being that had long lain atrophied, inert.

“You never used to have any trouble of that kind in the old days,” Antoine remarked. “How did it start?”

Jacques, who was sorry to have shrunk back as he had, did his best to answer, to explain things more clearly. But dare he tell the truth?

“It came on after some kind of illness; quite a sudden attack, it was—perhaps it was the flu, or it may have been a touch of malaria. … I was in the hospital about four weeks.”

“In the hospital? Where?”

“At … Gabès.”

“At Gabès? That’s in Tunisia, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I was delirious, it appears. For months afterwards I had frightful pains in my head.”

Antoine made no reply, but he was obviously saying to himself: “What an idea, when one has a comfortable home of one’s own in Paris, and is the brother of a doctor, to run the risk of dying like a dog in an African hospital!”

“What saved me,” Jacques went on, hoping to turn the conversation into a different channel, “was fear. The fear of dying in that furnace-heat. I thought of Italy the way a shipwrecked sailor, on his raft, must think of land, of wells and running streams. … I had only one idea in my head: dead or alive to get on board the steamer, to escape to Naples.”

Naples… . Antoine’s thoughts reverted to Lunadoro, to Sybil, to Giuseppe’s boating-trips in the Bay.

“Why Naples?” he ventured to ask.

Jacques flushed. He seemed to be struggling to say something by way of explanation; then his steel-blue eyes grew hard.

Antoine hastened to break the silence.

“What you needed, to my mind, was just rest, but in some bracing climate.”

“To Naples, first,” Jacques repeated. Obviously he had not been listening. “I had a letter of introduction to a man in the Consulate. You see, it’s easier to get a postponement of one’s military service when one is abroad.” He straightened his shoulders. “And, besides, I’d rather have been reported as a deserter than go back to France to be cooped up in their barracks!”

Antoine gave no sign of disapproval. He changed the subject.

“But had you—had you the money for your fares?”

“What a question! That’s you all over!”

He started walking up and down the room with his hands in his pockets.

“I was never very long without money, just enough to get along on, I mean. At first, of course, out there, I had to turn my hand to anything that cropped up.”

He flushed again, and looked away. “Oh, that was for only a few days. You manage pretty soon, you know.”

“But what on earth did you do?”

“Well, for instance, I used to give French lessons in an industrial training school. Then proofreading, at night, for the
Courrier Tunisien
and the
Paris-Tunis
. It often came in handy, my being able to write Italian as fluently as French. Fairly soon they began to publish articles of mine. Then I was given the press summary to do for a weekly, and the news items, all the odd jobs, in fact. And after that, as soon as I was able to manage it, I got a reporter’s job.” His eyes sparkled. “That was something like a job, and if only my health had held up, I’d still be at it. What a life! I remember, one day, at Viterbo … Look here, please sit down. No, personally I’d rather go on walking. I was sent to Viterbo, as no one else dared to go there, for that fantastic Camorra case—you remember that, I suppose? In March 1911, it was. What an experience! I put up with some Neapolitans. A regular den of thieves, I must say. During the night of the thirteenth they all decamped. When the police turned up, I was sound asleep, alone in the house. I had to …”

He broke off in the middle of the sentence, in spite of Antoine’s sustained attention—on account of it, perhaps. How could mere words convey even a faint idea of the breathless life he had led for months on end? Though his brother’s questioning eyes urged him to go on, he dropped the thread of his reminiscences.

“How far away it all seems! Oh, let it go! Let’s talk of something else… .”

He was conscious that these evocations of the past were laying their spell on him and, to break it, he forced himself to go on speaking He continued in a calm, detached voice:

“What were you asking me about? Ah, yes, those pains in my head. Well, you see, Italy in the spring never agreed with me. As soon as I was able, the moment I was free …” He stopped, frowning; once again, it seemed, he had come up against distressing memories. “As soon as I was able to get away from it all,” he went on, with a violent swing of his arm, “I travelled north.”

He had come to a stop, looking down at the stove, with his hands in his pockets.

“To Northern Italy?” his brother asked.

“No!” Jacques exclaimed. A tremor ran through his body. “Vienna, Budapest; then Saxony, Dresden. And after that, Munich.”

His face suddenly became overcast; this time he darted a sharp glance at his brother and seemed to be really on the verge of speaking out; his lips moved slightly. But after a few seconds he made a wry face and, clenching his teeth so tightly that the last words were almost inaudible, muttered merely:

“Ah, Munich! Munich, too, is a dreadful place, simply appalling.”

Antoine cut him short hastily.

“Anyhow, you should … Until we’ve ascertained the cause … Headache isn’t a disease, of course, but only a symptom.”

But Jacques was not listening and Antoine fell silent. Several times before, the same thing had happened; one could have sworn that Jacques suddenly felt the need to unbosom himself of some rankling secret, and then, all of a sudden, it seemed as if the words stuck in his throat, and he stopped short. And each time Antoine, inhibited by some absurd apprehension, instead of helping his brother over the jump, shied off the topic, turning away stupidly on a sidetrack.

He was wondering how he could best bring back Jacques into the main track, when a patter of light footsteps sounded on the staircase. There was a knock. The door half opened almost immediately, and Antoine had a glimpse of an untidy mop of hair and a boyish face.

“Oh, I beg your pardon! Am I in the way?”

“Come in,” Jacques said, walking across the room.

On a better view, the caller proved to be not a boy, but an undersized clean-shaven man of no definite age, with a creamy-white complexion and tousled, tow-coloured hair. He hung back for a moment in the doorway, and seemed to dart a timorous glance towards Antoine, but the pale lashes fringing his eyes were so thick that the movements of the pupils were hidden.

“Come over to the stove,” Jacques said, and helped the visitor off with his dripping overcoat.

Again he seemed set upon not introducing his brother. Still, he wore an entirely unconstrained smile, and appeared to be by no means put out by Antoine’s presence.

“I came to tell you that Mithoerg has arrived. He is bringing a letter,” the new-comer explained. He had a jerky, sibilant voice, but spoke now in a low, almost apprehensive tone.

“A letter?”

“From Vladimir Kniabrovski.”

“From Kniabrovski!” Jacques exclaimed, his features lighting up.

“Sit down, you look tired. Will you have a glass of beer? Or a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you, nothing at all. Mithoerg arrived during the night. He has come from over there. … So what am I to do? What do you advise me to do? Shall I have a try?”

Jacques thought it over for some little time before answering.

“Yes. It’s the only way of finding out now.”

The other man grew excited.

“Great! I thought as much. Ignace advised me not to, and so did Chenavon. But you know better. Good work!”

He stood facing Jacques, his little face radiant with trustfulness.

“Only—watch out!” Jacques put in severely, lifting an admonitory finger.

The albino nodded assent.

“By kindness, that’s the way,” he declared solemnly. And iron determination was discernible in that frail body.

Jacques was observing him intently.

“You haven’t been ill, have you, Vanheede?”

“No, no. Just a bit run down. I feel so uncomfortable, you know, in that big shanty of theirs!” he added with a wry smile.

“Is Prezel still here?”

“Yes.”

“And Quilleuf? Tell Quilleuf from me that he talks too much. Just that, eh? He’ll understand.”

“Oh, Quilleuf! I told him straight: ‘You behave, the lot of you, just as if you were the scum of the earth.’ He tore up Rosengaard’s proclamation without so much as reading it! Everything’s putrid in that group. Yes, everything’s putrid,” he repeated in a hollow, indignant voice, while at the same time an indulgent, angelic smile lit up the girlish lips.

In a high-pitched sibilant tone he went on: “Saffrio! Tursey! Paterson! Every one of them. And even Suzanne! They stink of rottenness!”

Jacques shook his head.

“Josepha, perhaps, but not Suzanne. Josepha, mind you, is a despicable creature. She’ll set you all by the ears.”

Vanheede had been watching him silently, sliding his doll-like hands over his diminutive knees, bringing into view fantastically pale and fragile wrists.

“I know. But what is to be done about it? We can hardly consign her to the gutter at this time of day. Would you do that, tell me, now? Is that a reason? She’s a human being, when all’s said and done, and one who isn’t bad through and through. And she has put herself under our protection, after all. Something can be done, surely. By kindness, perhaps, by kindness. How many such creatures haven’t I met in the course of my life!” he added with a sigh. “There’s rottenness everywhere.”

Again he sighed, shot a veiled glance at Antoine, then, going up to Jacques, he burst out excitedly:

“That letter of Vladimir Kniabrovski’s is a damn fine letter, let me tell you!”

“Tell me,” Jacques inquired, “what exactly are his plans for the present?”

“He’s looking after his health. He has gone back to his wife, to his mother, to his kids. Getting in trim for a new lease of life.”

Vanheede was pacing up and down in front of the stove; now and then he locked his hands in a sudden access of excitement. As though talking to himself, he added with a rapt expression:

“One of the pure in heart, that’s what old Kniabrovski is!”

“Yes, indeed—one of the pure in heart,” Jacques echoed immediately, in the same tone of voice, adding after a pause: “When does he expect to bring out his book?”

“He doesn’t say.”

“Ruskinoff tells me it’s a simply amazing work.”