The Widow (10 page)

Or, at those moments when the heart opens:

“‘
My darling idiot
.”'

She would give him almost motherly advice.

“‘
It's crazy for you to get mixed up with a woman like me…. What difference can it make to you if Victor comes to see me now and then, if he pays the rent and my dressmaker's bills?
”'

That was enough to make him wild. He'd write to his father, to his sister. He'd invent every possible excuse to get them to send him money.

“‘
You're spending too much…. Why did you order champagne again?
”'

Because people were looking at them, that was all! And she, why did she always contrive to get her bills presented in his presence?

All that was far away and confused. He could barely recall the gardens of the Luxembourg, the benches on which he used to wait for her for hours at a time, an unopened textbook on his knee. Then the evenings when neither of them knew what to do! The games of backgammon in a corner of the Mandarin, downstairs, where others were playing poker.

Tati realized that all this had gone on in a world unknown to her, but she made an effort to understand.

“So it was money you killed for, then?”

“I owed three months' rent, besides a squirrel coat I'd given her for a present and hadn't paid for. I was afraid she'd take her engineer back. I knew she was writing to him on the sly. I wonder now whether she wasn't seeing him now and again. She lied as she breathed. She'd say to me:

“‘
You'd much better work for your exams. If I were your father
… '

“I begged my father to send me money. He spent hand over fist on his own mistresses. I was entitled to my mother's share of the estate, but he had sworn he would disown me if I claimed it.

“One evening, when I had just sold my watch, I saw some people, in the basement of the Mandarin, sitting down to a big game of poker.

“Actually, it wasn't my watch I'd sold, but a gold stopwatch I'd stolen from my father the last time I'd been to see him. I'd got three thousand francs for it. It was worth three times as much.

“Three thousand francs wasn't enough for me….

“One of the poker players was a big man, fresh from his province, a contractor in Le Mans. He was losing. He was furious. My friends who were playing with him kept winking at me…. ”

Tati gave a sigh like someone at a movie who feels the approach of the climax.

“I was with Zézette. She was wearing her squirrel coat. She said:

“‘
I'll bet your friends are cheating. They're going to skin him, and it'll serve him right. The man's sure to have a wife and children
…. '

“She had a strong respect for family….

“‘
Don't play, Jean. What good will it do you? You're drinking too much and you'll be ill again. A fine thing for me, having to spend the night taking care of you, like last Tuesday
.”'

“You lost?” asked Tati, fiddling with her empty glass.

Unconsciously, her tone had become more formal.

“First he won my three thousand francs. I kept on ordering drinks. I insisted on playing on word of honor. I signed I.O.U.s. I lost ten thousand francs in less than an hour, and the man crowed with a fat laugh:

“‘
I've got my shirt back! I've got my shirt back … and Papa Passerat-Monnoyeur will do the paying! … He can afford it. I've drunk enough of his liquor for that!
'

“When the game broke up, Zézette had left. Outside, it was drizzling. It might have been two o'clock in the morning, and the last cafés were closing.

“The man went out. I followed him at a distance. I had nothing special in mind. He crossed the Ile de la Cité and walked along the embankment. Then he crossed a bridge, at the tip of the Ile Saint-Louis, and I hurried up to him.

“‘
Listen
,' I said, ‘
even if you won't give me back my three thousand francs, you've got to let me have at least the I.O.U.s I gave you
.'

“He began to laugh. I must have looked pale and tense, for his laughter grew less natural and I realized from his glance that he was afraid, that he was looking around for help….

“At that time, like a great many students, I used to carry brass knuckles in my pocket, for fun….

“The man was still laughing when I hit him, right in the face, and he went down in a heap.”

“He was dead?” asked Tati, her bosom heaving.

Jean shrugged. “I took his wallet. I put it in my pocket. I got out fast…. Then …”

“He wasn't dead? …”

So he shouted, “No! Damn it, no! He was not dead! Or rather … how could I know? … I was already a hundred, two hundred yards away. Suddenly, I thought he'd be coming to, that a policeman on his beat would find him, and that he would report me. I retraced my steps. Only then did I feel any fear. I bent over him. He groaned….

“As quickly as I could, I lifted him up, God knows how, he was so heavy, and hoisted him over the parapet….

“There was fourteen thousand francs in the wallet and a snapshot of two children, twins, cheek to cheek….

“Did they catch you right away?”

He lowered his head.

“Four months after. The body wasn't found until five weeks later, at a dam. The investigation took place without my name being mentioned.”

“What about Zézette?”

“I'm sure she suspected the truth. I spent the fourteen thousand francs on her. One morning, the concierge came to me full of mystery to announce that the police had been to inquire about me….

“I disappeared. I slept at a friend's. The uncle he lived with could not be allowed to know I was in the house. I dared not go out anymore. During the day, I remained hidden under the bed. My friend would bring me leftovers, hard-boiled eggs, slices of cold meat….

“I wrote to my father asking for money to get abroad. He replied in one short phrase: ‘Go to hell!'

“And so, one morning when I found I was beginning to cough, I went to the quai des Orfevres to give myself up. They didn't know who I was and left me in the waiting room for two hours.

“I was given a court-appointed counsel. He advised me to say that the man had tumbled over the parapet as I hit him, and that's what I said.

“Nobody believed it, but they gave me the benefit of the doubt and I only got five years…. ”

Tati's voice asked, “It didn't do anything to you?”

“What?”

“Killing him.”

“I don't know anymore…. I don't think so…. ” he said, looking out of the window.

The truth, the real truth, was that it wasn't his contractor he was thinking of as his brow clouded, but of his ruined day, of Félicie's spitting at him, of something that had existed and that he could not recapture.

“Don't drink any more…. ” murmured Tati, taking the bottle away from him.

He ran his hand over his face and sighed. “I'm sleepy.”

“Go and lie down.”

“Yes … I think…. ”

He climbed the stairs heavily, slumped down on his paillasse with its smell of musty hay. Cool air was coming in through the open skylight over his head, and with it the cackling of the chickens and the scraping of a rake someone was wielding somewhere—Couderc at the bottom of the garden, or the road mender on the towpath.

“
E
VERY
person condemned to death shall be decapitated
.”

He jumped up, as though, just when he thought himself alone, someone had laid a rough hand on his shoulder. The words had formed in his head, the syllables had written themselves in space, and he finished mechanically: “Article 12 of the Penal Code!”

It had been a mistake to sleep in the afternoon. Then, when he had gone downstairs again, Tati had looked at him overintently, as if there were some change in him. That look pursued him, in the darkness of the loft, under the moon-blue skylight.

“
Men condemned to forced labor shall be set to the hardest possible work; they shall wear an iron ball at their ankles and shall be joined in pairs by a chain
…. ”

This time, it seemed to him that it was a cheerful voice that finished with: “Article 15 of the Penal Code.”

The voice of his counsel, Maître Fagonet, who was twenty-eight and looked younger than Jean. He used to come into the cell, air puffing the folds of his black gown, a faint aroma of apéritif on his lips, on which still lingered traces of the smile he had given to his girlfriend as he left her in the car a hundred yards from the prison.

“Well, old boy? What story are we going to tell dear Oscar today?”

The name of the examining magistrate was Oscar Darrieulat. Maître Fagonet found it more fun to call him Oscar.

“Have you brushed up on your Article 305?”

The recollection was so clear, the presence of Fagonet so real, that Jean had to sit up in his bed, his eyes wide open to the darkness, his chest heaving as it had when, as a child, he would throw himself out of the bedclothes, in the grip of a nightmare.

The extraordinary thing was that it was years since any of this had come back to him. More so: at the time when these events were unfolding in reality, he had taken scarcely any heed of them.

It had been too complicated. They harried him with questions. His counsel kept repeating articles of the Code incessantly.

“‘
Murder shall entail the death penalty when it precedes, accompanies or follows another crime
…. ' Do you understand, young man, why you must not at any price admit the story of the wallet?”

It was not tragic, not at the time. Even his warder would toss him each morning a cheerful, “Slept well?”

And the examining magistrate, the famous Oscar, was courteous, with an air of not wishing to press certain details.

“Sit down…. So you say that he struck you first, not hard enough, however, to leave any mark. For my own part, I'm willing to accept this. Only, it's the others who've got to be convinced, isn't it?”

His wife would telephone him during the interview. He would answer:

“Yes, darling. Yes, darling. All right. I won't forget. Yes, seven pounds …”

Seven pounds of what?

“
Every person condemned to death shall be decapitated
.”

He turned heavily on his bed, his nerves taut.

“Article 321, old man. But for Article 321 we'd be done. That's what I'm going to plead…. But if you can't help me…. ”

“
Murder, as also wounds and blows, is justifiable if provoked by blows or violent assault against the person
.”

Maître Fagonet ran a little comb through his thick and glossy hair.

“You have joined him on the bridge without any evil intentions. All you want to do is ask him to give you back part of the money he's won off you. You tell him about Zézette. He laughs in your face. You make a move and he thinks you mean to strike him. He strikes first. You lose your head, and in the struggle you push him over the parapet.”

In a different tone of voice, Maître Fagonet pronounced, “They won't believe us.”

“What then?”

“We shall get the benefit of the doubt.”

Sometimes he would tell the prisoner the story of the play he had seen the night before at the theater.

The trial itself had unfolded like a play. People looked at him curiously. He'd catch himself looking at them while his thoughts were elsewhere.

“Gentlemen, the Court!”

And now, suddenly, years later, lying on his paillasse with its smell of musty hay, here he was realizing at last that it was serious, that it was grave, that his head had really been at stake.

“
Every person condemned to death shall
…”

He would have liked to get up, to go downstairs near Tati, not to be alone. He was afraid. He was drenched with sweat and he had the impression that something, his heart no doubt, was not functioning properly in his chest.

“You see before you, gentlemen of the jury, a youth, the victim of …”

Of what? Of none of the things Maître Fagonet had said! And already, while the lawyer spoke and flapped his black wings, Jean wanted to shake his head.

“One … two … three … four … five …”

The drops of water dripped from the white cheese. He would have liked to cry out, because his brain kept on working, because images kept going through his head, too sharp, super-imposed one upon another, accompanied by voices and sensations like that of the sunbeam which, in the courtroom, reached his left hand, just his left hand and no more, in a little quivering disk.

None of it was true, any more than the story he had told Tati. The truth—the truth which he alone knew—was that it had all begun when he was fourteen and that the real culprit, really, was his English teacher.

Jean had forgotten his name. It was odd, forgetting that, when the other details were so vivid. A man carved in wood, with a pale face, big dark eyes, and a black mustache, who wore a jacket that was too long for him and looked more like a frock coat.

“Monsieur Passerat-Monnoyeur …”

Pronouncing Jean's name, he assumed a different voice and the pupils would all feel a cold chill down the spine. The window was open onto the school garden. A woman was beating her carpets at a second-floor window.

“I imagine that it would be pointless for me to ask you a question, eh? … The son of Monsieur Passerat-Monnoyeur is wealthy enough to have no need to earn his living and he is not required to be intelligent…. ”

Sharp little teeth appeared for a moment beneath the mustache. The master was satisfied. He collected a few smiles from the class.

“You may sit down, Monsieur Passerat-Monnoyeur. I regret that the rules do not allow me to send you out for a walk during my period. Nevertheless, I regard you as not being present.”

And, when he collected their compositions, he'd keep Jean's separate, walk slowly up to the fire and throw it in with affectation, making as if to warm his hands.