The Widow (13 page)

Tati herself had remained apparently stupefied for an instant. When she passed her hand across the top of her head, it came away red with blood and she felt her legs give under her.

She felt no pain, but the blood was flowing. It ran down her forehead, reached her eyelids, her nose, zigzagged round the corners of her lips before reaching her chin.

“Sit down,” Françoise managed to utter. “Wait! Félicie! … Félicie! … Run and get someone … do something…. Now you, you can be proud. Well! Are you going to stay stuck there like the idiot that you are? … Perhaps we ought to cut off her hair? … Tati! … Tati! …”

Tati had fainted. She was swaying. They caught her just as she was about to fall to the ground and they laid her out on the stone floor.

“Félicie! … Where are you?”

Félicie, leaving her baby forgotten on the grass, was running along the canal.

“Hand me the vinegar, you fool! … No, not that! That's the oil. Let's hope…. You're not going to pass out, are you?”

Indeed, Eugène felt himself growing weak. He had to sit down on a chair, and there he remained, plunged in his thoughts, not daring to look at his sister-in-law.

When Jean entered, the kitchen smelled of vinegar; there was a pool of blood on the floor and blood was spurting through Tati's graying hair. She half opened her eyes, gave a long sigh, called, as though she knew he was there, “Jean! … Don't let them cut off my hair.”

She was barely recognizable. She seemed fatter, and for a moment he thought her head had swelled. It was the red of the blood which distorted it so.

“Water,” he ordered.

He was obeyed. Félicie brought towels from the next room.

If the gendarmes had appeared at that moment, Eugène would have been quite ready to breathe, “I give myself up.”

Françoise was just beginning to cry. Félicie wanted to be sick. The lock-keeper, intrigued, observed the house from a distance, hesitating to walk so far on his wooden leg.

“I can't see where it is,” murmured Jean.

And Tati: “Careful! You're hurting me. Don't you realize you're tearing my skin!”

Her hair was matted. He was trying to catch sight of the wound, but could not manage to.

“We must cut it off,” repeated Françoise, not knowing perhaps what she was saying.

Tati could not be so bad as all that, for she answered in her most cantankerous voice, “I'll cut
yours
off for you! Just you wait…. ”

And Jean announced: “It's nothing. A gash an inch long. It's bleeding a lot, but I don't think it's deep.”

“Help me get up, Jean!”

“There's no hurry,” Françoise intervened. “Take your time till you feel better. We'll give you a little drop…. Go and fetch something, Félicie.”

“You won't catch me drinking anything in your house again!”

Things had already ceased to be tragic. Eugène was gaining his courage and, as his daughter had set a bottle on the table, he helped himself to a big glass.

Tati insisted on getting up. “Steady me, Jean…. ”

And Françoise: “It's really your fault! If you hadn't pulled me by the hair, like a … like a …”

She hesitated to use strong language to a woman who had just fainted.

“Like a what?”

“Nothing. It's all right…. Eugène didn't do it on purpose. As for Father, he has the right to—”

“Hold me, Jean. I think I'm going to fall. There's a pounding in my head.”

“Come along.”

Without Couderc? She still hesitated, turning toward him. However, she felt really ill. She was afraid of fainting again.

“I'm going now, but let them just wait…. ”

Outside, he saw tears start from her eyes, tears of vexation and rage.

“Is there still blood on my face?”

“Hardly any.”

“People will wonder.”

She walked faster, turning her head away when she passed near one of the anglers.

The two cows had finally crossed the bridge and were standing stupidly in front of the house, as if hesitant to enter the kitchen, the door of which was open.

At the far end of the path Jean saw his sister's car still parked. Billie was at the wheel. Evidently she wanted to find out what had happened.

They had scarcely got into the kitchen when she started the engine, let in the clutch, and maneuvered noisily back and forth several times in order to turn around in the narrow track.

“Has somebody been here?” asked Tati mechanically.

Billie's perfume still hung about the room.

“Help me to get to bed. There's a great pounding in my head. You really think there's nothing broken?”

“We can call the doctor.”

“And what would the doctor do? Give me a shove. I feel like I'll never get to the top of the stairs. I'd never have thought a fool like Eugène could have…. ”

There was a stale smell in the bedroom.

“Unhook my dress. Hurry up!”

He undressed her as one skins a rabbit. The black silk clung to her plump flesh. She had begun to cry softly.

“You're kind, Jean. Wait! I can get to bed on my own. Who was it that came?”

“My sister.”

“What did she want?”

And then, suddenly sitting up on the bed: “You're not going to leave, are you? She didn't come to get you?”

“Lie still. Wait, now…. Are there any disinfectants in the house?”

“There must be some iodine in the cupboard…. ”

It was the first time he had looked after anyone. He was astonished to feel so nimble, with an eye for everything, and gestures quick and sure.

“Where are you going?”

“For some boiled water.”

“Promise you're not going to leave.”

“Of course I'm not.”

“Promise!”

“I promise…. Hold this towel over your head so as not to mess the pillow…. ”

He could have wished his sister back again, so that she could see him moving about as though he were at home, poking up the fire, drawing water at the well, boiling it, opening a cup-board full of old dresses which smelled of mothballs, and searching for a little brown bottle.

From her bed, Tati listened for every noise, and the only thing she feared was a sudden silence.

“Get in, cows! Not that way, you dummies. We'll take care of you soon.”

Would he be able to milk them? He had watched the old man do it, but had never tried.

When he returned to the bedroom, Tati enveloped him with a grateful, admiring look.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing. You're funny like this. Anyone would say you'd been nursing all your life.”

He had taken down a blue apron from behind the kitchen door.

“Now, try to keep still. I think I'm going to hurt you a bit, but it's got to be done.”

“There's not much of it left, is there?”

“Of what?”

“My hair. It doesn't make you squeamish? Your shirt's covered with blood.”

“If you don't keep still, I—”

“All right! But you're pulling at the skin.”

He made her a bandage shaped like a turban which transformed her.

“I feel as weak as if—What are you going to eat, Jean?”

“The potatoes are cooking.”

“Just get yourself a slice of ham. A little later, I'll be able to get up. Pull the blind down, will you? The light hurts my eyes.”

She snatched a furtive kiss on the back of his hand. He went downstairs, took a plate from the cupboard.

And, after he had eaten, he went and stood in the doorway, a cigarette between his lips, his hands in his pockets.

The Sunday strollers were beginning to invade the towpath where the shade from the trees looked purple.

“Perhaps I ought to take her up a cup of coffee?” he thought.

He had forgotten his terrors of the night. He was happy.

A
WARM
, soft rain fell from early morning till nightfall, and such calm, such silence, prevailed beneath the padded quilt of the sky that you felt you could hear the grass growing.

Noises, whether close or far off, did not, as in the sunshine, blend into a symphony, they soared, one by one, set in silence, with the quality of a solo or a personal message—be it the crowing of a cock, the clang of the crank handle dropped by the lock keeper after he had used it, or the thin blast of a barge's trumpet.

Jean had woken earlier than usual and he might, upon discovering the gloom through his skylight, have mistaken it for a shred of night. A cow lowing in the shed reminded him that Couderc was no longer there and that it was he who would, once again, torture the poor beasts.

But suddenly the silence was rent by a shrill, unexpected cry, coming from inside the house.

“Jean!”

The cry was agonized, dramatic. It called to mind one of those streetcar accidents by which a street, all light and gaiety a second before, is transformed into a hospital waiting room, or one of those haggard creatures rushing madly out of a house yelling, their eyes wide, “Fire! … There! … There! …”

Jean was almost frightened. Frightened of nothing specific. Frightened of tragedy. He started downstairs. Tati's door opened abruptly.

“Jean! Look!”

He could not see at once, because the light came from behind her.

“I'm going to die, Jean.”

He had an unpleasant shock when he finally made out Tati's face, disfigured, her eyes nearly closed by swellings, her lips awry. Her head seemed to be twice its normal size, and, as she looked at herself in the glass, she stammered, “I'm getting water on the brain. I knew someone like that, with blood turning to water, but in the legs. What do you think, Jean? Am I going to die?”

And the curious thing about it was this: no sooner had he left the bedroom than he felt neither sad nor anguished. He had remembered to open the henhouse door as he went by. He had thrown a handful of grain to the poultry and felt a twinge of regret, as he crossed the kitchen, that there was no cold coffee left over from the night before.

Bareheaded, he walked along the canal, whose waters were as thick and smooth as black velvet. The people in the little house in the brickyard were up. Doubtless they were at the table, drinking their breakfast coffee? Only Françoise came and stood framed in the doorway, unkempt and unwashed, to watch him go by.

He grunted a good morning as he passed close to the wooden-legged lock-keeper, but he got no reply.

He stepped along as lightly as if he were out for a stroll. He overtook two children on their way to school. As he entered the grocery, which also sold tobacco and had a telephone booth, the doorbell tinkled. A little old woman in slippers entered noiselessly by another door and he was astonished at seeing her there in front of him, in the shadows, on the other side of the counter.

She did not ask him anything. Perhaps she was afraid of him?

“May I use the phone?”

He smiled at the thought that she knew him to be a murderer. He went into the booth.

“Hello! Is that Dr. Fisol's house? Dr. Fisol? I should like— Yes. At Madame Couderc's. The widow Couderc, at the Gué de Saulnois. Hello! You know where it is? Yes, I think it's pretty urgent.”

He took the occasion to buy some cigarettes, and as he came out again he met the children on their way to school whom he had overtaken on the towpath.

Going back, he counted on seeing Félicie, but there was only old Couderc seated in a chair, on the left side of the door, a cap on his head, heedless of the drizzle. His attitude recalled that of a dog whose owner has chained it up near the door and comes for an occasional glance to make sure it has not got loose.

“He's going to come, Jean? You explained what it was for? You must go down and milk the cows. The poor creatures haven't stopped lowing.”

“Of course. Don't be afraid.”

“Listen from time to time in case I call. It would mean I was getting worse.”

He started by lighting the fire to make himself some coffee and he thought he understood the state of mind of those hundreds of thousands of women who get up early, while the household is still asleep, who move about in their kitchens, rake out the stove, and, to make the coal light quicker, pour some kerosene on it.

He did that too, and a not unpleasant smell pervaded the room while blue flames leaped up. He worked the coffee grinder, and his mind was almost as empty and untroubled as his surroundings.

Upstairs, Tati turned over in bed from time to time. He took her up a glass of sweetened coffee.

“D'you think it's all right for me to drink it? Look at me. Do you think I'm still swelling? Hurry up and milk the cows, Jean.”

He sat down on the old man's three-legged stool. The cow's tail made his task more difficult, and he wanted to tie it up; but he could not find a rope. The dung was warm beneath his feet. The animals turned their heads around to gaze at him in surprise.

What was he to do with them now that they were relieved? They must be hungry.

“Jean! Jean! Come up a minute.”

He knew she was listening to every sound, following all his movements by ear.

“You'll find some stakes in the shed, near the old gig. There are some chains there, too. I don't know where the mallet is, but it can't be far away. Open the gate for the cows. They'll find their own way to the meadow the other side of the bridge. Tether each of them to a stake, and leave them plenty of chain.”

Things were already becoming more difficult and he was worried. Would these big creatures with the staring eyes obey him? He followed them. He had found a stick in the kitchen. He looked in the direction of the pink-tiled house where the old man still sat near the door, and hoped that Couderc would instinctively come to his aid.

He felt clumsy. The grass was wet and he hadn't worn his sabots.

“Come here, cow. Don't be afraid. Why do you look at me the way the shopwoman did this morning?”