The Widow (16 page)

There was indeed a car. Jean did not recognize it, and was worried. As he entered the kitchen, he bumped into a man who was just finishing drying his hands, and he recognized him. It was the doctor from St. Amand.

“I didn't know you would be coming this morning,” Jean said by way of excuse.

“It isn't you I come for.”

“How's Tati?”

“Bad.”

He must be like this with all his patients. He took real pleasure in saying unpleasant things and, doing so, his eyes gleamed behind his gold-rimmed spectacles.

“Is she really bad?”

“Yes, she's really bad. By the way …”

He was tidying up his bag.

“I must ask you if you intend to stay here.”

“But … why?”

Was not the question very like the one Félicie had put to him, only more contemptuous?

“It's none of my business. Though, in a sense, it is my business. Madame Couderc will have to stay in bed for weeks and she will need care. I understand that, apart from yourself, there's no one in the house and that she's not on the best of terms with her family. If you were to leave one fine day, I would have to make arrangements, have her moved to the hospital. You'd better answer me frankly. Are you prepared to look after her as long as may be necessary?”

“Naturally.”

“It's not very pleasant.”

“I don't mind.”

“Very well.”

He sat down at a corner of the table to write out a prescription.

“Is she in danger?”

“She might not pull through. I'll call again in two or three days' time.”

The doctor got into his car without saying good-bye. Jean, for his part, ran upstairs, halted for an instant on the landing in order to banish any trace of emotion.

“Come in!” called Tati. “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. He's not a talkative man.”

“I'm in for a long spell, eh?”

“Why, no. In a few days' time you'll be up and around.”

“Why are you lying? You see, you can tell lies!”

“I swear—”

“Don't swear, Jean, else I won't believe you any more. To begin with, he let me know I would be here for weeks. Then, from up here, I can hear everything that's said in the kitchen. Is it true you will stay?”

“Of course it's true.”

“You know that it won't be pleasant to look after me. Since yesterday boils have come out all over my body. I think it's the change of life, do you understand? It's the blood. Look at the thermometer. He looked at it, but he didn't say how much it read.”

“A hundred and two degrees.”

“Did you buy some meat?”

“Yes, I got a steak.”

“You didn't meet anybody?”

“No.”

“You didn't see Couderc? … Nor Félicie?”

He knew very well that she did not believe him. And then came the same question put in a different form.

“I sometimes wonder what keeps you here.”

He did not dare answer, as he had to Félicie: the house. He preferred simply to look at Tati, smiling and shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

“Just now, when the car stopped, I thought it was your father. I was almost pleased you weren't here. Then I heard someone moving around in the kitchen and pouring water into the basin. I couldn't go down. I waited, my mouth dry. What surprises me is that the old man hasn't come to prowl around here yet. I'll bet they watch him every minute of the day. Did you see to the incubator?”

“I've seen to everything. There's another rabbit littered, and another beginning to make its nest.”

“Félicie didn't try to talk to you?”

Why did she force him to lie like a child?

“No, I assure you.”

“Do you know what you're going to do? Here, I worry myself to death. René's room hasn't been used since he went away. The window looks onto the canal. There's an iron bedstead that will do if it's put up. Do you know how to put up a bed?”

“Yes.”

“In the closet under the stairs, you'll find a mattress and a bolster.”

“You really want to change rooms?”

He knew that her object was to keep an eye on him and on Félicie. Her present room was the largest and brightest. Moreover, it looked onto the yard and the garden, so that she could see her livestock from her bed.

“Quick, now! Call me when it's ready.”

She did not wait for him to tell her. She dragged herself along, barefoot, draped in a blanket. The room, which had been used to store fruit, was fitted with shelves on all four walls.

“Go get a hammer and pliers. You'll take down the shelves. You can get the bedside table from my room. Look.”

And through the open window they saw old Couderc hanging timidly around his two cows.

“He'll end up here. Let him come in without saying anything. Try and get him to come upstairs and I'll see to it that he doesn't go back to Françoise's place. Go get the hammer and pliers.”

She sweated at the slightest effort, but she would not stay still for a moment.

“Félicie wasn't up buying meat?”

“I think I caught a glimpse of her.”

“You told me a few minutes ago you hadn't seen her.”

“I wasn't paying any attention.”

He tore down the planks. Holes showed in the wallpaper where the nails had been.

“Push my bed nearer the window, so that I can see their house. Anyhow, so long as I'm sick, they won't be able to do anything. Look! Couderc saw me!”

The old man had indeed looked up, and there he stood, motionless, by the two cows.

“You can go down, Jean. It's time you got your dinner ready. I'm only allowed milk and some vegetable soup.”

He thought of Félicie all day long and it was partly Tati's fault, for he could feel that she too was thinking of her the whole time. Whenever he went to move the cows, he scarcely dared turn toward the house in the brickyard because Tati, from her window, kept watching him.

At first, Félicie had not noticed. Her baby on her arm, she had come near Jean and watched him drive his stake into the earth. Perhaps she was about to speak to him when she had looked up, followed his eyes, and seen her aunt at the window.

So, with a shrug, she had gone off. Did she imagine he was afraid of Tati?

“What did I tell you? I knew perfectly well she'd start hanging around you. She does the same with all the men.”

And he made an effort not to answer, “That's a lie, Tati. You're saying that to make me dislike her. Even if it were true, I wouldn't mind.”

Tati had got him to bring her a stick which she kept propped against her bed all day. When she needed anything, she rapped the floor with it. If he was outside, she cried in the high-pitched voice of a mother calling her child, “Jean! … Jean! …”

And he was embarrassed, because Félicie could hear.

“Do you know who's just bicycled to their place, Jean? Look. The bicycle's leaning against the house. It's Amélie. She's come after the news. She must be wondering what I'm going to do. Look! There she is at the door.”

The distance between the two houses—Tati's big house and Françoise's little one—was perhaps two hundred yards as the crow flies. Françoise watched Tati's window. Tati watched Françoise.

“I wonder if she'll dare come.”

Amélie did come, balancing uncomfortably on her machine, which she evidently did not often use.

“If only she could fall into the canal. Stay here, Jean. I wouldn't put it past her to take advantage of my being in bed to—”

“Are you there, Tati?” called a voice from the kitchen.

“As if she didn't know I'm here!”

“Can I come up?”

“Come up, you bitch!” growled Tati between her teeth.

“Now, then, what's this I hear from Françoise? That you're ill? That the doctor has called twice already? They say it's the blood?”

Tati did not invite her to sit down and continued to look her sister-in-law in the eyes.

“How will you manage to take care of yourself alone? I hear Father has decided to live at Françoise's. You must allow it's natural he'd sooner live with one of his own daughters.”

“Give me a glass of water, Jean.”

“We were wondering, Françoise and I, what ought best to be done. Don't you think you'd be better in a nursing home than alone in a big house where anyone can get in while you're lying in bed? I know you won't like it, but, if I were in your place—”

“I'm not alone.”

“For the moment! But who's to tell you that you won't be from one minute to the next? One fine morning there you'll be waiting, and the bird will have flown. And you'll be lucky if he hasn't carried off a few little keepsakes.”

“Jean!”

“Yes.”

“Throw her out, will you?”

“I can leave quite well by myself…. Oh well! You've been warned. Now, if anything happens to you, you'll know where the blames lies. As for Father, he asked me to bring back—”

“He didn't ask you a thing. Jean! You're to stop her going into the bedrooms and taking anything whatever.”

“But you're surely not going to leave our poor Father without so much as a shirt.”

“Show her the door, Jean! She makes me tired. Take my stick. Don't be afraid.”

“Good-bye, my girl!”

“Yes, good-bye.”

And, once more, they saw Amélie on the towpath, this time returning to Françoise's.

“What did I tell you, Jean? They're trying everything they know to get me out of the house. If I was silly enough to leave for just one hour, I should find them here when I got back and they'd slam the door in my face. What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

She looked too, and saw Félicie standing at her door. She realized that the instant before the girl and Jean had locked eyes across the space.

“Swear there's nothing between you two.”

“I swear.”

“Swear you don't love her.”

“I don't love her.”

Nevertheless, that very evening he was sure of the contrary. He thought of nothing else. At times it was childish. Like a little boy trying to play truant, he elaborated plans to meet her without being seen by Tati.

It was while he was tending the rabbits that he discovered the window in the wall of the shed. Strictly speaking, it was not a window, since it had no panes. It was a hole in the wall, fitted with two bars. To reach it, he had to climb on something, and he set two rabbit hutches one on top of the other, making sure they were stout enough.

In this way, he was below Tati, a little to her left. Watch the canal as she might, she could not see him.

He stayed nearly an hour, at twilight. It was cool and Félicie wore her red shawl again, but in the blue of evening the red became richer than it had been in the morning.

She was taking a stroll, perhaps purposely to meet him. She was not carrying her baby on her arm. She knew that her aunt was at her window, but she did not yet know where Jean was.

So he put a hand between the bars and waved, without imagining for a single moment that it might look ridiculous. She saw the hand. He felt sure she saw it, for she paused. He thought she smiled, a little smile at once amused and content.

Then, almost at once, she turned around and went home, walking slowly, swinging her hips, and not forgetting to stoop and pluck a piece of grass to chew.

“Thank you, Jean! I don't disgust you too much? Not a pretty sight, a woman, eh? Don't you think it odd that your father hasn't come yet?”

“He won't come.”

“Well, I think he will.”

Poor Tati. The house was becoming her fortress, and her bedroom, with its window ever open on the canal, her watch-tower. From morning till night she was on the alert, aware of every sound, starting if she heard a car on the main road, wondering if it would turn into the hazel-lined path; then if she lost track of Jean for an instant, listening to the silence in an anguish of terror that nothing would come to break it.

“Where were you?”

“I was hoeing the potatoes. This morning I saw that the lock-keeper was spreading some stuff on his.”

“They ought to be spread with weed killer, too. Do you know how? Somebody came to see Françoise just now. Somebody I don't know. As for Couderc, he very nearly crossed the bridge. It wasn't for lack of wanting to that he didn't. Françoise came and took him back just in time. Have you seen Félicie?”

“No.”

“She must have walked this way, because she crossed the lock. The trouble is, I can't lean out of the window. Weren't you speaking to someone, fifteen minutes ago?”

“No.”

It was the truth. He had spoken to nobody. But Félicie had walked along the path, no longer on the other side of the water, where Tati's gaze could follow her, but on the track that passed in front of the house. And Jean was behind his bars. He had shown her both his hands less two fingers. Had she understood? He had pointed out to her, insistently, the gate to the left of the house from which he had removed chain and padlock.

Unfortunately, that evening, at eight o'clock, Tati, as though mysteriously forewarned, chose to be attended to. He did not even know whether Félicie had come walking near the gate. If she had, what had she thought?

He lived with her presence from morning till night. He carried the image of her, the thought of her, through the house, across the yards, the garden, into the shed, by the poultry, and by the incubator. Above all, that fullness of her lip haunted him, and her trick of curving her body when she had her baby on her arm.

“What are you doing, Jean?”

“Nothing! I'm tending the rabbits.”

He tended the rabbits often, so that he could look through the hole in the wall, and that day again, and the next, he displayed eight fingers with an insistence which must really have been funny.