The Widow (8 page)

Désiré swallowed hard and boldly ventured, “When one must live night and day with people fresh from prison…. ”

And Tati, with deep satisfaction: “Especially when he ought to be there himself! Do you remember poor little Juliette? A kid of fourteen and an orphan. She was still of an age to play with dolls, and the poor little thing didn't dare say a word, she was so frightened.”

“It's not for you to judge Father's actions. You know very well that, since his accident, he's not been the same as other people.”

“Especially when he was so much better than others before!”

“Be quiet, Tati. I forbid you, a stranger, to—”

“What will you forbid me to do? To tell the truth? To say that your father is an old bastard, and that, no later than last week, he exposed himself in front of a little girl on her way home from school? Why, Françoise knows her! She can ask her if it isn't true. It's Cotelle's daughter, of the Moulin Neuf…. ”

“Just the same,” shrilled Amélie, “the house is his! And you're in his home, and you dare bring under his roof people that have no right to hold up their heads. Go and get Father, Françoise. Hector, you go and sit on the doorstep, but don't you dare go play beside the canal, or else you get a hiding…. Do you hear? Go on out.”

“I don't want to go out. I'm thirsty.”

“Have a drink of water.”

“Désiré, will you or will you not make that child go outside?”

A smack rang out. Françoise had gone, heavy and stupid, swollen with anger and fear.

“We'll soon see whether we shall have to take steps!” declared Amélie, who was decidedly the brains of the family. “I may as well tell you right now that I've been to see a lawyer.”

“To get Couderc thrown in jail?”

“Stop trying to be funny. You know you've got the short end of the stick. We know you, my girl! We know your brazen ways, and that ever since you stepped into the house you've wanted to run things your own way. My poor brother—rest his soul—could vouch for that.”

“Pour me out another drink, will you, Jean? Why don't you sit down? I'd warned you it was an odd family, hadn't I?”

“Aren't you ashamed?”

“What of?”

“Having a murderer in the house. True, your son's not much better. If Mamma should see us! Our poor Mamma! She who …”

She looked at the faded portrait. Her eyes grew moist.

“A good thing she's dead, for now she would die of shame and grief.”

Françoise's voice was heard on the path. She must be talking for the sake of talking, possibly to reassure herself, for the old man following her, with his head lowered as if she had him at the end of a halter, was incapable of hearing a word.

“Come in, poor Father.”

Dazzled by the sun outside, he was blinking in the effort to make out the faces in the half darkness of the kitchen.

“Sit down. Have you got the note, Désiré? As for you, Tati, we'll soon see what Father thinks of all your scheming. Where was he, Françoise? Full in the sun, eh? To think that at his age he has to do all the heavy work. He's being treated like a worthless old workhorse till he breaks under the strain. Show him the note, Désiré.”

As it was impossible to speak to the old man, they had written to him. Désiré, a cautious man, had taken care to make the letters large and blocked.

He kept looking at the piece of paper stupidly, wondering what was wanted of him. He was by no means reassured. And oddly enough it was Tati that he clung to.

“You don't even know, the whole lot of you, that the old fool can't read any more without glasses! And the joke would be on you if I didn't give them to him. But I want him to read your piece of paper. Poor old devil! If I wasn't by, he couldn't even button up his fly…. ”

She went to a drawer, got out a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, and put them on Couderc's nose. He still hesitated to read, as though he scented a trap.

He had several tries at it. Perhaps the lenses were not strong enough?

“Here, you old goat! You're entitled to a drink too.”

She gave them a defiant look.

“If you think I don't see through your little game! It isn't the old man you're after! He'd be a nuisance to you! You wouldn't keep him a week without having him shut up in an asylum. And that's the truth! You needn't glower like that, Amélie. I know all about you! It's not my fault you married a man who earns seven hundred francs a month and has to change jobs every year because he always thinks he knows better than the boss. As for you, my poor Françoise, you're so stupid that, instead of speaking to you, one always wants to hold out a handful of hay. Well! What does your father say? Look at him! Try and get him to go with you!”

He was in terror. A child being kidnapped in a park could not have looked back with more anguish than did the old man as he turned toward Tati.

Yet Amélie was smiling at him for all she was worth, smiling and clucking as one does when trying to gain the confidence of an animal new to the house.

“Write to him that he'll be well cared for, Désiré, and that he'll have nothing to do but stroll all day long. And write too that there's a murderer in the house and that one fine day he might get it.”

Then, turning to Tati: “You see, I know what you're up to. It's no accident that this man's here. One fine morning you'll get Father—God knows how—to sign a paper. Then he'll have to be disposed of before he can change his mind. Go on, admit it! Admit that from the first day you stepped in here, when we were still only kids, you decided
you
would take over. Our poor brother was properly fooled. You were already as perverted as could be. And I sometimes wonder if that isn't what he died of. Have you finished writing, Désiré?”

He handed her a little black notebook in which he had written a few lines.

“Write too that he's in danger of his life here.”

Old Couderc would have liked to go. He had emptied his glass, and Amélie sighed: “On top of it all she gives him brandy, knowing full well he could never stand it and that the doctor forbids.”

“Read it, Couderc,” snapped Tati, who, seeming vastly amused, had planted herself in the middle of the kitchen, her hands on her hips. “You'll be happy with them all right, in three rooms on the first floor of a miserable gray house. And who'll there be to make love to you, eh?”

“Tati!” exclaimed Amélie, leaping to her feet.

“As if you didn't know! As if you didn't know it began while your brother was still alive! Look at him now, all of you. D'you think he wants to go off with you?”

He had risen, and had let the notebook fall to the floor. He had gone to sit by the chimney, to be as far out of reach as he could.

“You're taking advantage of him not being all there. But you haven't won the game for all that, Tati, I warn you. In cases like this, there is always the right to have a family council named. I know what the lawyer told me. And when that happens …”

She looked at the walls around her, made a sweeping gesture. “You'll be thrown out of here with your murderer.”

She was quivering, her lips trembling. The sun-drenched window caught her eye. It doubtless reminded her of something, for she cried, “Where's Hector? Désiré! Quick—go and find Hector. He might have …”

Tati was smiling, a broad, beaming smile, and her hand was fiddling with the cameo pinned to the black silk bodice of her dress, the cameo her mother-in-law wore in the portrait.

“You really won't take anything to calm you down?” she asked, grasping the bottle of black-currant syrup.

Then, suddenly, Amélie did a foolish thing. She grabbed the bottle, which shattered on the floor. Tati's automatic response was to snatch off her hat, which fell into the red and sticky puddle.

“Amélie! … Tati! …” yelped Françoise, crazy with fear.

“It's lucky I can control myself,” panted Amélie while she looked fearfully at Jean in case he might intervene. “Where's Désiré? Désiré! … Désiré! … Hector! … Where are you both?”

She had opened the door. The sun, coming into the kitchen, painted on the red tiles a broad lozenge dancing with fine dust.

Amélie wanted to cry. Françoise had got up.

“Désiré! … Hector! … I'll bet that child's gone and fallen into the canal…. ”

This gave her an excuse for sobbing.

“You go too, old girl!” Tati advised as she gently pushed the inert Françoise before her. “Go and find your slut of a daughter. Go on! …”

And she kicked the door to.

“It's the house…. ” she declared, coming back to the middle of the room and addressing Jean. “They get positively sick at the thought that they won't have the house to share between themselves. But who's got to put up with the old man, I ask you? Would it be fair?”

For the first time, she was looking at Couderc with a sort of tenderness.

“The idea of losing his Tati and not having his bit of fun now and then … !”

She stroked his cheek, and narrowed her eyes in a look of promise. “Come on!
This
time you'll have really earned it.”

She jerked her head in the direction of the staircase. Jean had his back to her just then, but he had the impression that she made an obscene gesture.

He was looking out the window. Amélie, hatless, her hair disheveled, was delivering a violent harangue, to the shame of her husband. The child, one shoe dripping with water, had evidently just been slapped, for one of his cheeks was red and he was rubbing his eyes with his dirty hands.

Amélie and Françoise embraced, the way people do after a funeral.

Then the three from St. Amand made off toward the main road where they would have a wait of an hour and a half for the bus.

When Jean turned around, there was no one left in the kitchen. He could hear noises overhead and he preferred to go out into the yard where the chickens huddled in the shade of the cart.

What was there to be done that day?

He turned the well wheel and began watering the lettuces.

T
HAT SATURDAY
turned out like one of those special days which a child anticipates for too long.

Did it not indeed begin with childish impressions? Jean's panic when, half awake, he heard the drumming of the rain on the sloping glass just over his head! On all the other days the weather had been radiant. Was it going to rain on purpose? He had to make an effort to open his eyes halfway. He had always been a heavy sleeper, coming to only with difficulty. It was still dark, fortunately. What time could it be? There was a moon, and the drops of water glistened as they slid down their zigzag track.

He went to sleep again, telling himself that the weather could still improve, and when he heard a door bang and leapt to his feet, the sun was indeed shining bravely, a richer, graver sun than on other mornings, and the chestnut trees were a deeper green.

When he was in the shed, getting the mash ready for the poultry, Tati's window opened. Tati leaned out, busy combing her hair as it hung down on her shoulders.

“Don't forget the pullers in the basket!”

And he felt as light as air, light as one is when something out of the ordinary is sure to happen. He whistled as he carefully arranged all the things Tati was to take to market: a basket of white pullets, tied in pairs by the feet; twelve dozen hen's eggs; three dozen duck's eggs (for the pastry cook) and five big goose's eggs; then the bricks of butter wrapped in cabbage leaves.

“Did you pick the red currants?” she called to him again, almost ready by now.

The old man was busy with his cows. The kitchen garden was damp. Tati did not want to waste anything, and, there being a gardenful of red currants, she was taking them off to market.

She snatched a bite, without sitting down, for she was always afraid of missing her bus.

“Hurry up, Jean! Mind the eggs!”

She frowned. Perhaps she found him too lively? He was still whistling as he loaded himself with the biggest baskets, and he strode out along the sunken path where the ground, after the rain, was a richer brown and the bushes gave off a heavy scent.

“If she comes to the house, don't be afraid to throw her out. Oh! I nearly forgot … the insurance man might call. He always picks a Saturday. The money's in the tureen in the dining room. It's the right amount.”

For the first time, he saw again the small blue-fenced house beside the main road, and this time its door was half open.

“Good-bye, Clémence!” Tati called, though she could see nobody.

Someone moved inside. A woman who was cleaning herself up stuck her head out of the window and called in the same fashion, “Good-bye, Tati.”

Then they waited, looking in the direction of Montluçon. The bus arrived ten minutes later. Tati got in. He handed her her baskets. The door banged.

Then, hands in pockets, he went back unhurriedly, remembering to stop and see whether there would be a big crop of nuts that year.

He did not know that this was the beginning of no ordinary day, or that he was living his last carefree moments. Not merely carefree! It was something more miraculous than that and the miracle had lasted a week and more. Hours, whole days, of innocence!

He was no longer any particular age! He was no longer this or that! He was not even a Passerat-Monnoyeur anymore!

He was Jean, like any child playing by the roadside, heedless of the future as of the past! Like a child, he cut a stick! Like a child gleefully anticipating a promised game, he kept saying to himself: “Let her be there.”

In truth, ever since a heavy door, down there at Fontevrault, had shut behind him, ever since a man in uniform had called out: “Good luck” to him, ever since he had started walking straight ahead, aimlessly, he had had no more ties, everything had been a free gift, the days no longer counted, nothing counted except the magnificent present humming with sunshine.