The Conquest of Plassans (Les Rougon-Macquart Book 4) (23 page)

‘My dear child,’ she often said to Marthe, when they were going back to the Rue Balande together, ‘I heard Ovide talking to you very loudly again today. Can you not do as he asks? Do you not like him? Oh, how I wish I were in your shoes, I should kiss his feet… If all you can do is cause him grief, I shall end up hating you.’

Marthe bowed her head. She was extremely embarrassed in the presence of Madame Faujas. She did not like her, she was jealous of her, found her always in the way between herself and the priest. And besides, she suffered from the black looks of the old lady, whom she kept meeting and who was full of strange and troubling pieces of advice.

Marthe’s bad health was a satisfactory explanation for her meetings with Abbé Faujas in the oratory of the Work of the Virgin. Doctor Porquier assured everyone that she was simply following his prescription—which made the walkers on the Cours laugh heartily.

‘Nevertheless,’ Madame Paloque said to her husband one day as they watched Marthe go down the Rue Balande with Madame Faujas, ‘I would love to be a fly on the wall to see what the priest does with his lovelorn penitent… All this talk about her “heavy cold” makes me laugh! As though a heavy cold could prevent her from taking confession in a church! I’ve had a cold myself, as a matter of fact, but that didn’t make me go and hide in a chapel with a priest.’

‘You are wrong to concern yourself with Abbé Faujas’s affairs,’ replied the justice. ‘I’ve been warned. He’s a man who needs careful management. You are too full of resentment. You will prevent us getting where we want to be.’

‘Well, they trampled all over me,’ she went on bitterly. ‘They’ll hear about this… Your priest Faujas is a big fool. Do you suppose Abbé Fenil wouldn’t be grateful if I came upon the curate and his lady love whispering sweet nothings to one another? He would give a lot for a scandal like that, you may depend upon it… Let me alone, you don’t understand that sort of thing.’

Two weeks later on the Saturday, Madame Paloque was waiting
for Marthe to come out of her house. Her monstrous features hidden behind her curtains, she was all dressed, spying on the street through a hole in the muslin. When the two women disappeared round the corner of the Rue Taravelle, she grinned from ear to ear. Without hurrying, she put on her gloves and went sedately through the Place de la Sous-Préfecture, taking a roundabout route and slowly picking her way over the sharp cobbles. As she passed Madame Condamin’s town house, for a moment she pondered whether to call for her. But perhaps the latter would have scruples about it? All said and done, it was best to do without a witness and carry out the mission boldly.

‘I’ve left time enough for them to have got on to the major sins, I think I can show my face now,’ she thought after walking round for a quarter of an hour.

Then she made haste. She often came to the Work of the Virgin to go over the details of the accounts with Trouche. Today instead of going into the employee’s office, she went along the passage, and went down again straight to the oratory. Sitting on a chair in front of the door, Madame Faujas was calmly doing her knitting. The judge’s wife had foreseen this obstacle. She reached the door, with the brisk air of a very busy person. But even before she had stretched out her arm to turn the knob, the old lady had got up and, with extraordinary strength, pushed her out of the way.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked in her coarse peasant voice.

‘I’m going where I need to go,’ Madame Paloque replied, her arm bruised, her face convulsed with anger. ‘You are a coarse and insolent woman. I am the treasurer of the Work of the Virgin, I have the right to go where I like here.’

Madame Faujas stood leaning against the door. She had put her spectacles back on her nose. She resumed her knitting with the most admirable display of coolness you could see anywhere.

‘No,’ she said stolidly. ‘You can’t go in.’

‘Oh? And why not, pray?’

‘Because I say so.’

The justice’s wife felt that her trick had misfired. She was choking on bile. She grew fearsome, saying over and over:

‘I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you are doing here, I could shout for someone and have you arrested, because you hit me. There must be very nasty things going on behind this door if you are
charged with stopping people who belong here. I belong here, do you hear?… Let me pass or I shall call everybody.’

‘Call who you like,’ the old lady replied, with a shrug. ‘I told you, you can’t go in. I say so and that’s that… How do I know if you are someone who belongs here? Anyway, even if you do, it wouldn’t make any difference. Nobody can go in… It’s my business.’

Then Madame Paloque lost all sense of proportion; she raised her voice and shouted:

‘I don’t need to go in. That’s enough for me. I’ve learned what I want to know. You are Abbé Faujas’s mother, aren’t you? Well, this is a fine state of affairs, you have got a nice job here!… No, of course I’m not going in; I don’t want to get mixed up in all this filth.’

Madame Faujas, putting her knitting down on the chair, looked at her, eyes flashing behind her spectacles, a little bent over, her hands outstretched as if she were going to pounce on her to keep her quiet. She was about to throw herself at her when Abbé Faujas appeared at the door; he was in his surplice and looked very stern.

‘Why, whatever’s the matter, Mother?’ he asked.

The old lady put her head down, and drew back like a bulldog hiding behind its master’s legs.

‘Is that you, my dear Madame Paloque?’ the priest went on. ‘Did you want a word with me?’

The justice’s wife, through a supreme effort of will, managed to smile. She replied, in a terrifyingly pleasant tone of voice, cuttingly:

‘Oh, you were there, Monsieur le Curé? Oh, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have insisted at all. I wanted to see our altar cloth, which must be in a rather bad state by now. As you know, I am a good housekeeper here; I look after the little details. But if you are busy I won’t disturb you any longer. Do what you have to do, it’s your house. Madame only had to say the word, and I would have left her, to make sure you had your peace and quiet.’

Madame Faujas made a growling noise. A look from her son calmed her down.

‘Come in, I beg you,’ he continued. ‘You aren’t disturbing me in the slightest. I was giving confession to Madame Mouret who is not very well… Please come in. The altar cloth could do with changing, you are right.’

‘No, no, I’ll come back another time,’ she said again. ‘I am embarrassed that I interrupted you. Carry on, carry on, Monsieur le Curé.’

But she did go in. While she was looking at the altar cloth with Marthe, the priest was quietly scolding his mother.

‘Why did you stop her, Mother? I didn’t tell you to guard the door.’

She looked straight ahead with the air of an animal refusing to do what it’s told.

‘Over my dead body would she have got in,’ she muttered.

‘But why?’

‘Because… Listen, Ovide, don’t be cross; you know I can’t bear you to be cross with me… You told me to accompany the landlady here, didn’t you? Well, I thought you needed me because of inquisitive people. So I sat there. You were free to do whatever you wanted, I promise you; nobody would have poked their nose in.’

He understood, caught hold of her hands, shaking her and said:

‘What, Mother, you presumed…?’

‘Oh, I didn’t presume anything,’ she replied with sublime insouciance. ‘You are the master and you do what you want, and whatever you do is good, you see. You are my son… I would steal for you, you know very well.’

But he was no longer listening. He had let go his mother’s hands; he looked at her as though he were lost in thoughts that made his face sterner, and more austere.

‘No, never, never,’ he said with bitter pride. ‘You are mistaken, Mother… Only chaste men are strong.’

CHAPTER 16

D
ÉSIRÉE
at seventeen still laughed her simple laugh. She had grown into a tall, plump and comely girl with the arms and shoulders of a mature woman. She grew like a strong plant, happily, impervious to the ill fortune that was emptying and darkening the house.

‘You seem a bit sad,’ she said to her father. ‘Shall we do some skipping? Would you like that?’

She had taken over a large patch of garden; she dug, planted vegetables, watered them. She loved the hard work. Then she
would
have chickens, which ate her vegetables, chickens that she scolded lovingly as if she were their mother. She got very dirty in these games, in the earth, among the animals.

‘She’s a real ragamuffin!’ cried Rose. ‘Let me tell you straight, I don’t want her in my kitchen, she carries mud all over the place… Madame, there’s no point in dressing her up like that. If I were you I’d let her mess around as much as she likes.’

Marthe, wholly possessed, no longer even made sure that Désirée changed her underclothes. The girl sometimes had the same chemise on for three weeks. Her stockings with holes in the heels fell down around her shoes, the soles of which were hanging off; her wretched skirts hung from her like a beggar’s tatters. One day Mouret had to get a needle himself; her dress was torn from top to bottom at the back and exposed her flesh. She laughed at being half-naked. Her hair hung down around her shoulders, her hands were black, and her face grimy.

In the end Marthe, back from Mass with the subtle perfumes of the church still scenting her hair, conceived a kind of disgust for her; she was shocked by her daughter’s powerful earthy smell. She sent her out into the garden again when lunch was over; she was upset, she couldn’t bear this strong healthy girl with the bell-like laugh, who found everything funny, sitting next to her.

‘Heavens above, what a tiresome child!’ she would murmur sometimes with a world-weary air.

When Mouret heard her complain, he said to her in a rush of anger:

‘If she’s in your way, we can throw her out like we did the other two.’

‘Well, I should be very pleased if she weren’t there,’ she replied quite definitely.

One afternoon towards the end of the summer Mouret was perturbed not to hear Désirée’s voice at the bottom of the garden where, only a few minutes before, she had been making a dreadful din. He rushed out and found her on the ground, having fallen off a ladder she had climbed to pick some figs. Luckily the box hedge had broken her fall. Alarmed, Mouret caught her up in his arms and called for help. He thought she was dead. But she recovered consciousness, assured him she was all right, and wanted to get back on the ladder.

Marthe had gone down the steps. When she heard Désirée’s voice she got cross.

‘That girl will be the death of me,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t know what to do next to give me a fright. I’m sure she threw herself on the ground deliberately. I can’t bear it any longer. I shall shut myself in my room, and go out in the morning and only come back at night… Yes, you can laugh, you great booby! Is it possible that I gave birth to a stupid girl like that? Get out, you’ll cause me no end of trouble.’

‘That’s for sure,’ added Rose who had rushed out from the kitchen. ‘She’s a burden on us and there’s no danger we could ever marry her off.’

Mouret listened to them and looked at them, deeply pained. He didn’t say anything, he remained at the bottom of the garden with the young girl till nightfall, talking quietly together as it seemed. The next day Marthe and Rose had to be out the whole morning. They went to hear Mass in a chapel dedicated to Saint Janvier, five or six miles away from Plassans, where all the devout ladies of the town went on pilgrimage that day. When they got home, the cook bustled about serving up a cold lunch. Marthe had been eating for several minutes when she noticed that her daughter was not at table.

‘Is Désirée not hungry?’ she asked. ‘Why is she not having lunch with us?’

‘Désirée is no longer here,’ said Mouret, who had left bits and pieces on his plate. ‘I took her to her nurse’s at Saint-Eutrope this morning.’

She put down her fork, rather pale, taken aback and hurt.

‘You could have asked my opinion,’ she said.

But he went on without answering her directly:

‘She’ll be fine at her nurse’s house. That good woman loves her and
will look after her… And then the child won’t get on your nerves any more and everyone will be happy.’

And as she still didn’t say anything, he added:

‘If the house is not quiet enough for you, just tell me and I’ll go away too.’

She half rose, with a gleam in her eyes. He had just dealt her such a cruel blow that she put her hand out as though to throw the bottle at him. In this woman now, who had for so long been submissive, an unknown anger was fermenting. Her hatred was growing for this man who prowled around her continually like her bad conscience. Deliberately she started to eat and didn’t mention her daughter again. Mouret had folded his napkin. He stayed seated opposite her, listening to the sound of her fork, looking slowly round the dining room, once so joyful with the noise of children and now so sad and empty. The room seemed icy cold to him. Tears welled up in his eyes when Marthe called to Rose to bring in the dessert.

‘You’ve got a good appetite, haven’t you, Madame?’ she said, bringing in a plate of fruit. ‘That’s because we did a lot of walking!… If Monsieur, instead of acting like a pagan, had come with us, he wouldn’t have left you to eat up the rest of the lamb all by yourself.’

She changed the plates, still chattering.

‘The Saint-Janvier chapel is very pretty, but too small… You saw the ladies who arrived late; they had to kneel down outside on the grass in the hot sun… What I don’t understand is that Madame de Condamin came in her carriage; so there’s no merit in a pilgrimage like that… But we had a good morning, all the same, didn’t we, Madame?’

‘Yes, it was a good morning,’ said Marthe. ‘Abbé Mousseau, the preacher, was very moving.’

When Rose in her turn noticed that Désirée was missing and learned of the child’s departure, she cried:

‘What a good idea of Monsieur’s!… She was always taking my pans off to water her lettuces… We’ll have less to bother about now.’

‘That’s true,’ remarked Marthe, cutting into a pear.

Mouret was choking. He left the dining room without paying attention to Rose, who was shouting to him that the coffee would be ready straight away. Marthe, left alone in the dining room, calmly finished her pear.

Madame Faujas came down when the cook brought in the coffee.

‘Come in,’ said the cook. ‘You can keep Madame company and have Monsieur’s cup. He has run off, like someone not right in the head.’

The old lady sat down in Mouret’s chair.

‘I thought you never drank coffee,’ she remarked, putting sugar into her cup.

‘Yes, she never used to,’ Rose said, ‘when Monsieur was holding the purse strings… But now Madame would be very silly to deprive herself of what she likes.’

They chatted away for a good hour. Marthe, who was upset, was soon telling Madame Faujas her troubles. Her husband had just made a terrible scene about her daughter and taken her to her nurse’s house, in a fit of pique. In her own defence she protested that she loved the child and would go and fetch her back one day.

‘She was rather noisy,’ Madame Faujas remarked. ‘I often used to feel sorry for you… My son would have stopped coming down to read his breviary in the garden before long; she got on his nerves.’

From that day on, Marthe and Mouret’s meals were eaten in silence. It was a very damp autumn; the dining room was a gloomy place with the two isolated table settings and the whole width of the large table between them. Shadows lurked in every corner and cold even seemed to emanate from the ceiling. You would have thought they were at a funeral, as Rose remarked.

‘Well now,’ she often said as she brought the dishes in, ‘you’ll wear your tongues out with so much chattering… Cheer up a bit, Monsieur; you look like a pall-bearer. You’ll have Madame in bed sick if you carry on like that. It’s not good for the health to eat without talking.’

When the first cold days came, Rose tried to be obliging to Madame Faujas, offering her the oven to do her cooking. It all began with the jars of water the old lady brought down to heat up; she didn’t have any fire and the Abbé was in a hurry to shave. After that she borrowed irons, helped herself to some saucepans, asked for the grill to roast some lamb on the spit. Then, as she didn’t have a hearth upstairs suitable for this purpose she finally accepted Rose’s offer to light a fire with sticks, that would have roasted a whole lamb.

‘Don’t mind me,’ Rose repeated, turning the lamb herself. ‘It’s a big kitchen, isn’t it? Plenty of room for two… I don’t know how you’ve managed up to now, doing your cooking on the hearth in your
room on that dratted iron stove. I should be afraid of the blood going to my head… And Monsieur Mouret is ridiculous. He shouldn’t rent out a flat without a kitchen. You must be plucky folk; no airs and graces and you’re easy to please.’

Gradually Madame Faujas began to make their lunch and dinner in the Mourets’ kitchen. At first she provided her own coal, oil, and spices. Afterwards when she forgot some item, the cook told her not to go back upstairs to her apartment. She made her take whatever she needed from the cupboard.

‘Here you are, here’s the butter. That little bit you put on the end of your knife isn’t going to bankrupt us. You know well enough that you are welcome to anything here… Madame would tell me off if you didn’t make yourself at home.’

From then on Rose and Madame Faujas were fast friends. The cook was delighted to have someone there who would always listen while she stirred her sauces. Moreover she got on wonderfully well with the priest’s mother whose calico dresses, coarse features, and peasant bluntness put her almost on the same social footing as herself. They stayed talking for hours in front of their stoves a long time after they had gone out. Madame Faujas soon ruled the roost in the kitchen. She still maintained her impenetrable manner, said no more than she really meant to, found out the things she wanted to know. It was she who decided what the Mourets were to eat, and tasted the dishes she sent through to them before they did. And often Rose put aside sweetmeats especially reserved for the priest: baked apples, rice cakes, doughnuts. The food and the pans got mixed up, and the two dinners were confused, to such an extent that at the moment of dishing up, the cook laughed:

‘Tell me, Madame, are the fried eggs for you? I’m sure I can’t tell any more!… I’d say it would be better if we all ate together!’

It was All Saints’ Day when Abbé Faujas had lunch for the first time in the Mourets’ dining room. He was in a great hurry, since he had to go back to Saint-Saturnin. To save him time, Marthe asked him to have lunch with them, saying that his mother wouldn’t then have to climb up two floors. A week later the habit had become established, the Faujas came down for every meal and sat at table till coffee. In the first days what they ate was different; then Rose decided that was ‘too silly for words’ and that she could just as well do the cooking for four and that she would make it right with Madame Faujas.

‘Don’t thank me,’ she added. ‘You are the ones who are good enough to come down and be company for Madame; you will cheer things up a bit… I hardly dared go into the dining room any more; it was like going into a funeral parlour. It was dreadful empty. If Monsieur is still sulking, well, that’s too bad! He can sulk by himself.’

The stove roared, the room was cosy and warm. It was a delightful winter. Never had Rose’s tablecloth looked so white. She placed Monsieur le Curé’s chair next to the stove, so that he had his back to the fire. She made sure his glass, knife, and fork were just so. If the cloth had the slightest little mark, she took care that it should not be on his side. She looked after his needs in a thousand little ways.

When she was cooking one of his favourite dishes she told him in advance to save some room for it. Sometimes, on the other hand, she gave him a surprise. She would bring in the dish with its cover on, laugh covertly at the puzzled looks, and say, with an air of quiet triumph:

‘It’s for Monsieur le Curé, stuffed duck with olives, just as he likes it… Madame, won’t you give Monsieur le Curé a breast? The dish is specially for him.’

Marthe served. She looked imploringly at him, insisting he had the choicest cuts. She always began with him, searching around in the dish, while Rose leaned over and pointed out the ones she thought the best. And they even had little disagreements about the quality of the various pieces of the chicken or rabbit. Rose pushed a tapestry cushion under the priest’s feet. Marthe insisted on him having his bottle of bordeaux and his bread, a small golden loaf that she ordered every day from the baker.

‘Oh, nothing’s too good for you,’ Rose would say, whenever the priest thanked them. ‘If nice people like yourselves can’t have a bit of comfort, who can? Let us do as we like, we’ll get our reward in heaven.’

Madame Faujas, sitting at table opposite her son, was all smiles. She was developing a fondness for Marthe and Rose. Anyway she found it quite natural that they should adore him, regarded them as very blessed to be kneeling thus before her god. With her square head, eating her way stolidly through a substantial meal, like a hardworking peasant-woman, she was the one who presided over meals, seeing everything and not missing the least flourish of a fork; she ensured that Marthe fulfilled her role of handmaid and she watched
over her son with a look of benign satisfaction, like an old hen. When she spoke, it was to say briefly what the priest liked to eat, or to cut short the polite refusals he still ventured to make. Occasionally she would shrug her shoulders and tap him with her foot under the table. Was he not at home here? He was welcome to eat the whole dish if he pleased. The others could make do with gnawing at their dry crusts while they watched.

As for Abbé Faujas, he remained indifferent to the tender care of which he was the object. Very frugal, eating quickly, his mind elsewhere, he was often unaware of the treats they reserved for him. He had yielded to his mother’s pleading in agreeing to eat with the Mourets. The only pleasure it gave him to be downstairs in the dining room was that of being completely free of material concerns. So he retained his superb calm, gradually getting used to seeing his slightest wish anticipated, no longer surprised by anything, not thanking anyone, reigning supreme between the cook and the lady of the house, who were anxiously scanning his serious face for the least little frown.