Pedigree (10 page)

M
ILLIARDS
upon milliards of creatures, over the whole surface of the world, in the air, in the water, everywhere, strive continually, second by second, with their every cell, towards an evolution they do not know, like those ants which carry across precipices burdens a hundred times bigger than themselves, trudge across mountains of sand or mud, and return a dozen times to the attack on an obstacle without ever diverging from their course.

Élise, on this particular day, a fine September Sunday, as ripe and golden as a fruit, Élise the thirteenth, Élise the anaemic, Élise who had found no other weapon for herself than her timid smile, so humble that it aroused pity, Élise who was always apologizing for being there, for existing, who was always begging pardon for causing offence, begging pardon for everything and nothing, who was almost ashamed of being on earth, Élise was about to wage her first battle.

Did she know this? Did she even guess, like the ant climbing an uneven slope and constantly dropping and picking up again the same grain of corn, did she guess the importance, the object of the battle she was about to wage, and did she realize that she was waging it, not only against Désiré-the-Smiler, Désiré-with-the-Fine-Walk, but against the Mamelins of the Rue Puits-en-Sock and, through them, against an entire species?

Did she already sense that she was stronger than they were, strong in her weeping eyes, in her pale, hollow cheeks, in her aching belly, in the iron prescribed for her anaemia, in her legs which kept giving way on the stairs, did she know, the little Fleming, the thirteenth-born of the Peters, what she wanted and where she was going?

She had been married for barely two years. She had always said yes to everything, but this particular Sunday, because it was necessary, because a strange force was impelling her, because she was a Peters and there were Mamelins in the world, because life was in command, she was going to fight, and fight with her own weapons.

Nobody knew this, except herself and Valérie, and Valérie, who would have liked nothing better than to obey a man, had take fright at the idea.

‘You really think so, Élise?'

There were some windows which, this particular Sunday, Élise could no longer bear to see, even though she knew that she would not be seeing them much longer. These were the twenty-eight pale windows of corrugated glass, on which, repeated over and over again, in funeral black, there were three words which looked almost obscene:
Torset et Mitouron … Torset et Mitouron … Torset et
…

Désiré suspected nothing. He had gone to the Rue Puits-en-Sock, after hearing Mass at Saint-Nicolas in the pew of the Brotherhood of St. Roch. He had brought home the brownish loaves baked by his mother as well as an apple tart. The hours flowed along at their usual pace and he was far from suspecting that their course was going to change.

When the baby was ready in his cradle, he had to be strapped in, as he was every day, while Désiré and Élise took the pram two floors down.

‘Mind the walls …'

They could make as much noise as they liked. The Delobels were on holiday, in a villa at Ostend. Only Madame Cession did not disarm for a moment. She was lying in wait behind the door, dressed in black silk, with gold chains round her neck, ready to rush out if one of the pram wheels happened to scrape against the wall in the semi-darkness.

There was room for it at the end of the passage, under the stairs, where nothing was kept but the dustbins and nobody ever set foot.

‘If you insist on having a pram, you must keep it in your flat.'

Désiré stayed downstairs. Élise went to fetch the baby. The bottles, underneath the mattress, were still warm.

‘She didn't say anything,' said Désiré, stepping out and pushing the pram as he often did on Sundays.

You might have thought he was doing it on purpose, and Élise had all the trouble in the world to keep up with him.

It was another Mamelin Sunday, and Désiré had no idea that there were going to be Sundays of a different sort. They went by way of the back-streets. This was a habit of Élise, who always took short cuts along narrow streets and past blind alleys where she invariably felt the need to adjust her suspender.

They had not got far to go. They soon reached the church of Saint-Denis and, behind it, a little old square with a provincial look about it, shaded by chestnut-trees and enlivened by the gay song of a fountain. Every morning the cheese market was held here, and the smell lingered on, spreading far and wide through the nearby streets and growing more insipid as the day wore on.

They were going to see Daigne, or rather Charles as they were in the habit of calling him. Charles Daigne, the sacristan at Saint-Denis, had married Françoise, the eldest of the Mamelin girls; he was the brother of the Daigne who worked at Monnoyeur's and smelled so bad.

Charles did not smell bad. He smelled of the church, of the monastery. The whole house was impregnated with a sweet smell that was at once cosy and virtuous.

The heavy front door flanked by its two stones was polished like a handsome piece of furniture and adorned with gleaming brass knockers. There was not a stain, not a scratch, not the slightest speck of dirt to be seen, and the façade of the house, as an extra touch of cleanliness, had been painted with oil-paint, in a creamy white which harmonized with the cheesy smell of the square.

Nobody came to open the door. Désiré rang the bell by pulling a brass ring. There was no noise to be heard inside, but a well-oiled catch was released and the right-hand door-panel opened a fraction of an inch. Anybody who had not been told about it would not have noticed it and could have spent hours waiting on the doorstep.

The door was heavy, and opened into a solemn-looking porch with fake-marble walls and blue and white flagstones which were the same as those in the church.

The building belonged to the church council. The vast block in front was occupied by a barrister, Monsieur Douté, the president of this church council.

Désiré had never set eyes on him, nor had Élise. To avoid marking the flagstones with the wheels, they carried the pram in silence, walking on tip-toe, and scarcely daring to look at the flights of stairs on each side, or the doors with their stained-glass window-panes.

Did Monsieur Douté have a wife and children? They never heard anything, and only now and then did they notice a maidservant, silent and dressed all in black, who gave the impression of being a nun in mufti.

What if the baby, being carried along in his pram, started to cry? They did not dare to think of the effect this would produce in this calm, in this absolute silence where not even the smell of cooking could be distinguished.

Finally they reached the second door which separated the porch from the courtyard, a long convent yard, with tiny round paving-stones, polished like pottery. A green gate shut off that part of the yard which was reserved for Monsieur Douté, who had never set foot in it.

Élise was depressed. She was thinking about the odious twenty-eight windows, about the empty hours which were about to elapse, about what she had to do next. Would it be best to speak in the street, when they got back to the Rue Léopold? Or should she wait until they were in the kitchen where the fire would be sure to have gone out?

At the far side of the courtyard there were two smart little white houses, both meticulously clean, that of the church porter at Saint-Denis, Monsieur Collard of the thick moustache, and that of Charles Daigne, the sacristan.

‘Be careful how you shut the door, Désiré.'

For here a voice, an ordinary human voice, became a thunderous din, and the next day Charles received a written remonstrance in an icy style from the barrister.

‘Hush!'

The gravel had crunched under Désiré's broad soles.

Nowhere else was the air as clear as it was here. Anybody might have thought he was in a world of porcelain.

The other Mamelins, used to the plebeian hurly-burly of the Rue Puits-en-Sock, never ventured here. Only Désiré and Élise came every Sunday to see Françoise who was always dressed in black.

Inside the house, where the air was a blue colour with a hint of purple, the two couples kissed. Charles smelled of incense and mustiness. He was tow-haired, with fair, frizzy curls. He had a gentle sheepish face, slow gestures, and a voice so monotonous that nobody ever waited for the ends of his sentences.

In his house, in his kitchen, in his bedroom, everywhere, it was as if you were still in church, and Élise kept having to call Désiré, who had a loud voice, to order:

‘Careful, Désiré!'

He suspected nothing. He went on blandly living his Sunday-afternoon life, but today Élise's face was more pointed, she smiled her morose smile more often, and she kept repeating for no apparent reason:

‘Poor little Françoise …'

Françoise had a child too, a girl a year older than Roger. She was expecting another baby.

The windows had little panes as iridescent as soap-bubbles, but you could not see them, hidden as they were by two or three thicknesses of muslin curtains.

‘What are you doing, Désiré? Heavens, Françoise, he's so free-and-easy…'

‘I'm in my sister's home, aren't I?'

He made no bones about opening drawers, about changing around objects frozen in religious immobility.

Everybody would have liked to go and sit in the courtyard, in the sunshine, in front of the white wall, but what if one of the children started crying?

Désiré made himself comfortable, tilting his chair back a little on account of his long legs. At the other end of the courtyard, the barrister's windows were even more thickly lined with white curtains than Françoise's. Didn't a prisoner's hand ever push them aside, didn't an ivory-coloured face ever appear behind the window-panes?

The Mamelins had brought along an apple tart. They had it with some coffee, before Vespers and Benediction. Charles went off first, bare-headed, for he had only to cross the street to get to the narrow door of the sacristy. Monsieur Collard followed him, in full-dress uniform, and you always had the impression that his moustache smelled of spirits. People said that he drank.

‘Just imagine, Élise…'

He did it on the sly, and never went into a café, for fear of the church council.

Who was going to look after the children, then? It was Désiré's turn. He could give a baby the bottle and tie its napkins better than any woman. When the children cried, he beat a drum to send them to sleep.

The two sisters-in-law went off to Benediction. Élise felt the need for something to soothe her heart.

‘If only you knew, Françoise, how nasty Madame Cession is!'

She was frightened now at what she had done. Just as she was leaving the Daignes', she had caught sight of Désiré smiling blissfully, crossing his legs and lighting his cigarette, and it had struck her that it was an act of treachery that she had committed.

They said their prayers unthinkingly, in the shadow of a pillar. They saw Charles, holding a wax taper in one hand, coming and going around the altar, genuflecting every now and then.

Coming out of the church, they were greeted by the vague smell of the cheese and the song of the fountain.

‘But yes, you must stay to supper.'

‘It's so much trouble for you, Françoise!'

Élise had a congenital fear of causing people trouble. She had never dared to occupy the whole of a chair.

‘I assure you it's no trouble at all, Élise.'

‘Then let's go and buy some meat at Tonglet's. We'll go shares.'

It was only a few steps away, on the corner of an alley-way where decent people avoided going. In ten years' time, wherever she might be living, Élise would go on maintaining that only at Tonglet's was the pig-meat any good, especially the larded liver.

‘A tenth of larded liver.'

They had brought along a china plate. In another shop, quite close, they bought fifty centimes' worth of chips which they covered with a napkin. The plate was hot to hold, hot and greasy. They walked fast in the fading daylight which was casting a blue glow over the streets.

‘If only you knew, Françoise, how the Rue Léopold gets on my nerves…'

No. She must not say anything … Her sister-in-law murmured:

‘Hush … Careful…'

They had come to the porch, the famous porch which had to be crossed on tip-toe and which they were defiling with the smell of chips.

Désiré had laid the table and ground the coffee. Charles had come home, still surrounded with something of the half-light of Vespers and Benediction. They had supper. A little later, Charles would show them some of his photographs. He was incredibly patient. For a whole fortnight, every morning at six o'clock—the street had to be empty—he had levelled his camera at the General Post Office, near the Passerelle, and he had obtained some unique cloud-effects, greys of wonderful delicacy.

‘Next Sunday, if the weather's fine …'

For months he had been promising to take a photograph of the whole family. They would have to be able to leave the children naked on a sheepskin.

Nine o'clock.

‘Heavens, Françoise! … As late as that! … And we're keeping you up … I'll help you with the washing-up …'

‘But no …'

The baby, in his pram, was warm and sleepy. They covered him up and raised the hood, for fear of the cool night air.

‘See you next Sunday! Come early.'

‘I'll bring a Savoy cake from Bonmersonne's.'

‘Careful … Hush …'

The porch.

‘Really, Désiré!'

He had pulled the door shut too sharply. Élise trotted along. She had never managed to keep in step with her giant of a husband who was pushing the pram along with the satisfaction of duty done. Other families were making their way home along the pavements in the same way, and sleepy children were perched on their fathers' shoulders.