Pedigree (12 page)

‘Hush!'

She had not dared to turn round. Perhaps
they
were in the loggia? They had not seen anything of each other since Élise had married a little clerk without any prospects.

‘You'll understand one day, my girl! You'll be sorry!'

Because of that, for other vague reasons, and because it was terribly Sunday, she had tears in her eyes as she walked beside Désiré around the docks, pushing the pram along with her belly.

Was it because she had already exhausted the pleasure of polishing and dusting her flat in the Rue Pasteur, with its spotless windows and the floor so clean that you could eat off it? Or because she no longer enjoyed pushing the pram along the wide, level pavements towards the Place du Congrès, with the magistrate's wife waving to her over the plants in her window, as she went by on her way to see Madame Pain, who had a child of the same age as Roger and was married to an important traveller in coffee? Or because, in spite of everything, this winter had already left a feeling of emptiness in her heart?

Yet they were on the threshold of a spring which you could feel approaching, and the winter had been so mild that people had scarcely noticed it. And it had been a snug, cosy winter in the two new rooms with the new wallpaper, where everything was clean—just the two of them with the baby, and Valérie for supper on Friday, Valérie whom Désiré used to accompany, teasing her and joking with her, as far as the Pont des Arches which served as a sort of frontier.

Désiré was always asking:

‘What haven't we got, to make us happy?'

He held himself erect, smoking his cork-tipped cigarette and looking straight ahead, his long body tilted slightly towards the pram as if to proclaim his solidarity with the baby and Élise.

Possibly, in the wasteland of this Sunday afternoon, his thoughts went to the Rue Puits-en-Sock, where all the Mamelins, the brothers, the sisters, the brothers-in-law, the daughters-in-law, were going into the yard, into the kitchen, shouting, laughing, cracking a joke, or bellowing a loud ‘Hullo, everybody!'

‘Have you seen Désiré?'

‘He came this morning after the eleven o'clock Mass.'

‘I saw them after dinner going towards the Pont-Neuf.'

There was no further mention of them. The gas was lit. It was lit earlier here than anywhere else, because of the fake stained glass which kept out the light. Old Papa solemnly filled his pipe from the tobacco jar which Arthur, the practical joker, had filled with horse-hair. Juliette, Arthur's wife, opened her immaculate tulle blouse and released a white breast which she pushed towards her baby's greedy mouth, while Catherine, Lucien's wife, made sure that her baby's bottle was not too hot.

‘Poor Désiré!'

Arthur sang in a high baritone and played tricks on the others, Lucien calmly smoked his long worker's pipe, Old Papa listened to them dreamily, and while Chrétien Mamelin stood on the door-step with old Kreutz, Madame Mamelin, cold and grey, cooked the supper, which would be eaten in shifts, the children having theirs first, the parents afterwards. Cécile would watch over the babies as they fell asleep, the tow-headed Kreutz sisters would look in to bid everybody a neighbourly good evening, and the door would go on constantly opening and shutting on other people of the Rue Puits-en-Sock.

If the weather had been a little less chilly, they would have put some chairs out on the pavement, in spite of the tram which brushed past, but which, on Sunday, went by only every quarter of an hour.

‘Shall we go home now?'

‘You want me to push the pram?'

‘No, Désiré.'

They could have gone back along the quays, where there was no longer a soul to be seen, but they returned through the town to have the benefit of a little light and warmth. Not that Désiré did not generate enough inner light and warmth for himself. He was smiling. He was walking along as erect as ever. He did not care if the lamps on the bandstand were not alight, if the remaining silhouettes, sitting on the iron chairs scattered around, looked like ghosts waiting for heaven knows what romantic performance; he did not care about the icy moon which could be seen in the sky at the same time as the setting sun.

He kept on walking. The child, sitting in his pram, fell asleep and his head started nodding.

‘Give me the pram.'

‘Not in town.'

They plunged into the Rue du Pont d'Avroy, the liveliest street in the town, and behind all the windows, in a halo of comfortable warmth, they could see people drinking cups of coffee filtered through silver percolators. smooth half-pints of beer, and port in delicate glasses, with a golden biscuit in a saucer beside each glass, while the cloud of cigar smoke thickened, and you could sense the collision of the balls on the green billiard-tables.

They looked as if they were fleeing and it was Élise, seized with a sort of giddiness, who was walking the faster of the two.

This procession, this flood of humanity pouring out of a long porch, these people stretching their limbs, still smiling and looking surprised to find a little daylight left outside, were coming out of the Walhalla, the café-concert, and Élise looked over their heads into the auditorium which she could just distinguish, a place of mystery with its hundreds of little red and white lamps, its marble tables, its Chinese lanterns and the muffled sound of the orchestra's finale.

The glance which she darted at the impassive Désiré afterwards was not a reproach. Even if he had offered to take her to the Walhalla, she would have refused.

‘It's too dear, Désiré.'

Hadn't she spent the whole of her life in mourning? Once, and only once, she had gone to the theatre with Désiré, in the early days of their marriage, right up in the gallery; she had taken off her veil, put some
Floramye
on her handkerchief, and taken some sweets along.

He never felt the need to go into a café. He was never thirsty and, when they went into the country, they took sandwiches with them which they ate by the roadside. Hundreds of people were buying waffles and, straight after coming out of the Walhalla, pushing open the glass door of a beer-hall.

The bridge over the black, icy-looking water; the Boulevard de la Constitution, to shorten the journey home, for Élise's back was beginning to ache; the tree-trunks; the massive stocky figure of a man on the kerb, obviously a drunkard, a bearded, scowling individual who had opened his overcoat and was urinating with a satisfied air, facing the passers-by.

‘Quick, Désiré.'

She stole anxiously along under the trees, not looking back, and quickening her pace. She would have run if she had dared. She wondered if Désiré had recognized the drunkard.

‘He's following us, isn't he?'

They had turned the corner of the Rue de l'Enseignement. The Rue Pasteur was the first on the left. Their house was the first in the Rue Pasteur. They could hear footsteps behind them.

‘I think it's him,' said Désiré.

‘Dear God! Let's hope he doesn't try to come in!'

It was Léopold. The sound of his drunken footsteps echoed along the wall of the church club.

‘Do you think he recognized us? Open the door quickly. Help me to carry the pram in.'

It was a positive rout, and they rushed into the house as if they were being pursued.

‘I can hardly stand! Light the gas …'

He pulled at a little chain hanging from a wrought-iron lantern with coloured panes of glass, and the gas came on automatically. The landlady's light was on. They took the child out of the pram.

‘You take him, Désiré.'

They went upstairs. Opening the door, they were met by a familiar warmth and a smell unlike that of any other home. The clock was ticking, there were pink embers in the stove, and the table, which Élise had laid before going out, was ready for supper.

‘Do you think he saw where we came in?'

‘What difference does it make?'

He did not feel anything. He never felt anything, as Élise was always telling Valérie and her sister Félicie. As for her, she felt all too much, she felt so much that it hurt, indeed perhaps she even felt things which did not exist.

Was that why she remained nervous, irritable, anxious after the encounter with Léopold? The next morning, when Désiré set off for the Rue des Guillemins, she was still very uneasy, and she went shopping earlier than usual, with the baby on one arm and her string bag hanging down her side, hurrying into the butcher's and the greengrocer's, and looking behind her as if she were being pursued.

But when, at ten o'clock, she got back to the Rue Pasteur, Léopold was there, as dark and stocky as ever, standing on the opposite pavement and gazing at the windows of the house.

She went bravely forward and took out her key, something which called for a whole series of gymnastics on account of the baby, the purse and the shopping-bag.

‘Come in, Léopold. Had you already rung the bell?'

She was afraid that he had rung the bell and the landlady had answered the door. He smelled of alcohol. He muttered a few syllables which she could not understand. If only he didn't stumble on the stairs and fall headlong!

‘Hold the banisters.'

He was a heavy man. He crushed the steps under his weight and he still dragged his left leg a little. He looked around him at the neat kitchen, went across to Désiré's wicker armchair by the stove, and sank into it.

‘What's the matter? Wait a moment while I put the baby in his chair.'

What was the matter? Nothing. He didn't understand the question.

‘I came along to say hullo.'

‘I wonder if I've got a drop of something I can offer you.'

She knew that there was nothing, that the carafe in the sideboard was empty.

‘Won't you have a cup of coffee?'

She poked the fire, moved the kettle and picked up the coffee-mill. She was still uneasy, she could not help it. It seemed to her that there was some significance in their meeting on the Boulevard de la Constitution.

‘Is Eugénie keeping well?'

‘Probably. She's supposed to be in a big country house.'

‘Take your coat off.'

He shook his head. She did not dare to insist. Never, however often he might come and sit down in the kitchen by the stove, would he agree to take off his coat or his bowler hat, which seemed to be inseparable from his bearded face and his bushy eyebrows. Never would he meet Désiré either, or make the slightest reference to him.

He sat there, heavy and motionless. She did not know how to talk to him and spoke politely as if he were a stranger, and yet these were the two extreme links of the family chain which had come together, the eldest of the Peters and the little thirteenth child who might have been his daughter.

He watched her coming and going, always on the move, as if she were afraid of suddenly finding herself immobilized in front of him.

‘You aren't too hot like that? You won't have a little milk in your coffee? A sandwich? There's a bit of cheese left.'

He did not trouble to reply. There was no way of knowing why he had come, what had impelled the vagabond to sit down in this kitchen, next to this little sister of his whom he did not know and whom he gazed at with surprise in his eyes.

Once again, without realizing that she had already asked the same question, she said:

‘Is Eugénie keeping well?'

She had seen Eugénie only once, an astonishing woman who must have been very beautiful at one time, a brunette with a Parisian accent who called everybody ‘dearie' and used the familiar
tu
with people.

‘Have you seen Louisa lately?'

She talked about her sisters, about Louisa who lived on the Quai de Coronmeuse, about Marthe, Schroefs' wife, about Félicie who was extremely unhappy with her husband.

‘She's married a madman. He hides in the dark at night to frighten her. He beats her too. She's shown me the marks.'

Léopold heaved a sigh and she felt more and more uneasy, yet drawn to him by a mysterious force. There were so many questions which she would have liked to ask him, so many questions which, like an augur, only he could answer!

Why was it that she felt guilty? If Désiré had come home unexpectedly, she would not have known what to say, what attitude to adopt, and she would have begged his pardon.

‘You knew Father well, Léopold …'

He drank his coffee, with drops running down the black hairs of his beard. His eyes sought automatically for another drink which he would have preferred, and he heaved a sigh.

‘Is it true that at the end of his life? …'

‘That what?' he asked gruffly. ‘That he drank?'

Désiré's armchair creaked under Léopold. The latter knew everything. He had been to see his father's birthplace, at Herzogenrath, on the other side of the frontier, the vast, comfortable house of a big landowner.

The place itself remained incomprehensible to Élise, those three frontiers close to the Meuse, those low-lying meadows, that house situated in Germany whose windows overlooked Holland while from the bottom of the garden you could see Belgium.

‘Mother lived in the biggest farm in Dutch Limbourg. She was a Liévens.'

The daughter of a rich farming family, a family which was still one of the richest in Limbourg.

The young couple had decided not to go far: they had crossed the Meuse and settled in Belgian Limbourg, at Neeroeteren. Peters was a dike keeper. It was he who controlled the movement of the water in the polders. From Neeroeteren, you had to walk for an hour before you saw another house.

‘It's there that you were born?'

‘The others too, Hubert, Louis, Marthe, Louisa, all of us except Félicie and you. And I'm not so sure about Félicie. Wait a moment…'

He started counting and she tried to picture that expanse of pale, spongy grass, those endless meadows divided by curtains of poplars and by irrigation canals.