Pedigree (16 page)

‘You aren't too tired?'

‘I'm hungry.'

She could see that his lip was trembling in a way which was not usual with him. She pretended not to notice. She was sad, more tired than he was, and light-headed, and if it had been left to her, if it had not been time to do the housework, she would have gone to bed.

At seven o'clock, a familiar siren announced the resumption of work at Halkin's, and a few minutes later, while the builders were unloading bricks on the waste ground underneath the kitchen window, the first blows of the hammer on the sheet-iron rang out.

F
IVE
minutes before … Not even five minutes … It took so little time for bad luck to strike and it was Élise who was right, she knew it, she felt it, however much people might make fun of her morose expression, her way of creeping along apologetically as if to incite fate to pity. Once, speaking with exaggerated good humour so as not to annoy his wife, Désiré had exclaimed:

‘You're a regular wet blanket!'

He would never understand, and it was all the better for him.

Five minutes before, her life had been bright and simple. She had been crossing the Passerelle. Roughly half-way between the Pont-Neuf and the Pont des Arches, a sort of frontier between the suburbs and the centre of the town, the Passerelle was a wide wooden bridge. It was quicker. It was more familiar. It was in a sense the chattel of the inhabitants of Outremeuse, the bridge they used to cross hatless, on an ordinary errand.

You went up a few stone steps. The planks of the bridge clattered and trembled under your feet. At the other end, you went down and, in the early morning, this descent was like a landing in a new world.

Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, the market spread out, the vegetable market on the left, the fruit market on the right; thousands of wicker baskets forming regular streets, blind alleys, crossroads; hundreds of short-legged women who had pockets full of change in the three thicknesses of their petticoats and who kept catching hold of customers or insulting them.

Élise heard them murmur as they smiled at her son:

‘He's such a dear!'

Or else:

‘That's the little lady with the kiddy who's so spick and span.'

Along the quays, there were still a few old houses with high roofs, façades covered with slates, and windows with little greenish panes. There were hundreds of horses and wagons, and the horses, at that time of day—after being on the move for most of the night—had a bag of oats hung on their heads.

Élise ventured timidly into this world which had come from somewhere else, from the surrounding countryside, a world which would disappear in a little while, at the sound of a bell, leaving nothing behind it, on the cobblestones of the quays and squares, but a few cabbage-leaves and carrot-tops.

At last she had her push-chair! For months on end, they had kept on saying:

‘When we can do without the pram!'

When,
always
when
!
When
Roger would be down to only six bottles a day,
when
he would be able to go on to phosphatine,
when
they could sit him in his chair,
when
he began to walk,
when
it would no longer be necessary to carry him on the stairs …

Élise, who suffered from backache and, now that the child could walk a little, had him on her hands all the time, knew that it was all a delusion, but it was no use telling Désiré that it would always be the same. Besides, at bottom, Désiré knew it too. He just pretended to believe …

Just now, when she had left the Rue Pasteur with the new pushchair for its first outing, he had said gaily to her:

‘You see! You won't get tired any more.'

Then he had set off with his long stride to go and sit down for a moment in his mother's kitchen before going on to his office. Élise had decided to make some gooseberry jam and she was almost gay, almost determined, like Désiré, to see the world in the light of this May morning. However, try as she might, her head still hung a little to one side.

‘What can you expect, Désiré? I've got so used to bad luck …'

She could sense bad luck where it was most carefully concealed; she dug it out where nobody would have suspected its existence. The proof of that was what had happened this morning. She had just bought some red gooseberries, then some big green goose-berries enlivened by a little purple spot. She meant to drop in on Madame Pain on her way home to borrow her copper preserving pan, and then to spend the rest of the day making jam in front of the open window which the pink wall and the white masons had nearly reached, for they were building a new house behind theirs and every day the walls went up by a few rows of bricks.

Then all of a sudden, spitefully …

It was that, the spitefulness, the treachery of fate which upset her. She did her best. She had got up as usual at six o'clock in the morning. Anybody could come into her flat unexpectedly: everything was tidy and the soup was always simmering on a corner of the fire. Not a single child in the district was looked after as carefully as Roger. His nappies were washed more often than was necessary, and there was no insipid smell hanging about the kitchen as was so often the case in houses where there was a baby. She made all their clothes. She never bought anything ready-made. She saved money on the smallest things. And had Désiré ever come home to the Rue Pasteur without finding his dinner ready?

This morning, the blow had had to come from Félicie.

To crown it all, Élise had felt it coming. She ought to have followed her instinct. But just because Félicie ran a café in the middle of the market, did that mean that she could no longer buy anything in town but had to do her shopping in the Rue Puits-en-Sock like her sisters-in-law on the Mamelin side?

The stallholders knew her and smiled at her. She was so pleasant with everybody!

‘You know, Valérie, if only everybody took the trouble to be pleasant!'

It hurt her when somebody failed in this elementary duty. Even Désiré sometimes! Too many people didn't feel things and this made it worse for those who did! They were the ones who suffered.

She knew. Not exactly what was going to happen to her, except that she would wish that she could sink through the floor. All the same, she had a sort of premonition.

Doing her shopping brought her gradually closer to the huge Café du Marché with its bay windows, its monumental white marble bar, its sparkling beer pulls. She had bought her goose-berries and her shopping-bag was full, hooked on to the folding push-chair which they would at last be able to take up to the flat, thus avoiding causing any annoyance to the landlady.

She had haggled over the price and the stallholder had scarcely put up any resistance.

‘Ten sous? … Get along with you! … Well, just because it's you, lady …'

She never came to the market without a hat and yet nobody thought her bumptious. She knew that Félicie had seen her through the café windows. She had seen her husband, whom the two of them called Coucou between themselves, come out, dressed in black and wearing a bowler hat, and set off towards the centre of the town as if he were going to a funeral.

Although Coucou was no longer there, she did not go in. She stayed outside. She did not want Félicie to be able to reproach her one day with having come to the market without saying good day to her, but she did not want to impose herself on her either.

Wasn't it Félicie who had always been coming to see the Mamelins, when they lived in the Rue Léopold, to complain about her husband? To such an extent that Désiré had prophesied:

‘One fine day, we shall have trouble with Coucou.'

Yet Désiré had not known everything, for instance that one morning Félicie had arrived looking like a madwoman, afraid of being followed. She had been bare-headed, with a shawl folded across her blouse, and she had brought out a little packet.

‘Élise, for the love of God you must keep this for me until I come and ask for it back. Whatever you do, don't show it to Désiré.'

The packet had remained hidden for three days on top of the wardrobe, next to the rifle.

‘Poor Félicie.'

To attract her attention, Élise tapped timidly on the glass pane, and looked inside where the market women were eating eggs and bacon and rice tarts two inches thick, and drinking big bowlfuls of coffee. These women took their money out of old purses stuffed with coins and notes, without knowing exactly how much there was inside.

Félicie was standing with her elbows on the bar, wearing a pretty white blouse with a lace insertion which emphasized the rich curve of her breasts. She was chatting with a customer of whom Élise had only a back view. Near Élise, some draymen were delivering beer through a trap-door and the air reeked of it, while the two horses pissed urine the colour of ale.

Élise was on the point of going. She thought it would be best to leave. But suddenly her gaze met that of her sister. Félicie came towards her, turned round to say something to her companion, reached the door and opened it just as Élise was starting to smile.

‘
Now what have you come begging for?
'

She had said that! Her eyes cold, her features motionless. Élise looked at her uncomprehendingly, unable to think of anything to say in reply. She would have given a great deal to be far away, anywhere, and never to have heard those words.

‘Dear God!'

Yes, she must have stammered out ‘Dear God', while looking around her to make sure that nobody had heard. One person who had heard was the waiter, Joseph, the bald one who knew her. Élise walked away with the push-chair. She rushed along.

Listen, Désiré … No, Désiré wasn't there … He was at his office and she would never tell Désiré … Poor little Valérie! … No she wouldn't tell Valérie either … Valérie must never know …

Léopold perhaps? … If only Léopold could come this morning to the Rue Pasteur! … He would understand, he who knew them all, all the Peters … He must still know a few things which Élise only suspected …

Begging!

She marched along, crossing the Pont des Arches without getting her breath back or her normal colour. She looked at the passers-by as if they were planning to hunt her down. She murmured:

‘Félicie's mad.'

As she walked along, this phrase kept coming back like a refrain:

‘Félicie's mad.'

She longed to talk to somebody about it straight away. She knew that she would know no peace until she had got it off her chest. She crossed the Place Ernest-de-Bavière and passed in front of Saint-Nicolas. She very nearly went inside with the child to throw herself before the altar of the Virgin, since it happened to be her month.

‘I knew it all the time: Félicie, our Félicie, is mad …'

Nobody in the whole family knew Félicie better than Élise. Before her marriage, Félicie had lived with her and their mother in the little flat in the Rue Féronstrée. She was already beautiful and very well developed for her age, and men used to turn round to look at her in the street; above all she had a provocative way of throwing out her chest.

Begging!
Élise who always refused to take anything, who was so embarrassed every time she went to see her sister! Élise who sometimes made a big detour to avoid just that.

And besides, what use to her were all those breakfast sets in fine porcelain? Wasn't it a regular mania?

‘Here, Élise, take this for little Roger …'

Why always breakfast sets?

‘Oh, come now, Félicie! Last time too …'

Did Félicie remember that she had given her a breakfast set only the week before? In the end, Élise had had to hide them from Désiré. She didn't know what to do with them.

‘Don't worry, dear. Take it! It's a lovely one.'

Always Limoges porcelain, with tiny pink flowers. Was it really true that Félicie drank, and in that case was it…

‘No, Félicie, not money. You know, I can't possibly take it …'

‘Don't be silly!'

Money which she took by the handful out of the till, and which she thrust into her sister's hand or into her bag.

‘It's for the baby.'

Money which Élise was ready to return to her straight away. She had never spent it. Without saying anything to Désiré, she had opened a Savings Bank account in the child's name. After leaving Félicie, she used to drop into the General Post Office.

Now she felt like crying. It was the reaction. Her nerves were giving way. She felt tired out and started worrying about the two storeys she had to climb with Roger in her arms. Then she blushed.

Not all the money in the Savings Bank account came from Félicie. But nobody could say that she had taken the other money from Désiré. He never thought of putting anything aside. He never asked himself what would become of her and her son if anything happened to him. Why did she do her shopping at the market? To save a few centimes on this and that. At the end of the month she had several francs which she took to the Savings Bank.

The masons were in their places, scarcely six feet below the window, already silhouetted against the sky. The bean soup had got stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.

Élise did not go to Madame Pain's to borrow the copper preserving pan. She made her jam, without any enthusiasm or pleasure, thinking all the time about Félicie. Léopold did not come. As long as she had not spoken to anybody, she would not feel easy in her mind.

At two o'clock, Désiré was surprised to see her with a white face mottled with pink, as if she had been crying.

‘What's the matter?'

‘Don't take any notice, Désiré. It's my nerves.'

A prudent man, he never pressed the point on these occasions. He ate his meal, facing the open window. It was she who spoke up first.

‘I saw Félicie this morning.'

Without thinking, Désiré asked: