Pedigree (19 page)

The sun had never failed to shine for the feast-day. The skies were clear. It was summer.

The iron pots were filled to overflowing with black powder, and along came the artificer, dragging his red-hot rod, and leaping from one pot to the next while the whole district echoed with a sound like that of gunfire.

Before the din had finished the procession came out of the church, and in front of it, in every street, little boys and little girls in starched, embroidered dresses scattered rose petals and coloured paper lozenges which they had spent weeks cutting out.

Nothing remained of what had been the day before. The world had been transfigured. The town was no longer a town, the streets were no longer streets, and the very trams stopped respectfully at the crossroads.

The smell of the procession preceded and followed it. It would linger until the evening, and even until the following day, in the streets: the smell of the big red roses, of the leaves being trampled underfoot, and above all else of the incense, as well as the smell of the cakes and tarts being cooked in every house and that of the fair which would be opening very soon.

A sound as characteristic as, for instance, the humming of a swarm of bees, a symphony to be more precise, filled the streets: the tramping and shuffling of the thousands of people who were following the procession as it moved along, the hymns which were constantly changing in tune and tone: the little girls from the schools or from the Congregation of the Blessed Virgin had scarcely gone by before you could hear the drone of the men in black, the men of St. Roch who had no eyes for anything but their hymn-books; the band was at the end of the street; it turned the corner; but even so you could suddenly hear the shrill voices of the deacons and sub-deacons heralding the arrival of the Dean, stiff and erect in his golden vestments, and carrying the Blessed Sacrament under a canopy held by the local notabilities.

Just as at the fair you would hear at one and the same time the music of ten or fifteen roundabouts, the explosions of the shooting-galleries and the shouts of the women selling chips, this procession, which was nearly two miles long and did not miss a single street or alley-way, would occasionally overlap or catch up with its own tail.

The saints had all come out, the Black Virgin of the parish, St. Roch and St. Joseph, on flags which kept tilting dangerously, and they were preceded by banners, little boys, little girls, men, women, old people, all grouped together in brotherhoods and sisterhoods.

Désiré was carrying a taper at the end of a stick painted red and white. Old Mamelin, for his part, gloved in white, was holding the canopy over the Blessed Sacrament.

At eleven o'clock there could be heard the high-pitched notes of the barrel-organ of a tiny roundabout for children, a round-about at two centimes a ride, and after that the first rifle shots.

The next day, or the day after that, Élise would speak to Désiré about her condition. He would be pleased without thinking of what it would involve. When he came home for dinner, she could tell from his breath that he had drunk an apéritif. He was in a merry mood. It was the parish feast-day.

Very soon now, on the stroke of two o'clock, all the Mamelin children and grandchildren would gather together, dressed in their Sunday best, in the courtyard in the Rue Puits-en-Sock. Élise's head was already buzzing at the thought. When dinner was over, standing in front of the mirror, with pins between her lips, she pinned up her bun three times, four times, growing increasingly impatient as it kept falling to one side. Désiré was there behind her, doing nothing.

‘Take the push-chair down, will you?'

He took it down, and then the child, for he could foresee the moment when, as so often happened on a Sunday, she would burst into tears, her nerves frayed out, or else suddenly tear something up.

When she finally joined him, he did not ask any questions. He wheeled the push-chair along. The ground was littered with flowers and pieces of coloured paper. There were children besieging the yellow carts of the Italian ice-cream vendors.

‘If your mother starts getting at me …'

‘She won't say anything to you. You mustn't take any notice.'

They greeted the passers-by who smiled at them. Désiré knew everybody, all the names you could see over the shop windows, even people who had left the district but who came back on the parish feast-day like prodigal sons, carrying babies they were proud to show to their old neighbours.

‘What did I tell you, Désiré? We are too early. They are still at table.'

‘What does that matter?'

A long table had been set out in the courtyard in the Rue Puits-en-Sock. Another table was laid in the kitchen. Sooner or later, somebody would have the idea of counting the people gathered around impassive Old Papa: thirty-seven, including twenty-two grandchildren and Chrétien Mamelin who, together with his old friend Kreutz, would go and sit outside on the pavement, between the two shops.

Everybody was looking his best, their cheeks pinker, their eyes brighter than usual. They kept coming in and going out. The women had put on some eau-de-Cologne or scent.

‘Good afternoon, Françoise.'

‘Good afternoon, Élise.'

Nobody knew that it was the last time this gathering in the Rue Puits-en-Sock would be complete. The mother, dressed in grey as usual, with her grey hair in bandeaux, was the only person who never sat down for a single moment, for there was always somebody who was hungry.

Exactly ten days from now, when everybody least expected it, she would suddenly feel dizzy, there, in that kitchen of hers, in front of her stove of which she was so proud.

There would be nobody there but Old Papa, sitting in his armchair.

‘I don't know what's wrong with me, Papa. I'm going upstairs for a minute. If it starts to burn on the stove …'

‘Get along with you, my girl.'

Nobody had ever thought that anything like that might happen. For the first time in her life she would go to bed at four o'clock in the afternoon, all alone, and when Cécile came home a little later, it would be her cries that would give the alarm. They would call in the doctor. They would send for Désiré, Lucien, Arthur. Only Mère Madeleine would be unable to come, for nuns were forbidden to return to their old home, even when their parents were dying.

At ten o'clock at night, however improbably it might seem to them all, it would be over.

Nobody, today, had any suspicion of this. Now a daughter, now a daughter-in-law would unbutton her blouse to feed a baby. Thirty people at least, of all ages, went to and fro in the yard and in the kitchen. The Kreutz sisters came along to have a piece of tart. There were so many tarts that people began to wonder whether they would all be eaten, and every time somebody ate a piece it meant another plate to be washed.

‘Give me an apron, Cécile. I'll help you…'

It made your head spin to have so much happening at once, and the babies in their prams started crying because there was not always time to attend to them.

The men smoked cigars and drank liqueurs. The children were shared out among the parents. The bigger ones were taken out for a ride on the roundabouts and were bought ice-creams and cheap toys, usually paper windmills spinning round at the end of sticks or else balloons made of goldbeater's skin.

People had scarcely finished eating before it was time for them to start again and groups lost track of one another, eyes became feverish, almost wild.

‘Where's Loulou?'

Loulou was Charles Daigne's daughter; she was of the same age as Roger.

‘I think she's gone out with Catherine.'

There were things to see everywhere. The whole district was in holiday mood. And on all sides you could hear the music of the roundabouts and the noise of the shooting-galleries.

‘Do you want me to warm the bottles?'

Then there was supper which started at six o'clock, a ham which Désiré's mother had cooked the day before and which was eaten with lettuce and mayonnaise.

The men in particular were not the same as on other days, because they had smoked cigars and drunk liqueurs. Heaven knows where they had been when they had gone out earlier.

‘Get along with you, Arthur …'

Arthur always exaggerated.

The feast-day smell grew fainter. The dust became thicker and thicker. The sun had vanished and the world was slowly turning purple, with perspectives of frightening depth.

Eyes were smarting and bodies growing weary, especially the little children's bodies, and yet it was the children who clung to the enchantment of it all.

Élise had backache, but she said nothing. All this eating nauseated her and once she wondered if she ought not to go into a corner to be sick. Not for a single moment did she feel at home.

‘Come along with us for a walk round the fair.'

‘No, Cécile. It's nice of you, but really, I'd rather not.'

Cécile was married to a locksmith, a good-looking man with a waxed moustache who, on Sunday mornings, right up to the time for eleven o'clock Mass, wore a contraption to train it. His name was Marcel. He had the aggressive look of a handsome, common young man. Élise did not like him. In the whole family, in her opinion, the only person who was any good was Françoise.

When the gas had to be lit, although it was still light outside, it revealed, beneath the blue haze formed by the cigar-smoke, piles of dirty plates, coffee stains, pieces of tart, and the remains of the ham.

‘Désiré.'

She tried to get him to come outside. He did not understand. He was at home here. He was talking about Monsieur Monnoyeur and everybody was listening to him because they knew he was the most intelligent and the best educated of them all.

She signalled to him. He finally noticed and asked aloud:

‘What is it?'

Anywhere else he would have guessed straight away, but here he had already turned back into a Mamelin.

‘Is anything wrong?'

She felt like crying. Her head was spinning. Her hand went out as if to hold on to a table.

‘Come outside for a minute.'

How discreet it was! Everybody watched them going out. In the yard, next to the bronze pump, next to the children who eyed them too, she stammered:

‘I don't feel very well. Listen: you can stay. I'm going home with the child.'

‘Why don't you go upstairs and lie down for a while?'

How could he possibly suggest such a thing? Lie down, her, in her mother-in-law's bedroom, for instance, or in the bedroom of Cécile and Marcel who lived in the house! Why, the smell by itself would be enough to make her sick! They were clean, of course, but that didn't alter the fact that every person, every house had its particular smell. And what if she was going to be ill, and couldn't get up straight away?

Ugly little creases appeared near the sides of her nose. Désiré gave in.

‘Let's go.'

‘No, you stay! Yes, I insist. What will they say if you leave them on a day like this?'

‘Come along. I'll explain to them.'

‘No. I mean it, Désiré! I haven't the courage to go back into the kitchen. Bring me my hat and my gloves. They are by the coffee-mill. Tell them …'

She was tired out. She leaned against the pump and closed her eyes. Désiré, in the kitchen, tried to joke in order to conceal his embarrassment.

‘Élise doesn't feel well. She's very sorry. It's fatigue. She isn't very strong, you know, she isn't used to so much noise.'

His mother remained as cold as marble.

‘You aren't coming back?'

‘I may do. But if she really isn't well …'

‘Take a few slices of ham at least. What are you looking for? Her gloves?'

Élise was the only one who had come with gloves. Catherine, for all that she was wearing a black silk dress for the first time, had not even put her hat on to walk the three or four hundred yards from where she lived.

‘Good night, Mother. Forgive us. Good night, everybody.'

‘Good night, Désiré.'

Élise was outside in the yard. Although nobody could see her through the fake stained glass, she turned towards the kitchen, gave the ghost of a forced smile, and murmured:

‘Good night. Thank you…'

They went along the whitewashed passage. Chrétien Mamelin, in the falling darkness, was still smoking his pipe in the company of his accomplice Kreutz. They had taken a couple of chairs out of the shop. They were at home on this pavement where, in front of the shops, there were other groups like their own watching the young people dancing.

‘What's the trouble?'

‘I don't know. I'm sorry.'

‘But you must feel something?'

‘Don't be cross with me, Désiré. If only you knew…'

The truth, the real truth, was that her back was not aching as much as it did on a wash-day, for instance. If for a moment she had felt like being sick, that had passed. She could have stayed.

It was rather a moral anguish that had taken hold of her in the midst of that merry family, that vulgar, cordial disorder in which they were all so happy.

In which they were wallowing,
as she would say to Valérie later. They had no refinement, no feelings. Nobody had noticed that she was doing all the washing-up and, when somebody had suggested that she should go to see the fair, it was too late, the others had already gone out two or three times. She would not have gone, but she would have liked a little consideration.

The noise diminished as they came nearer to the Rue Pasteur and the feast-day smell grew fainter in the dark. The gas-lamps were alight.

‘Are you really ill?'

So much the worse for him! She felt the need to take her revenge. There was nothing to lead her to suppose that what she was saying was true.

‘I think I'm going to have a miscarriage.'

‘But … What? … You've never said anything to me about it…'