Pedigree (28 page)

‘On one condition, and that is that you'll entrust your son to me till this afternoon. All right?'

He was Mephistophelian.

‘We've got great plans, the two of us, haven't we, sonny? Ssh! Don't look at your mother. Don't be afraid of your mother. Have we got great plans or haven't we?'

Overawed, the child stammered:

‘Yes.'

Élise turned to Madame Smet to appeal for her help, but Guillaume said airily, as if he had known her all his life:

‘Come now, my dear Madame Smet, don't let me down, don't take any notice of my sister-in-law's winks. It's all agreed, then! Good health! And off I go with Roger. Roger's mine, let's say till four o'clock.'

‘Listen, Guillaume …'

‘It's agreed, isn't it? Have I or haven't I come from Brussels just to see my nephew?'

‘Of course, Guillaume. Only let me change him at least.'

And she who had never entrusted her son to anybody, except for a few minutes to Madame Pain, now found herself obliged to give in, because Guillaume insisted and because Madame Smet was there.

What would Désiré say? If only Léopold had stayed! She tried to create a diversion.

‘Look, Guillaume: it's my parents' house at Neeroeteren. My father was a dike-keeper. The barges used to go past on a level with the roof of the house. I never saw it, but all my brothers and sisters were born there, except Félicie.'

He stroked his moustache, looking politely, without listening. It was all one to him.

‘Go and piddle, Roger. You're going for a walk with your Uncle Guillaume. You'll be nice, won't you? You'll be good?'

Everything was going wrong. Nothing, today, was happening as usual. Weeks, months went by without seeing a living soul and then, all of a sudden, things happened in a rush.

She watched Roger go off with his uncle.

‘You know, Madame Smet, he isn't used to children. I can tell that he's got some bee in his bonnet. He is going to buy something for Roger. I only hope it's something useful! With Guillaume, you can never tell.'

The kitchen seemed so empty without Roger. If Madame Smet had not been there, Élise, without saying anything, would have followed her son at a distance.

They walked along in the dazzling sunshine and Guillaume bent down slightly, without managing to adjust his pace to the child's, talking to him as he would to an adult.

‘You see, if your mother had come with us, she wouldn't have let me do what I wanted. I know her. She's still dressing you like a girl.'

He was ignorant of the rites, for instance that you had to stop in front of the human dummies in black frockcoats who mounted guard outside the dress-shops in the Rue Léopold and handed out prospectuses to children. He did not know that these prospectuses were puzzles, that you had to find the Bulgarian or the huntsman in a jumble of lines. He wondered why his nephew insisted on walking over the grating outside Hosay's where you could breathe in the hot chocolate air from the basement.

‘Are you tired?'

‘No.'

‘You'd like us to take the tram?'

‘No.'

He went into L'Innovation as if it were an ordinary shop, into L'Innovation where all the shopgirls knew Roger and where on Thursdays—yesterday, for instance—they passed him round like a doll as soon as Monsieur Wilhem's back was turned. He did not know Valérie. He went past her counter without stopping, and Valérie got into a panic and trotted over to another counter.

‘It must be Désiré's brother.'

‘What can Élise be doing to let him take the child?'

Guillaume was at home everywhere. Here he was, picking Roger up and standing him on a counter.

‘Isn't your mother with you, Roger?'

‘No, Mademoiselle. Today Roger is mine for the whole day. Now let's see what you can show me.'

He was in a holiday mood. He was the uncle who had arrived miraculously from Brussels and who was going to transform a boy's life completely.

‘No blue, Mademoiselle. Find me something gayer.'

Valérie did not dare to approach. The assistant regretfully produced a red jersey suit which delighted Guillaume.

‘Put it on him, will you?'

The assistants made signs to each other from one counter to the next. They all knew that Roger was dedicated to the Virgin, and imagined Élise's face when she saw her son come home in that gaudy red suit.

‘Perfect! Leave it on him. Put his dress on one side. His mother will come and pick it up one of these days. How much?'

He was Guillaume! And with Guillaume, everything was different. The boy followed him, dumbfounded, still a little frightened.

‘Now let's see. What would you like to do now?'

Roger's gaze alighted on an ice-cream vendor's yellow cart.

‘An ice-cream!'

He would never have dared to say that to his mother. Guillaume leaned his elbows on the little cart and spoke familiarly to the vendor, as he spoke to everybody.

‘Give this little nipper an ice. A strawberry ice, Roger?'

‘Yes.'

Then he plunged into the town crowds with the child, who let himself be pulled along while he sucked his cornet crowned with pink cream. If only Élise had seen him!

This was all so different from the quiet visits to L'Innovation the other days, from the silent walk between the counters, the discreet exchange of signals, the long halts in front of a piece of madapollam or merino, the words which were whispered with an eye on Monsieur Wilhem's silhouette or the Inspector's frockcoat!

Guillaume went along streets where Roger had never been. In the Place Verte, they crossed a sea of sweet-smelling flowers where the flower sellers sat behind their bouquets like the women in the market behind their baskets of fruit or vegetables.

‘What if we went and had dinner at the Exhibition? Would you like to go and have dinner at the Exhibition?'

They took the tram. With Élise, they took the tram only when it was absolutely necessary. The ice was still lasting. There was a bit of it left when they got off the tram outside the Exhibition gates and Guillaume paid for them to go in; he did not even know that children did not pay and bought two tickets, afterwards making straight for the restaurant section.

Usually they avoided this section where, in brightly painted houses, you could see people eating huge Brussels waffles with the holes filled with whipped cream. They went straight across to the free stands, including those where samples were given, the chocolate stand for instance, with its machines, its huge shining wheel, the belt slipping along without a sound, and the negro dressed as if he had come out of the Arabian Nights who distributed the drops of chocolate which had fallen from the machine.

Guillaume did not know that Élise forbade her son to eat these samples.

‘It's dirty!' she would tell him, wiping the palms of his hands with her handkerchief.

He did not know that when the child was thirsty and stopped in front of the stalls on which rows of coloured bottles of soda-water were lined up, you had to pull him away and say:

‘You'll have a drink when we get back home.'

Guillaume did not know either where you had to go to get the sumptuous prospectuses of which Roger already had quite a collection, the coloured pictures, the series of wild animals given by Remy starch, and above all the booklet advertising Swedish matches, with its thin, silky paper on which you could see matches of all colours, green ones, red ones, and even some with golden heads.

‘What does your mother give you to eat?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Tell me, waiter …'

For they were sitting under an arbour, with a waiter in a white apron beside them, like the people they walked past so quickly the other days before going to have a snack on a bench.

‘What are you going to give this little fellow?'

‘You could always start with a soup. Then something light, a fried sole for instance?'

‘A fried sole, then.'

He drank some wine. His eyes laughed like Désiré's. They were the same dark brown, but they did not have the same gentleness, or rather there was in their gay flame a more vulgar note which was sometimes rather aggressive.

‘Are you happy? Are you enjoying yourself?'

‘Yes.'

A man went past with some paper windmills fastened to coloured sticks.

‘Do you want a windmill?'

‘Yes.'

The child was impressed. A grown-up's napkin had been tied round his neck. Nobody had seen to it that he piddled, and he had done so in his red jersey trousers which were scratching him between the legs.

It was all too much for him. He could not stand it any longer. His cheeks were burning. He was hard put to it not to burst out sobbing.

‘Do you want to go on the water-slide?'

He pulled at the hand which was dragging him along.

‘No! …No! …'

He was frightened. For hours on end, the other days, they had watched people in boats coming down the slope of the water-slide, but the idea of going on it himself had never occurred to him.

‘You aren't tired, are you?'

‘Yes …No …'

He would have liked it all to last a long time and yet he could feel a mounting anguish in his chest. When he looked at his Uncle Guillaume, he thought he would recognize his father, but it was such a different father that he was afraid of him and became sad.

‘What do you want us to do now?'

With his mouth full and his hands full, he did not reply. The jersey was chafing his thighs which were probably all red, especially with the piddle.

‘What if we went to say hullo to your papa, who's still in his office?'

The child clutched at this straw, even though the word papa, which was never uttered in the Rue Pasteur, shocked him.

‘Yes.'

Was his father waiting outside, at the corner of the Pont du Commerce, to the left of the entrance, as on the other evenings when they came out of the Exhibition? For Désiré had not gone to the expense of buying a permanent ticket. When he left his office, he came to wait for Élise and the child, and, since Roger was always tired by that time, he carried him home on his shoulders.

‘Put him down, Désiré! He's too big now.'

‘I don't want to be put down.'

Today everything was different. Time had disappeared. The Exhibition was all topsy-turvy. Nothing was in its place. You could not be certain of anything any more. He felt lost in a world which no longer had any meaning and in which people bustled about in all directions.

‘Wait a moment. We'll take a carriage.'

He did not understand. Carriages were for taking people to hospital. He clung to his uncle's hand.

‘No. I don't want to.'

But Guillaume had already signalled to an open cab.

‘You really don't want to get in?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't want to. I want Mother.'

There was only the Pont du Commerce to cross, the square with the ducks where the flags fluttered in the sunshine. Then they were already in the Rue des Guillemins. They turned the corner of the Rue Sohet. A triumphant smile appeared on Guillaume's lips as he pushed open the door of the insurance office.

The child, for his part, saw only a partition with windows in it which he could not reach.

‘Well, I never! Guillaume! What are you doing here in Liége?'

And Guillaume mischievously lifted Roger up in his arms and placed him on the sill of the little window.

The boy discovered a world he did not know, a stove, some furniture, a piece of bread and butter on an unfolded napkin, a bowl full of coffee, and his father, in shirtsleeves, who looked quite at home here although they had surprised him in a strange setting.

It was funny: Désiré was almost embarrassed by his son's inspection of this scene, but he smiled straight away and went to open the communicating door.

‘Come in, Guillaume. Come in, son. I suppose it's you, Guillaume, who bought him that suit?'

What was the use of pressing the point? Élise would tell him herself!

‘Sit down, Roger. You see, this is your father's office. And how's your wife, Guillaume? Are you here for a few days? You've had your dinner, I suppose?'

He picked up his bread and butter, next to the typewriter, while the child stared hard, as if he were making a memorable discovery, at his father eating somewhere else than at home, in his shirtsleeves, just as he was in the evening in the Rue Pasteur flat.

‘D
O YOU
think the colour will come out, Valérie?'

Élise took out of the hot, soapy bath a blood-red, shapeless mass which was Roger's first suit. Were there any pink streaks in the bluey water? That was the vital question.

‘I assure you it won't, Élise. You'll see,
they
'll take it back all right.'

Élise was in a state of nerves. She couldn't find any other word for it. She felt just as she did when she had cried a lot and yet she had not cried at all today: her head and legs were empty, and there was a sort of hurried ticking going on all over her body, as if there were a machine driving her along, wanting to go faster than her.

Madame Smet was the same at nine o'clock in the evening as at ten o'clock in the morning, always the visitor, with her mittens on her freckled hands, wagging her head in approval of whatever was said to her, and sitting erect on her upright chair, for she had never agreed to sit in an armchair.

Valérie's fingers were fluttering over a piece of crochet-work. It was the only kind of work she could do. Her fingers were so delicate, so diaphanous, her hands so frail, that she would sprain her wrist if she had to bring up a bucket of water.

Wasn't it paradoxical that she should have become Élise's best friend? Valérie had no bones, no nerves. When you looked at her hand in front of the lamp, you could not see any bones in it, or hardly any. And her feet were so tiny that she had to buy her shoes in the little girls' department.