Pedigree (46 page)

‘Dear God, I'm not very presentable. I was doing my brasses …'

She took the opportunity to take off her apron and straighten her bun.

‘You have a student here, haven't you, called …'

He hunted for the name in his notebook, although she was certain that he knew it perfectly well.

‘Let's see. Frida Stavitskaïa … Do you mind if I smoke? If you would sit down, that would put me entirely at my ease.'

Didn't he know that you didn't sit down on the best chairs in the dining-room in your working clothes?

‘With regard to this young lady, could you tell me whether she often entertains friends here?'

‘I don't allow free access.'

‘Oh, I see. Yes … Of course …'

Did he understand what was meant by free access? He was a gay person. It was hard to believe that he was a real policeman. He was looking at Élise with an amused expression in which you could almost distinguish a certain tenderness, something, at any rate, which was at once affectionate and ironical. Possibly because he had encountered a good many Élises, he seemed to know just what she was like.

‘Even if she doesn't entertain any men, I suppose she can receive women friends in her room?'

‘I can see that you don't know her. She's much too shy to have any women friends.'

She was more at ease already. Pretending to be perplexed, he gazed at a letter which he had taken from his pocket and which, under the name of Frida Stavitskaïa, bore an address crossed out with purple pencil.

‘I suppose you sometimes have to go out to do your shopping? At those times, you obviously can't tell if anybody comes in here.'

A change of tactics was indicated. Élise did not like anybody suspecting her house.

‘Listen, Madame Mamelin, I'm not going to pretend with you any more. I belong to the Second Bureau. We are the people whose job it is to keep an eye on suspicious foreigners, and there's no blinking the fact that there are swarms of them in the country just now. By accident, thanks to an incomplete address, this letter, bearing a Swiss stamp, went to the dead-letter office and fell into our hands.'

He looked thoroughly at home and it was Élise who felt like a stranger in her own house, to such an extent that the quiet street whose cobbles she could see through the window seemed like a refuge to her.

‘I assure you, Madame, that your lodger, no doubt without your knowing it, has received somebody here in this house and has put him up for several days.'

Blushing fiercely, Élise started talking very fast, so as not to allow suspicion time to enter her visitor's mind.

‘I'm sorry, I had completely forgotten about it. It was two months ago, wasn't it? I could find the exact day for you. A Thursday, because I had been to L'Innovation. You're talking about the “devil”, I'm sure. I'll tell you what happened.

‘Mademoiselle Frida had told me that a relative of hers, a cousin, was coming to Liége for two or three days. She asked me if I could make up a bed for him in this dining-room which is scarcely ever used. It was Désiré, I mean my husband, who wouldn't agree. She seemed very annoyed and sulked for a couple of days. It appeared that her cousin didn't speak French and was very shy, so that she didn't want to leave him on his own in an hotel in the town.

‘She hunted around for nearly a week. I had forgotten all about it when, one Thursday, as I said at the beginning, I found her, when I got home, in the hall with a man I didn't know. They were waiting for me. It was already dark and I had to light the gas. What I remember most of all is the long overcoat the man was wearing.

‘ “Listen, Madame Mamelin, I've brought my cousin here. We were waiting for you to tell you. He's going to sleep in my room and I'm going to stay with a woman friend of mine.”

‘I couldn't refuse, could I? They didn't stay together more than a couple of minutes in the room, and during that time the door was open. Once they had put his suitcase in the room, they came out on the landing where they talked for a long time in Russian.

‘ “Why don't you come into the dining-room?” I called out to them.

‘Because heaven knows what they looked like standing there. She didn't want to. The man—we called him the devil straight away, because of his black forelock and his goatee, though we scarcely saw anything of him—he stayed in the room all the next day. I know he was writing, because I took him up a cup of coffee and he stared hard at me.

‘But tell me, Monsieur …'

‘Monsieur Charles.'

‘Tell me, Monsieur Charles …'

She felt a pang of remorse. Mightn't she be ruining Mademoiselle Frida's reputation?

‘She hasn't done anything wrong, I hope?'

‘Go on, please.'

‘That's all. He stayed four days instead of two. He only went out in the evening and he came back in the middle of the night, because Mademoiselle Frida had given him her key. One night, he didn't come back at all, and the next day my lodger moved back into her room. I pointed out to her that her cousin hadn't said either good-bye or thank you to us …'

‘Would you mind terribly if I just had a look inside that room? Have no fear, Madame Mamelin. I'm used to this sort of thing and the young lady won't even suspect that I've been there.'

‘What if she came back?'

He shrugged his shoulders. It was as if he knew where she was, what she was doing, when she would be back.

‘Come now, Madame Mamelin, I don't want to alarm you, but, seeing that you are an intelligent woman—yes, I'm sure you are—and that you can keep a secret, I ought to tell you that the devil, as you call him, is one of the nihilists who assassinated the Grand Duke, in St. Petersburg, with a bomb which killed over fifty people.'

Élise smiled incredulously.

‘No, Monsieur Charles, that's impossible. You'll never persuade me that in my house …'

In her house, indeed! In the Rue de la Loi!

‘Would you like me to give you some information about your other lodgers? Then you'll realize that we don't make mistakes. Do you know, for instance, where Monsieur Saft went on Monday morning?'

She frowned. The previous Monday, she had in fact heard him go out before daybreak and, when he came back, she had noticed that he was carrying a long parcel under his overcoat.

‘Monsieur Saft went to Cointe to fight a duel with a fellow countryman of his. Show me the way, will you?'

He left his hat in the dining-room, throwing a sympathetic glance into the kitchen, where the waiting brasses were being steamed up by the boiling water. For two pins he would have gone in there and sat down and asked for a cup of coffee.

‘Does Mademoiselle Frida get many letters?'

‘A letter from Russia every week and a money-order at the end of the month. Often the money-order is late.'

‘Have you got the key to this wardrobe?'

‘There isn't any need for a key; the lock doesn't work.'

The man's hands went through the linen and clothes with unexpected gentleness. He opened the drawers, and a sweet-box which contained strings of various colours and hairpins. From the landing, Élise kept an eye on the street door.

‘If you knew her as well as I know her …'

‘Has she told you that her father has been in prison in Siberia for twenty years?'

‘Yes.'

With the same careful movements—she had found the comparison she was looking for: he had a dentist's hands—he leafed through the medical books without finding anything.

‘Well, well. She's a smart one.'

He came downstairs again and stopped in front of the letter-box.

‘Who takes the post out of this box every morning?'

‘It depends. Usually each lodger collects his own post. We are having breakfast when the postman comes. As for us, we scarcely ever have anything but the paper.'

‘Tell me, Madame Mamelin, I'd very much like to ask you …'

No. He decided to abandon the idea. It would be better to come back another day, to proceed gently.

‘I was nearly forgetting my hat. Above all, don't say a word to anybody, will you, not even to your husband. I count on you. I'll be back soon. And once again, forgive me for giving you all this trouble.'

How could you describe what she felt as soon as she was alone again in the house? If she had obeyed her first impulse, she would have gone across the street to tell the whole story to Brother Médard and ask his advice. Who could tell whether that man really belonged to the Second Bureau? What if he were a thief?

She went upstairs to make sure that Monsieur Charles had not taken anything. She had scarcely come down again and was dipping her rag in the metal-polish which smelled of acid when Mademoiselle Frida came back from the University.

Whom and what could she trust now? Élise had the impression that her house had been soiled, that a vague menace had insinuated itself into it. Wouldn't she have done better to keep quiet? Instead of that, she had talked and talked, she had told all she knew. The fact of the matter was, it had been fear which had impelled her. And also, she had to admit it, she had felt a desire to win the respect of that wonderfully polite man, even though she did not know him from Adam.

‘Not even to your husband!' he had told her.

Poor Désiré! She was going to have to conceal something more from him! Cheating! Always cheating! She could almost have cried at the thought! And then there was Monsieur Saft who went out on tip-toe early in the morning to fight a duel!

Suddenly her blood froze, and she sprang to her feet, facing the glazed door. She had heard somebody running along overhead, the door of the annexe had opened and slammed to as if shut by a draught, and angry footsteps were coming downstairs. Mademoiselle Frida rushed towards the kitchen so clumsily that you would have thought that she was wearing heavy men's boots. She stopped in the doorway and, under the stress of emotion, spoke in Russian first of all, then corrected herself and asked in a hissing voice:

‘Who has been in my room? I want to know. I want you to tell me straight away who has been.'

A fixed smile appeared somehow or other on Élise's pale lips.

‘What's the matter with you, Mademoiselle Frida?'

‘I want to know, do you understand?'

‘But … I assure you that apart from myself …'

The furious Russian woman looked as if she could have hit her landlady or seized her wrists to shake her.

‘You're lying!' she screamed.

‘I swear on Roger's head …'

She hadn't said that on purpose, and she tried to take it back.

‘I swear on my head that …'

‘Then it's you!'

‘What are you accusing me of doing?'

‘It's you who have been touching my books.'

‘What should I be doing with your books?'

Frida stamped on the floor.

‘I forbade you to touch my books.'

‘When I'm dusting them, I may move them a bit without meaning to.'

‘No.'

She was quite definite. Élise could guess why and blushed even more. But why should she have to put up with a scene like this in her own kitchen?

‘You've gone through the pages of my books on purpose. You've looked through my lecture notes, opened the drawer of my table.
I know!
'

She added, her teeth set in anger:

‘I make marks too.'

Despite this allusion which put her out more than ever, Élise had the presence of mind to exclaim:

‘I see what it is! Dear God! Mademoiselle Frida, how can you work yourself up into such a state for such a little thing? Just now, when I took the coal up, Roger followed me into your room. A child touches everything when you've got your back turned. I'm always telling him not to go in the lodgers' rooms.'

With a sharp look which was not entirely disarmed, Frida turned her back, opened the street-door, and slammed it behind her with such violence that the house trembled with the shock. Perhaps she had gone for good?

Élise hesitated no longer; she tore off her apron, did her hair again, and washed her hands at the pump. Brother Médard was there on the opposite pavement, watching the boys going out, and darting an occasional glance at the Mamelins' house.

Why had he never struck her as ridiculous? His body, underneath his cassock, looked like a big, lop-sided ball on which the other, disproportionate ball of the head was balanced. He made you think of a snowman in black, and yet it seemed to her that he was probably the only person from whom she would accept any verdict.

‘Come with me, Roger. Wait while I get my key.'

If she forgot to take it out of the letter-box, as had sometimes happened, she would find herself locked out and would have to wait for Désiré or one of the lodgers to return.

‘Excuse me, Brother Médard. But I don't know what to do. I need advice. Something so unexpected has just happened to me …'

Majestically—yes, he was truly majestic—he waved to the little door which was open in the middle of the gate, the yard with the uneven paving-stones, and his empty classroom where the newish desks and benches were a pale yellow colour.

‘Stay in the yard, Roger.'

It was the first time that she had ever been in a classroom. It impressed her as much as when she had gone with Charles, Françoise's husband, into the sacristy at Saint-Denis to admire the chasubles.

‘Sit down, Madame Mamelin.'

He could not offer her his chair, for it was a high chair, made to go with the desk planted on the edge of the platform. He gestured towards the front bench and stood there, his paunch sticking out, solemn, self-assured, his eyes so calm that you felt that the world could be turned upside down without his being in the least flurried.

She told him everything. In front of him, she felt no shame at all. An arithmetic problem had been left on the blackboard. The air smelled of chalk and the dirty water in the bucket with a towel over it in which the boys washed their hands. A painted plaster Virgin looked down at Élise who went on talking, interrupted now and then by a question from Brother Médard.