Pedigree (47 page)

‘I know that it's a lie and that people haven't any right to tell lies …'

He smiled. He was a man who understood.

‘What comes hardest is making a child tell a lie in his turn. But what else is there to do?'

He thought. He was the very statue of thought, his wooden leg raised slightly, his eyes fixed on the empty yard where Roger, left on his own, did not know what to do.

Finally he limped over to the door and called out:

‘Roger.'

This was all quite extraordinary, for none of the friars ever called a pupil by his Christian name. Surprised, Roger came running up and looked inquiringly at his mother.

‘Come here, young man.'

Brother Médard sat down on the edge of a bench, moved the lever underneath his cassock which enabled him to bend his wooden leg, took the child by his shoulders and, breathing into his face, said:

‘You're a big boy, aren't you? And you love your mother. Now because you love your mother and you wouldn't want anything nasty to happen to her, you're going to do what I'm going to tell you. Just now, while your mother was taking up coal to Mademoiselle Frida's room, you went in and played with the books.'

‘No, dear Brother.'

His ears had turned red, he couldn't tell why. He did not dare to turn his head away, and Brother Médard's thick breath was making him choke.

‘Listen to what I'm telling you. If anybody questions you, if anybody asks you what you did in Mademoiselle Frida's room, you must answer that you looked through her books and opened the drawer in the table.'

He had understood. Brother Médard released him and turned with satisfaction and a touch of pride to face Élise.

‘There, Madame Mamelin. As for that Monsieur Charles, if he comes again, I would advise you to …'

He gave her her instructions.

‘You did well to tell me all about it. Don't hesitate to come to see me whenever you have a problem or some question is bothering you.'

‘Thank you, Brother.'

She did not dare to say dear Brother, like Roger. It was extraordinary, but going out of the classroom and crossing the yard, she felt lighter. It had all been so easy! Everything had become familiar and reassuring once more.

‘You couldn't act in any other way, your confessor will tell you the same as I.'

Out on the pavement, he made her a deep bow which made her blush with embarrassment.

‘Come along, Roger.'

She took her son by the hand to cross the street. It seemed to her that everybody was looking at her, that all of a sudden she had become very important.

‘Mother, why does Brother Médard want me to …'

She called him to order:

‘Don't ask questions. You know perfectly well that Brother Médard forbade you to. Later on, when you're grown up, you'll understand.'

She finished her brasses. Now and then a somewhat sad smile, more distinguished than her usual smile, the smile she had given Brother Médard, came back to her lips without her realizing it.

And what was most surprising was that things happened after that just as she had been told they would. Mademoiselle Frida came home as usual, came downstairs and when the others were already at table, took her tin from the shelf, cut her bread and buttered it. Anybody would have thought that nothing had happened, and only Élise could see that her lodger was slightly embarrassed.

As for Roger, his gaze kept going from his mother to Mademoiselle Frida and, when supper was over, he was rather annoyed that nobody had asked him a single question, and wondered why Brother Médard had delivered such a solemn sermon to him.

‘P
ICK
your feet up, Roger.'

Roger wondered in silence. When they had turned into the Rue Neuvice instead of the Rue Léopold, he had thought they were going to the Vierge Noire. It was April, the air was pure, warm and caressing on the sunny side of the street, cool and bluish in the shade, some men had already discarded their overcoats, and the windows of the flats were open above the shops whose wares were overflowing again on to the pavements.

They were not going to the Vierge Noire. Roger gave up. Although they often went along the Rue Neuvice, they had never climbed this particular flight of steps where the stone was so old and worn that in certain places the steps merged together; they had never gone through this reddish double-door of which only one half was open, then this second, padded door which closed automatically like a trap. Taken aback by the contrast with the busy life outside, Roger was struck by the silence and emptiness of this little, unfamiliar church with three pencils of sunlight cutting diagonally across it.

His mother genuflected, held out to him two fingers moistened with holy water, pulled him along by the hand, like somebody who had been here already, towards a side-aisle of the chapel, and knelt down in front of a confessional.

They were in the Redemptorists' church. The confessional which Élise had picked was empty and had a name over it: Father Meeus. Next to the wooden grating which concealed the part reserved for the priest there was a bell-push.

Further on, in front of other confessionals, some women in black were waiting; a little old woman lifted the green curtain which partly hid the penitents and came out, to have her place taken straight away by another. The silence was so profound that you could hear the whispering of a woman who was probably hard of hearing and was confessing her sins in a kind of frenzy, stopping now and then to draw breath with a long hissing noise.

Élise remained motionless, her face buried in her hands, her body bent forward. You could tell that it was not the first time she had been here and that she had not picked Father Meeus' confessional at random. An oblong patch of sunlight was trembling beside the bell-push; Roger tried to find out where it was coming from, gave up, and amused himself by obliterating with his hand another patch of sunlight on the top of his prayer-stool, whose coarse plaited straw was cutting into his knees.

For the past fortnight, Élise had been a prey to a fever of cleaning. One after another, all the rooms in the house had been emptied of their contents, which had been piled up in the yard, or on the platform on top of Mademoiselle Frida's room. The mattresses and bolsters had been unstitched and the wool inside spread out in the sun.

Was it Monsieur Chechelowski's departure which had started this mania for absolute cleanliness? No doubt that event had contributed to it, but it would have come in any case some day or other for Élise Mamelin felt as if she had reached a dead-end and her nerves were at fever-pitch.

Nearly every Sunday she complained of headaches. Just as they were on the point of setting out, when everything was ready, when Roger was already waiting on the pavement, the ritual scene occurred and an attack of hysterics threatened the projected visit to the Rue des Carmes or the Ursuline convent.

‘You're tiring yourself out. I knew the time would come when you wouldn't be able to stand it any more.'

Here Désiré was obviously saying something he shouldn't. What is more, he was wrong. Élise would have put up with her tiredness as she had the previous year if everything, this winter, had not conspired against her. Her sister Félicie's death, to begin with, and the ambiguous atmosphere in which the drama had come to its miserable end. Then Françoise's pleurisy, even though she was only her sister-in-law. Désiré had shown scarcely any concern about Françoise, but Élise knew that she was suffering from tuberculosis, with two lovely little children on her hands. She had talked it over with Doctor Matray, who had said that only mountain air could save her and that in any case she ought to be separated from her children. Charles Daigne knew this, but did nothing. He shuttled sheepishly backwards and forwards between the sacristy and the house at the back of the courtyard, and when Élise had tried to have a serious talk with him he had just sighed:

‘What more can I do? I'm praying for her. And Monsieur le Curé says a Mass every week for her intention.'

Françoise suspected nothing, and thought that she was getting better because two red spots had lit up on her cheekbones. Her voice was already soft and distant, and when Élise saw her kissing her son who was only eighteen months old, her blood froze.

‘If you want my advice, don't interfere!' Désiré kept telling her.

Mademoiselle Pauline had not changed. Élise could not stand her and yet she did not dare to throw her out; perhaps, indeed, she would have missed her, she was so used to having this enemy installed in her house, giving her material, with her daily vexations, for morose reflections or silent feelings of revolt.

Mademoiselle Frida had not gone either and Monsieur Charles came nearly every week to sit down, cordial and familiar, in the Rue de la Loi dining-room. To begin with, Élise had not understood. She had thought that he was simply doing his job. When a suspicion had occurred to her, she had banished it from her mind as inconceivable, and yet it was becoming more and more flagrant; he looked at her in a way which no woman could mistake, his voice took on inflections which made her blush, and he had a habit, while he was talking to her, of putting an ostensibly fatherly hand on her knee or on her arm.

The idea! A middle-aged married man with a good job, coming to waste his time chatting with a woman in her apron and with her hair untidy, for anybody would think that it was on purpose that he always caught her in the middle of her work.

She had nearly spoken about it to Brother Médard, who always looked at the house while he watched the boys coming out of school and who, as soon as he caught sight of Élise, made an exaggerated bow towards her. So far she had not dared to.

‘Do you think it's possible, Valérie? Do you think he'll try to go any further?'

‘Why don't you speak about it to Désiré?'

‘Never, you silly! If Désiré knew about it…'

It would not be jealousy. Désiré trusted her. He would never descend to suspecting his wife. He had put up with the invasion of his house by the lodgers better than she had expected, but if he discovered that there was anything at all suspicious underneath this life surrounding him, he would be capable of driving everybody out, good and bad together.

A certain Father Blanc, who was taller than Désiré and as handsome as a saint, had preached the Lent sermons at Saint-Nicolas, in a warm voice with brassy accents which had made most of the women take their handkerchiefs out of their bags. Élise had not missed a single sermon and had wept like the rest. Lent had begun just after the scene with Monsieur Chechelowski.

Of all the lodgers, he was the least troublesome, the least difficult to live with. He came in and went out without saying a word, served himself, and paid without looking at the bill, and yet it was on him that all the rancour accumulated in Élise's soul had fallen.

‘Do you know, Madame Mamelin, that my bed is full of little insects?'

‘What's that you're saying, Monsieur Chechelowski? Come now, you don't mean it!'

‘I do! Look at my arms.'

He pushed back his cuff and showed her some little red marks on his hairy skin.

‘What makes you think those are bug-bites? This is a clean house. There have never been any insects in my beds.'

‘All the same, they were bed-bugs that I killed last night.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about…'

Mademoiselle Frida and Mademoiselle Pauline were sitting there listening.

‘…Or rather, it's you who caught some fleas and brought them here.'

He stuck to his guns and answered back, and she could not contain herself any longer.

‘Listen, if what you want is to insult me in my own home, by accusing me of being a dirty woman, I'd rather you found yourself a room somewhere else. There's no lack of them in the district. No doubt you'll even be allowed to receive your fiancée in your room, since you seem to be hankering after that.'

Yet there
were
bed-bugs there. Élise had found some. They must have been in the walls when the Mamelins had moved to the Rue de la Loi. Or else they had come from the pub next door. When Monsieur Chechelowski had left, without a word of protest, Élise, feeling a certain remorse, had said:

‘Even if it was true, you know, you shouldn't have shouted it out in front of everybody. You know that I do everything I can. You'll find that you won't be looked after anywhere as well as you are here.'

He had generously admitted:

‘I know.'

She had nearly asked him to stay, but it was too late. And instead of that, heaven knows what devil had prevented her from mentioning the knife to him. It was such a little thing and yet it would torment her for such a long time! Two or three times already, she had been on the point of running to the Rue de la Province, where he lived now, to give the wretched knife back to him. She still used it every day, always with the same uneasy feeling.

Was it worth ten francs or twenty francs? It was a knife of a different shape from those you could buy in Belgium, and probably came from Russia. It cut better than all the other knives in the house and the white metal handle was soft and smooth. It fitted Élise's hand so perfectly that even in Monsieur Chechelowski's time she used to take it out of her lodger's tin to prepare her vegetables, putting it back before he returned.

On the day he had gone, the knife had accidentally been left in a bucket with the peelings. Élise knew this. Monsieur Chechelowski, for his part, had not given the knife a thought. She had nearly reminded him about it. She had not done so. You could say, in a word, that she had stolen it.

The bed-bugs had started the great cleaning crisis. The other lodgers had realized this, and the yellow powder scattered in the corners of the bedrooms constituted an admission.

Then, while in the house with its windows open from morning till night, a sort of renewal was taking place in tune with the spring, Lent had begun and this passion for cleanliness had spread. Élise had felt a need to air the depths of her soul, which she would have liked to spread out in the April sunshine as she spread out the bedding on the warm platform.