Pedigree (52 page)

Then Élise, who had eaten standing up, while she was working, made the beds, did the dusting and peeled the vegetables for dinner.

‘Hurry up, Roger. Let me see if your shirt is still clean.'

A wet comb had put a parting into the boy's flaxen hair. He was wearing a tussore jumper his mother had made for him. They were in mourning again, but in the country she let him wear out his blue trousers. She herself was wearing a white blouse with a round collar over a black skirt—a grey serge skirt which she had dyed.

They made their way slowly towards the Thiers des Grillons, in a world where they could have imagined themselves to be alone. Élise was sad, and when she was sad she felt more than usually tired. Recently she had suffered a great deal from her prolapsus of the womb. Once again there had been talk of an operation; the specialist had insisted, but Doctor Matray, for his part, had declared:

‘You've got a child, Madame Mamelin. Take care of yourself, rest as much as you can, but don't have an operation.'

For Roger's sake, he had said! That meant that she might die. They would come for her with a carriage like Félicie, and take her to hospital or to a clinic. Her family would come to see her, Désiré leading Roger by the hand along those pale corridors where the smell of sickness and death took you by the throat. There would be oranges and grapes on a painted table, next to the medicines; then they would put her to sleep, and when the child and his father came again …

‘No! No! I don't want to!'

She dreamt about it at night and thought about it in the sunshine, even on this wonderful morning dressed in pale green and haloed with gold dust.

‘Play, Roger.'

He played, that is to say he banged a stick in the thick dust which covered the road and had already whitened his boots.

Françoise had died in April. She had lingered on for a month when everybody knew that there was nothing to be done. The doctors had given her up. Élise went round to see her every time she could escape from the Rue de la Loi, to find her sisters-in-law there and neighbours looking after the children. Françoise herself, alone in her bedroom, gazed at her with an expression which Élise had never seen before in anybody's eyes and which she would never forget, even if she lived to be a hundred.

The blinds were always lowered, for the daylight tired the sick woman. Very thin, with her black hair spread out on the pillow, her jaw already jutting out like that of a dead person and her breath coming jerkily, all that you could see of her was her big dark eyes, eyes of a frightening stillness.

She was thinking about the children. Élise knew that. She did not reply when somebody said:

‘She didn't know that she was dying.'

In that case, why did her eyes express that boundless fear every time the voice of one of her children was raised in the kitchen? Why did she refuse to see them? People took them in to her sometimes, thinking it would please her, and with a tremendous effort, she would turn away from them; everybody said that she had lost her wits.

Only Élise had understood what was happening in Françoise. That was why her sister-in-law's death had upset her more than Félicie's, even though the latter had been her favourite sister.

A few moments before she died, Françoise had sat up in bed and uttered a cry like a roar, there was no other word for it, staring so fixedly at the door that it was as if she could see through it. It was just before dawn. The baby was crying in the next room and a strange voice, that of the beadle's wife, Madame Collard, was trying to coax it back to sleep.

‘You're going to tear your clothes, Roger.'

He was trying to squeeze through a gap in the hedge. Surprised by his mother's voice, he looked at her and noticed that her eyes were misty, but he said nothing and went on playing by himself.

The foliage of the trees met above the steep slope of the Thiers des Grillons and formed a dark ceiling which the sun penetrated only here and there, casting bright patches on the uneven cobble-stones. The air was humming with noise. The town, down in the valley, was like a bluish lake covered with mist, with factory chimneys poking into the air and railway engines whistling spitefully. You could make out the sounds of trucks bumping into one another, dredger buckets emptying their loads into space and monstrous hammers striking white-hot metal. Shriller notes in this powerful symphony came from the bell of the tram which stopped at the bottom of the hill and from the shouts of children in a nearby school; a clumsy bee brushed against Élise's face and a bird started twittering, perched on a strand of barbed wire, its beak open and its crop puffed out.

Élise sat down on the grass after covering it with her handkerchief. Roger hunted around for nuts. The rays of the sun, which had been pale and light in the early morning, turned the dark yellow of ripe corn and were filled with buzzing life.

The lodgers were on holiday. Mademoiselle Frida herself had gone to spend a month in Geneva, which proved that Monsieur Charles was right.

‘Look, Mother.'

The boy came every now and then to show Élise nuts, acorns and strawberries he had found in the wood.

‘Perhaps Uncle Charles has taken the main road?'

She was beginning to think the same, for it was eleven o'clock at least, judging by the sun, and she was on the point of going back to the house when, right at the foot of the Thiers des Grillons, she caught sight of three figures in a patch of sunshine.

‘Dear God!' Élise sighed sadly.

Why did Charles Daigne make his daughter wear a veil when she was only ten years old? Loulou was in deep mourning, just like a woman, and it was only half-way up the hill that the poor little girl, who must have been extremely hot, stopped to throw back the black crape.

Roger had already gone running to meet them. They were holding the hands of a two-year-old child, Joseph, who, dressed in black trousers at an age when other boys still wore pinafores, was climbing the stony slope with his little legs.

Mathilde Coomans, who lived on the corner of the Rue de la Loi and whose business was in a bad way, had taken charge of the youngest child whom Élise had wanted to take herself, a baby of five months who was being fed on cow's milk.

‘How could you manage, with your lodgers?'

It hurt her to see the baby with Mathilde who was utterly unmethodical, was never dressed before ten in the morning, and kept looking round with a dazed expression as if she did not know her way about her own shop. If a customer asked her for a pound of flageolets or split peas, she was completely at a loss.

The little group had come to a halt, for Joseph could not go any further. His father, trying to carry him, had to stop every few yards to get his breath back.

‘Dear God, Charles, you must be dripping wet. Give him to me. Good morning, poor Loulou.'

‘Good morning, Aunt.'

They were alone on the long road which went down to the town, and Charles and the children seemed to have come from another world, in their black clothes which still smelled new.

‘How pale she is, Charles.'

Loulou had always been pale. Her thin face was a matt white emphasized by the crape of her veil which had been cut out of one of her dead mother's mourning bands.

‘You ought to leave her with me too, Charles. Even if it was only for a month. The air would do her so much good.'

To which Charles simply replied:

‘I need her at home.'

Élise could have cried. It hurt her to see them looking so calm and natural after the catastrophe, as if they had not understood. Charles had not changed. His face still had a gentle, sheepish expression which was positively exasperating. He had not been able to come the day before because it was Sunday and on Sunday there were the offices. Not once, since he had become the sacristan at Saint-Denis, had he had a Sunday off; not once had he seen the colour of a Sunday anywhere but in the cloister with the silent porch where he lived and in the nave lit by tapers.

‘I didn't think I'd be able to come today, on account of Mademoiselle Tonglet who died on Friday. Luckily they ordered the Requiem Mass for three o'clock.'

‘You'll only just have time for dinner.'

How could he still go on making arrangements for funerals and Requiem Masses? There were moments when she felt like shaking him. He was too gentle, too resigned. You would have sworn that he did not appreciate the disaster which had overtaken him and his family.

‘So it's you, Loulou, who's looking after your papa?'

‘Yes, Aunt.'

‘You do the cooking and the washing-up?'

‘Yes, Aunt. Madame Collard comes and helps me with the beds.'

Loulou was so beautiful, so delicate! She had been rigged up in skirts which were too long for her and which made her look, not like a child, but like a dwarf. Everybody turned round to look at her when, in the procession, dressed in white and sky-blue, she played the part of the Virgin.

‘Take your jacket off, Charles. It's too hot.'

It did not matter. He was hot, but he would not make himself comfortable, even when there was nobody there to see him. You did not know what to say to him. It was agony getting a word or a sentence out of him. He walked along, looking neither at the countryside nor at Madame Laude's house, which he entered as he would enter any place into which you chose to push him.

‘You see, I've sent for the cot Roger had when he was little.'

Joseph already took after his father. He had not opened his mouth once. He had allowed himself to be kissed by huge Madame Laude and, if he had been frightened, he had not shown it.

‘You'll enjoy yourself here, won't you, Joseph?'

As if they couldn't have found him a nicer name than that!

‘Have you brought his clothes, Loulou?'

A tiny parcel wrapped in grey paper and tied with red string. There was practically nothing light inside for the summer.

‘It doesn't matter. I'll fix him up with something.'

For two pins she would have picked up Charles Daigne like a pawn to move him into the next square. At table he kept looking at his watch, thinking of nothing but his church, his funerals, his offices. Did he even know what he had been eating? Loulou looked after him as she looked after her little brother.

When the time came for him to go, he bent down and kissed his son on both cheeks, very simply, and it was on his nose that a tear suddenly appeared.

‘Will you be coming to see him, Charles?'

‘As soon as I can.'

Joseph did not cry.

‘Say good-bye to your father and sister, little Jojo.'

She had just found a name for him. The child did not open his mouth, and watched them go with such a gentle look in his eyes that Élise had to make an effort not to burst out sobbing. It struck her that here was a child destined to suffer in life.

‘If you only knew the effect it had on me, Madame Laude!'

She still felt sad, seeing the father and daughter, dressed all in black, disappearing into the distance between the two hedges, sharply silhouetted against the whiteness of the road, Charles with his bowler hat perched on the top of his head, his sloping shoulders, his tight trousers, his hand into which Loulou had slipped her own, and his gaze which you could imagine sliding over things with a gloomy indifference. They came from somewhere else, from that smoky world which Élise had been looking at while waiting for them, so dark when you saw it from a distance, and yet so full of snug little houses, of kettles singing on well-polished stoves, of reassuring little nooks, made to measure for those who lived in them, for their needs and joys and sorrows.

‘What's the matter, Mother?'

Now that Roger was a big boy, she had to be careful all the time how she behaved in front of him.

‘Nothing. Don't take any notice.'

Françoise's little boy had not even cried. He did not know yet that he was an orphan, and perhaps Charles, for his part, did not realize that he was a widower.

‘Come here, Jojo. You're too hot like that.'

She took off his dark jumper, revealing a pair of narrow shoulders, as white as milk, which seemed surprised by the bright sunshine.

‘What could we dress him in, Madame Laude? I can't stand him all in black. Tomorrow, I'll make a little suit for him.'

Not today, for they had to go out. It was time for their walk. They weren't in the country to keep the children shut up all day.

‘Get your toys, Roger. Give your hand to your little cousin.'

‘Where are we going?'

‘To the Marronniers.'

His mother prepared an afternoon snack which she slipped into her shopping-bag, together with some crochet-work. She picked up a folding-stool and a mauve parasol.

‘Good-bye, Madame Laude. You won't forget to put the stew on the stove about five o'clock, will you? With just a drop of water.'

Try as she might, she could not get rid of the picture of Charles and his two children as it had been printed on her retina when they were slowly climbing the Thiers des Grillons. They had been so lonely! They had looked like the survivors of a cataclysm which had laid waste the world, leaving only them on earth, three odd-looking creatures dressed in black, roaming about in an empty, indifferent immensity.

And yet it was only the mother that had gone!

‘Roger, you must be nice, very nice to your cousin. You see, when somebody's mother is dead, there's nothing left.'

She thought of the hospital she would go to if she listened to the specialist, of Désiré holding Roger's hand and walking with him along an endless empty street. She had dreamt about it several times and she was convinced that she knew this street; she hunted about in her memories, but in vain. She had never seen it before, and yet she was sure that it existed and that one day she would suddenly stop and exclaim:

‘There it is!'

‘You're making him walk too fast, Roger. Remember that he's only got tiny little legs.'