Pedigree (67 page)

‘Tell us, Monsieur Chabot, what you think of the Battle of
Hernani
.'

It was not an insult, it was not an opinion, it was worse than that. Chabot-the-diplomat, as Roger called him, a tall aristocratic boy with delicate features and exquisite manners, was the only boy in the third year who could be compared with Mamelin in literature. He was in any case the most brilliant pupil in the class and he played that part with well-bred discretion; a shy boy, he seemed to be forever apologizing for his success which he accepted unconcernedly.

Why, when it was up to Roger to talk about Victor Hugo, and particularly about the stormy Battle of
Hernani
, had Father Renchon turned to his rival? Chabot, who had not been expecting this to happen, turned towards Mamelin as if in apology, and started hunting for his ideas and words.

Well, it was better that way. In any case, Roger had not prepared anything: instead of spending his Easter holidays studying the Romantics, he had read the whole series of the Rocambole adventure-stories. He did not listen to what his friend was saying. With a defiant smile on his lips, he thought ostentatiously of other things, looking out of the window, which was open for the first time that year, at a woman ironing nappies in a distant room.

This woman of the people reminded him of the dressmaker getting dressed in the Rue Puits-en-Sock, opposite Gruyelle-Marquant's, and his Aunt Cécile with her feet in an enamel bucket. Something like a rancid, repugnant memory struck him, and he recalled a Mamelin in wooden clogs, with a shaggy mop of hair and dirty fingernails, who, smoking the juicy pipe of an old man, had wandered with his hands in his pockets through the poorer districts of the town, on his way to the Crypt at Le Bouhay.

His face hardened, his lips tightened, his eyes narrowed until they were nothing but bright points of light between his eyelids, like the eyes of his Uncle Louis of Tongres, and his fingers contracted in their unconscious longing to crush something.

Was that how they had spent their Easter holidays, the boys around him? He was not thinking of the odd peasants, like Neef, who did not count, who got off their tram in the morning and went home in the evening without having understood anything, without having tried to understand anything of a world in which nobody had so much as noticed their presence. Those boys, stubborn, obstinate, pale with an effort too great for their simple minds, lived, blind, deaf and dumb, in a sort of tunnel at the end of which the coveted diploma awaited them.

What did it matter if they were badly dressed, if they smelled of the stables, if their breath reeked of the sausage-meat which they brought to school, together with some slices of coarse bread, in a piece of oilcloth? Did they suffer, at playtime or at the end of school, at not belonging to any group?

But what of the others, all those who, like Chabot, lived in big houses with basement kitchens and marble staircases, in the Fragnée district, with maidservants with starched aprons? Had they, only the day before, had to endure an ignoble scene with a furious Élise to obtain the two hundred francs for these shoes without which the suit would have failed to make any impression?

Every day of their lives they had been properly washed, they had been well dressed, they had eaten their fill in spite of the war, and there was no need for them to go to the Rue Surlet to change the sickening novels of an Aunt Cécile in order to obtain access afterwards, after heaven knows what terrible fears, to the Gruyelle-Marquant till.

J.P.G. had never understood Roger's looks. Or perhaps he had understood, and his pride had made him turn in revulsion against the pity he had read in them.

Father Renchon had understood, and he was sad and disappointed. It was Roger's turn to feel ashamed, to bristle up against that feeling of shame, to go stiff in furious protest.

There. Today he looked like
them
. He was as well dressed as Chabot, as Leclerc, as Neef-of-the-Château, as fat Lourtie whose father was the richest brewer in the town and who was so stupid that at the age of nineteen, an obese creature already, he was sitting on the third-year benches, which were far too small for him.

Later in the day, instead of making straight for the Outremeuse district, keeping close to the houses and slinking down alley-ways, Roger would drop into Mariette's with the others to eat an icecream. For three years now he had wanted to; for three years he had turned his head away as he passed the confectioner's shop which fresh-faced Mariette had opened two hundred yards from the school, a shop so white, so spotlessly clean, so sweet-smelling that it made your mouth water, especially when you saw a band of schoolmates elbowing their way in.

What did he care about Hugo or Lamartine or Théophile Gautier and his red waistcoat? There was only one person in that Battle of
Hernani
who interested him, and that was Dumas, a poor nonentity, a pen-pusher in an office where he had been taken on out of charity, who had queued for hours to obtain standing room right at the back of the theatre.

Hadn't Dumas looked at the crowd around him in the same way as Roger was looking at his classmates today, and hadn't his hand, unknown to himself, contracted too as if on an invisible prey?

What did Father Renchon want of him? Why did he seem to be silently questioning him? Did he hope that he was going to raise his hand to interrupt Chabot's monotonous and over-elaborate account?

What was Father Van Bambeek doing in the gallery? He had stopped. Through the glass panes of the door, he was looking into the classroom as if he were waiting for somebody. Chabot, who had finally caught sight of him, went up to Father Renchon, spoke to him in an undertone, and went out to join the master in charge of discipline.

But it was not with a matter of discipline that they were concerned, for if it had been, things would have happened differently. It was a meeting between grown men, Roger knew this, and this too put him in a fury, for nobody ever spoke to him like that, least of all Father Van Bambeek.

Their only encounter, which had been a brief one, had left Mamelin such a bitter memory that his ears reddened at the thought. It had been during playtime, on a fine day like today. Roger had been running along when a dry voice had halted him in his tracks.

‘Monsieur Mamelin.'

He had gone up to Father Van Bambeek, trying to get his breath back and wondering what offence he had committed, while the latter, six foot tall and puffing his chest out like a fairground wrestler, had stood still for quite a long time without looking at him. Finally he had appeared to remember that he was there. His hand had stretched out, and two fingers had seized the pipe whose stem was poking out of Roger's pocket, pulled it half-way out, then pushed it back.

Nothing else. Not a word. An imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, but a look of such utter contempt…

‘Run along now.'

Not even a punishment. Now he and Chabot were talking about the latter's elder brother, whom the Jesuits had smuggled across the frontier to join the army by way of Holland and England. Roger had not got a brother at the front, nor, like Neef-of-the-Château, parents who organized charity events. He was nothing. He did not interest Father Van Bambeek, who had disdainfully returned his pipe to him.

‘You have nothing to say on the subject, Monsieur Mamelin?'

‘No, Father.'

‘I suppose it is superfluous to ask Monsieur Stievens what he thinks of the question?'

It was Roger's turn to show his scorn, and this attained its object, bringing a flush to the master's cheeks, for it was far too easy to make a class laugh by poking fun at the most stupid pupil, who in any case had long ago become aware of the role of fool which he was supposed to play and, out of a desire to please, pretended to be more stupid than he was.

That was somebody Roger could go out with this afternoon. For that was what he had been thinking about all morning, for several days, to be precise ever since he had had his new suit. It was a suit belonging to his cousin Jacques Schroefs. The latter, like Chabot's brother, as soon as he had reached the age of eighteen, had crossed the frontier, through the barbed-wire entanglements and the electrified wire, in order to join the army.

‘You see, Roger, you always think the worst and get the wrong idea about people. You were wrong to imagine that Hubert Schroefs hadn't any feelings. He said yes straight away when my sister Marthe suggested giving you two of her son's suits.'

It had been in vain that his mother had tried to get a word of gratitude out of him.

‘If he thinks that I'm going to go and lick his boots, he's mistaken.'

‘It isn't a question of licking his boots, Roger. It seems to me that you could at least go and thank him. They are practically new suits, made to measure at Roskam's.'

‘They weren't made to measure for me, at any rate!'

There had been a scene, and one by one she had reminded her son of all her past sorrows, including the inevitable story of his first communion, when he had been seven years old and had stubbornly refused to beg his mother's forgiveness.

There could be nothing more horrible than those scenes, in the narrow, overheated kitchen where they seemed to collide with one another, red in the face, their eyes shining. Usually Roger managed to restrain himself for a while and promised himself to keep calm, but soon the two of them were like lunatics. They would have felt ashamed of themselves if they could have seen themselves in such a fury, incapable of the slightest self-control; and afterwards, with throbbing nerves and empty heads, they tried in vain to forget the things they had said, the monstrous words they had uttered.

Roger knew that his mother detested Schroefs almost as much as he did. He knew too by what miracle she had finally got hold of those famous suits she had been talking about for so long without any hope, Schroefs remaining deaf to all his sister-in-law's hints. Wasn't it Élise who had said only a few days before:

‘That man would let a dog starve to death in front of his door, and if it were a poor man instead of a dog, I dare say he would calmly watch him die.'

They had had to wait until Brother Médard had summoned Élise to the Rue de la Loi; she had wondered what for at first.

‘Dear God, Désiré, I hope they aren't in trouble with the Germans again!'

For all the friars of the Institut Saint-André had been arrested by the Germans one fine day and shut up in the Chartreuse fortress where spies were shot. It had been rumoured that Brother Médard and Brother Maxime were in solitary confinement, each in a windowless cell. People had kept an eye on the walls for the red posters which announced executions.

Without saying anything to Désiré, who would probably have forbidden her to do it, Élise had gone to the Chartreuse, all by herself, taking a big parcel of food. Nobody knew what she had said, in her bad German, to the sentries, who had finally let her in. For a whole month she had gone round the Rue de la Loi and their old district collecting delicacies which she had taken to the prisoners.

Well, that was indirectly the origin of the two suits. The friars had been released. When Brother Médard had sent for Élise, it had been to hand her a letter from Jacques Schroefs. So the Germans had not been mistaken, as everybody maintained, and the friar with the wooden leg was indeed an important figure in the traffic in letters across the frontier.

‘Just imagine, Désiré, there was a letter from Jacques. A letter four pages long! And his father hadn't opened his mouth for the three months he'd been without any news of him. I ran like mad. I don't know how I didn't get myself run over by a tram. As soon as I was inside the shop I started shouting: “Hubert! Hubert!” He just stood at the door of his office and looked at me coldly. I'd lost the use of my legs and my voice out of sheer joy. “Hubert!” I said. “It's … It's from Jacques!” '

She started crying again as she told the tale.

‘He went so white I thought he was going to faint. He didn't dare to read it. He went upstairs and sat down in his armchair without a word. The paper was trembling in his hand and he couldn't find his glasses. There were tears in his eyes, the only tears I've ever seen him shed. That man, you know, loves nothing in the world apart from his son. His wife and daughter could die and he wouldn't turn a hair.'

‘ “Read it aloud,” said my sister, who was in one of her good days.

‘He didn't read that letter just once, but a dozen times. Then he went to find his friend Magis, and in the meantime Monsieur Van Camp turned up unexpectedly. Hubert had an old bottle brought up. He'd forgotten all about me. It was Marthe who ended up by asking me:

‘ “And how's Roger, my girl?”

‘ “He's very well, thank you. He's still at college. He's growing so fast that I don't know how to dress him …” '

Élise must have added:

‘On what Désiré earns!'

That was the origin of the two suits. Indeed, it was even more complicated than that. In his letter, Jacques had mentioned Louisa's son Évariste, who was also at the front, an officer already, for he had been a student before the war.

‘I looked a mess in my uniform, and when I rushed up to him to embrace him, I realized straight away that he was not pleased. He gave me to understand that between an officer and a private, even if they were cousins, relations had to remain dignified. That was the word he used. He was very dignified, even icy. I left him feeling disappointed and heavy-hearted, for I have no friends in my company where I am the only intellectual and therefore anything but popular.'

Then, in front of Monsieur Magis and Monsieur Van Camp, Marthe had suggested giving her sister, for Roger, the practically new suits ‘which after all will be too small for Jacques when he comes home'. Schroefs had not dared to refuse. He had taken the opportunity to make a handsome gesture.

‘I'll never, do you hear, never go to thank him. I hate him. He's a repulsive character.'