Pedigree (68 page)

‘Shut up, Roger. At least show a little respect for your family.'

‘What a family! Oh, yes, you can be proud of it…'

Their voices grew louder, the two of them lost their tempers, and his mother started snivelling. He hated her for her tears, which he called crocodile tears.

‘Do you know what Hubert Schroefs said about you behind your back? He said that you were a beggar!'

‘Roger!'

‘It wasn't the first time either. Félicie had said the same thing before him.'

‘I forbid you to talk about Félicie.'

‘Because it's the truth. Yes, you are a beggar. It's in your blood. Even when you don't need anything, you look as if you're asking for something. You have to talk about the bare necessities, preferably to Aunt Louisa, because you know that anything that humiliates Father pleases her …'

‘Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Roger, for saying things like that after all that I've done for you?'

‘You're going to remind me of your prolapsus of the womb again, aren't you? Is it my fault if you have trouble with your organs, as you put it so delicately? Did I ask to come into the world? Perhaps it would have been better if I hadn't been born, considering the life that's waiting for me …'

‘Roger … If you don't shut up, I …'

Why couldn't he be quiet?

‘I suppose you think I'm proud of the life we lead?'

She took her hair in both hands and her face became convulsed. An attack was starting.

‘Roger, for God's sake shut up, shut up, shut up!'

She screamed and shook him as hard as she could. He felt frightened, for he had his back to the wall. She tried to scratch his face and he made as if to reply in kind. Finally she threw herself at full length on to the tile kitchen floor, crying bitterly, and he started crying too, begging her to get up and kneeling down to ask her forgiveness, alarmed by that face of hers which was no longer that of a mother but of a poor girl who was suffering and looked young and old at the same time.

‘Forgive me! Get up quickly! I'm begging you on my knees to get up. Remember that Mademoiselle Rinquet might come in …'

‘I don't care. I'll tell her about all that you've made me suffer. Yes, I need to get it off my chest, seeing that your father lets you do as you like. I can't stand it any more. I wish I was dead.'

‘Mother, I forbid you …'

You wondered, at moments like that, if you were in your right mind, and you were astonished to see through the window, as if in another world, people walking along the pavements, houses, carts, life going on.

And yet it was after touching the depths of degradation, when the two of them had been dazedly wiping away their last tears, that he had succeeded in getting the two hundred francs for the shoes out of her. He preferred not to think of the way he had set about it. He had been obliged to represent himself as the victim of the mockery of his classmates and masters.

‘You see, Mother, you thought you were acting for the best, but the mistake you made was in sending me to the Jesuit college. In any case, I know that I'm not going to stay there. I'm going to start working. I'm going to go into a workshop as an apprentice.'

Did they have any suspicion of that, all these fine gentlemen? And did Father Renchon, shrewd as he was, suspect even a quarter of the truth? The two hundred francs which he had obtained in that way? Well, they had not been enough. There had been another bit of cheating, for he cheated as much as his mother. The shoes, which he had seen in a shop window in the Rue de la Cathédrale, cost exactly two hundred and eight francs, but he had realized that a price like that would scare Élise. The difference had been made up from the Gruyelle-Marquant till.

For this afternoon, a Stievens, whose mother and sister went with the Germans and dealt in heaven knows what, was not good enough for him. An effort such as he had just made deserved better than that, and when Chabot came back into the classroom, slipping discreetly between the benches as if unaware of the curiosity he had aroused, Roger took a decision.

Playtime had scarcely begun, and the groups were just beginning to form up at the foot of the iron staircase, when, avoiding Father Renchon to whom he usually talked, Mamelin went up to his classmate. Big Chabot was walking slowly along with Leclerc. He avoided showing his surprise at seeing Roger come towards him.

‘I'd like to ask you something. What are you doing this afternoon?'

‘But … I don't know yet …'

They had had time, he and Leclerc, to exchange glances.

‘In that case, come to see the revue at the Renaissance with me. I'll have a box. If Leclerc wants to come with you, he's welcome too, of course.'

‘The trouble is that on Thursday afternoons we always go to play tennis at Cointe … Don't we, Leclerc?'

‘Yes. You're calling for my sister at two o'clock. You promised her you would.'

‘Good. That's that. Sorry!'

Once Chabot had refused, the others would refuse, for the whole Fragnée group followed his lead. Why, if he had known that he was going to play tennis, had he said at first that he did not know what he was going to do? Simply for fear of seeing Mamelin invite himself along. They wanted to keep themselves to themselves. It was all very well being friends in the school yard. But once they were outside, they kept to people of their own class.

Would he fall back on Stievens, who had money too and was probably the most expensively dressed of them all? Stievens was almost as isolated as he was. He was even an undesirable. At the Carré, the boys nudged each other as they pointed to his mother and sister who looked like a couple of tarts.

Father Renchon was standing by himself next to the sunny wall. Perhaps he had guessed what had just happened. It was so as not to embarrass Roger that he pretended to be watching a game of prisoners' base when the latter unconsciously turned towards him.

Roger decided to go to the theatre by himself. He had already gone there on Sunday, but he had just taken a seat in the stalls, for he had not had his suit, which Cortleven had had to alter to fit him. He had marked out the box where he was going to sit, the first one, practically on the stage. He would sit with his arm on the crimson velvet ledge, his hand dangling in space, and he would be one of the first to applaud every couplet, with a hint of nonchalant condescension and knowing glances at the actors.

‘I say, Mamelin …'

Verger, who had run up to him, stood there getting his breath back. He was a thin boy, with a pale, bony face, who looked older than he was and had the reputation of being immoral. He was not exactly rich, but he was not poor either, or the son of a clerk. His father was an important house-painting contractor.

‘Is it true that you've got a box at the Renaissance and that you're looking for somebody to go with you?'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Leclerc. He's just told me that if I wanted to go to the theatre this afternoon, you'd got some seats you didn't know what to do with. Will you take me along?'

It was as if every word had been carefully chosen to wound him. With a bitter taste in his mouth, Roger stood silent and motionless, looking at the swarming yard through his half-lowered lashes. He sensed that somewhere Chabot and Leclerc were watching him, that perhaps Father Renchon too was looking at him, and he had to make an effort to keep his face impassive and then to say in a natural voice:

‘If you like.'

Who could tell who would be sent him if he were foolish enough to refuse Verger?

‘What time is it?'

‘Two o'clock.'

‘Have you got the tickets already?'

He said yes, but it was not true. It did not matter. He would get them at the box-office. Perhaps they had thought that he had got hold of some complimentary tickets? Soon they would be stopping boys at random and saying:

‘Would you like to go to the theatre? If so, go and ask Mamelin.'

He was disgusted, with himself and the others, and he longed to be in his bedroom so that he could cry. Because he could not, he tensed himself, and his face became pointed like Élise's at certain times, his smile aggressive. He had nothing to say to Verger, who was no friend of his.

Once, only once, over a year ago now, they had gone together one Thursday afternoon to the home of Lafont, a boy who was already seventeen and whose father ran a big shoe-shop. Lafont had taken them up to his bedroom. His face flushed and his eyes shining, he had promptly shown them some obscene photographs on which he had commented in the coarsest possible language. He had got the maid to bring up some wine. They had heard his mother and sisters moving around the flat and the shop bell ringing every five minutes.

Why, when Lafont had brushed against his back, had he put himself on the defensive, as if he had scented a trap? He remembered the faces of his two classmates, Lafont sickly and excited, with shining eyes which had revolted him, Verger pale and apparently a prey to an obsession.

Suddenly Lafont had started indulging in exhibitionism; for all that Roger had turned away, he had kept on finding him stubbornly planted in front of him.

What excuse had he found for going away? He could remember only that he had left with the distinct impression that after his departure the other two were going to go on with their disgusting games.

‘Have you seen the revue already?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is it good? Are there some tarts in it?'

‘You'll see.'

‘Where shall we meet?'

‘Outside the theatre, at two o'clock.'

Luckily the bell went then, for he would have been unable to find anything else to say. He felt a pang of remorse as he caught sight of poor Neef dragging his hobnailed boots along as he took his place in the line after spending the break circling round Roger. The poor fool probably imagined that now that Mamelin was dressed like the others he would not deign to speak to him any more.

It was another of Father Renchon's lessons, a geography lesson this time. It was of no importance. Roger looked out of the open window and his gaze, lost in the distant chaos of the rooftops, grew harder and harder. That morning, his father had said nothing when he had seen him dressed in new clothes from head to foot. The day before, when Roger had displayed his red silk tie which he had just bought, Désiré had felt it for a moment.

‘It was a cut-price bargain, you see. Otherwise, I couldn't have had it for six francs. It seems there's a flaw in it, but it doesn't show.'

Élise, who was always on the look-out for bargains, had believed him. She had even asked:

‘You didn't see a darker one for your father?'

The tie, which he had bought in the smartest shirt-shop in the Rue du Pont-d'Ile, had cost forty-five francs. During the past week, in francs as well as marks, and notes of both low and high denominations, Roger had taken about two hundred francs out of the till in the Rue Puits-en-Sock.

On Sunday morning, he had nearly been caught. The shop had been empty. Roger was coming away from the till and thrusting his hand in his pocket when he had a feeling that somebody was watching him. Looking up, he had seen his grandfather standing at the kitchen door. For perhaps a tenth, a hundredth of a second, he had thought that all was lost, and he had been on the point of throwing himself on his knees when he had remembered the chocolates. He had passed his left hand over the trellis and had somehow managed to say with a little nervous laugh:

‘I think I should be able to treat myself to one on a Sunday, shouldn't I, Grandfather?'

Had old Mamelin been taken in? Had he seen the boy's first movement? Had he suspected the truth? He had said nothing, but had bent down to make the ritual sign of the cross on his grandson's forehead and then gone slowly upstairs to see Cécile.

Since he had handed over his business to Marcel in return for board and lodging and five francs' pocket-money a week, he had withdrawn further and further into the background, avoiding the kitchen where everybody gathered, and living from morning till night among the wooden heads in the back-shop. When he went out, it was to take the air with his friend Kreutz.

Roger had promised himself not to take any more money out of the till, and this time he meant it. He had been too frightened. Fear was the most appalling and the most degrading feeling there was. He had just over a hundred francs left. He would go to the Renaissance with Verger. He would buy some expensive cigarettes he had hankered after when he had still been at the Collège Saint-Louis and which you could find only in a shop in the Rue de la Régence, delicate ladies' cigarette which you could see, with their gold tips, through the red cellophane wrapping.

If Chabot had gone with him, or somebody else from the Fragnée group, he had promised himself to send the box-attendant to buy some flowers. After the ballet which concluded the second act, he had planned to throw them, as if it were the most natural gesture in the world, to a little dancer in the second row who had the touching face of a sickly street-urchin.

Would he do the same for Verger? Perhaps. Not so much for Verger's sake as because the latter would not fail to tell the others about it.

He had promised himself too much from that afternoon. Now he was in a hurry to be living it, indifferent to everything around him. At last the bell rang, and once again he avoided Father Renchon, although it was rarely that a day went by without his exchanging a few words with him. In the yard he waited for Neef, the only one who went his way, Neef-the-peasant who could not get over his classmate's yellow shoes.

‘Where did you find those shoes?'

‘In the Rue de la Cathédrale.'

‘They must have cost a lot.'

‘Two hundred and eighty francs.'

‘Your suit's jolly smart! Who made it for you?'

‘Roskam … Let's go into Mariette's and have some ice-cream … Yes, I'll pay …'