Pedigree (74 page)

And Monique prayed to God too, took part in charitable activities, sang at High Mass! They were all perfectly capable of joining together to offer up a novena:

‘Jesus and Mary, summon to Heaven that girl who is preventing the world from being happy!'

He heard Élise murmuring:

‘Besides, she's a sickly little thing. Anna was telling me just now that she knows, from the woman who does their washing, that she started spitting blood not so long ago. She's got something wrong with her womb too. She wasn't strong enough for a normal delivery and she had to have a Caesarean operation.'

It was shameful. It was ignoble. And yet nothing cracked, the sky was a magnificent blue which enveloped you in serenity, thousands of daisies pushed their innocent little heads between velvety blades of grass, and the very fish which an angler was pulling out of the water seemed to be wriggling happily at the end of his line.

When the poetic Monique had been a girl, had she allowed men to paw her about on dark patches of waste ground or in public lavatories? Had she taken pleasure like her sisters in conjuring up erotic scenes before a boy?

His skin was baking in the sun. He could hear the staccato laughter of the two Duchêne girls. He turned round and saw the three women in a row; Monique's innocent parasol, the black parasol of Anna, who was not very particular about her appearance, and the bent head of Élise, who wanted everybody to be happy and who, for that reason, hoped without any malice that Thérèse would die.

On the canal, a tow-haired woman was using her buttocks to push the tiller of a barge which was moving silently along; a little girl in red, thin and naked under her dress, was playing at her feet on the deck, which was still wet from being washed down. The woman was feeding a baby at her breast, and that breast was the only white patch in the whole scene. In the distance, in the shadow of the trees, the husband was walking along, bent forward, harnessed to a steel hawser; it was he who, by dint of a slow, continuous effort, was making the barge glide along between the canal banks.

Why had the Duchêne girls suddenly burst out laughing? He had not said anything or done anything. He realized that he was looking at them inquiringly with a stupid expression on his face, and it was some time before he guessed the ignoble truth: they had started laughing because they had thought that he could not take his eyes off the bargee's milky-white breast!

They picnicked at Visé, which was known as the Martyred Town because most of its inhabitants had been shot by the Germans in August 1914 and the town itself burnt down.

Sitting on a grassy mound, they unpacked their provisions while looking vaguely at what remained of the town. Of the houses, churches and public buildings, nothing was left. The few walls which had been left standing had long since been demolished, and now stones and bricks were arranged in regular heaps. The streets and pavements were intact and stood out with astonishing clarity, so that it was still a town, but a town where the blocks of houses had been replaced by piles of stones up to six foot high.

Facing them, a wooden café had sprung up, flanked by a sort of arbour.

‘No need to go and spend our money there. What would they give us to drink? Nothing good, I'll tell you that. I've brought some coffee for everybody.'

The bridge had been broken in two like a toy. In the distance, on one bank of the Meuse, they could see the frontier post and make out, in spite of the dazzling sunshine, the cable stretched across the river. The flashes they noticed now and then came from the light catching the sentries' bayonets.

In the first winter of the war, two hundred youths had piled into the hull of a tug without arousing the Germans' attention. They had had to wait for several days until the river had risen high enough to allow the boat to pass over the dams; and finally, one night, the tug had pulled away from the bank and forged downstream at full steam, without navigation lights, while rifle shots had crackled from the banks.

The Germans had already stretched a cable across the river, but the captain, counting on the force of the current, had gone straight ahead; the cable had given way and the tug had spun round slightly in the same place while the youths, free at last, had rushed on deck, shouting for joy.

Roger had been too young. He still was. His jaw set as he gazed at the frontier. What could he do to make life beautiful and clean, above all clean?

Head down, he walked along behind the others.

‘What's the matter, Roger?'

‘Nothing, Mother.'

‘Aren't you enjoying yourself?'

His cousins were laughing at him. He did not care. They went along some secluded lanes, and Élise started to explain:

‘The most dangerous place will be the level-crossing. You've seen the sentry. Luckily he's a Bavarian. If anything happens, we may be able to come to terms with him. You'll go first, Monique. Smart and pretty as you are, he'll just look at you and we'll take the opportunity to slip across.'

They finally arrived at Éléonore Dafnet's farm. She was waiting for them and exclaimed:

‘What! You've had something to eat already! That's Élise all over. And I'd got a good dinner ready for you!'

She was a thin woman, of the same type as Élise, one of those women who look as if they have no stamina at all but are really tougher than men. Why did Roger suddenly think that they seemed to have been born to become widows?

‘Is that your son? Dear God! I would never dare to kiss him!'

She was dressed in black like a woman of the middle classes. The farm was well kept, the kitchen as clean as a new pin. An accordion could be heard somewhere, and Élise, who was easily worried, looked inquiringly at her old friend.

‘Don't take any notice. It's my lodgers. Because just imagine, Élise, I've got some lodgers too. But these came without me having to go and look for them. They are four Germans, three of them old men. I've got them well trained, and when they're not on guard duty they help me to milk the cows.'

She opened a door a little way.

‘Hey, Franz … Come and say hullo to my friends …'

As he was wearing neither his tunic nor his boots, and had clogs full of straw on his feet, they did not have the impression of being in front of a German soldier.

‘You must still be able to talk to them, I suppose, Élise. They're very nice, you know. I'm looking forward to them going and my husband coming back, but I can't say that this lot have been a nuisance. Go and get me a bottle from the cellar, Franz …
Flasche, ja … Wein
… That's right … You see, he's understood! … You'll have a glass too, you fat pig! … Believe it or not, nothing amuses him more than being called a fat pig …'

‘You aren't frightened?'

‘What of? … His father is burgomaster of his village … I've told him that yours was too … But what are you going to carry the food in?'

‘I say, Éléonore, you're sure they don't understand everything you say?'

‘What if they do? They know what you've come for. I give them plenty of butter to send to Germany, where everybody's starving to death … Where you'll have to be careful is at the level-crossing … Especially if you see a sergeant-major … He's a brute of a man who wouldn't hesitate to have you stripped in the middle of the road to make sure you're not hiding anything … Last week, he ordered his men to fire at a poor devil who was doing a bit of smuggling …'

Roger looked hard at Élise, marvelling that his mother could once have been the friend of this woman in front of him. At the time of L'Innovation, had they been like one another, and had life been sufficient to make them different?

Élise said something in an undertone. The other woman replied in an audible voice.

‘Don't worry, my girl! I take good care not to lose on the deal. If I told you how much I charge them for washing their shirts and socks, you wouldn't believe me. But you haven't seen my favourite yet. Wait a minute … Ethel! … Ethel! … Come here, my lad, so we can admire your pretty face … Well, wouldn't you say he was just like a child? … I don't know why they've put him with the old men, instead of sending him to the front … He's got the soft skin of a girl and he blushes at the slightest thing … These are friends of mine, Ethel, from the days when I was a girl …
Fräulein
, yes . . Me,
Fräulein
… You see! He doesn't know what to do with himself … His father's a solicitor at Mainz … He's got a sister who's married to a baron … A glass of wine, Ethel? …
Ja
… Get the glasses out of the cupboard … Try to make yourself useful … You see how I make them work?'

‘You still haven't any news of your husband?'

‘No. I haven't had a single letter for a year now.'

She heaved a sigh, but went on filling the glasses.

‘What are you going to put the corn in?'

‘You'll see. I'll show you when they've gone. I've made myself a double petticoat with vertical seams every couple of inches …'

They had eaten some tart with the Germans. Only Monique had remained somewhat aloof. Then all of a sudden they had noticed that time was passing fast. In the granary, they had had to hunt for a funnel with which to pour corn into the narrow pockets of which Élise's petticoat was composed. They had weighed the butter and bacon.

Roger had understood what Colette was up to when, after looking him in the eyes, she had wandered casually into a dimly lit barn. He had followed her. In a rather nervous voice she had asked him:

‘What do you want?'

She must have been frightened, for he really hated her, and it was out of hatred that he had pushed her down on the floor, that his teeth had pressed against hers, that his hands had torn angrily at her underclothes. If her sister Yolande had not come in just then, he would probably have gone the whole way, to soil her.

‘Well, you two believe in having fun, don't you?'

‘Brute. Filthy brute!' Colette had muttered, trying to tidy herself up.

She no longer laughed at him. She respected him. It was she who, the whole of the way home, would go running after him.

Élise, who was slightly disappointed, did not show it.

‘How much has she charged us for the corn?'

‘Twenty-five francs a kilo.'

‘That's five francs cheaper than in town. Her butter has a good nutty taste. It isn't like the butter you get on the ration, which is always rancid and watery.'

Had she been hoping that Éléonore would let her have all that for nothing, or at the pre-war prices?

Monique Duchêne was sent ahead to go over the dangerous level-crossing. Roger and his cousins climbed the bank and crossed the railway-line a hundred yards away from the sentries. Élise, in her wheat-filled petticoat which was puffed out like a crinoline, looked as if she were pregnant; she bore a certain resemblance to those Louis Quinze figurines in porcelain, and her face seemed delicate and fine.

‘Let me carry something, Aunt.'

‘No, Monique, your hands are too delicate.'

They avoided the tow-path and went along a path between the rushes beside the Meuse. They talked less and less. They ended up by not talking at all, while the sky turned pale green and the breeze covered the river with little white waves.

Roger envied the young soldier whom he had seen back at the farm and whom Éléonore Dafnet looked at so tenderly. Wasn't that young man lucky to have escaped from everyday life, from his family, from the never-changing houses which he had seen ever since childhood, standing around him like prison walls?

In a whitewashed scullery, four mattresses had been laid side by side on the floor. There were helmets and belts lying around on some straw-bottomed chairs, a razor and a shaving-brush on the window-sill, a piece of looking-glass fixed with some nails to the wall. On the other side of the wall you could hear the cows and horses. Sitting on his bed, barefooted, his open shirt revealing a hairy torso, a forty-year-old soldier who was a dentist in civilian life was playing the accordion.

And Aunt Louisa wrote to Évariste, who was at the front, to tell him all the tittle-tattle she had heard about his wife. Monique for her part wrote to him to hint, for she was extremely tactful, that she was waiting for him and that whatever happened he would find her on his return.

Éléonore Dafnet did not worry about her husband of whom she had no news and who was probably dead. For her name-day, she had treated herself to a brooch costing two thousand francs. She had shown it to Élise.

Désiré, that evening, would have to get his own supper when he came home from the office, for they would not get back to the Rue des Maraîchers before dark. There were still a few dangerous places to pass. Not only were they running the risk of several years' imprisonment, but the sentries had orders to shoot.

‘What do you do on Sundays?' Colette asked Roger.

He knew what she was getting at, but he would not grant her the rendezvous she was hoping for. He was glad that Yolande had turned up to prevent him from going the whole way, for Colette would probably have hung on to him.

Was it his family that weighed heavily on Roger? There were moments when he wondered whether, as Élise maintained when she was having one of her fits of hysterics, he was a monster. It was not his fault. That morning, he had been full of goodwill. Why had they had to stir up all their filth in front of him?

Solitude frightened him sometimes. But what could he do to avoid being alone?

They ended up by walking in Indian file. Their feet kept stumbling, the grass had turned grey, and the evening had as it were a taste of cold embers. Éléonore Dafnet's stodgy tart—the pastry had not been properly baked—still weighed heavily on their stomachs.

What was left to him of his day? A few minutes of gaiety and hope when, in the morning, on the Quai de Coronmeuse, his mother had asked him with touching timidity to give her his arm, and he had had the impression of breathing the air of a period which he had not known, which he could reconstruct only with the help of Valérie and a few scattered friends of his mother's.