The Catalans: A Novel (6 page)

Madeleine and Francisco had, very early in their marriage, fallen into the habit of going to the family shop for meals. It had begun with Madeleine’s complete incapacity—she really could not boil an egg at first—and had continued because it was so much easier and because Dominique loved to have a talking crowd around the table. In the first year it had been convenient; it had not been necessary. Now it was essential, and now Francisco and Madeleine arrived with a hang-dog air, and now any quip or jibe about their extravagance in the first year’s prosperity went home and rankled. The quips and jibes, the “remarks passed” were rarely meant to be as unkind as they sounded sometimes, but it was remarkable how accurately those rather stupid women and that dull, heavy-witted man managed to say just the thing that would hurt most afterward, upon reflection.

They had been a little extravagant, it is true: Madeleine had bought clothes; they had often gone to Perpignan for the day, and still more often to Collioure, where Francisco’s clever friends were to be found on the beach or in the cafés; he had bought canvases, colors, and a better easel. But it had seemed at the time that no one thing was more than a very little treat; there had been no single example of unjustifiable expense, and after all, as they had said to one another, a few hundred francs more or less would not make a great difference by the end of the year.

It was not an agreeable situation, and it was less so for Francisco than it might have been for another, for his bad conscience made him vulnerable. He had not found casual work at the end of the fishing: he had not found it for the plain reason that he had not wanted to find it. He said to the family that it was not to be found (with a regretful shake of his head) and he had said to Madeleine that it was not to be found (with a grin of relief) and that he would have to pass the winter at home. They agreed that out of the evil came the blessing that he would have an uninterrupted stretch of time for his painting. He did: but it costs money to paint, and although the family could always be relied upon for help in kind, they would never part with cash.

Now Madeleine was glad that she had learned to type: she had never ceased seeing Mme. Roig in spite of the widow’s disapproval of her marriage, and now she went and asked for her good offices with her nephew, Maître Roig, the lawyer, who sent most of his typing to a bureau in Perpignan. She, who had disliked the marriage too much to countenance it with a present, yet felt too much engaged by her use of Madeleine and by her interior promise, as well as by her affection for her, to feel at all easy, was very happy to do what Madeleine asked: she went at once, without stopping to put on her hat, and in ten minutes the thing was done. It proved an invaluable source of supply: it not only bought Francisco’s materials and many of their meals, but it enabled him to spend a good part of his time with his friends at Collioure.

Painting is a messy business: it cannot be carried out in a shining little parlor where the position of each object is sacred. A room that is to be kept immaculate for wakes and marriages, the polished morgue of a self-respecting house, is not suitable; and
there arose a great bitterness over the drops of paint, the smell in the room, and the wrongful displacement of the central table; for now Madeleine, typing at Me. Roig’s, could not always be there to clean and to replace before one of her aunts or her mother got
in.

Francisco took his easel to Collioure. His particular friends of the time had a very large attic where there was room for all to work, and there he took up his stand.

This was lonely for Madeleine, and when he took to sleeping there, it was more so. She did not tell her mother or anyone else—she would never have done so at any time, but now that she was so withdrawn from them it would have been even less possible: for she was withdrawn from them, although Francisco blamed her for being entirely on their side, not with him at all: that was the root of all their quarreling.

She said as she lay there alone, watching the light of the street lamp swinging madly on the ceiling as the gale of the equinox took it, she said that it was better to watch it and know that he was on dry land than to watch it and think of him at sea. She said this, but she was saying it against her knowledge—a knowledge that she would not formulate or allow to appear whole, but which grew so substantial and familiar in those last weeks that she was not surprised, not fundamentally surprised, however cruelly shocked she was, when she came home one day from Me. Roig’s house and found Francisco pale and strange in the middle of his possessions, packing them—his only. He spoke as if he were drunk, but he was not drunk. He had meant to get out alone, unseen; he had not thought he would be disturbed, and when he saw her he was uncertain what attitude to take. He had not prepared one. There was a terrible embarrassment between them, as if they were naked in front of strangers.

He saw that she did not intend to scream or fight and asked her to find his blue suit.

She said “Have you got your best shirts?”

He said “I took them last week,” and after a second he flushed an ugly dark color, because he had lain with her since then.

She said “Do you want this?” It was her portrait that he had painted in the autumn. It was his best piece of work: it was framed. He said Yes, to put it by the other paintings stacked by the door; but he did not look and his voice was hardly recognizable.

They did not say anything more, and she went out of the room: she did not watch him pick up the load of things, the too-many parcels, bundles; go awkwardly out, down the stairs, put the things down, open the door, pick them up, and bolt out. His feet went sounding up the street, for he had shoes on; and in a minute the hollow wind slammed the door after him.

At the crossroads he jerked into the car, into the back seat, and the woman in front, after a glance at his face, started the engine and drove rapidly away on the white road of the coast.

He sat there in the back, abandoned to the movement of the car: he had never felt anything like this in his life. It was as if his whole being, the whole of the inside of his body, were bleeding, bleeding. The pain was something utterly beyond his experience.

It did not surprise him that his face was wet with tears: he leaned forward and let one roll on to the back of his hand.

What, what was he? A hero? Had he done something extremely brave? How terribly he was suffering: how terribly an artist must suffer. How shockingly wide is the range of an artist’s feelings, he thought, only an artist could suffer so much: and the tears rolled on.

CHAPTER THREE

“
B
UT, MY DEAR
A
LAIN,
how very yellow your face appears,” she said, settling down comfortably, now that she had got him alone at last.

“My dear Aunt Margot,” he replied, “I suppose it does.”

“But, my dear Alain,” she said in a kindly but serious tone, leaning forward and tapping him on the knee, “
why
is it so yellow?”

A vision of the Luong river, sliding dark and smooth in the suffocating gloom; the matted forest steaming in the thunderous rain; paddy fields, lichee trees, mushroom hats, flashed across his mind; but he despaired of his ability to describe the causes and the circumstances of his face’s yellowness, and replied vaguely, “It is the climate, you know.”

“The climate? Yes; and the food, no doubt. I cannot think that the climate has so much to do with it, or the people here would be blue, if not yellow and black as well. There never was such a disagreeable climate as this, with its unhealthy dryness and clouds of dust, and the dreadful wind that never stops except in midsummer, when you need it. This last winter . . . I am sure I was better off in the Pas-de-Calais, where at least it does not pretend to be warm, and where the houses are properly built for the winter. But Alain, you would be far better with a wife to look after your house and see that you are properly fed: these birds’ nests and extraordinary dishes—mice, sharks’ fins—I don’t know indeed, but they cannot be good for you in the long run, however interesting at first, as curiosities.”

“You are a friend to marriage, Aunt Margot: you rarely miss an opportunity of recommending me to take some young woman or other back with me. Yet the idea of Xavier having a wife again does not seem to please you?”

“Ah, that! No, indeed. And I am surprised that you should refer to it so lightly, Alain; if you knew how it grieved me, I am sure you would not do so.”

“Tell me, has anything definite happened since you wrote to me last?”

“I wrote to you last in—” With her lips pursed and her eyes thrown up to the ceiling she numbered the days, weeks, months. “No. I cannot say that anything definite has happened, if you mean by that has he publicly announced that he is going to marry her, or has he been taken off in a strait jacket to the madhouse. That is where he would be if I had my way: I often tell him so. No: it has gone on in the same fashion, but now of
course it is still more widely known. I have had letters of sympathy from Mme. Marty in Toulouse and from André at Constantine.”

“I cannot see what it has to do with them. But when you say it is going on in the same fashion, what exactly do you mean? I have not gathered an exact impression: judging from Côme’s remarks I should have supposed the girl to be a flaunting Jezebel, Xavier’s acknowledged mistress—practically a common woman. But then, as I remember, she was very often with you before her marriage; and I cannot reconcile that with a very high degree of open depravity.” He smiled tentatively, having intended to be a little facetious. However, his aunt frowned and said coldly, “No; I do not suppose you can.” She paused; and then, with an air of almost masculine candor, quite characteristic of her, she said, “I do not know what Côme has said, but I should say that it is certainly untrue. This girl is not a bad girl at all. She sees her advantage, and she wishes to profit by it: that is all. If it were not that her gain is our loss, I should have nothing to say, nothing at all. But as it is .
. . No. This question apart, I have nothing to say against Madeleine: indeed, I had a real affection for her. When she was a young girl I was very fond of her—too fond of her, perhaps—and when her good-for-nothing husband ran off I was exceedingly sorry for Madeleine. Even now I should be sorry if she were unhappy. No: I do not say that she is vicious or dishonest. But I do say that for us she is the enemy, and must be fought like one.”

“So there is no moral issue?”

“Yes, there is a moral issue. She should not take advantage of Xavier’s lunacy.”

“Is she his mistress?”

“I do not think so. I cannot say, of course. From what I know of her I should say that she was virtuous; though it is true that she has a much more secretive nature than I liked, even then; and her marriage changed her a great deal. But I should certainly say that she is not his mistress, if for no other reason than that it would not answer her purpose. If it paid her to play the whore, it would be a different matter; though even then, I would not say for certain.”

“You say that she takes advantage of Xavier’s madness. I take it, then, that there is no inclination on her side—she does not care for him at all?”

“Care for him? Why of course not, Alain: how could you ask such a simple question? Think of Xavier’s age and his appearance. He looks exactly like a dried old goat; you know he does. But of course, you never saw Francisco Cortade when he was grown up.”

“The husband?”

“Yes. He was no good at all, no good whatever: but, my dear Alain, he looked like what’s-his-name in the thing.”

“Did he, though?”

“He did indeed. And still does, of course, wherever he is. He would make three of Xavier and still leave some to spare. A big, straight young fellow, very good-looking. Rather too good-looking for my taste, all gleaming teeth and curly hair, you know. But I must admit that he was not flashy, like most of the youths here who think themselves handsome, and he did not even look too much of a lout when he was dressed in his best clothes. He was not the sort who would wear well at all: no; there was too much youthful charm altogether; but he was exactly the kind of young man who would make a silly girl’s heart turn right over. I could understand her perfectly well, although I never was a romantically inclined woman: and although I disapproved I thought that forty years ago I might have felt the same. I would never have acted as she did, of course; but I might have
thought
about it. And besides being so good-looking, he had that helplessness that is so appealing to an affectionate nature: that is to say, he
appeared
to have it. He
appeared
an ingenuous young man, too. However .
. . No; I am convinced that Madeleine is eating her heart out for him. But even if she were not, I cannot see her looking at Xavier with anything but a businesslike eye. After all, he is twice her age, and even my dear sister-in-law, if she were alive now, could not call him anything but a dried-up old stick.”

“Sometimes one finds girls madly enamored of men as old as their fathers. It is not so rare, either. And then again, Xavier is not actually decrepit, is he? If he were thinking of marrying, re-marrying, a handsome, well-connected dowry, are you sure that you would think of him as such an old man?”

“Well, perhaps not. But that really has nothing to do with the case, has it? There is no dowry or connection here.”

“So she is entirely mercenary?”

“Yes. Though prudent would be a better word. Prudential motives, they say, don’t they? Though if we are to be entirely just to the girl I should say that I do not think she has her heart in the affair: I think it is mainly her family pushing her on. Though no doubt she sees her advantage as clearly as anybody.”

“The family. That is the Pou-naous in the arcades.”

“Yes. The father has the vineyard next to ours at the Puig d’en Calbo: there is not much harm in him. It is Mimi l’Empereur who is the dangerous one. She is Madeleine’s aunt.”