The Thibaults (29 page)

“Yes, yes, I understand!” he all but shouted. His pale eyes were sparkling, there was an almost vicious edge to his voice, and his lips were curiously twisted. It looked as if he were furious with his brother for shattering his peace of mind by this so unexpected outburst of enthusiasm. A tremor passed through his body, then his features relaxed, and a look of profound weariness settled on his face.

“Oh, let me be!” he suddenly exclaimed, letting his forehead sink between his hands.

Antoine said nothing; he was observing his brother. How much thinner and paler he had grown, in a fortnight! The close-cropped reddish hair made still more apparent the abnormal size of his skull, the scragginess of his neck, and his protruding ears.

“By the way,” he suddenly asked, point-blank, “have you turned over a new leaf?”

“In what way?” Jacques murmured, and a mist crept over the brightness of his eyes. He flushed, and, though he managed to keep up an expression of surprise, it was obviously feigned.

Antoine made no reply.

It was getting late. He looked at his watch and rose; he had his second round to make, at five. He pondered if he should tell his brother he was going to leave him alone till dinner; but, much to his surprise, Jacques seemed almost glad to see him go.

And indeed, when he was alone, he felt as if a weight had been lifted from him. He had the idea of making an inspection of the flat, but in the hall in front of the closed doors a vague anxiety came over him and he went back to his own room and shut himself in. At last he noticed the bunch of violets, and the paper streamer. All the events of the day merged together in his memory: his father’s welcome, Antoine’s conversation. He lay down on the sofa and began crying again, but not with despair; he was weeping above all from exhaustion, but also because of the room, and the violets, and the hand his father had laid on his head, and Antoine’s solicitude, and the new life which was beginning for him. He wept because on all sides they seemed to want to love him, because henceforth people were going to take notice of him, and speak to him, and smile towards him, and he would have to respond; because his days of tranquillity were over.

TO SOFTEN the transition, Antoine had postponed Jacques’s return to the lycée till October. With the help of some of his old school friends, who were about to enter the university, he had worked out a sort of review course, the object of which was the progressive re-education of the boy’s intelligence. Three different tutors shared the task. They were all young, and personal friends. Under those favourable conditions, the youngster worked as and when he pleased, according to the amount of concentration he could bring to his task. And soon Antoine had the pleasure of seeing that his seclusion in the reformatory had not done so much harm to his brother’s mental faculties as might have been feared; in certain respects, in fact, his mind seemed to have ripened most remarkably in solitude—so much so that after a rather slow start his progress soon became more rapid than Antoine had dared to hope. Jacques profited, without excess, by the independence he was allowed. Moreover, Antoine, though he did not say so to his father, but with the tacit approval of the Abbé Vécard, felt that no harm could be done by allowing Jacques the utmost freedom. He realized the potentialities of Jacques’s mind and believed that there was everything to be gained by letting him develop in his own way, on his own lines.

During the first few days the boy felt a strong distaste for going out of the house. The bustle of the street made him feel dizzy, and Antoine had to exercise his ingenuity in devising errands that took him out into the open air. So gradually Jacques renewed acquaintance with the neighbourhood and after a while came actually to like his walks abroad. The weather kept fine and he found pleasure in walking to Notre Dame along the river bank, and strolling in the Tuileries Gardens. One day he even ventured to enter the Louvre, but he found the air stifling and dusty, and the long lines of pictures so monotonous that he soon went out, and did not return.

At meal-times he was silent; he listened to his father. In any case M. Thibault was so dictatorial and overbearing that all who were constrained to live in his vicinity took refuge in silence and composed their faces into masks of decorous attention. Mademoiselle herself, despite her beatific admiration, always hid her real face from him. M. Thibault enjoyed this deferential silence, which gave free rein to his craving to lay down the law on every topic, and was naive enough to take it for approval. His attitude to Jacques was studiously reserved, and, faithful to his promise, he never questioned him as to how he spent his time.

There was one point, however, on which M. Thibault had shown himself intractable; he had formally forbidden all intercourse with the Fontanins, and, to make assurance doubly sure, had decided that Jacques should not join the rest of the family that summer at Maisons-Laffitte, where he went every year with Mademoiselle, and where the Fontanins, too, had a little country residence on the outskirts of the forest. It was settled that Jacques should spend the summer in Paris, with Antoine.

The paternal edict against seeing the Fontanins was the subject of a momentous conversation between Antoine and his brother. Jacques’s first reaction was a cry of revolt; he felt that the old injustice would never be wiped out, so long as this attitude of suspicion as regards his friend was allowed to persist. The violence of his reaction was far from displeasing Antoine; it proved to him that Jacques, the real Jacques, was being reborn. But when the first blaze of anger had passed, he set himself to reason with the boy. And he had little trouble in extracting a promise that he would not try to see Daniel. As a matter of fact, Jacques was not so set on their meeting as he seemed to be. He was still too shy and too unsociable to desire new contacts; the intimacy with his brother was enough—all the more so as Antoine took pains to live with him on a footing of simple friendship, without anything to indicate the difference in their ages, and still less the authority with which he had been invested.

One afternoon in early June, when he came home, Jacques saw a crowd gathered round the street door. Old Mme. Friihling, the concierge, had had an attack and was lying unconscious on the threshold of her room. She came to in the evening, but her right arm and leg were partly paralysed.

Some days later, when Antoine was about to leave his flat after breakfast, there was a ring at the bell. A young German-looking girl, wearing a pink blouse and black apron, was standing in the doorway. She was blushing, but there was boldness in her smile.

“I’ve come to do your rooms, sir. Don’t you recognize me, M. Antoine? I’m Lisbeth Friihling.”

She spoke with an Alsatian accent, the sing-song quality of which was still more emphasized by her childish intonation. Antoine had not forgotten the little girl who was known to all the residents in the block of flats as “old Mme. Frtihling’s orphan brat,” and whom, as he walked past the concierge’s lodge, he often used to see playing hopscotch in the courtyard. Lisbeth explained that she had come from Strasbourg to look after her aunt and do her work for her. And forthwith the girl took up her domestic duties in the young men’s flat.

She continued to come each morning, bringing their breakfast on a tray and waiting on them as they ate it. Antoine would tease her over her way of blushing in and out of season, and ask her questions about German life. She was nineteen; during the six years since she had left Mme. Friihling, she had been living with her uncle, who kept a hotel-restaurant in the vicinity of the station at Strasbourg. So long as Antoine was present, Jacques put in a word now and then. But whenever he was alone with Lisbeth in the flat he kept studiously out of her way.

All the same, on the mornings when Antoine was on duty early at the hospital, she served the breakfast in Jacques’s bedroom. On these occasions he always asked her for news of her aunt, and Lisbeth did not spare him a single detail. The old lady was slowly getting better— she must be, as her appetite was steadily improving. Lisbeth had a great respect for food. She was small and plump, and the suppleness of her body bore witness to her passion for dancing and open-air games. When she laughed, she would look at Jacques without the least constraint. She had a knowing, pretty little face, with a rather short nose, young, pouting lips, china-blue eyes, and clusters of flaxen curls rippling over her forehead.

Each day Lisbeth made the talk last a little longer and gradually Jacques got over his early shyness. He listened to all she said seriously, attentively. He had a way of listening that had at all times won him confidences: the secrets of servants, of schoolmates, sometimes even of his teachers. Lisbeth talked to him more freely than to Antoine, though it was with the elder brother she behaved more childishly.

One morning, noticing that Jacques was looking up a word in his German dictionary, she dropped what little reserve she had so far kept up and asked him to show her what he was translating. It happened to be a
Lied
of Goethe’s that she knew by heart and used to sing at home.

Fliesse, fliesse, lieber Fluss!

Nimmer werd’ ich froh… .

German poetry, it seemed, had a way of going to her head. In a soft voice she sang to him several German love-songs, explaining the meanings of the first lines before she began. The songs she liked best were always sad ones, with a note of childish sentiment.

Were I a little swallow in the nest

I would take wing to thee!

But Schiller was her adoration. After thinking hard for a while she recited without a break one of her favourite passages, the lines in
Mary Stuart
in which the young imprisoned queen is given leave to take a few steps in the garden of the keep where she is confined, and runs across the lawns, her eyes half blinded by the sudden light, her heart aflame with youth. Jacques could not understand all the words, so she translated as she went along and, to convey the young queen’s delight in that brief spell of freedom, she put such emotion into her voice that Jacques, remembering Crouy, felt profoundly thrilled. Little by little vanquishing his reserve, he began describing his own misfortunes. He was still living so much alone, and spoke so seldom, that the sound of his own voice rapidly went to his head. In his excitement he embroidered on reality and inserted in his narrative all sorts of literary reminiscences; for, during the past two months, a large share of his time and industry had gone to the perusal of the novels on Antoine’s shelves. He was keenly aware, moreover, that these romantic travesties were stirring Lisbeth’s emotions far more effectively than would have done the plain, unvarnished truth. And when he saw the pretty girl drying her tears, in the graceful attitude of Mignon weeping for her motherland, he felt, almost for the first time, the boundless joy of the creative artist, and such an immense gratitude to Lisbeth for the pleasure she was giving him that, with a thrill of hope, he wondered if this were not love… .

Next morning he awaited her impatiently. She guessed his feelings very likely, and had brought with her an album full of picture postcards, autographs, and dried flowers: a visual record of her young life, of all she had been and done since the age of three. Jacques plied her with questions; he liked being taken by surprise, and was surprised by everything he did not know. Lisbeth’s stories of her young days were sprinkled with picturesque details that carried conviction— in fact it was impossible to question her good faith. And yet, when a blush mantled her cheeks and the singing tone of her voice grew more pronounced, somehow she gave the impression of making things up, of lying, that we get from people trying to describe their dreams.

In a flutter of pleasurable excitement she spoke to him of the winter evenings at the
Tanzschule
where the young men and girls of her quarter of the city met. Carrying a tiny violin, the dancing master would follow the couples round, marking the beat, while Madame ground out the latest Viennese waltzes on the player piano. At midnight they all settled down to a meal. Then in merry groups they flocked out into the darkness, and saw each other home from house to house, but never could bring themselves to separate, so soft was the snow underfoot, so clear the wintry sky, so keen the night-wind on their cheeks.

Sometimes non-commissioned officers from the garrison put in an appearance at their dances. One of them she named as Fredi and another Will. Lisbeth took her time before pointing out on a group photograph of men in German uniforms the big doll-like soldier whose Christian name was Will. “
Ach
,” she said, dusting the photograph with her loose sleeve, “he’s such a nice boy, Will, so good-hearted and sentimental!” Evidently she had been to his room, for she told Jacques a long story in which a zither, raspberries, and a bowl of junket figured. In the midst of the tale she caught herself up with a sudden little laugh, and left it unfinished. Sometimes she spoke of Will as her fiance, and sometimes as if he had passed out of her life. Jacques gathered finally that he had been transferred to a garrison in Prussia after a mysterious, rather comical incident, the memory of which set her shivering at one moment and giggling at another. It seemed that there had been a hotel bedroom at the end of a corridor where the floor squeaked—but at that point the story became quite incomprehensible. One thing seemed clear: the room in question must have been one of those in Friihling’s own hotel; otherwise how could her old uncle have been able, in the middle of the night, to rise in anger from his bed, pursue the soldier into the courtyard, and throw him out into the street, in his shirt and socks? By way of explanation Lisbeth added that her uncle thought of marrying her himself, for her to keep house for him. She also informed Jacques that her uncle had a hare-lip, and smoked black cigars that smelt of soot from morn till night. And, at that, suddenly the smile left her lips and she began to cry.

Jacques was sitting at his table, with the album open before him. Lisbeth was perched on the arm of his chair and when she bent down he was conscious of the warm fragrance of her breath and felt her curls lightly brushing his ear. But his senses were not stirred. Perversion he had known, but now another world was opening up before him, a world he fancied he was discovering within himself, but actually was exhuming from an English novel he had recently perused. It was a world of chaste love, happy sentimental satisfactions, and of purity.