The Vatard Sisters (6 page)
The younger girl nodded yes. She was standing in front of the cast-iron stove in the middle of the room. She didn’t seem to be conscious of what she was doing, because her fingers were grazing the metal top and, somewhat unsteady on her feet, she was staring with a dejected air at the copper knob of the stove pipe. The restaurant was empty. There were only some old jackets and capes hanging on the wall and, on a table at the back, a double salt cellar and a mustard jar whose lid had lost its tip. At this hour, old Ma Antoine was giving the kitchen a good going over, wiping with her greasy rag at the milk sizzling on the stove and blowing tiny bubbles that popped and stank. Every ten minutes she came back into the dining room, dabbing at her endlessly dripping nose, pouring fresh glassfuls for the two men, furtively rubbing a nailless finger over the wax blobs sticking to the necks of the bottles. Anatole and his friend Colombel had been drinking like fish while waiting for the girls. The game of dominoes came to an end. Colombel got up, stretched himself, adjusted the legs of his tight trousers, scraped his shoes on the floor tiles in order to get rid of the crust of cigarettes and mud besmirching them, and, pirouetting round on one foot, howled out: ‘Mademoiselle Désirée, when, oh, when are you going to let me court you?’
But Désirée barely heard him, with tears in her eyes after a big yawn she was stretching her fingers and flexing her knees; it was Céline, now in a passionate clinch with Anatole, who answered: ‘That’s an insult that is! What have you got to offer? Your heart? Only people who’ve got nothing else offer that! It’s not good enough, you can take a running jump!’
Colombel forced a laugh behind his excessively thick beard. Anatole, much amused, fondled his girlfriend’s breasts and shouted: ‘The whole package belongs to Papa!’ Colombel came back and sat down, and shuffled the dominoes once again. The door opened and two men came in. They were sporting their Sunday best, suits fit for walking out with some nice girl on their arm, for harvesting cheap wine in bars. They were wearing brand-new felt hats, striped trousers with patches between the thighs, frock coats that had been cleaned and repaired at the Temple, and string ties. They shook hands with everyone, made fun of Céline who, her nose in her glass of hot wine, was nibbling lemon peel every time a slice came within reach of her lips, and then sat down opposite one another, a bottle and two glasses between them, leaning low over the table chatting nose to nose, breathing right into each other’s faces, slapping each other on the arms, as if to make themselves better understood.
‘Now then,’ said Colombel, ‘where are you off to today looking so swanky?’
‘We’re taking his blonde for a stroll, my friend; we’re going to have a glass of Rigolboche and something to eat at the Place Pinel, and then afterwards…well, we’ll see…’
‘Hey, that’s an idea,’ exclaimed Anatole, ‘supposing we go and get a fry-up somewhere, and some
escargots
? How about it, Céline? Colombel and your sister could come with us.’ But the girls refused; they had to return home and prepare a meal for their father, and anyway they were too tired, it would have to be another time. ‘Yes, there’s no way,’ murmured Céline, ‘though it would’ve been nice…’ and she leaned on her elbows, dreamily contemplating a wheel-of-fortune screwed to the wall, seeing in its painted scene of a couple kissing beneath a bower the pleasures of such intimate
tête-à-têtes
, the leisurely eaten fish stew, the morsels one shares using the same fork, the coffee brandy drunk from the same cup… then one of the workers gave it a spin and the countryside scrambled, clearing again as it stopped spinning, and Céline just sat there, daydreaming of those long walks where you flirt with each other, of those journeys home along the Seine when you stare languidly into each other’s eyes and when, amid the thickets, mouths meet from time to time, of all that happiness which, in short, ends up in arguments as soon as the defensive walls are breached.
‘Now look,’ said Anatole, ‘sitting there playing hard-to-get isn’t going to get us very far. Are you coming, yes or no?’
‘But I can’t,’ repeated Céline.
‘Oh, suit yourself!’ And while the young girls were rubbing sleep out of their eyes and preparing to return home, Colombel, annoyed at seeing them leave, ordered several shots of brandy, and then he tossed them down his bulging throat as the two sisters, tottering along, reached their lodgings, where they slept like babies, without even having had the energy to unlace their dresses.
That evening old Vatard returned, in a very good mood at the thought that a rare lamb chop would be waiting for him on the table. The old man had spent the day at the home of his friend Tabuche, a carpenter whose first consideration once he found himself quite well-off had been to fall out with his missus and build himself a wine cellar. Vatard, acting the gallant, paid a number of extravagant compliments to his wife, who had a belly like a bass drum, then kissed his daughters, and, emptying his pipe on his thumbnail, shot a long spurt of saliva into the ash, dabbed it with his finger and rubbed it on his trouser leg so as to remove the nicotine stains with which it was speckled, then, collapsing into an armchair, legs spread wide, arms dangling, he sat in a state of blissful content.
Pierre-Séraphin Vatard had married young, to a woman who was quite jolly in her good moments, but bloody-minded at others. All in all, he’d been lucky. Eulalie was a bit cantankerous and capricious, but at bottom she was a spirited, if unintelligent girl. She had brought only two children into the world: Céline and Désirée. Vatard was happy to have fathered girls, and not wanting to risk having a boy he turned a deaf ear to the promptings of his nocturnal appetites. Deep down, he’d always been a circumspect, gentle man, and would have been a perfect husband if it wasn’t for his complete indifference to the thousand and one problems of life and his invincible laziness when it came to overcoming them. What he wanted was a life of idleness and peace. He’d been happy living with her, giving in to his wife’s demands, replying: ‘Yes, dear’ to everything she said, and so, all things considered, she pampered him, letting him live on the few sous she’d been left after the death of her brother, a tanner who made sheepskin saddle blankets in the old Faubourg Saint-Marceau quarter. The only arguments that occasionally arose between them took place at night, when they couldn’t sleep. They were becoming embittered, lying there staring into the blackness of the bedroom: him, suffering from rheumatism with no hope of a cure; her, already feeling the first symptoms of an enormous dropsy.
The two big afflictions that, one after the other, had delivered a terrible blow to this easy, carefree existence he was promising himself were caused by his wife’s illness and Céline’s amazing appetite for running after men. But after a fit of depression, he quickly consoled himself. Désirée was old enough to look after him and to replace her mother, and, as for the other, the best thing to do was to shut his eyes to her escapades. Besides, he had acted as a father should: he’d reproached her for what the courts would have called ‘the dissoluteness of her morals’, but she’d become angry, had thrown the whole household into disarray, threatening to wreck everything if he annoyed her again. Vatard had then adopted a more indulgent approach, and anyway his daughter’s tremendous gift for the gab kept him distracted while he digested his food in the evening. He even began to regard her as being very lively, very exuberant. With her slangy street expressions, her mannerisms picked up in some disreputable dance hall and her laugh of a girl who knew life, she reminded him of his youth and of a certain mistress he’d almost fallen in love with. At the time when he was counting on marrying her off, these traits, like those of a female docker, had given him some anxiety. Céline would have scared off any respectable suitors, but now, given the fact that she was happy living like a right slut, it was better that she was amusing, and not nasty and mean like all those girls embittered by celibacy. As for Désirée, Vatard would let her do as she thought fit, provided she took care of his meals and didn’t run out the house as soon as night fell. There was little to distract him in the company of his wife, who would sit riveted to her easy chair, mutely suffering. The unfortunate woman lived with her mind in a daze and said not a word. And added to which, she spoiled his appetite with her constant look of anguish and the way she had of letting her stew grow cold in her dish.
This particular evening, poor Eulalie sat without stirring, watching her husband with an unflinching gaze that embarrassed him. Désirée was dozing in a chair, Céline was pacing listlessly from stove to window. The leg of lamb was overcooked. Never had his daughters been in such a state. The older girl, who’d stayed out all the night the day before, and who, in order to rest her partied-out legs had strained her arms the following evening at work, basted the roast with a trembling hand, spilling the sauce over the edge of the plate, and spattering herself with grease from top to toe. The younger, who had only just stood up, had collapsed again on a chair and, eyes closed, her nose nestling in her shoulder, shivering and ill-at-ease, was snoring slowly; as for Vatard, he was smoking his pipe feeling sorry for himself; a smell of burning came from the kitchen; finally Désirée woke with a start, rubbed her eyes energetically and laid the table. The meal was tense. Annoyed, the father kept his silence, the daughters tapped at their plates and ate distractedly. When the dessert had been gulped down, it was the turn of the father to doze and the daughters to wake up.
Céline heated some water for coffee. At that moment the darkening sky rumbled, violent squalls shook the house from attic to basement and swirls of wind rushed down the chimney, forcing smoke from the fire into the room. Suddenly, everyone was up on their feet and rushed to the windows to open them. ‘By heaven,’ said Vatard, ‘if this weather continues the Testons won’t come,’ and he rested his elbow on the frame of the window with the satisfaction of someone who feels sheltered and who wouldn’t be upset to see others get soaked. ‘The main thing is that they should have left home by now,’ he thought. ‘All the same, they must be feeling a bit rum being out on the street in weather like this!’ The rain got heavier, cross-hatching the whole street with its grey diagonals; blasts of wind were lashing the slates of the roofs, making them rear up into the air and shatter on the pavement with a sharp crack; at intervals, squalls of rain would fling themselves against a cornice and then burst, exploding into a fine spray. One could hear the patter of the water against the windowpanes, the hiccupping of streaming gutters, the dull moaning of blocked water-spouts, the trill from the throats of overflowing drainpipes gushing onto the pavement, pouring continuously onto tiles, reviving the faded ochre of the walls, staining them with dark blotches, teeming down sometimes with the din of an avalanche, sometimes with the sizzle of a hot frying pan.
Vatard was beginning to enjoy himself inordinately. He was watching some passers-by hurrying as fast as their legs could carry them: the women, splashing along, hair glued to their foreheads, the brims of their hats wilting; the men, running so fast their heels were hitting their backsides and causing trousers as stiff as boards and topcoats stuck to hips to flap, trying to protect hats the glue of which was seeping out; then, a bit later, when all these unfortunates had disappeared and the street was deserted, Vatard delighted in listening to the plaintive song of the gargoyles, the retching sound of badly welded downpipes.
At that moment the Testons appeared in the distance: the wife, her dress lifted up to her knees, squelching through puddles in waterlogged shoes, the husband, bent double, hunched against the rain, dragging his other half behind him. Vatard was gazing at a cast iron drainpipe that had split. Water was splashing, leaking out in a white spray through its cracks, frothing into soapy bubbles, blossoming into white roses, then all these watery flowers broke up and fell into a sheet of unspeakably dirty water, while fresh ones bloomed anew only to shed their petals once more in a murky spittle.
‘If they come past on this side of the pavement, they’ll be for it,’ Vatard said to himself, but the unfortunate couple couldn’t see they were walking straight towards the waterfall. They were tottering along, eyes closed, blinded by the rain and deafened by the wind, which was jerking around the old umbrella onto which they were clinging. They held each other by the arm, hanging onto one another at every gust, lowering their heads, splashing their legs, mopping their necks. Just as they were sinking into this lake of mud, they reached the curb and passed by the pipe. Their umbrella crumpled and resounded like a drum, the husband and wife swore, she, losing her shawl, hitching her clothes up almost to her waist, him, wrestling with the flapping umbrella. A gust of wind cut across the street at an angle, buffeting the wife’s ringlets and surging into the umbrella which, ceasing to shelter its owner, caused him to receive the whole deluge from the overflowing gutters right on top of his skull. Teston danced like an idiot beneath the shower, and his wife, exasperated, the strings of her bonnet whipping against her cheeks, swore and cursed, swallowing wind and rain, calling her husband a good-for-nothing imbecile. Vatard was splitting his sides with laughter when the couple knocked at his door. ‘Oh what weather! what weather!’ the wife exclaimed. Teston didn’t say a word, his hair streaming, he had water up his nostrils and was sniffling, pitiful and grotesque, with his hat in rags and his shoes squirting out a spoonful of dirty water with every step he took.
‘Wait, Madame Teston,’ said Céline, ‘I’ll go find you a jacket and some slippers.’
‘And you, my old friend,’ proffered Vatard, ‘do you want an overcoat?’ But Teston declared that he didn’t need anything, except something hot to drink; he huddled in one of the nooks by the fireplace and there, pulling out a checkered handkerchief, he mopped his head. His wife unfastened her clothes; she angrily took off her shawl, once white but now dirty brown like a dishcloth ready to be wrung out. Turning her back to the fireplace, her meagre figure, swaddled in a mass of undergarments, was reflected in the mirror, and, thin as a rake, it stretched out like those interminable barley-sugars that fez wearing carnies drape over metal rods with bells on, at fairs out in the suburbs. The arc of her shoulders descended in a sharp slope down to her hips, which furrowed her slip and joined to form a small shapeless backside, braced by two long stays. The water had soaked her through, from top to toe; she wiped herself more or less dry, showing off, as her arms were to-ing and fro-ing, her rib cage. They wrapped her up as best they could in one of Désirée’s old nightgowns, and, squatting in front of the fire, she undid the laces of her boots. The polish had run and the leather had shrivelled and was sticking to her feet. Vatard had to give her a hand, and, between two puffs of his pipe, he pulled them off for her. Then she let out a long anguished wail, her stockings were in such a sorry state. The whole of the toe end seemed to have been soaked in a bath of ink, the stain growing lighter or changing colour the closer it got to the leg, black turning to brown and brown turning to yellow; at the instep, the stain was bigger but no darker than pale gray. Teston’s wife slipped on some old, mismatched clogs and, her nose in her handkerchief, her body shattered, she stared at the fire, which was burning noisily, blazing hot and high, crackling in a volley of tiny explosions.