The Widow (19 page)

Was it for Jean that Félicie had brought, or made a new dress? An apple-green dress. As soon as she left the house, she looked toward the open window. Doubtless she saw Tati's head in the foreground. Did she make out Jean in the half darkness behind?

She went off along the towpath. Tati observed Jean, who pretended to think of something else, and she sighed.

The people outside, not knowing there was going to be a storm, prepared to spend a Sunday like any other. Some settled themselves along the canal; others, with packs on their backs, rode far afield on their bicycles.

“You could have killed a chicken,” said Tati suddenly. “Life hasn't been much fun for you this week.”

They never ate chicken in this house devoted to poultry rearing, because they preferred to sell them. Tati thought of that.

“If you talk to people about me, they'll tell you I'm stingy. That's because they don't know what it's like to spend your life as other people's servant. If I'd treated myself to dresses like that female, I wouldn't have saved a sou and I would be risking…. ”

Yet, Félicie had disappeared; her green dress had long since been swallowed up in the two rows of greenery which met at the horizon. But Tati followed her in thought. Perhaps in Jean's thoughts?

And now voices were heard on the path.

“Why! The bus has gone by,” she observed.

Then she cocked an ear.

“I think…. Yes … that's Amélie's voice.”

Soon they saw the family on the bridge, the father with straw hat and pince-nez, the little boy in a sailor suit, and Amélie, who carried with great care a box of pastry. The little boy turned around. Still looking straight ahead, his mother gave him a good shove, forbidding him no doubt to look at that house.

They were going to Françoise's house. The old man was ready, washed, spruced up, and a pipe was put in his mouth; he was being settled outside—as if nailing him there—in a ray of sunshine. Françoise alone still had to wash. She put up her hand to shade her eyes, saw the family coming, and no doubt exclaimed, “Eleven o'clock already!”

Whereupon she hurried indoors and tidied up the front room.

“Before, they never used to see each other,” Tati observed. “Désiré thinks he's brainy. He looks with contempt on Eugène and his wife. But, when it's a question of hatching a plot against me…. ”

They brought the table outside. Désiré, who had taken off his jacket and whose shirt sleeves gleamed like snow, helped Françoise, but the table was wide and could barely get through the door.

Félicie came back from church and glanced up at the window. She had a red flower on her new dress.

They spread a cloth on the table, brought some chairs.

“She's killed a rabbit,” Tati went on, never letting them out of her sight.

And they, eating the rabbit, pretended to be mighty busy, but couldn't help stealing glances at the window. Only Eugène used his pocket knife to eat with. Amélie had brought an enormous creamcake.

It was exactly when she started cutting it, not without pride, that the first flurry ruffled the water, and all at once the foliage began to quiver so hard that leaves were snapped off. The table-cloth lifted. Drops of rain fell.

Jean laughed heartily. It was fun to see them scramble up, to see Amélie rescuing her cake. Désiré, who didn't know what to do and was hunting for his jacket, which he had left indoors.

A fine rain fell all afternoon and they had to remain in the kitchen, sitting in a semicircle around the door. At five o'clock Amélie, her husband, and the little boy left. They had borrowed an old umbrella under which they huddled together, heads bowed, in the wind.

Would Félicie come all the same?

Firecrackers sounded far off, followed by detonations, and now and then the breeze brought gusts of music from the hurdy-gurdy.

“I'd forgotten it was the fair today,” Tati murmured, glancing quickly at Jean. There must be a shooting gallery, a merry-go-round, a floor and a band for dancing….

Was that why Félicie stayed so long on the doorstep looking toward the house? She finally donned an old raincoat, with a hood, and went off toward the village. She was going dancing. Perhaps she hoped Jean would follow her?

Instead, he floundered in the slimy mud of the yard where everything was soaked, and he had scarcely done tending the animals, was still looking bitterly at the spot where Félicie ought to have come to meet him, when Tati called, true to the craze, the obsession it had become, “Jean! … Jean! … What are you doing?”

More firecrackers went off in the wet night. He heard them from his bed. He even saw gleams that doubtless came from a wretched fireworks display, and he thought he heard the outlandish strains of a trombone, a fiddle, and a piano.

From then on, no two days passed without a storm. For one thing, the weather took a long time to improve. The sky remained a greenish gray and the waters of the canal were restless. The leaves dried gradually. In the mornings, the atmosphere was rather clearer. There seemed to be some hope that summer would begin again, but all at once, between noon and three o'clock, the rumblings would sound in the distance.

Félicie came on the Monday. The rain had stopped, but it had fallen all day. The hay gave out a strong smell. Jean was cross.

“You went dancing?” he asked, groping for her in the dark. “What time did you get home?”

“I don't know. Past midnight.”

“Who did you dance with?”

“All the boys.”

“And you didn't do anything else?”

She laughed, but did not answer. He was unhappy. She did not realize what a price he was paying for her.

“Jealous? You mustn't …”

She offered her moist lips.

Ever since he had possessed her in his dream, he failed to find the simple pleasure of their first embrace. It had gone so naturally! Now, they looked for a place. Félicie settled herself.

“Wait a minute…. There … Come on now…. Don't squeeze me so tight.”

One day, Zézette had said to him with a sigh, “It's just my luck! I wanted to stand myself a gigolo, and I'm landed with you—a fake sugar sou.”

Because he was jealous! Because he would not let her pay when they went out together! Because he insisted on keeping her although he could not afford it!

“You didn't do anything, last night, with anybody?” he asked Félicie in a murmur.

“Of course not! Why?”

Was she already tired of coming to him at eight o'clock every evening? The next evening she asked him, “Are you really going to stay here long?”

“Why?” he replied.

They exchanged so few words, yet even those were too many since, when they did speak, the words did not fit.

“I don't know. For my part, I'd sooner live in a town, or somewhere just outside Paris … a little three-room apartment with peace and quiet. A job where you draw your money every Saturday…. ”

Was it an invitation? He made no answer. Everything irritated him, everything distressed him, even unexpected details: “No. Don't … We can't today.”

Well, wasn't that precisely the occasion for her to nestle in his arms, her cheek against his, whispering away in the dark?

“It's time I went home. If you don't see me tomorrow, it'll be because my father …”

The doctor came to see Tati and looked at Jean as though he found it astonishing that he was still there.

“Is she any better?”

The doctor shrugged.

And, all day long, Jean trailed around in the mud in Couderc's overlarge sabots. Everything was soaked, slimy. He got dirty doing nothing at all. To go and shift the cows, he put a sack over his head and shoulders. And only rarely did he see Félicie framed in her doorway, where Françoise, on the other hand, planted herself constantly.

Tati, upstairs in bed, was fretting. She could not let an hour go by without seeing him and, as soon as he came in, she would look at him intently as if to read on his face the news of disaster.

“Getting bored? You weren't made for the countryside, eh?”

“On the contrary. I've never been so happy in my life.”

He said it in a mournful voice, for by now it was no longer true.

“Do you know what I sometimes think? Now don't get angry…. It would be better for us both if you were really a Polack. Do you remember? I asked you if you were French. I took you for some foreigner or other…. When you told me who you were, I didn't believe you.”

She reverted to her ruling idea. “It's odd that your father hasn't come.”

And then, distrustfully: “You're sure he hasn't? I've written to a lawyer at Vierzon, whose address I found in the paper. To ask him how to go about getting the house.”

Exactly like Zézette, who, one fine evening, had announced, “I've found an apartment.”

And he had to rent it! And that flat had been like the starting point of what had happened, because he had needed to borrow money that very day!

“We'll be in our own place—what you want so badly.”

“Yes. In our own place …”

Félicie dreamed of a three-room apartment in town!

From morning till night, Tati devised plans to get Françoise and Félicie out of the way for good!

As for Jean, he moved about in the midst of things that already had no more than the value of memory—the calendar, the stove he lit each morning, the table in the light of the paned window, the portraits of Couderc and his dead wife, and …

It would have been so simple! They would have lived here, all three of them, or rather all four, since there was the baby. He didn't mind the baby. He did not wonder whose it was. It fitted into the scene as he imagined it. Old Couderc too, if need be! Why not?

They would live, like that, all together, tending the poultry and the rabbits, hatching eggs, cutting grass, sowing vegetables.

Tati would shout, as she was wont, “Jean! Bring in some coal.”

And he would get coal from the shed.

“Jean! We're out of wood.”

And he would chop wood, with the ax which, in the early days, he had hardly dared handle.

He would see Félicie playing with the baby in the grass, going down on all fours and crying, “Look out! The big wolf … the big wolf … the big wolf!”

The baby's laughter. His mother's laughter as she stood up in the grass, with her blue smock and her tousled red hair, and freckles all around her eyes.

“Love each other well, my pets!”

Now and then, at the muggy hour of the siesta, Tati would go up to her room followed by old Couderc and dole out pleasure to him as one gives a lump of sugar to a dog.

On Thursday, Félicie did not come and he remained alone in the shed for a good fifteen minutes. When he went up, Tati guessed right away that he didn't look like himself.

“Where have you been, Jean?”

“In the garden.”

“What were you doing?”

“I don't know.”

He wore a guilty look, when on that particular day, in fact, he was not guilty! Yet this was the day she chose to be suspicious. The window was open.

The storm still rumbling along had not cleared the air, but an occasional gust of wind made the curtain swell and set the lamp smoking.

“You're sure you were alone?”

“Yes.”

“Why don't you sit down? You've got something on your mind, haven't you? Is it because your father doesn't come to see you?”

“No.”

“Is it because you're tired of looking after me?”

“I—”

“Are you bored?”

“No.”

“Is it on account of Félicie?”

Her gaze grew sharper and Jean tried in vain to appear natural.

“Come on, admit that you think of nothing but Félicie. You do! I've seen it all right. And she—well, she hangs around you. She's smart! Instead of crossing the bridge, knowing I'd see her, she comes over by the lock gate so I can't tell where she's going. Félicie was in the garden with you?”

“No. I swear—”

“Because I'm going to tell you something. Listen … I shouldn't talk this way. The other day, I let you know I had some savings and I purposely told you where they're hidden. That's something I wouldn't have told even René…. ”

Of course! Of course! He knew he meant almost more to her than René did. He had somehow taken Reneé's place, with a few things added.

“Well, if you had left, and taken the money with you…. Don't get angry. You didn't so much as think of doing it, I know that. But if you had, I wonder whether I'd have been angry with you. Even now, you could say, ‘Tati, I'm sick of it all. I must go away.' ”

It happened quickly. He saw her throat rise. Her illness made her ugly. But she became uglier still when, her features melting into one another, she began to weep, her face screwed up like a child's.

“Don't … don't pay attention…. There! Give me a handkerchief…. You … you'd want to leave that…. ”

But beneath the tears her face already resumed a harshness and she was sitting up in bed.

“Only, there's one thing I'll never forgive, never allow, which is that you and that girl I loathe…. You see, Jean, if you did that…. When I think how all my life those people have…. ”

She could not find words strong enough.

“I don't know what I'd do. But, stuck here in bed or no, I think I'd have the strength to get up and…. ”

She tore her hair in rage and impotence.

“If you went after another girl in town, for your fun…. But Félicie! … You don't answer?”

“No.”

“You love her?”

“No.”

There were only the two of them in the house, in the drafty bedroom. They could be seen from the other side of the water. Probably no one was there to watch them? Félicie had not come!

In the house in the brickyard they were in bed. It must be warm there. There were four of them breathing away in two tiny rooms and Eugène's breath was strong, reeking of liquor.