The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint) Page 16
‘Your sister again?’ came the rough voice of Madame Faujas. ‘What is she doing pursuing you like that?’
There was a silence. Then the sound of paper being crumpled violently, and the priest’s voice grumbling:
‘Always the same old thing. She wants to come over here and bring her husband and find him a job. She thinks we are made of money… I’m afraid they will do something rash and land up here one day!’
‘No, no, we don’t need them here, Ovide, do you hear!’ the mother’s voice went on. ‘They never liked you, they’ve always been jealous of you… Trouche is no good, and Olympe is heartless. They want to get whatever they can out of it for themselves. They would compromise you, upset all your plans.’
Mouret couldn’t hear very clearly. He was excited by his underhand action. He thought someone had their hand on the doorknob, and made good his escape. Moreover he was careful not to let anyone know about this little expedition. It was several days later in his presence on the terrace that Abbé Faujas gave Marthe a definite answer.
‘I’ve got someone who might work for you,’ he said in his calmest manner. ‘It’s one of my relatives, my brother-in-law, who will arrive from Besançon in a day or two.’
Mouret pricked up his ears. Marthe seemed delighted.
‘Oh, that’s good!’ she cried. ‘I was having a problem making the right decision. You realize we need a man of perfect moral character with all these young girls about… But if it’s a relative of yours…’
‘Yes,’ the priest went on. ‘My sister had a little lingerie business in Besançon. She has had to sell up because of her health. Now she wants to come and see us because the doctors have prescribed a Mediterranean climate for her… My mother is very happy.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ said Marthe. ‘Perhaps you had never before been separated? It will be nice for you to be all together… And do you know what we ought to do? There are two rooms up there that you are not using. Why don’t your sister and her husband stay up there?… They haven’t any children?’
‘No, there are only the two of them… I had actually thought for one moment of giving them those two rooms; but I was afraid of displeasing you bringing all these people into your house.’
‘But not at all, I assure you; you don’t make any noise…’
She stopped short. Mouret was giving her dress a violent tug. He didn’t want the priest’s family in his house. He was remembering how scathingly Madame Faujas had talked about her daughter and son-in-law.
‘The rooms are very small,’ he put in. ‘Monsieur l’Abbé will find it difficult… It would be better for everybody if Monsieur l’Abbé’s sister rented something nearby. It so happens there is empty accommodation in the Paloques’ house opposite.’
The conversation came to a halt. The priest said nothing, but stared into space. Marthe thought he might be offended; she was very hurt by her husband’s brutal response. After a moment she couldn’t bear the embarrassed silence.
‘That’s agreed then,’ she went on, without attempting a more skilful link in the conversation. ‘Rose will help your mother to clean the two rooms… My husband was only thinking of your personal convenience; but if that is what you want, we shall not stop you disposing of the rooms as you like.’
When Mouret was alone with his wife he exploded with rage.
‘I really don’t understand you. When I let rooms to the priest you sulked and didn’t want to let so much as a cat into your house. Now the abbé wants to bring the whole family, the whole lot of them down to the cousins twice-removed, and you thank him for it… I tugged your dress hard enough. Didn’t you feel me? It was perfectly obvious—I didn’t want these people… They are not respectable.’
‘How can you tell?’ cried Marthe, irritated by this injustice. ‘Who said so?’
‘Oh, Faujas himself did… Yes, I heard him one day talking to his mother.’
She stared at him. Then he flushed slightly and stammered:
‘Well, I just know, that’s all… The sister is heartless and the husband’s no good. And it’s no use you getting in a huff. Those are their own words; I’m not inventing things. I don’t need that mob in my house, do you understand? The old lady was the first to say she wouldn’t hear of her daughter coming. Now the priest has changed his tune… I don’t know what’s made him do that. Some new hole-in-the-corner stuff. He must have some use for them.’
Marthe shrugged her shoulders and let him rant on. He gave Rose orders not to clean the rooms; but now Rose only took orders from Madame. For five days his anger expended itself in bitter words and dire recriminations. When Abbé Faujas was there he made do with sulking, not daring to confront him with it directly. Then, as he always did, he came to terms with it. He constantly ridiculed the people about to arrive. He tightened his purse strings, kept himself more to himself, buried himself in his own little world. When the Trouches arrived one October evening, he simply muttered:
‘My word, they’re a bad lot. They look very shifty.’
On the day of their arrival Abbé Faujas seemed anxious not to let anyone see his sister and his brother-in-law. Their mother had positioned herself at the door. As soon as she saw them coming from the Place de la Sous-Préfecture she kept watch, throwing worried glances behind her into the passage and the kitchen. But as luck would have it, just as the Trouches arrived, Marthe, who was about to go out, came up from the garden, followed by the children.
‘Ah, the whole family’s here,’ she said with a polite smile.
Madame Faujas, usually so much in command of herself, looked uneasy, and stammered something in reply. For a few minutes they remained there face to face in the middle of the hall, looking at each other. Mouret had jumped nimbly up the steps. Rose had positioned herself at the kitchen door.
‘You must be very happy?’ Marthe went on, addressing herself to Madame Faujas.
Then, conscious of the embarrassment which descended upon the assembled company, and wanting to be friendly towards the newcomers, she turned to Trouche and added:
‘You arrived on the five o’clock train, didn’t you?… How far is it from Besançon to here?’
‘Seventeen hours,’ Trouche answered, exposing a toothless mouth. ‘In third class, I tell you it’s hard going… It churns up your belly.’
He began to chuckle, his jaws making a strange noise. Madame Faujas threw him a look that could kill. Then mechanically he tried to pull his greasy overcoat across where there had been a button, positioning two hatboxes he was carrying, one green, the other yellow, across his legs, no doubt trying to hide the stains. His reddish neck made a continual clucking noise under a rag of twisted black tie, beneath which you could just see a small piece of grubby shirt. His scarred face, the very image of vice, was lit up by two beady black eyes, which darted ceaselessly around at everyone and everything, in a sort of frightened covetousness. They were the eyes of a thief studying a house he would come back to at night and make some pickings.
Mouret thought Trouche was eyeing the locks.
‘That individual could copy your keys just by looking,’ he said to himself.
Olympe meanwhile had realized her husband had just made a faux pas. She was tall and thin, a faded blonde with a dull, unprepossessing face. She was carrying a small whitewood box and a bulky parcel tied up in a tablecloth.
‘We brought pillows,’ she said, indicating with a glance the big parcel. ‘In third class it’s not too bad with pillows. As good as in first class… My goodness, it’s an excellent way of saving money. Even if you have money, there’s no point in throwing it away, is there, Madame?’
‘Of course not,’ Marthe replied, a little taken aback by these characters.
Olympe came forward, into the full light, entering into the conversation with an engaging tone.
‘It’s like with clothes. I put on my shabbiest clothes to travel in. I said to Honoré: “Your old overcoat is quite good enough.” And he’s got his work trousers on, he’s tired o
f wearing them… As you see, I chose my ugliest dress; it’s even got holes in, I think. The shawl comes from Maman; at home I used it for ironing on. And then my hat! An old one I only put on when I went to the washhouse… All that’s too good for the dustbin, though, don’t you agree, Madame?’
‘Of course, of course,’ Marthe repeated, attempting a smile.
At that moment a brief irritated exclamation could be heard at the top of the stairs:
‘Well, Mother?’
Mouret, raising his head, saw Faujas, his face like thunder, leaning over the banisters on the second floor, almost risking a fall, to get a better view of what was going on in the hall. He had heard the sound of voices and must have been there, growing impatient, for some little while.
‘Well, Mother?’ he shouted again.
‘Yes, yes, we’re coming up,’ Madame Faujas answered, seemingly shaken by the fury in her son’s voice.
And turning to the Trouches she said:
‘Come children, we must go upstairs… Let’s leave Madame to get on with what she is doing.’
But the Trouches seemed not to hear. They were happy in the hall. They looked all round in delight as if they had been made a present of the house.
‘It’s lovely, lovely,’ murmured Olympe, ‘isn’t it, Honoré? When we read Ovide’s letters we didn’t know it would be as nice as this. I told you we should go over there, we should be better off, and I would be healthier… You see, I was right.’
‘Yes, yes, we shall be very well off here,’ said Trouche between his teeth… ‘And the garden is quite big by the looks of it.’
Then, addressing himself to Mouret:
‘Monsieur, do you allow your lodgers to walk in the garden?’
Mouret had no time to answer. Abbé Faujas had come right down and roared at them:
‘Well, Trouche!? Well, Olympe!?’
They turned. When they saw him standing on the stairs, in a terrible rage, they cowered down and went after him. He led the way without another word, without even seeming to notice that the Mourets were witnessing this strange procession. Madame Faujas, to make amends, smiled at Marthe as she brought up the rear. But when Marthe had gone out and Mouret was alone he stayed a moment in the hall. Above, on the second floor, doors banged noisily. Loud voices could be heard and then there was a deathly silence.
‘Has he put them in the cells?’ he said with a laugh. ‘Who cares, they are a bad lot.’
The next day Trouche, suitably attired in black from head to toe, freshly shaven, and what little hair he had combed carefully down over his forehead, was introduced by Abbé Faujas to Marthe and the lady patrons. He was forty-five, could write a fine hand, and said he had kept the accounts in a business for a long time. The ladies instated him immediately. He was to represent the committee, take care of the material details from ten to four, in an office on the first floor of the Work of the Virgin. His salary was one thousand five hundred francs.
‘As you see, these people are very quiet,’ Marthe said to her husband after a day or two.
And it was true that the Trouches made no more noise than the Faujas. Two or three times Rose claimed to have heard a few quarrels between mother and daughter, but the grave voice of the priest could be heard immediately after, making peace. Trouche left regularly at a quarter to ten and came back at a quarter past four. He never went out in the evening. Olympe sometimes went to do the shopping with Madame Faujas. Nobody had yet seen her go down on her own.
The window of the room where the Trouches slept looked out on to the garden. It was the last on the right opposite the trees of the sub-prefecture. Big red calico curtains with a yellow border hung from behind the windows, contrasting clearly with the priest’s white curtains. Moreover the window was permanently closed. One evening when Abbé Faujas and his mother were on the terrace with the Mourets, a little involuntary coughing was heard. The priest, annoyed, looked up quickly and saw the shadows of Olympe and her husband leaning on their elbows out of the window and not moving. He remained a moment like that, interrupting the conversation he was having with Marthe. The Trouches disappeared. You could hear the faint squeak of the catch.
‘Mother,’ the priest said, ‘you ought to go up. I’m afraid you might catch cold.’
Madame Faujas said goodnight to everyone. When she had retired, Marthe took up the conversation again, asking in a polite voice:
‘Is your sister not so well? I haven’t seen her for a week.’
‘She badly needs to rest,’ was the priest’s curt reply.
But she insisted kindly.
‘She doesn’t get out enough. The fresh air would do her good… These October evenings are still warm… Why does she never go out in the garden? She hasn’t set foot in it. Yet you know the garden is absolutely at your disposal.’
He muttered a confused apology. Mouret, to add to his discomfort, strove to outdo his wife in amiability.
‘Ah, that’s what I was saying this morning. Monsieur l’Abbé’s sister should come and do her sewing in the afternoons in the sun instead of staying shut up in there. You’d think that she doesn’t even dare show her face at the window. She’s not scared of us by any chance? We are not as terrifying as all that… The same with Monsieur Trouche—he always runs upstairs at top speed. Tell them to come down from time to time and spend an evening with us. They must be dying of boredom up there in their rooms.’
That evening the priest was in no mood for putting up with any sarcasm from his landlord. He looked him in the eyes and said bluntly:
‘Thank you, but it’s very unlikely they would accept. They are tired in the evening and they go to bed. And that’s the best thing they can do, I have to say.’
‘Just as they wish, my dear sir,’ replied Mouret, annoyed at the brusqueness of the priest.
And when he was alone with Marthe:
‘Hark at the man! Is he trying to pull the wool over our eyes or what? It’s obvious he’s scared that the scum he has gathered around him will play a nasty trick on him… You saw tonight how he policed them when he caught sight of them at the window. They were there spying on us. It’ll end in tears.’
Marthe was living a life of blissful serenity. She no longer attended to Mouret’s shouting and yelling. The advent of faith was for her an exquisite joy. She slipped gently into the devotional life, slowly, smoothly. She was rocked in its cradle and fell asleep. Abbé Faujas always avoided talking about God to her. He remained her friend, only charming her with his gravity, by the whiff of incense given off by his priestly robe. Two or three times when she was alone with him she had again burst into nervous tears without knowing why, taking pleasure in that weeping. Each time he had simply taken her hands, calming her with his strong and tranquil look. When she wanted to talk to him of her unaccountable sadness, of her secret joys, of her need for guidance, he silenced her with a smile. He said those things were none of his business and she should talk to Abbé Bourrette about them. So she bottled it all up, remaining on edge. And he took on even nobler stature, putting himself out of her reach, like a god at whose feet she eventually prostrated her soul.
Marthe’s most important occupations now were Mass and the religious offices she attended. She felt happy in the vast nave of Saint-Saturnin. There she enjoyed more perfectly the complete physical rest she was searching for. When she was there she forgot everything; it was as if an immense window on to another life were opening out, a life that was wide, infinite, full of an emotion that both filled and satisfied her. But she was still quite afraid of the church. She approached it warily, with some anxiety, and an embarrassment which caused her instinctively to throw a glance over her shoulder when she pushed open the door, in case there was anyone looking at her. Then she gave herself up to it, everything grew more comfortable, even the fruity voice of Abbé Bourrette who, after having given her confession, kept her sometimes on her knees for some minutes while he talked about Madame Rastoil’s dinner parties or the most recent soirée at the Rougons.
Often Marthe came back exhausted. Religion was destroying her. Rose had become all-powerful in the house. She hustled Mouret, grumbled at him, because he got through too much underwear, forced him to eat when dinner was ready. She even undertook to work towards his salvation.
‘Madame is quite right to live a Christian life,’ she told him. ‘You’ll be damned, you will, Monsieur, and it will be your own fault because at heart you are not a good man! You ought to go to Mass with her next Sunday.’
Mouret shrugged. He let things ride, setting to with the housework himself, brushing the floor when the dining room seemed too dirty. The children worried him more. During the holidays their mother was almost never there. Désirée, and Octave who had once more failed his baccalaureate, upset the whole household. Serge was ill, and kept to his bed, reading in his room for days on end. He had become Abbé Faujas’s favourite, and the latter lent him books. Mouret spent two dreadful months, not knowing how to give his little world any guidance. Octave in particular drove him mad. Not wanting to wait for the new term to begin, he decided his son should not return to school and that he should be placed in a business in Marseilles.
‘Since you don’t want to look after them any more,’ he said to Marthe, ‘I have to find a home for them somewhere… I’m at my wits’ end, I’d rather kick them out. And it’s too bad if you don’t like it! In the first place Octave is unbearable. He’ll never pass his exams. It’s better that he should learn straight away how to make a living, rather than let him waste his time with a band of ne’er-do-wells. He’s out on the town the whole time.’
Marthe was very upset. She woke as though from a dream, when she learned that one of her children was leaving home For a week she managed to get his departure deferred. She remained at home more, reverting to her old busy ways. Then she again grew listless; and the day Octave kissed her goodbye and told her he was leaving for Marseilles, she had no more strength and made do with giving him some good advice.