The Earth Page 24

  The girl shook herself free and the quarrel was about to start again when Buteau uttered an exclamation of pleasure as he saw the door open again.

  ‘Jean! Good Lord, you're soaked! You look like a poodle.’

  In fact Jean had come over from the farm at the double as he frequently did and had merely tossed a sack over his shoulders to protect himself; and he was wet through, dripping and steaming and laughing himself in his good-humoured way. While he was shaking himself dry, Buteau went back to the window and was beaming even more as he watched the unflagging downpour.

  ‘Ah, it's still falling, what a blessing! It's really wonderful, all this rain.’

  Then, turning round:

  ‘You've come just at the right moment, those two were at each other's throats… Françoise wants her share so that she can leave us.’

  ‘Really? That little sprat!’ cried Jean, taken aback.

  His desire had grown into a fierce, secret passion and his only satisfaction was to be able to see her in that house where he was welcomed as a friend. He would have asked her to marry him a score of times if he had not thought that he was too old for such a young girl; and though he kept on waiting, the fifteen years' difference did not seem to grow any smaller. No one seemed to imagine that he might be thinking of her, neither she herself nor her sister nor her brother-in-law. Indeed, it was for this reason that the latter made him so welcome, without fear of any consequences.

  ‘Little sprat's the word,’ he said with a fatherly shrug of his shoulders.

  But Françoise was not placated:

  ‘I want my share,’ she said obstinately, staring at the ground.

  ‘It would be the most sensible thing to do,’ old Fouan muttered.

  Then Jean took her gently by the wrists and drew her against his knees, and held her there, his hands trembling at the feel of her flesh, and he spoke to her in his kind, quiet voice, which quivered with emotion as he begged her to stay. Where would she go? Into service with strangers in Cloyes or Châteaudun? Wasn't she better off in this house where she had grown up, surrounded by people who loved her? She listened to him and her heart began to soften, too, because although she hardly thought of him as a sweetheart, she was usually glad to obey him, largely because they were friends and also because she was slightly scared of him since she thought him a very serious person.

  ‘I want my share,’ she repeated, less emphatically, ‘but I'm not saying that I'll leave.’

  ‘What a silly girl you are,’ Buteau interrupted. ‘What on earth will you do with your share if you stay on here? You've got everything you need, just like your sister and me. Why do you want half of it? It's enough to make a cat laugh! Listen to me. We'll let you have your share the day you get married!’

  Jean had been watching Françoise intently; now his eyes wavered, as if his heart had missed a beat.

  ‘You heard what I said? On your wedding-day.’

  She still made no reply and hung her head.

  ‘And now why not go and kiss your sister, Françoise? That'd be a nice thing to do.’

  In her fat, bumbling, cheerful way, Lise was still good-hearted, and she shed a tear when Françoise put her hands round her neck. Delighted at having postponed the evil day, Buteau exclaimed that a drink was what was needed, for Christ's sake. He fetched five glasses, uncorked a bottle and went back to fetch another one. The blood had risen to Fouan's tanned old cheeks as he explained that as far as he was concerned, he had felt in duty bound. They all drank, the women as well as the men, to each and everyone's health.

  ‘It's good stuff, wine!’ said Buteau, banging his glass down on the table. ‘But you can say what you like, it's not as good as the water out there… Look at it, it's still teeming down all the time. Oh, it's wonderful.’

  And they all stood beaming beside the window, in a sort of religious ecstasy, watching the warm, gentle rain pouring endlessly down as if they could already see the tall green wheat growing under this benison of water.

  Chapter 2

  ONE day that summer, Rose, who had been suffering from giddiness and trouble with her legs, sent for her grand-niece Palmyre to wash out the house. Fouan was out prowling round the fields as usual, and while the poor girl, wet through, slaved away on her knees, scrubbing, the old woman followed her round, both of them harping on the same old themes.

  First, there was Palmyre's own miserable state: her brother Hilarion had now taken to beating her. Yes, this innocent cripple had turned nasty, and as he didn't realize his own strength, with fists like footballs, she was always afraid he might kill her whenever he caught hold of her. But she did not want anyone to interfere. She would send them away and succeeded in calming him down by her endless, inexhaustible affection for him. The other evening there had been a scandal that was still being talked about by the whole of Rognes; she had been beaten up so badly that the neighbours had come round and found him indulging in all sorts of disgusting practices.

  ‘Tell me, Palmyre,’ Rose asked, trying to draw her out, ‘was it because that beast wanted to rape you?’

  Palmyre stopped scrubbing, still squatting in her soaked, tattered old clothes, and replied angrily, without answering the question:

  ‘What business was it of anybody? Why did they need to come snooping in our house? We're not robbing anyone!’

  ‘That's all very well,’ the old woman replied, ‘but if you sleep together as people say, then it's very wrong.’

  For a moment the poor girl said nothing, looking vacantly into space, her face drawn with suffering: then, bending double again, she mumbled between each sweep of her skinny arms:

  ‘I wonder if it really is so wrong? The priest sent for me to tell me that we would go to hell. But surely not my poor darling. He's an innocent creature, Father, I replied, a young man who doesn't know any more about life than a three-weeks-old bairn, and he would have died if I hadn't brought him up and being what he is he's hardly known any happiness! As for me, it's my business, isn't it? The day he decides to strangle me in one of these fits of rage he's been having recently, then I'll see if the good Lord will forgive me.’

  Seeing that she would not be discovering any fresh details and having long known the truth, Rose concluded philosophically:

  ‘When things go one way then they don't go the other. All the same, it's no sort of life for you, my girl.’

  And she complained that everyone had their own cross to bear; for example, hadn't she and her man had to put up with so much misery since they'd been kind-hearted enough to strip themselves of everything for their children? On this subject, nothing could stop her. It was a perpetual cause for complaint for her.

  ‘God knows, in the end you can get used to lack of consideration. When your children are swine, they're swine. But if only they'd pay us the pension they owe us…’

  And for the twentieth time she explained that only Delhomme brought along his fifty francs every quarter, oh yes, on the dot. As for Buteau, he was always late and trying to beat them down: for example, although the payment was ten days overdue, she was still waiting: he'd promised to come and settle up that very evening. As for Jesus Christ, that was a simpler matter, he just didn't pay a thing, they'd never seen the colour of his money. And that very morning hadn't he had the cheek to send La Trouille round and she'd started snivelling and asking for a loan of five francs to make a broth for her father, who was ill. Well, they knew what sort of illness he'd got: a great big hole under his nose! They'd given the little hussy a warm reception and told her to go home and let her father know that if he didn't bring his fifty francs along that very evening like his brother Buteau, they'd have the bailiffs on him.

  ‘Just to scare him like, because the poor boy's not really bad,’ Rose added, her heart already softening towards her favoured firstborn.

  At dusk, when Fouan had come back for supper, she started up again at table while he sat eating in silence, all downcast. How on earth was it possible that out of six hundred francs they had only Delh
omme's two hundred, barely a hundred from Buteau, nothing at all from Jesus Christ, adding up to just half the amount of the pension! And the dirty lot had signed at the notary's, it was in writing and legal! They didn't give a tinker's damn for legality!

  Palmyre, just finishing wiping off the kitchen floor in the dark, gave the same reply to every complaint, like a doleful refrain:

  ‘Yes, everyone's got his cross to bear and you die on it!’

  Rose was just making up her mind to light up when La Grande came in with her knitting. On the long summer evenings they did not foregather, but in order to save even an inch of candle she would come and spend the evening with her brother before groping her way to bed in the dark. She immediately settled down and Palmyre, who still had some pots and pans to scour, relapsed into silence, upset by the sight of her grandmother.

  ‘If you need some hot water, Palmyre,’ said Rose, ‘start a new bundle of wood.’

  She restrained herself for a moment and tried to talk about something else, because the Fouans avoided recriminations when La Grande was there, knowing that she enjoyed hearing them complain out loud at having handed over their property. But her anger overcame her caution.

  ‘And anyway, put on the whole bundle of firewood, if you can call it firewood. Bits of dead twig and hedge clippings! Fanny must be scraping at the bottom of her woodpile to be giving us rubbish like that!’

  At this, Fouan, who had remained sitting at table with a glassful of wine in front of him, broke the silence into which he seemed to have deliberately sunk. He flared up angrily:

  ‘For God's sake stop going on about your firewood! We know it's lousy! What about me with this dog's piss that Delhomme lets me have for wine?’

  He raised his glass and looked at it in the light of the candle.

  ‘You see? What the devil has he put in it? It's not even the bottom of the barrel. And Delhomme's a decent man! The two others would rather let us die of thirst than go and fetch us a bottle of water out of the river!’

  Finally, he decided to drink his wine up in one gulp, only to spit it out violently.

  ‘God, what rot-gut! Perhaps it's so as to get rid of me as soon as possible!’

  And now Fouan and Rose gave full rein to their resentment, pouring their hearts out to relieve their bitter feelings. Each in turn told their tale of woe and recrimination. The dozen and a half pints of milk per week, for example: well, they didn't even get a dozen; and although it may not have been blessed by the priest, there was certainly a good dose of holy water in it. It was like the eggs – they certainly must have been on special order from the hens, because you never saw such small eggs in Cloyes market; they really were odd eggs and they'd taken so long to reach them that they went rotten on the way. And as for the cheese, heaven help us, it gave Rose belly-ache every time she had any. She hurried off to find one, because she was anxious to let Palmyre try a piece. Well, wasn't it really dreadful? Didn't it cry out for vengeance? They must be adding flour to it or perhaps even plaster. And now it was Fouan's turn to complain that he could only smoke a penn'orth of tobacco a day and Rose immediately chimed in to bewail her black coffee, which she had been forced to give up; and then, in chorus, both of them accused their children of being responsible for the death of their dog, old and infirm, which they had decided to drown yesterday, because he now cost too much for them to keep.

  ‘I gave them everything I had,’ the old man cried, ‘and now the bastards don't give a damn for me!… Ah, it makes us so mad, it'll be the death of both of us.’

  They stopped at last and La Grande, who had not opened her mouth, looked at them one after the other with her wicked, round, birdlike eyes:

  ‘You asked for it,’ she said.

  But at that very moment Buteau came in. Palmyre had finished her task and took advantage of this to make her escape, with the couple of coppers Rose had just slipped into her hand. And Buteau stood stock-still in the middle of the room, silent and wary, for a countryman never likes to be the first to speak. Two minutes went by. His father was forced to broach the matter.

  ‘Well, you've come at last, that's a good thing… You've been keeping us waiting these last ten days.’

  His son was shifting from foot to foot.

  ‘Well, you can only do what's possible. We haven't always got bread in the oven.’

  ‘That's true, but at that rate, if it takes too long, then we could be starving while you're eating yours. You signed on the dotted line, you ought to pay us on the dot!’

  Seeing that his father was becoming annoyed, Buteau tried to joke:

  ‘So I'm too late, am I? Well, I'd better go away again in that case! It's not a very agreeable thing, having to hand over money. Some people manage to get by without doing it.’

  This allusion to Jesus Christ upset Rose and she timidly tugged her husband's coat. He restrained himself and said:

  ‘All right, hand over the fifty francs. I've got the receipt ready.’

  Unhurriedly, Buteau fumbled in his pocket. He had looked annoyed on seeing La Grande there and seemed embarrassed by her presence. She had stopped her knitting on his arrival and was watching closely for the money to appear. His father and mother had also come nearer and were looking at their son's hand. And beneath the gaze of these three staring pairs of eyes he reluctantly produced the first five-franc piece.

  ‘One,’ he said putting it down on the table. The other coins appeared, each more slowly than its predecessor as he continued to count them out loud, with increasing reluctance. After the fifth, he stopped and had to search very carefully to find the next one, and then exclaimed, loudly and firmly:

  ‘And that makes six!’

  The Fouans waited but no more coins were forthcoming.

  ‘That's six,’ his father said in the end. ‘We need ten. Are you trying to have us on? Last quarter it was forty and now it's thirty!’

  Buteau immediately started moaning: things were all going wrong: the price of wheat had dropped again, the oats were in poor shape. Even his horse had a swollen belly and they'd had to send for the vet twice. In a word, it was a disaster and he just didn't know how to make ends meet.

  ‘That's none of my business,’ the old man retorted in a fury. ‘Give me my fifty francs or I'll have the law on you.’

  Then he calmed down a little when he thought he could accept the six five-franc pieces as an advance; he said he would alter the receipt accordingly.

  But Buteau quickly grabbed the money he had placed on the table.

  ‘Oh no! None of that! I want my receipt for the lot. If you won't give it me, I'll be off. If I'm still going to be in your debt, then it's not worth me giving you the shirt off my back!’

  And a terrible scene ensued, father and son both refusing to budge and flinging the same words in each other's face again and again, Fouan exasperated at not having pocketed the money straight away, the other man gripping it tightly in his hand and determined not to let go until he had his receipt. Once more Rose had to tug at her husband's coat and once again he gave in.

  ‘All right, you dirty thief, here you are, here's your receipt! I ought to stick it on your mug with a punch on the nose… Now hand over the money.’

  Unclenching their fists, they made the exchange and now the row was over Buteau started to laugh. He went off, affable and contented, wishing everyone a good night. Fouan had sat down exhausted at the table. Then, before going back to her knitting, La Grande spat two words at him:

  ‘Bloody fool!’

  Silence fell and then the door opened and Jesus Christ came in. Having been warned by La Trouille that his brother was going to pay up that evening, he had kept watch on the road and waited until the latter had left before presenting himself in his turn. The gentle expression on his face was merely a maudlin hangover from the previous day. He was barely through the doorway before his eyes lighted on the six five-franc pieces that Fouan had been incautious enough to put back onto the table.

  ‘Oh, it's Hyacinthe!’ excl
aimed Rose, pleased to see him.

  ‘Yes, it's me! Good evening all!’

  And he came in, not once taking his eyes off the pieces of silver shining, moonlike, in the candlelight. His father, turning his head, gave an uneasy start as he saw what his son was looking at and smartly put a plate on top to hide them. Too late!

  ‘Bloody fool,’ he said to himself, irritated at his thoughtlessness. ‘La Grande's right.’

  Then out loud he snapped:

  ‘It's a good job you've come to pay me because, as sure as I'm sitting here, I was going to set the bailiffs on you tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, La Trouille told me that,’ wailed Jesus Christ penitently, ‘and so I took the trouble to come over to see you because I can't imagine you want to be the death of me. You said something about paying but, good God, how can anyone pay if they haven't even got enough bread to eat?… We've sold up everything, oh, I'm not joking, come round and see for yourselves if you think I'm joking. I've no sheets on the beds, no more furniture, nothing at all… And what's more, I'm not at all well.’

  His father gave a sneer of disbelief, which the other man disregarded.

  ‘It may not show very much but the truth is that there's something wrong with my inside. I keep coughing. I feel really bad… If only I could have a cup of hot beef tea. But if you haven't got any, you just go under, don't you? That's the truth of it. Of course I'd pay you if I had the money. Just tell me where I can get some so that I can give something and start making myself a mouthful of stew. I haven't seen any meat these last two weeks.’

  Rose's heart was beginning to melt while Fouan was becoming more and more annoyed.

  ‘You've drunk it all, you idle good-for-nothing, it's your own fault! Lovely land that had been in the family for years and years and you've mortgaged the lot! Yes, you and your trollop of a daughter have been on the spree for months and now it's all over and you can die in the gutter!’

  Jesus Christ did not wait to hear any more; he burst out sobbing:

  ‘That's not the way a father ought to talk. It's unnatural to deny your own son. I've got a kind heart, I have, it'll be the ruin of me… If you hadn't got the money, I'd understand. But you have, so how can you refuse charity to your own flesh and blood?… I'll go and beg elsewhere and what a fine thing that'll be!’