Pot Luck Page 28

  She became serious again, and added: ‘Here’s your Balzac; I couldn’t finish it. It’s too sad; he only writes about unpleasant things, that gentleman.’

  She asked him to give her some stories in which there was plenty of love, adventure, and travel in foreign lands. Then she talked about the funeral. She would go to the church, and Jules would continue to the cemetery. She had never been frightened of corpses; at the age of twelve she had sat up all night with an uncle and aunt who had died of the same fever. Jules, on the other hand, hated talking about dead people, so much so that he had actually forbidden her, the day before, to mention the landlord lying on his back downstairs. But she could find no other subject for conversation, neither could he; so that, as each hour passed, they barely exchanged a dozen words, and did nothing else but think of the poor, deceased gentleman. It was becoming tiresome and, for Jules’s sake, she would be glad when they took him away. Happy at being able to talk freely about it, she satisfied her urge, overwhelming Octave with questions. Had he seen him? Did he look different? Was it true that something horrible had happened as he was being put into his coffin? Were his relatives ripping up all the mattresses and ransacking everything? It wasn’t surprising that there were so many rumours going around, in a house overrun by servants! Death always obsessed everyone.

  ‘You’re giving me another Balzac,’ she said, looking over the fresh batch of books he was lending her. ‘No, take it back; his stories are too much like real life!’*

  As she held the volume out to him he caught hold of her wrist and tried to pull her into the room. She amused him with her curiosity about death; she suddenly seemed to him droll, full of life, desirable. But she understood his intention and blushed deeply. Freeing herself from his grasp she hurried away, saying:

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur Mouret; we’ll see each other, no doubt, at the funeral.’

  When Octave was dressed he remembered his promise to go and see Madame Campardon. He had two whole hours to fill, as the funeral was fixed for eleven o’clock, and he thought of using the morning to make a few calls in the house. Rose received him in bed; he apologized for disturbing her, but she herself called him into her room. They saw so little of him, and she was so pleased to have someone to talk to!

  ‘Ah, my dear boy,’ she cried suddenly, ‘I should be the one lying down there, nailed up between four planks!’

  Yes, the landlord was very lucky; he had done with existence! Octave, surprised to find her a prey to such melancholy, asked her if she felt worse.

  ‘No, thank you. It’s always the same thing, only there are times when I feel I’ve had enough. Achille has had to put up a bed in his workroom, because it annoyed me when he moved about at night. And we’ve managed to persuade Gasparine to leave the shop. I’m so grateful to her for that, she looks after me so well! Ah, I couldn’t go on living if I wasn’t surrounded by so much affection and kindness!’

  Just then Gasparine, with her submissive air of poor relation turned servant, brought in the coffee. Helping Rose to sit up, she propped her against some cushions and gave her the coffee on a little tray covered with a napkin. Rose, sitting in her embroidered jacket in the midst of the lace-edged linen, ate with a hearty appetite. She looked so fresh, younger than ever, and very pretty with her white skin and little blonde curls.

  ‘Oh, my stomach’s all right; there’s nothing wrong with my stomach,’ she kept saying, as she soaked her slices of bread and butter.

  Two tears dropped into the coffee. Then Gasparine chided her:

  ‘If you cry, I’ll call Achille. Aren’t you satisfied, sitting there like a queen on a throne?’

  When Madame Campardon had finished and again found herself alone with Octave, she became quite consoled. Coquettishly, she again began to talk about death, but with the languid gaiety of a woman whiling away a whole morning in the warmth of her bed. Well, she would have to go too, when her turn came; but they were right, she was not unhappy, and could go on living, because they saved her from all the main worries of life. And she rambled on in her selfish, sexless-idol manner.

  Then, as the young man rose to leave, she said:

  ‘Now, do come more often, won’t you? Go and enjoy yourself; don’t let the funeral make you too sad. One dies a little every day. The thing is to get used to it.’

  On the same floor, Louise, the little maid at Madame Juzeur’s, let Octave in. She took him into the drawing-room, looked at him for a moment, laughed in her bewildered sort of way, and at last said that her mistress had nearly finished dressing. Madame Juzeur appeared almost at once; she was dressed in black, and in this mourning garb she seemed gentler and more refined than ever.

  ‘I was sure you’d come this morning,’ she sighed wearily. ‘I kept dreaming about you all night long. Quite impossible to sleep, you know, with that corpse in the house!’

  She confessed that she had got up three times in the night to look under the furniture.

  ‘You should have called me,’ said the young man, gallantly. ‘Two in a bed are never afraid.’

  She assumed a charming air of shame.

  ‘Don’t say that sort of thing; it’s naughty!’

  She held her hand over his lips. He was thus obliged to kiss it. Then she spread out her fingers, laughing as if she were being tickled. Excited by this game, he sought to push matters further. He caught her in his arms and pressed her to his chest, without her offering any resistance. Then he whispered:

  ‘Come now, why won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, in any case, not today!’

  ‘Why not today?’

  ‘What, with that corpse downstairs? No, no, it’s impossible!’

  He held her tighter and she began to yield. Their warm breaths mingled.

  ‘When will you, then? Tomorrow?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘But you’re quite free; your husband behaved so badly that you owe him nothing.’

  He grabbed hold of her, but she, in her supple way, slipped from him. Then, putting her arms round him, she held him tightly so that he could not move, and murmured caressingly:

  ‘Anything you like except that! Do you understand me! Not that, never, never! I’d rather die! It’s the way I think, that’s all. I’ve sworn to Heaven I wouldn’t, but there’s no need to know anything about that. So you’re just like other men, who are never satisfied as long as they’re refused anything. But I’m very fond of you. Anything you like, but not that, my sweetheart!’

  She allowed him to caress her in the warmest, most intimate way, only repulsing him by a sudden nervous reaction when he attempted to perform the one forbidden act. Her obstinacy had in it a sort of Jesuitical reserve, a fear of the confessional, a conviction of pardon for petty sins, while so gross a one might cause too much trouble with her spiritual pastor. Then there were other unavowed sentiments, a blending of honour and self-esteem, the coquetry of always having an advantage over men by never satisfying them, together with a shrewd personal enjoyment of being showered with kisses without having to endure the final act of male gratification. She preferred it that way, and was quite resolute about it. No man could flatter himself that he had had her since her husband’s cowardly desertion. She was a virtuous woman.

  ‘No, sir, not one! Ah, I can hold my head up, I can! How many unfortunate women in my position would have gone wrong!’

  She gently pushed him aside and rose from the sofa.

  ‘Please leave me. That corpse downstairs really bothers me. The whole house seems to smell of it!’

  Meanwhile, the time for the funeral was approaching. She wanted to get to the church before they started, so as not to see all the funeral trappings. But, as she was walking to the door with him, she suddenly remembered telling him about her liqueur from the West Indies. So she made him come back, and fetched the bottle and two glasses. It was creamy and very sweet, with a scent of flowers. When she had drunk it, a sort of girlish greediness brought a look of languid rapture to her face. She could have lived on sugar; vanil
la-and rose-scented sweets troubled her senses as greatly as a lover’s caress.

  ‘That’ll keep us going,’ she said.

  When he kissed her on the mouth in the anteroom, she shut her eyes. Their sugary lips seemed to melt like bon-bons.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock. The coffin was still upstairs, for the undertaker’s men, after wasting their time at a neighbouring wineshop, were taking ages putting up the hangings. Out of curiosity, Octave went to have a look. The porch was already closed at the back by a large black curtain, but the men had still to fix the hangings over the door. On the pavement outside a group of servants were gossiping as they gazed up at the building, while Hippolyte, in deep mourning, hurried on the work with a dignified air.

  ‘Yes, madam,’ Lisa was saying to a desiccated-looking woman, a widow, who had been in Valérie’s service for a week, ‘it’s done her no good at all. The whole neighbourhood knows all about it. To make sure of her share of the old man’s money she got a butcher in the Rue Sainte-Anne to give her that child, because her husband looked as if he was going to cave in any minute. But her husband’s still alive and the old boy’s gone. A lot of good she’s done herself with her dirty brat!’

  The widow nodded in disgust.

  ‘Serves her right!’ she answered. ‘Her foul tricks have done her no good. I’m not going to stay! I gave her a week’s notice this morning. I found that little bugger Camille shitting in my kitchen!’

  Just then Julie came downstairs to give Hippolyte an order. Lisa ran to question her and then, after a few moments’ conversation, rejoined Valérie’s servant.

  ‘It’s a complete mess,’ she said; ‘nobody knows what’s going on. I reckon your mistress needn’t have got herself a kid; she could have waited for her husband to kick the bucket after all, because it seems they’re still hunting for the old boy’s money. The cook says they’ve got faces like thunder in there—as if they’ll come to blows before the evening’s out.’

  Adèle now arrived, with four sous’ worth of butter under her apron, Madame Josserand having ordered her never to show any food she went to fetch. Lisa wanted to see what she was carrying, and then scolded her for being such a fool. Whoever heard of anyone being sent to fetch four sous’ worth of butter! She would have made those skinflints feed her better, or else she would have fed herself before they got anything; yes, she would have eaten the butter, the sugar, the meat, everything! For some time the other servants had thus been inciting Adèle to rebel. She was gradually becoming perverted. She broke off a corner of the butter and ate it up without any bread, to show the others how little she cared.

  ‘Shall we go up?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ replied the widow, ‘I want to see him brought down. I’ve put off doing an errand for that.’

  ‘So have I,’ added Lisa. ‘They say he weighs a ton. If they drop him on their beautiful staircase it’ll do it quite some damage, eh?’

  ‘Well, I’m going up, I’d rather not see him,’ said Adèle. ‘I don’t want to dream again, like I did last night, that he was pulling me out of bed by the heels and saying all sorts of nasty things to me about making a mess.’

  She went off amid the laughter of her two companions. All night long Adèle’s nightmare had been a source of merriment on the servants’ floor. The maidservants, moreover, in order not to be alone, had left their doors open, which had provoked a waggish coachman into pretending to be a ghost, and little screams and stifled laughter could be heard all along the passage until daylight. Biting her lips, Lisa declared that she would never forget it. That was great fun and no mistake!

  But Hippolyte’s angry voice brought their attention back to the hangings. Oblivious of his dignity, he was shouting out:

  ‘You drunken fool! You’re putting it on the wrong way!’

  It was true, the workman was about to hook the escutcheon bearing the deceased’s monogram upside down. The black hangings, edged with silver lace, were now fixed, and only a few curtain-rests remained to be put up when a cart, laden with some poor person’s possessions, appeared at the door. A young lad was pulling it along, while a tall, pale girl followed, helping to push it from behind. Monsieur Gourd, who was talking to his friend the stationer opposite, rushed forward, forgetting his grand state of mourning, and exclaimed:

  ‘Now, then! Now, then! What’s he after? Can’t you see, you silly fool?’

  The tall girl interrupted him.

  ‘I’m the new lodger, sir. These are my things.’

  ‘Impossible! Come tomorrow!’ cried the concierge in a fury.

  She looked at him and then at the funeral hangings, as if in a daze. The door, shrouded in black, clearly bewildered her. But, recovering herself, she explained that she could not very well leave her furniture out in the street. Then Monsieur Gourd began to bully her.

  ‘You’re the boot-stitcher, aren’t you? You’ve taken the little room at the top? Another case of the landlord’s obstinacy! Just for the sake of a hundred and thirty francs, and after all the bother we had with the carpenter! He promised me, too, that he would never let rooms to working-people any more. And now, damn it! the whole thing’s going to begin again, and this time with a woman!’

  Then he remembered that Monsieur Vabre was dead.

  ‘Yes, you may look. The landlord’s just died, and if it had happened a week ago you wouldn’t be here; that’s for sure. Come on, hurry up, before they bring him down!’

  In his exasperation he gave the cart a shove, pushing it through the hangings, which opened and then slowly closed again. The tall, pale girl disappeared behind the mass of black drapery.

  ‘She’s come at a good time!’ said Lisa. ‘It’s not much fun to do your shifting while a funeral’s going on! If I’d been here I’d have let the old bugger have it!’

  But she fell silent as she saw Monsieur Gourd reappear, for he was the terror of the servants. His ill-humour was due to the fact that, as people said, the house would fall to Monsieur Théophile and his wife. He would willingly have given a hundred francs out of his own pocket, he said, to have Monsieur Duveyrier as landlord; he, at least, was a judge. This was what he was explaining to the stationer. Meanwhile people were beginning to come downstairs. Madame Juzeur passed by and smiled at Octave, who had met Trublot outside on the pavement. Then Marie reappeared, and stood watching them placing the trestles for the coffin.

  ‘The people on the second floor are really extraordinary,’ remarked Monsieur Gourd as he looked up at their closed shutters.

  ‘You’d almost think they go out of their way to avoid behaving like everybody else. Yes, they went off on a trip three days ago.’

  At this moment Lisa hid behind her friend the widow, on catching sight of Gasparine, who was bringing a wreath of violets, a delicate gesture on the part of the architect who wanted to keep on good terms with the Duveyriers.

  ‘I say!’ exclaimed the stationer, ‘the other Madame Campardon can doll herself up, can’t she?’

  He called her thus, innocently, by the name given to her by all the neighbouring tradespeople. Lisa stifled a laugh. Then suddenly the servants discovered that the coffin had been brought down, which caused great disappointment. How silly, too, to have stood all that while in the street, looking at the black curtains! They quickly went back into the house just as the coffin, carried by four men, was being brought out of the hall. The hangings darkened the porch, and at the back could be seen the pale daylight of the courtyard, which had been scrubbed that morning. Little Louise, who had followed Madame Juzeur, stood on tiptoe, wide-eyed and pale with curiosity. The coffin-bearers stopped and gasped for breath at the foot of the staircase, which, with its gilding and sham marble, wore an air of frigid pomp in the faint light that fell from the ground-glass windows.

  ‘There he goes, without his quarter’s rent!’ muttered Lisa, with the spiteful wit of a landlord-hating Parisienne.

  Madame Gourd, whose bad legs had kept her glued to her armchair, now rose with difficulty. As she could not
get as far as the church, Monsieur Gourd had instructed her not to let the landlord go past their lodge without greeting him. It behoved her to do this. She came as far as the door in a black cap, and as the coffin passed she curtsied.

  During the service at Saint-Roch Doctor Juillerat ostentatiously remained outside the church. There was, moreover, a great crowd, and several of the men preferred to stay in a group on the steps. It was very mild—a glorious June day. Since they could not smoke, they talked politics. The main door was left open, and at intervals bursts of organ music issued from the church, which was all hung with black and ablaze with tapers.

  ‘Did you know that Monsieur Thiers is going to stand for our district next year?’ asked Léon Josserand, in his grave way.

  ‘Oh! is he?’ replied the doctor. ‘Of course, you, being a Republican, won’t vote for him, will you?’

  The young man, whose Radical opinions had become milder under Madame Dambreville’s influence, drily answered:

  ‘Why not? He’s the avowed enemy of the Empire.’

  A heated discussion ensued. Léon spoke of tactics, while Doctor Juillerat stuck to principles. The bourgeoisie, he maintained, had had their day; they were just an obstacle on the path of the Revolution, and now that they had become wealthy they opposed progress more stubbornly and blindly than the old nobility.

  ‘You’re afraid of everything; no sooner do you believe yourself threatened than you become totally reactionary!’

  Suddenly Campardon interjected angrily:

  ‘I, sir, was once a Jacobin and an atheist like yourself. But thank Heaven, I came to my senses. I certainly wouldn’t vote for your Monsieur Thiers—he’s muddle-headed, full of mad ideas!’

  However, all the Liberals present—Monsieur Josserand, Octave, even Trublot, who was quite indifferent to the whole matter—declared that they would vote for Monsieur Thiers. The official candidate, Monsieur Dewinck, was a successful chocolate manufacturer from the Rue Saint-Honoré, whom they could not take at all seriously.* This same Dewinck did not even have the support of the clergy, who felt uneasy at his relations with the Tuileries. Campardon, wholly on the side of the Church, said nothing at the mention of his name. Then he suddenly exclaimed: ‘Listen! The bullet that wounded your Garibaldi in the foot should have got him in the heart!’*