A Love Story Page 31

  ‘Do you mean I don’t love you any more?’

  ‘I don’t know, you are not the same. Don’t say you are. You don’t smell the same. It’s over, it’s over. I want to die.’

  Hélène went very pale and held her in her arms again. So did it show on her face? She kissed her but the little girl shuddered with a look of such discomfort that she did not kiss her again on her forehead. She kept her arms around her, however. Neither spoke. Jeanne was weeping quietly in the nervous state of revolt which was making her rigid. Hélène was thinking that one must not take much account of the capricious behaviour of children. The fact was she was secretly ashamed, the weight of her daughter on her shoulder made her blush. Then she put Jeanne down. Both were relieved.

  ‘Now be sensible, dry your eyes,’ said Hélène again. ‘It will be all right.’

  The child obeyed, was very amenable, a little fearful, looking at her from under her lashes. But suddenly an attack of coughing shook her body.

  ‘Oh God, now you are poorly! I can’t leave you for a second. Were you cold?’

  ‘Yes, Maman, my back.’

  ‘Here, put this shawl round you. The stove in the dining room is lit. You’ll warm up. Are you hungry?’

  Jeanne hesitated. She was going to tell the truth and say no. But she gave her another sideways glance and drew back whispering:

  ‘Yes, Maman.’

  ‘Come along now, you’ll soon be better,’ declared Hélène, who needed to reassure herself. ‘But please, you naughty girl, don’t scare me like that again.’

  When Rosalie came back to tell her that Madame was served, she gave her a good telling-off. The little maid bowed her head, and mumbled that it was quite true, she should have kept an eye on Mademoiselle. Then, to calm Madame, she helped her change her clothes. My word! Madame was in a dreadful state! Jeanne watched her clothes fall off her one by one, as though she wanted to interrogate them, as though she expected to see the things she was not to know slither out from those mud-bespattered underclothes. The tie of her petticoat was especially unyielding. Rosalie had to work hard for a moment to loosen the knot. And the child drew nearer, sharing the maid’s impatience, getting cross with the knot, overcome with curiosity to know how it was tied. But she couldn’t stay there, she took refuge behind an armchair, a long way from the warmth of the clothes that bothered her. She turned her head away. Never had she been so embarrassed by her mother changing her dress.

  ‘Madame’ll feel the benefit,’ said Rosalie. ‘It feels so good to have dry clothes when you have been wet.’

  Hélène in her blue flannelette dressing gown uttered a little sigh, as if she were indeed now in a state of well-being. She was back at home, and felt lighter since she did not have to drag around the weight of the clothes any more. It was no good the maid reminding her that the soup was on the table, she insisted on a thorough wash of her face and hands. When she was completely clean, still damp, her dressing gown buttoned up to her chin, Jeanne came back to her side, took her hand, and kissed her.

  However, at table neither mother nor daughter spoke. The stove roared, the little dining room was cheerful with its shining mahogany and its bright china. But Hélène seemed sunk once more in a torpor that prevented her thinking. She ate mechanically, as though she was hungry. Opposite her, Jeanne eyed her covertly over her glass, not missing a single move her mother made. She coughed. Her mother, forgetting her, was suddenly concerned.

  ‘What! Are you still coughing? So are you not warming up?’

  ‘Oh yes, Maman, I’m lovely and warm.’

  She wanted to feel her hand, to find out if she were lying. Then she saw that her plate was still full.

  ‘You said you were hungry... So don’t you like it?’

  ‘Yes, I do, Maman, I am eating.’

  Jeanne was making an effort, swallowing a mouthful. Hélène watched her for a moment, then her mind went back to that room, and the darkness. And the child saw that her mind was no longer on her. Towards the end of the meal, her poor exhausted limbs had sunk on to the chair and she looked like a little old woman, with the pale eyes of those aged spinsters that no one will love any more.

  ‘Mademoiselle doesn’t want any stewed fruit?’ Rosalie asked. ‘So shall I clear away?’

  Hélène still looked vague.

  ‘Maman, I’m tired,’ said Jeanne, in an altered voice. ‘May I go to bed? I shall feel better there.’

  Again her mother seemed to come back to her surroundings with a start.

  ‘You are poorly, darling! Where is the pain? Tell me!’

  ‘No, I told you! I’m sleepy. It’s time to go to bed.’

  She got down from her chair and stood up, to make her believe she was not ill. Her small stiff feet stumbled on the wooden floor. In the bedroom she leaned on the furniture, she was brave enough not to cry in spite of the fever that was burning her all over. Her mother came to put her to bed, and was only in time to tie back her hair, she was in such haste to take her clothes off herself. She slipped under the sheets and shut her eyes quickly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Hélène, pulling the blankets over her and tucking her up.

  ‘Yes, I am. Leave me alone, don’t disturb me. Take the light away.’

  She only wanted one thing, to be in the dark where she could open her eyes and feel her pain without anyone’s eyes on her. When the lamp had been taken away, she opened her eyes wide. Meanwhile Hélène was walking back and forth in the bedroom next door. A strange urge to move around kept her on her feet, the thought of going to bed was unbearable. She looked at the clock. Twenty to nine. What was she going to do? She rummaged in a drawer, and then couldn’t remember what she was looking for. Then she went over to the bookcase, glanced at the books, without taking down any. Just to read the titles bored her. The silence in the room was throbbing in her ears; the solitude, the heavy atmosphere, were becoming difficult for her to bear. She wanted noise, people, anything that would take her out of herself. Twice she listened at the door of the little bedroom, where Jeanne was breathing too softly to hear. Asleep. She walked round, picking up trinkets she came across and putting them down again. But then a sudden thought struck her: Zéphyrin must be with Rosalie still. Relieved and glad at the thought of no longer being on her own, she padded into the kitchen in her slippers.

  As she pushed open the glass door in the little passage she heard the smack of a hefty slap. Rosalie’s voice cried:

  ‘Don’t do that again! Get your paws off me!’

  But Zéphyrin gave an answering growl:

  ‘Don’t mind me, my darling, I love you, that’s all!’

  But the door had creaked. When Hélène came in, the little soldier and the cook were seated serenely at the table with their eyes fixed on their plates. They were all innocence, it wasn’t them making a noise, but their faces were very red. Their eyes glowed like candles, they were shifting around uneasily on their straw chairs. Rosalie made haste to get up.

  ‘Does Madame need anything?’

  Hélène had not thought of an excuse. She had come to see them, to chat, to be with someone. But she was embarrassed, she did not dare say she did not want anything.

  ‘Have you any hot water?’ she asked finally.

  ‘No, Madame, and my fire is going out. Oh, I can do it, I’ll give you some hot in five minutes. It’ll boil straight away.’

  She topped up with coal, put the kettle on. Then, seeing her mistress was still in the doorway:

  ‘I’ll bring it in five minutes, Madame.’ Hélène made a vague gesture. ‘I’m not in a hurry. I’ll wait... Don’t disturb yourself, my dear. You eat. This man will have to go back to the barracks soon.’

  Rosalie consented to sit down. Zéphyrin, still standing, gave a military-style salute and attacked his meat again, spreading his elbows to show that he had manners.

  When they ate together like that after Madame’s dinner, they didn’t even pull the table out into the middle of the kitchen, they preferred to sit side
by side facing the wall. In that way they could rub knees, pinch and slap one another without missing a mouthful. And if they looked up, the splendid sight of the saucepans met their eyes. A bunch of laurel and thyme was hanging there, there was a peppery aroma from the spice box. Bits and pieces of the dessert lay around them in the kitchen which had not yet been cleared, but it was very pleasant there nevertheless for lovers with hearty appetites to treat themselves to dishes which were never served in the barracks. It smelled of roast meat, with a touch of vinegar, the vinegar of the salad dressing. The reflections from the gas danced in the copper and beaten iron pans. As the stove was ferociously hot, they had partly opened the window and the fresh air blew in from the garden and made the blue cotton curtain billow out.

  ‘Do you have to be back at exactly ten?’ asked Hélène.

  ‘Yes, Madame, thank you kindly, I do,’ Zéphyrin replied.

  ‘It’s a fair step! Do you take the omnibus?’

  ‘Oh yes, Madame, sometimes... But sometimes I get there quicker by Shanks’s pony.’

  She had stepped down into the kitchen, and was leaning against the sideboard, with her hands clasped to her dressing gown. She was still chatting about the dreadful weather, about what they had to eat in the regiment, of how dear eggs were. But every time she asked a question and received an answer the conversation dried up. They were embarrassed by her being there behind them like that. They did not turn round any more, but talked while they ate, bending their shoulders under her gaze and swallowing small mouthfuls to eat politely. She, calmer now, felt comforted.

  ‘You’ll have to be patient, Madame,’ said Rosalie. ‘The water’s bubbling now... If the flame was stronger...’

  Hélène stopped her getting up. There was no hurry. But her legs were feeling extremely tired. Mechanically she crossed the kitchen, went over to the window where she saw the third chair, a very high wooden one which became a ladder when you turned it upside down. But she didn’t immediately sit on it. She noticed a pile of pictures on a corner of the table.

  ‘Oh, look at these!’ she said, picking them up, wishing to be nice to Zéphyrin.

  The little soldier laughed silently. He glowed with pleasure, looking at the pictures, nodding when Madame lit upon a particularly good one.

  ‘I found that one in the Rue du Temple,’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful woman with flowers in her basket.’

  Hélène sat down. She studied the beautiful woman, the cover of a glossy gold sweet tin that Zéphyrin had carefully wiped. A tea towel on the back of the chair was preventing her from leaning there. She pushed it out of the way and became absorbed in the picture once more. Then the two lovers, seeing Madame was being so friendly, were no longer embarrassed. They even forgot she was there. Hélène had dropped the pictures on her lap one by one. Smiling vaguely, she watched, she listened.

  ‘Tell me, my love, don’t you want some more lamb?’

  He answered neither yes nor no, swung back on his chair as though someone was tickling him, and then stretched out luxuriously when she placed a thick slice on his plate. His red epaulettes rose and fell while his round head with the sticking-out ears was shaking in his yellow collar like a monkey’s. You could see from his back he was laughing — fit to burst his tunic, which he never unbuttoned in the kitchen out of respect for Madame.

  ‘This tastes better than old Rouvet’s turnips!’ he said finally, his mouth full.

  That was a memory from home. They both split their sides laughing, and Rosalie held on to the table so as not to fall over. One day, before their first communion, Zéphyrin had stolen three turnips from old Rouvet. They were hard, oh, hard enough to break your teeth. But all the same Rosalie had eaten her share behind the school. Then, each time they had eaten together, Zéphyrin always said:

  ‘That tastes better than old Rouvet’s turnips!’

  And every time he said it, Rosalie burst out laughing, so much that the strings on her petticoat snapped. You could hear the string going.

  ‘Hey, have you broken it?’ asked the little soldier in triumph.

  His hands reached out to find the answer. But all he got was a slap.

  ‘Keep your hands off! I don’t s’pose you’ll be the one mending it... It’s stupid of you to snap the string. I have to sew another one on every week.’

  Then as his hands were still all over her, she pinched up the skin between his fat fingers and twisted it. This affectionate gesture was exciting him even more, when she eyed him furiously, motioning in the direction of Madame who was watching. Without being too put out, and taking another mouthful, so big it swelled out his cheeks, he gave a knowing soldierly wink as though to say that women, and even ladies, didn’t dislike that sort of thing. Of course, it’s always nice to see when people love one another.

  ‘Have you still got five years in the army?’ asked Hélène, who had relaxed into the high wooden chair, forgetting herself in her present sense of well-being.

  ‘Yes, Madame, or perhaps only four if they don’t need me.’

  Rosalie realized Madame had her marriage in mind. Pretending to be angry, she cried:

  ‘Oh, Madame, he can stay another ten years, for all I care, I shan’t be after depriving the government of him... He can’t keep his hands to himself. I think that lot are bad for him. Oh, you may laugh. With me that doesn’t wash. When Monsieur le Maire is here, that will be the time to have a joke.’

  And as he chuckled louder, pretending to be a seducer in Madame’s presence, the cook really lost her temper.

  ‘Be off, is my advice to you! You know, Madame, he’s such an oaf. Once they’re in uniform they get like that. When they’re with their comrades they give themselves airs. If I was to put him out, you’d hear him snivelling in the passage... and see if I’d care, my lad! And whenever I like, you’d still be there trying to find out what sort of stockings I’m wearing, wouldn’t you?’

  She eyed him closely. But when she saw him looking like that with an anxious expression creeping over his good-natured freckled face, she suddenly took pity on him. And without any noticeable transition, said:

  ‘Oh, I forgot to say, I had a letter from my aunt. The Guignards are looking to sell their house. Yes, it costs almost nothing. Perhaps later we could...’

  ‘I’ll be damned!’ said Zéphyrin, his face one big smile. ‘We’d have our own little place. We could have a couple of cows.’

  Then they were silent. They were on to their dessert. The little soldier was licking the grape jam off his bread, like a greedy child, while the cook was peeling an apple, carefully, with a motherly air. He had shoved his free hand under the table and was stroking her knees, but so very gently that she pretended not to feel it. While he kept within the bounds of decency, she did not get cross. She must even have enjoyed it without admitting as much, for she kept jigging up and down on her chair in little starts of pleasure. Truly that day it was all a great treat.

  ‘Your water’s boiling, Madame,’ said Rosalie after a pause in the conversation.

  Hélène did not move. She felt cocooned in their warmth for one another. And she elaborated on their dreams, she pictured them there in the Guignards’ house with their two cows. It made her smile to see him so serious, his hand under the table while the little maid was holding herself very straight to avoid suspicion. The distance between them all seemed not so great, she no longer knew which was herself and which the others, where she was or what she was doing there. The copper pans shone bright on the walls, and she was kept there by a sort of inertia, lost to the world, not offended by the state of the kitchen. This self-abasement satisfied a need in her and she was relishing it mightily. She was, however, very hot, the heat from the stove produced drops of sweat on her pale forehead. But behind her, the half-open window blew delicious puffs of breeze down the back of her neck.

  ‘Madame, your water’s boiling,’ Rosalie said again. ‘There won’t be anything left in that kettle.’

  She put the kettle down in front of her.
Taken momentarily by surprise, Hélène had to get up from her chair.

  ‘Oh yes, thank you.’

  She no longer had a pretext, and slowly, regretfully, she withdrew. In her room the kettle was an encumbrance. But her heart was bursting with passion. That torpor in which, like an imbecile, she had been confined, was dissolving now in a flood of excitement, that coursed through her, burning her. She shivered with the voluptuousness that she had not felt before. Memories revived in her, her senses awoke with a huge unquenched desire, too late. Right there in the middle of the room she stretched out her body, she raised and twisted her hands, feeling the tension cracking in her fingers. Oh, she loved him, she wanted him, she would give herself to him like that next time.

  And the moment she took off her dressing gown and looked at her bare arms, a noise disturbed her, she thought she could hear Jeanne cough. Then she picked up the lamp. The child’s eyes were shut, she seemed to be asleep. But when her mother, reassured, turned her back, she opened her eyes, her big black eyes and followed her as she left the room. She was not yet asleep, she did not want to be made to go to sleep. A new fit of coughing racked her throat, and she burrowed under the blanket, stifling it. Her mother would no longer notice now if she left. She kept her eyes open in the darkness, knowing all, as though she had just been reflecting, and was dying because of it, without a whimper.

  Chapter 2

  Next day Hélène was full of practical ideas. She woke with a compelling need to protect her own happiness, trembling with the fear she might lose Henri by doing something wrong. Getting up in the chill of the morning while the bedroom was still steadfastly slumbering, she adored him, she desired him, her whole being burst into life. Never before had she felt this need to be cunning. Her first thought was that she should see Juliette that very morning. In that way she could avoid embarrassing explanations, and enquiries that might compromise everything.

  When she arrived at Madame Deberle’s towards nine, she found her already up, pale and with reddened eyes like a tragedy queen. And as soon as she saw her, the poor woman threw herself into her arms, weeping, calling her her good angel. She swore she did not care in the slightest for that Malignon. Oh God, what a stupid affair! It would have been the death of her, for certain. She couldn’t be doing with such things any more, the lies, the pain, the tyranny, feelings that were always the same. How good it was to find yourself free! She laughed in relief, then started sobbing again, begging her friend not to despise her. At bottom, this feverish cry was a cry of fear, she thought her husband must have found out everything. The day before, he had come back in a state of agitation. She bombarded Hélène with questions. Then, with an audacious facility which surprised even herself, the latter told her a story, inventing details liberally one after the other. She swore that her husband did not suspect anything. It was she who had found out about it all and in the desire to save her, had thought of breaking up the rendezvous. Juliette listened, went along with this tale, her face shining with a joy in the midst of her tears. Again she threw herself round her neck. And Hélène was not in the least embarrassed by her embraces, she did not have any of the scruples of loyalty that she had suffered before. When she left, after making her promise to remain calm, she laughed inwardly at how clever she had been, and went away, delighted with herself.