The Conquest of Plassans (Classic Reprint) Page 38
‘The devil of it!’ said Mouret, looking at the sky with concern. ‘I mustn’t dally, there’s going to be a real downpour! I’ll never get to Plassans before the rain comes. And besides I haven’t got very much on.’
And he drew across his chest the thick grey woollen coat that he had reduced to shreds in Les Tulettes. He had a deep bruise on his jaw and felt it with his hand, without being conscious of the sharp pain he felt there. The highway was deserted. He met nothing but a small cart trundling lazily down a hill. The driver, who was sleeping, did not return his friendly greeting. It was at the Pont de la Viorne that the downpour came. He found the wet unpleasant and went down under the bridge to shelter, grumbling that he couldn’t bear it, that nothing ruined your clothes so much as that and that if he had known he would have brought his umbrella. He stayed there a good half-hour, enjoying the sound of the streaming water. Then when the shower was over, he climbed up to the road again, and finally reached Plassans. He went to great lengths to avoid the muddy puddles.
It was nearly midnight. By Mouret’s calculations it was not quite eight o’clock. He crossed the empty streets, worried at having made his wife wait so long.
‘She must be wondering why I’m late,’ he thought. ‘Dinner will be cold… Rose won’t be very pleased to see me!’
He had reached the Rue Balande. He was outside the door.
‘Bother,’ he exclaimed, ‘I haven’t got my keys.’
But he did not knock. The kitchen window was dark, and none of the other windows on the front seemed to be lit either. The madman was beset with suspicion. With an instinct that was entirely animal, he sniffed danger. He drew back into the shadow of the neighbouring houses and studied the front of the house again; then he appeared to come to a decision, and went round by the Impasse des Chevillottes. But the small garden gate was bolted. So, seized by a sudden rage, he threw himself with prodigious strength against it, and, damaged by the damp, it split in two. He was bewildered by the violence of the break, not knowing why he’d just smashed it, and he tried to repair it by piecing it together again.
‘That was a silly thing to do, when it was so easy to knock!’ he muttered with sudden compunction. ‘A new door will cost me at least thirty francs.’
He was in the garden. He looked up and seeing the bedroom brightly lit, he believed his wife was going to bed. That caused him great astonishment. He must have fallen asleep under the bridge while he was waiting for the shower to be over. It must be very late. And indeed the windows in the neighbours’ houses, Monsieur Rastoil’s, as well as those of the sub-prefecture, were black. His eyes travelled back to the second floor when he saw the gleam of a lamp behind the thick curtains in Abbé Faujas’s room. It was like a fiery eye lit up at the front of the house, blazing at him. He pressed his burning hands to his temples, losing his reason, reeling in the horrendous memory of some vanished nightmare, where nothing was clear, and where for him and his loved ones there stirred the threat of an old danger that had slowly increased and grown more terrifying; the house would be swallowed up if he didn’t save it.
‘Marthe, Marthe, where are you?’ he faltered in a subdued voice. ‘Come out and bring the children with you.’
He searched for Marthe in the garden. But he couldn’t recognize the garden any more. It seemed to him bigger and emptier and greyer, like a cemetery. The box hedge had gone, the lettuces were no longer there, the fruit trees seemed to have moved. He retraced his steps and got down on his knees to see if it was the slugs which had devoured everything. The box trees especially, the death of this high green hedge cut him to the quick, as if it were a living part of the house. So who had killed the box? What scythe had passed there, razing everything? Everything, even the little clumps of violets he had planted at the bottom of the terrace had been dug up. At the sight of this devastation, a soft moaning began in his throat.
‘Marthe, Marthe, where are you?’ he called again.
He looked for her in the small greenhouse, to the right of the terrace. The little greenhouse was piled high with the dry corpses of the tall box bushes. They were stacked up in bundles, in the midst of the trunks of the fruit trees lying here and there like limbs that had been cut off. In a corner the cage that had housed Désirée’s birds was hanging pathetically on a nail, with its door broken and bits of wire sticking out of it. Paralysed with fear, the madman took a step back, as if he had opened the door of a vault. Muttering to himself, his blood rising, he went up on the terrace and prowled around outside the closed door and windows. His increasing anger made his limbs as supple as an animal’s. He crouched down, crept along quietly and looked for some crack he might squeeze into. The cellar window was wide enough. He slid in with the agility of a cat, scratching the wall with his fingernails. Finally he was inside the house.
The cellar was only on the latch. He advanced through the dense darkness of the hall, feeling the walls each side, and pushed open the kitchen door. The matches were on the left on a wooden shelf. He went straight to this shelf, struck a match to give himself enough light to take a lamp from the mantelpiece, without breaking anything. Then he looked around. There must have been some big meal that evening. The kitchen was in a mess, as if there had been feasting: plates, serving dishes, dirty glasses littered the table. Saucepans, still warm, were piled up in the sink, lay on the chairs and the floor; a coffee pot, forgotten on the edge of a lighted stove, was still boiling, tilted like a drunk. Mouret set the coffee pot the right way up again and tidied away the pans; he sniffed at them and at the remains of alcohol in the glasses, counted the dishes and the plates, grumbling more loudly than ever. This was not the clean, cool kitchen of a retired businessman; the food from an entire inn had been consumed there; this gluttonous mess reeked of indigestion.
‘Marthe, Marthe!’ he said again coming back into the hall, his lamp in his hand. ‘Answer me, tell me where they have locked you up? We must leave, leave straight away.’
He looked for her in the dining room. The two cupboards to the right and left of the stove were open. A brown paper bag of sugar on the edge of one of the shelves had burst and the sugar was trickling on to the floor. Above that he could see a bottle of cognac without a top on, plugged with a rag. He climbed on a chair to inspect the cupboards. They were half empty. The bottles of fruit preserved in brandy were all opened and begun simultaneously, the open pots of jam had been tasted, the fruit bitten into, the provisions of all kinds had been nibbled and spoiled, as if an army of rats had been at them. Since he could not find Marthe in the cupboards he searched everywhere behind the curtains, under the table; there were bones there amongst the crumbs of wasted bread. Syrupy stains had been left from the bottoms of glasses on the oilcloth. So he went across the passage and looked for her in the drawing room. But as soon as he got through the door, he stopped short. This wasn’t his home. The lilac wallpaper, the carpet with red flowers on, the new armchairs covered with cerise damask astonished him. He was afraid he had come to the wrong house, and shut the door again.
‘Marthe, Marthe!’ he stammered again in desperation.
He had returned to the middle of the hall to think, unable to quieten the hoarse breathing that swelled in his throat. Where was he then, that he did not recognize any of the rooms? Who had transformed his house in this way? His memories were submerged. All he could see were two shades sliding through the hall: at first they were two black shadows, poor, polite, self-effacing; then they turned into two drunken, disreputable figures, laughing horribly. He raised the lamp with its flickering wick; the shadows grew bigger, lengthening along the walls, spread up into the stairwell, filled and consumed the entire house. Something foul, something decomposing in there had rotted the woodwork, rusted the iron, made cracks in the walls. He could hear the house crumbling, like plaster that had fallen with the damp, melting like a block of salt in warm water.
Upstairs clear laughter rang out, making his hair stand on end. He put the lamp down on the floor and went up to look for Marth
e, on all fours, without making a noise, lightly and softly as a wolf. When he was on the first floor landing he crouched down outside the bedroom door. A ray of light showed under the door. Marthe must be on her way to bed.
‘Oh, that’s nice!’ came Olympe’s voice. ‘Their bed is really cosy. See how you sink into it, Honoré. I’ve got feathers up to my eyes.’
She was laughing, stretching, diving under the covers.
‘Shall I tell you something?’ she went on. ‘Well, ever since I came to this house, I’ve wanted to sleep in this cosy bed… I was dying to, I tell you! I couldn’t see that great gawk of a landlady tucked up, without a crazy longing to turf her out and put myself in her place… You get warm straight away! I feel as if I am wrapped up in cotton wool.’
Trouche, who was still up, was fiddling with scent bottles in the bathroom.
‘She’s got all sorts of perfumes,’ he muttered.
‘Well,’ Olympe continued, ‘since she isn’t here, we can enjoy the luxury of all this! There’s no danger of her coming to disturb us; I’ve bolted the doors… You’ll catch cold, Honoré.’
He was opening all the drawers, and feeling around among the underwear.
‘Put this on,’ he said, throwing Olympe a nightdress. ‘It’s covered in lace. I’ve always dreamed of sleeping with a woman who has got lace on… I’m going to put on this red bandana… Did you change the sheets?’
‘My goodness, no I didn’t,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t think of it; they are still clean… She’s very careful about personal cleanliness, I’m not concerned about that.’
And as Trouche was finally getting into bed, she shouted to him:
‘Bring the grog over to the bedside table! We aren’t going to get out of bed to drink it at the other side of the bedroom… There, darling, my great big man, we are like real property owners.’
They had stretched out side by side, with the eiderdown up to their chins, basking in its soft warmth.
‘I ate well this evening,’ said Trouche softly after a silence.
‘And drank!’ added Olympe with a laugh. ‘I feel good; I can see things are changing… What’s annoying is that Maman is always on our backs; she was so bossy today. I can’t move a step in the house… There’s no point in the landlady going if Maman stays here acting like a policeman. It spoiled my day.’
‘Doesn’t the priest think about leaving?’ asked Trouche, after another silence. ‘If they make him bishop, he’ll have to leave the house to us.’
‘We don’t know,’ she said crossly. ‘Maman thinks perhaps she can keep it… We should be so well off on our own! I’d put the landlady in my brother’s room upstairs; I’d tell her it’s healthier… Pass me the glass, Honoré.’
Both drank and snuggled down under the blankets.
‘Huh!’ went on Trouche. ‘It wouldn’t be easy to get them out; but we could always try… I think the priest would already have moved if he hadn’t been worried the landlady would make a fuss and feel abandoned… I want to work on her. I’ll tell her some tales to get her to chuck them out.’
He had another drink.
‘Supposing I started making up to her, eh darling?’
‘Oh no,’ Olympe cried, starting to giggle as though she were being tickled. ‘You’re too old, you’re not handsome enough. I wouldn’t care at all, but she wouldn’t have you, that’s for sure… Let me take care of it. I’ll think up some scheme. I’ll get rid of Maman and Ovide because they are so nasty to us.’
‘Anyway, if you don’t manage to,’ he murmured, ‘I’ll tell everyone that we found the priest in bed with the landlady. That’ll cause such a scandal he’ll have to move.’
Olympe sat up in bed.
‘Well, that’s a good idea! We must start tomorrow. Before the month is out the house’ll be ours… I’ll give you a kiss for your efforts.’
They were having a lovely time. They planned how to arrange the furniture; they would move the chest of drawers, bring up two chairs from the drawing room. Their words got steadily more indistinct. Silence reigned.
‘Now you are off!’ Olympe exclaimed. ‘You snore with your eyes open. Let me lie on my front, then at least I can finish my novel. I’m not sleepy.’
She got up, rolled his bulk over against the wall and began to read. But at the first page she turned her head anxiously in the direction of the door. She thought she could hear a strange groaning noise in the corridor. Then she got angry.
‘You know perfectly well I don’t like jokes like that,’ she said, poking her husband with her elbow. ‘Don’t pretend to be a wolf… It sounds as if there’s a wolf at the door. Well, you carry on, if you think it’s funny. You are a real nuisance.’
And she plunged back into her novel, furious, after sucking the slice of lemon from her drink.
Mouret with a swift movement got up from the door against which he had been crouching. He went up to the second floor to kneel down outside Abbé Faujas’s door, raising himself to the height of the keyhole. He choked back Marthe’s name, and eagerly scanned the corners of the bedroom to be sure she wasn’t being hidden there. The great bare room was full of dark shadows, a little lamp placed on the edge of the table cast a small circle of light on to the floor. The priest, who was writing, was nothing but a black shape in the middle of the yellow. Having searched behind the chest of drawers, behind the curtains, Mouret’s eyes had come to a halt at the iron bedstead, on which the priest’s hat lay, like a woman’s hair. Marthe must be in the bed. The Trouches had said that she slept there now. But seeing the cold bed with the sheets pulled up, it looked like a gravestone. His eyes got used to the dark. Abbé Faujas must have heard a noise for he glanced towards the door. When the madman saw the calm face of the priest his eyes reddened, a slight foam appeared on the corner of his lips; he repressed a howl and went off down the stairs on all fours through the passages, whimpering:
‘Marthe, Marthe!’
He searched for her in the whole house. In Rose’s room, which was empty. In the Trouches’ rooms, which were full of what had been moved out of the other rooms. In the old bedrooms where the children had slept, he sobbed when his hand encountered a pair of little bootees with holes in, that Désirée had worn. Taking the utmost care, he went up, came down again, leaned on the banisters, felt his way round the rooms without bumping into anything, all with the extraordinary agility of a cautious madman. Soon there was no corner of the house from cellar to attic that he had not inspected. Marthe was not in the house and nor were the children. Rose wasn’t there either. The house was empty, the house might as well fall down.
Mouret sat on the stairs, between the first and second floor. He repressed the loud breathing which swelled his chest despite himself. He waited with folded arms, his back leaning against the rails, his eyes open to the night, fixated on the idea that was maturing steadily in his brain. His senses were so tuned that he picked up the slightest little sounds in the house. Down below him Trouche was snoring. Olympe turned the pages of her novel, with a faint rustle of her fingers on the paper. On the second floor Abbé Faujas’s pen made a tiny noise like the scratching of an insect, while in the room next door the sleeping Madame Faujas seemed to be keeping time to his squeaky tune with her deep breathing. An hour went by, Mouret’s ears were pricked. It was Olympe who was the first to fall asleep. He heard her novel fall to the floor. Then Abbé Faujas put down his pen and took off his clothes and he heard the discreet rustling of slippers. Clothes slipped off softly and there was not even a creak as he got into bed. The whole house had retired for the night. But the madman sensed by the sound of the priest’s light breathing that he was not asleep. Gradually the sound of that breathing got louder. The whole house slept.
Mouret waited another half-hour. He still listened very attentively as if he had heard the four people lying there descend more and more heavily into the torpor of deep sleep. The house, crushed in the darkness, was abandoning itself. Then he rose and went as far as the hall. He grumbled:
He opened the door into the garden and went down to the little greenhouse. There he methodically moved the dried branches of the box trees; he carried huge armfuls up to the doors of the Trouches and the Faujas. As he needed a good light, he went and lit all the lamps in the kitchen and came back to put them on the tables in the rooms, on the landings on the stairs, along the corridors. Then he transported the rest of the box wood. The pile rose higher than the doors. But as he made the last journey he noticed the windows. Then he returned to get the fruit trees and built a pyre under the windows, cleverly arranging it so that the draught would get in and ignite a successful blaze. The pyre looked rather small to him.
‘Nothing’s left,’ he repeated. ‘There must be nothing left.’
Something occurred to him. He went down in the cellar, and began making more trips again. Now he brought up the stock of fuel for the winter: the coal, the vine sticks, the logs. The pyre under the windows was growing. Every little armful of vines that he put in the right place gave him an ever greater thrill of satisfaction. Then he placed what was combustible in the other rooms on the ground floor, left a pile in the hall, another in the kitchen. He finished by tipping up the furniture and pushing it into a big heap. It had taken just an hour to accomplish this hard task. Barefoot, and with his arms full, he had hurried to and fro and carted it all so carefully, he had not been so clumsy as to drop a single log . He seemed endowed with a new lease of life, where extraordinary movements were completely natural to him. In his own fixed idea of himself he was very strong and clever.
When everything was ready, he enjoyed his creation for a moment. He went from pile to pile, pleased with the square construction of the pyres, walked around each one, clapping his hands gently with an expression of supreme satisfaction. A few pieces of coal having fallen on the stairs, he went to fetch a sweeping brush, and cleaned the black dust off the steps. Thus he finished his inspection, like a careful householder who believes he has to do things properly, in an orderly fashion. His delight made him gradually more fearful. He bent down and found himself on all fours again, crawling quickly here and there on hands and knees, his breath coming harder with snorts of terrible delight.