The Earth Page 7

  His two sons and son-in-law suddenly stopped and turned round to cast a lingering look at the farm's five hundred acres spread out before their eyes:

  ‘Ah well,’ grunted Buteau, as he went on his way, ‘a fat lot of good that'll do us. And townsfolk always do us down, don't they?’

  It was striking ten o'clock. They quickened their steps because the wind had slackened and a large black cloud had just released its first shower of rain. Rognes's few vineyards lay beyond the church, on the hillside which sloped down to the Aigre. This was where the castle had formerly stood in its park and it was barely a century ago that, encouraged by the success of the vines at near-by Montigny, the Cloyes farmers had had the idea of planting this hillside with vines, since its steep south-facing slope seemed suitable for that purpose. They produced a poorish wine which was, however, pleasantly tart and reminiscent of the light table wines from the region of Orléans. Anyway, none of the inhabitants of Rognes had more than a few patches of vineyard; the richest of them, Delhomme, had six acres; the main crops of the area were cereals and fodder.

  They passed round the back of the church and along the side of the former presbytery; then they made their way down to the patchwork of small vineyards.

  As they were crossing a stretch of stony ground overgrown with shrubs, they heard a shrill voice coming from a hole:

  ‘Dad, it's raining, I'll bring my geese out!’

  It was La Trouille, Jesus Christ's daughter, a twelve-year-old with a tangled mop of hair and as thin and wiry as a holly branch. She had a large mouth, screwed up in its left corner, and staring green eyes; she could easily have been mistaken for a boy, for instead of a dress she wore one of her father's smocks tied round the middle with a piece of string. And if everyone called her the Brat, even though she bore the splendid name of Olympe, it was because Jesus Christ, who used to bawl abuse at her from morning till night, whenever he addressed her always finished by saying: ‘You wait, you little brat, I'll give you something you won't forget!’

  He had produced this tomboy with the aid of some slut whom he had picked up in a ditch after a fair and then settled in his den, to the great scandal of the village. For nearly three years the couple had lived a cat-and-dog life together and then one night at harvest-time the trollop had taken herself off with another man, just as she had come. The daughter, scarcely weaned, had flourished like the green bay, and ever since she could walk she had prepared the meals for her father, whom she feared and adored. But her real passion was for her geese. At first, she only had two, a goose and a gander which had been abstracted while goslings through a gap in a farmer's hedge. Then, thanks to her motherly care, the flock had prospered and now she had twenty geese which she fed on stolen food.

  When La Trouille appeared with her saucy little faunlike face, driving her geese in front of her with a stick, Jesus Christ exploded:

  ‘You get back and see to the dinner or else you'd better look out. And shut up the house, you little brat, in case of burglars!’

  Buteau gave a grin and the others were also unable to hide a smile at the thought of Jesus Christ being burgled, for his house was a disused cellar, or three walls of one, below ground, a proper foxhole, set amongst tumbled-down stones and overgrown with old lime trees. It was all that remained of the castle; and when, after a quarrel with his father, the poacher had taken refuge in this retreat among the ruins, which belonged to the parish, he had had to build another wall of dry stones to enclose the cellar, leaving two openings for a window and a door. It was overhung by brambles and the window was hidden behind a tall dog-rose. The locals called it the Castle.

  A fresh downpour overtook them but fortunately the vineyard was close by and the division into three was speedily concluded without arousing further disagreement. All that was now left was seven and a half acres of meadow, down by the bank of the Aigre. But at that moment, the rain started falling so heavily that as they were passing by the entrance to an estate the surveyor suggested that they might go in.

  ‘What do you think? Shall we take shelter with Monsieur Charles for a minute?’

  Fouan had stopped and was hesitating in awe of his brother-in-law and sister who, having made their fortune, had retired to end their days in this opulent property.

  ‘No, I don't think so,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘they have lunch at noon, we'll be disturbing them.’

  But Monsieur Charles had appeared on the terrace, under the glass porch, to look at the rain, and recognizing them he called out:

  ‘Won't you come in?’

  And as they were all dripping wet, he shouted to them to go round the back and into the kitchen, where he joined them. He was a handsome man of sixty-five, clean-shaven, with heavy lids, lack-lustre eyes, and the dignified, jaundiced face of a judge. Dressed in coarse blue flannel and fur-lined slippers, he wore on his head a priest's cap with the self-assurance of a man who had spent his life in positions requiring tact and authority.

  When Laure Fouan, a dressmaker in Châteaudun at the time, had married Charles Badeuil, he was running a small café in the Rue d'Angoulême. Anxious to make money fast, the ambitious young couple moved to Chartres. But at first every venture proved unprofitable; in succession they tried keeping a tavern, a restaurant and even a dry fish-shop; and they were beginning to despair of ever having two pennies to rub together when Monsieur Charles, an enterprising young man, hit on the idea of buying one of the brothels in the Rue aux Juifs, which had fallen on hard times owing to the shortcomings of its staff and its well-earned reputation for lack of cleanliness. He had summed up the situation at a glance: as a county town Chartres needed a reputable establishment providing comfort and safety in line with modern progressive ideas and this need was not being met. In fact by its second year, No. 19, properly modernized with nice curtains and mirrors and equipped with a hand-picked staff, had acquired such an excellent reputation that they had to increase the number of women to six. Army officers, local government officials, in a word the cream of Chartres society, would never dream of patronizing any other establishment. And this successful start was maintained thanks to Monsieur Charles's iron hand and firm, fatherly management; whilst Madame Charles showed extraordinary energy in keeping her eye on everything and ensuring that nothing went astray, although she knew when to turn a blind eye at petty thefts committed by her richer customers.

  In less than twenty-five years, the Badeuils accumulated more than 300,000 francs in savings and they then thought that they might realize their lifelong dream of an idyllic old age in the depths of the country among trees, birds and flowers. But they were unable to realize their dream for another two years because they could not find anyone prepared to pay the high price that they had set on No. 19. It was really heartbreaking: here was an establishment to which they had devoted the best years of their lives and they now found themselves forced to let it pass into unknown hands where it might well go downhill. As soon as he first arrived in Chartres, Monsieur Charles had had a daughter, Estelle, whom he sent to school with the Sisters of the Visitation in Châteaudun when he set up in the Rue aux Juifs. It was a pious convent, very strong on moral upbringing, and he left his daughter there until she was eighteen to ensure her total innocence; she spent all her holidays far away from Chartres and never learnt how she came to be so wealthy. And he removed her from the convent only at the time of her marriage to a young excise officer, Hector Vaucogne, a good-looking young man whose sterling qualities were marred by inordinate laziness. She was nearly thirty and had a little girl, Elodie, who was seven, when, having finally learnt the truth and hearing that her father wanted to retire from the business, she asked him, of her own accord, for the first refusal. Why should such a splendid gilt-edged concern go out of the family? Everything was settled, the Vaucognes took over the establishment and by the very first month the Badeuils were delighted and touched to see that their daughter, albeit brought up with quite different ideals, showed herself a very gifted bawdy-house keeper, thus making up
for the inertia and total lack of managerial skills of her husband. The parents had retired five years ago to Rognes, where they could look after their granddaughter Éodie, who had been sent in her turn to the convent of the Sisters of the Visitation in Châteaudun to receive a religious education in accordance with the strictest principles of Christian morality.

  When Monsieur Charles came into the kitchen where a young maid was beating an omelette and keeping an eye on a pan full of larks frying in butter, they all doffed their hats, even Delhomme and old Fouan, and appeared greatly gratified to shake the hand he offered them.

  ‘My word,’ said Grosbois, making himself agreeable, ‘what a nice property you have here, Monsieur Charles. And when you think that you got it for a song! Yes, you're a very smart man, Monsieur Charles, a really smart man.’

  Monsieur Charles smirked.

  ‘A bit of luck, sheer chance. We decided we liked it and Madame Charles was so keen to end her days in the village where she was born… You know, where sentiment is involved, I've never been able to say no.’

  Roseblanche, which was the name of the property, was the folly of a rich citizen of Cloyes who had just spent nearly fifty thousand francs on it when he was struck down by an apoplexy even before the paint had dried. The house was extremely elegant, set halfway up the hill in nearly eight acres of garden sloping down to the Aigre. In such a dreary village on the edge of the dismal plain of Beauce, there were no buyers and Monsieur Charles had picked it up for twenty thousand francs. Here he was able to satisfy, in uninterrupted bliss, his every taste: superb trout and eels caught in the river, lovingly cultivated collections of roses and carnations, and finally birds, a vast aviary full of wild singing birds of all sorts of which he took sole care. The affectionate old couple lived there on their twelve thousand francs a year, in a state of unruffled happiness which he regarded as the just reward of his thirty years of work.

  ‘Isn't that right,’ Monsieur Charles added, ‘at least people here know who we are?’

  ‘Yes, of course, people know you,’ replied the surveyor. ‘Your money sees to that.’

  And all the others nodded approval.

  ‘Certainly, certainly.’

  Then Monsieur Charles told the maid to set out some glasses and he himself went down into the cellar to fetch a couple of bottles of wine. They all sniffed the delicious smell of the larks frying in the pan. And they solemnly drank, rolling the wine round their mouths.

  ‘Goodness me, that doesn't come from these parts! Really lovely!’

  ‘Another drop, your very good health.’

  ‘And yours too!’

  As they put down their glasses Madame Charles appeared, a respectable-looking lady of sixty-two, with snow-white hair drawn tightly back from her face; she had the heavy features and big nose of the Fouans, but they were combined with a fresh pink complexion, like that of a gentle old nun who has spent her life in cloistered seclusion. Her twelve-year-old granddaughter, Elodie, who was spending a couple of days' holiday in Rognes, followed her into the room, looking scared and shy as she clung awkwardly to her grandmother's skirts. She was a pallid, plain little girl with a flabby, puffy face and pale wispy hair, a bloodless little creature who was moreover repressed by the virginal innocence of her upbringing to the point of idiocy.

  ‘Well, well, it's you,’ said Madame Charles to her brother and her nephews, without enthusiasm, as she slowly offered them an aloof and rather lordly hand.

  And then, swinging round and paying them no further attention:

  ‘Do come in, Monsieur Patoir… Here he is…’

  Patoir was the veterinary surgeon from Cloyes, a short, stout, sanguine man, with a military-looking purple face and large mustachios. He had just arrived in his muddy cabriolet in the pouring rain.

  ‘This poor little pet,’ she went on, pulling out of the warm oven a basket containing a dying cat, ‘this poor little pet started trembling all over yesterday and so I wrote to you… Oh, he's not young, he's almost fifteen… We had him with us in Chartres for ten years and last year my daughter had to get rid of him because he kept forgetting himself all over the shop, and I brought him here.’

  ‘Shop’ was in deference to Elodie, who had been told that her parents kept a confectioner's shop which took up so much of their time that they were unable to have her to stay with them. Moreover, the others did not even smile because the word was current in Rognes, where people used to say that ‘the Hourdequins' farm didn't bring in as much as Monsieur Charles's shop’. And they looked wide-eyed at the skinny, yellow, wretched old cat which had lost all its fur; the cat who had purred its way through every single bed in the Rue aux Juifs, tickled and fondled by the plump hands of five or six generations of loose women. For so many years he had been pampered as a favourite pet, at home in the parlour and in the bedrooms, licking up left-over face-cream, drinking out of the toothglasses, a silent, meditative observer of all that was happening as he watched through his narrow pupils ringed with gold.

  ‘So, Monsieur Patoir,’ Madame Charles concluded, ‘I want you to cure him, please.’

  The veterinary surgeon stared with wide-open eyes, wrinkling his nose and lips with a grimace on his cheerful, coarse, puglike face. He exclaimed:

  ‘What on earth! That's what you fetched me out for? Of course, I can cure him for you. Tie a stone round his neck and chuck him in the river!’

  Élodie burst into tears while Madame Charles choked with indignation.

  ‘But your little pussy is smelling to high heaven! How can anyone want to keep such a dreadful animal and give the whole house cholera? Chuck him in the river!’

  But in the face of the old lady's wrath, he finally sat down and wrote out a prescription, grumbling the while:

  ‘All right then, if you enjoy this sort of stench… What's it to me as long as I get paid? Here you are: stick a spoonful of that into his mouth every hour and here's a prescription for two enemas, one tonight, the other tomorrow.’

  For the last few minutes, Monsieur Charles had been growing restless because he could see the larks becoming overcooked while the maid, bored with beating the omelette, was standing there with her arms dangling. So he quickly handed Patoir the six-franc fee for his consultation and invited the others to drink up.

  ‘It's lunchtime. All right? Look forward to seeing you. It's not raining now.’

  They left regretfully and the veterinary surgeon, as he climbed into his ramshackle old crock, said once again:

  ‘All for a cat that isn't worth the cost of the piece of rope to chuck it in the river! Ah well, I suppose if you're rich…’

  ‘If you earn your money through whores then you spend it likewise,’ sneered Jesus Christ.

  But they all shook their heads in protest, even Buteau, whose face had gone pale with secret envy; and Delhomme said judiciously:

  ‘All the same, if you've succeeded in amassing a pension of twelve thousand francs a year, you can't have been idle or stupid either.’

  Patoir whipped up his horse and the others went off down towards the Aigre along the paths that had been turned into streams of water. They had just reached the last seven-odd acres still left to divide when it started to rain again in torrents.

  This time, however, they kept on with their task, famished though they were, but determined to finish. Only one disagreement delayed them: it was over the third plot, which was treeless, whereas the other two plots shared a little copse. Nevertheless, everything seemed to be settled and agreed. The surveyor promised to let the notary have his notes so that he could draw up the deeds; and they arranged to meet to draw lots the following Sunday at ten o'clock in their father's house.

  As they were going back into Rognes, Jesus Christ suddenly swore:

  ‘You wait, you little brat. I'll give you something!’

  Along the verge of the grassy track La Trouille was unhurriedly parading her geese under the driving rain. The gander was waddling along in front of the bedraggled and delighted flock and e
ach time he turned his big yellow beak to the right, all the other big yellow beaks turned likewise. But the little girl took to her heels in fright up the hill, followed by the gaggle of geese, all of them with their long necks outstretched behind the outstretched neck of their gander.

  Chapter 4

  IT so happened that the following Sunday fell on November 1st, All Saints' Day; and nine o'clock was about to strike when Father Godard, the vicar of Bazoches-le-Doyen, who was in charge of the former parish of Rognes, emerged at the top of the slope leading down to the little bridge over the Aigre. Rognes now numbered only about 300 inhabitants – it had earlier been much larger – and it had not had a parish priest of its own for years; nor did it seem anxious to acquire one, since the parish council had housed the gamekeeper in the half-demolished presbytery.

  So every Sunday Father Godard walked the one and a half miles between Bazoches-le-Doyen and Rognes. He was short and portly with a neck as red as a turkeycock and so thick that he had to hold his head backwards. He used to force himself to undertake this walk for his health's sake, but this Sunday he was panting with his mouth wide open in a frightening manner; the fat on his florid, apoplectic face had submerged his little grey eyes and pug-nose; and despite the livid, snow-laden sky and the early onset of cold weather after last week's rain, he was swinging his hat in his hand, his bare head covered only with a tangled greying thatch of ginger hair.

  The road descended abruptly and on the left bank of the Aigre there were only a few houses before the stone bridge, a sort of suburb which the reverend father hurtled through at top speed. He glanced neither upstream nor downstream at the slow, clear-flowing river which meandered through the meadows between clumps of willows and poplars. The village began on the other bank, with house-fronts lining each side of the street while others clambered haphazardly up the hillside. Immediately beyond the bridge stood the town-hall and the school, housed in a former barn, whitewashed and provided with an extra floor. The priest hesitated for a moment and stuck his head into the empty front hall. Then he turned and seemed to be rapidly scrutinizing two drinking-shops opposite: one of them with a neat front window full of bottles and jars and a little yellow wooden sign above, on which you could read MACQUERON, GROCER, printed in green letters; on the other one, adorned merely with a holly branch, these words: TOBACCO: LENGAIGNE, sprawling in black letters on its rough-cast wall. And he had just made up his mind to take the little street between the two and go up the steep footpath leading to the square in front of the church when he caught sight of an old farmer and stopped.