He suddenly remembered that that morning, passing Kreutz’s toyshop next to his home—his home, as he still called it, was his parents’ house—he had seen a whole display of masks, false noses and rattles.
‘It’s the first Sunday of the Carnival,’ he announced.
Élise did not understand why he should talk about that. The first Sunday was the children’s carnival. Désiré was just remembering the carnivals of his childhood.
‘Are the carrots sweet enough?’
‘They’re good. Did you cook them, Valérie?’
‘Poor Valérie, if you only knew the trouble she goes to! I keep wondering what we should have done without her!’
‘But seeing that we’ve got her!’
Precisely! Seeing that Valérie was there, what was the point of worrying? Oh, he didn’t feel things!
‘Félicie came this morning.’
‘Was she squiffy?’
A word they used to signify … not exactly drunk … not entirely sober either …
‘Désiré!’
She jerked her head towards Valérie.
‘Well? Doesn’t Valérie know that your sister … Another piece of meat, Valérie? Yes do, you must keep your strength up …’
Until three o’clock, the streets remained empty, or nearly empty. Then a few families appeared, dressed in dark clothes and dragging masked children along behind them without much enthusiasm. A little toreador went by, shivering in a ratteen overcoat and waving a rattle in one hand while he was pulled along by the other.
‘What about your mother, Désiré?’
‘She’ll come. You know that it’s an adventure for her, crossing the bridges.’
‘Valérie, you don’t think the baby’s choking, do you?’
He was breathing badly, there was no doubt about that. You ought not to be able to hear a baby’s breathing like that. What would Madame Mamelin say, she who was so fond of repeating that Élise was a sickly creature?
‘Have you looked in the cupboard on the landing, Valérie? There’s nothing lying around?’
For her mother-in-law was perfectly capable of opening the cupboard on the landing to prove that Élise was a poor housekeeper! Élise had taken her big Désiré away from her and that was something she would never forgive.
‘You’re sure we oughtn’t to offer her something? A glass of liqueur? Some cakes?’
‘I tell you a mother who’s just had a baby never offers anything to her callers. On the contrary, it’s up to them to bring something.’
He considered it natural for people to bring something! Whereas Élise would have liked to give something in return, to give more than she received, never to be obliged. She was a Peters.
‘I can hear a noise.’
He opened the door and called out gaily:
‘Is that you, Mother?’
The people on the first floor had gone out, and there was no longer any need to keep quiet.
‘Wait a minute and I’ll put on the light. These stairs are so dark.’
He was happy, so happy.
‘Come in … Come in, Cécile…’
It was his youngest sister, Cécile, who was going to get married, who had come with his mother. The latter had crossed the bridges, with her grey dress and her locket, her grey gloves and her hooded cape, to see the child of the foreign woman, of that tousle-haired hoyden who had no money and no health, who was not from Outremeuse or even from Liége, and who, when she was with her sister, spoke a language she did not understand. Désiré was the only person who failed to notice that her entry into the flat produced the effect of an icy draught.
‘Good day, daughter.’
She did not bend down to kiss her daughter-in-law.
‘Where’s your bebby?’
She was obviously speaking dialect on purpose. To stress the fact that she was a woman of Outremeuse.
Élise trembled between the sheets and Valérie stood beside her as if to protect her.
‘Well, daughter, he’s green, your bebby is!’
It wasn’t true! She was just being spiteful! He wasn’t green. After being too red all morning, he looked as if he had had trouble digesting his last feed. He was pale, that was undeniable. Élise herself was surprised to see how pale he was, and her hands clutched at the sheets under the blanket while her mother-in-law, shaking her head, stated once for all:
‘What an ugly bebby?’
That was all, She sat down. She deigned to sit down while her icy gaze swept round the flat. She was sure to have seen everything. The two damp patches on the ceiling—they were there all right; the Cessions had refused to have them whitewashed—and a duster which Valérie had left lying on a chair.
She had not brought anything either. She was there because she had to be there, but not for anything in the world would she have taken off her hat.
Élise made an effort and murmured:
‘A cup of coffee, Mother?’
‘No thank you, daughter.’
As if her daughter-in-law’s coffee was not good enough for her.
Élise was ashamed of her furniture. It was the wife who provided the furniture when a couple married. At her home, at the time of her father’s death, there had been some beautiful antique furniture. One of her brothers, Louis, Louis of Tongres as he was called because he lived at Tongres where he had made his fortune, had come and taken it all, one piece after another, under the pretext that it belonged to the Peters and had to go back to the Peters, and he had replaced it with deal furniture …
‘Well, children …’
The regulation time for a call had passed.
‘I still wonder whether your wife will be able to feed him.’
It was to Désiré that she spoke commiseratingly. ‘You would have your way! I warned you!’ These words were in the tone of her voice, in the gaze of her eyes.
‘Anyway, I hope for your sake that all goes well!’
She went off. Cécile followed her. Désiré accompanied them downstairs and when he returned he found Élise in tears in Valérie’s arms.
‘She was spiteful … On purpose … She was deliberately spiteful…’
‘But no! … I tell you you’re wrong…’
He would have liked everybody to be in agreement, to like one another, to live as he did in the serenity and the joy of every passing moment. He looked at the alarm-clock.
‘It’s time for his feed.’
Alas, the baby vomited a murky liquid which was not milk, and which was a greenish colour.
‘Valérie! He’s ill … Dear God …’
Suddenly they heard the shrill noise of squeakers and rattles, and looking down from the window they saw some families who were taking advantage of a break in the rain to take their masked children on a tour of the town centre.
‘Perhaps if we gave him some sugared water? …’
‘Look, he’s all red again. Anybody would think he had done it on purpose, just when your mother …’
Poor Valérie. She did not lose her head for one moment. She came and went like a diligent ant, like a furtive little mouse.
‘Don’t start getting upset, Élise. I tell you it’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Why is he sick? It’s my milk, I’m sure it is. His mother has always said I wouldn’t be able to feed him …’
Désiré was drumming on the window-pane with his fingers, through the lace curtain which deadened the noise, and he was delighted to be able to announce:
‘Here’s Dr. Van der Donck.’
The doctor took an age to climb the stairs with slow, deliberate steps. He knocked on the door. He came in.
‘Well, Madame Mamelin?’
She was already less frightened. Ashamed of her fears, she made an effort to smile. He had come on a Sunday and he deserved her gratitude.
‘I don’t know, Doctor … It seems to me … He has just thrown up his milk, and ever since this morning I’ve had the impression that he’s so hot … Valérie! …’
Valérie, who had understood, brought the bowl of warm water and the towel, and the doctor slowly, carefully washed his white hands loaded with a gold signet-ring.
‘Désiré!’
He did not understand as quickly as Valérie. The light was failing.
‘The lamp…’
He lit it and the doctor sat down by the cradle, in the leisurely manner of somebody with plenty of time at his disposal.
‘Let’s have a look at the little fellow…’
He took a watch out of his pocket. Dr. Van der Donck was fair-haired, slightly bald, with a tapering moustache and clothes in broadcloth.
‘When did you feed him last?’
Respectfully she replied:
‘At two o’clock, Doctor.’
‘Come, now … Come, now … don’t worry …’
He knew that she was just a nervous child frightened by all the ghosts created by an anxious mind. And yet … He frowned … He examined the child …
‘Will you undress him for me?’
Désiré himself, whose head seemed to touch the ceiling, stood rooted to the spot behind him. More mummers went by outside. A military band passed somewhere.
‘Loosen it… Good … Ssh!…’
He listened … He counted … He frowned. He smiled so as not to frighten the mother …
‘Come, now, Madame, it’s nothing serious … Don’t worry … A touch of bronchitis, such as lots of new-born babies get at this time of year…’
‘That’s serious, isn’t it, Doctor?’
She could still summon up the courage to smile so as not to annoy him with her fears, when he had come on a Sunday, a carnival Sunday.
‘No, not at all … With a few precautions …’
He put on his gold pince-nez to write.
‘Wipe the table, Valérie.’
He read over what he had written, and added a couple of lines.
‘There you are, Madame. In a few days there won’t be a sign of it left. Above all, don’t get into a panic. I tell you it’s nothing to worry about. Incidentally … Where’s that milk he vomited after his last feed?’
‘Valérie!’
It was Valérie who came and went. Then Désiré followed the doctor out on to the stairs.
‘Doctor…’
‘Nothing to worry about. I should just like to have an analysis of the milk.’
He held out a little phial he had in his pocket.
‘If you can, without alarming her … Take it tomorrow morning to the Pierson laboratory…’
She would be the only one in the whole family whose milk wasn’t good. Madame Mamelin had warned him: ‘That girl…’
‘Come, now! Come, now! Everything will be all right, you’ll see. She’s rather highly strung, you understand? Gets worried about the slightest thing.’
More mummers … He shut the door …
When Désiré got back, he found Valérie trying in vain to calm Élise, who was having a fit of crying which was degenerating into a fit of hysterics.
‘I knew it. I felt it. She said it would happen before she even knew me!’
The lamp started smoking. Désiré lowered the wick. At the same moment the stove gave its familiar ‘boom’, as if the guardian spirit of the house had felt that the time had come to make his benevolent presence felt.
‘Hush!’ whispered Valérie, when Désiré went towards the bed.
And she added in an undertone, while Élise was shaken by sob after sob:
‘It does her good.’
CHAPTER THREE
TWO o’clock. Two strokes which rang out sharply in the empty air, here first, then there, at Saint-Jean, at Saint-Jacques, at the Cathedral, at Saint-Denis, two strokes which sounded early or late over the sleeping town, in a sky in which the moon was swimming. The fried-fish shops were closed. The frosted-glass globe which served as the sign for a night-club no longer attracted anybody and the doorman was inside.
An opening appeared in a wall in the Rue Gérardrie, in a tiny café, a door between two shutters, and somebody gently pushed Léopold outside. In the yellow lamplight a fat blonde waitress could be seen counting the stitches in her crochet-work, the door shut again, footsteps faded into the distance.
God preserve him! And help him to find his way home through the maze of streets!
It was a relief not to see him there any more, staring at his glass, all alone, bearded, unsociable, and so still that when a traveller who was teasing the waitress stopped when he became aware of Léopold’s presence, the girl motioned to him to take no notice.
He had gone. There was the noise of a shop shutter which he bumped into, then his footsteps zigzagging from pavement to pavement.
The town slept.
Élise, lying motionless, had her eyes open, and her gaze remained fixed upon the alarm-clock beside the little flame of the night-light.
Three minutes past two … Five minutes past two … The child did not move, Désiré was snoring, and she could feel him all warm beside her. She gave him a little push, and murmured, as if she were afraid of waking him:
‘Désiré …’
Why this humble voice, this apologetic expression, this air of being a poor bedridden woman who would have preferred to fend for herself? He opened his eyes, swung his long hairy legs out of the bed, scratched his feet, and put on the priest’s elastic-sided shoes which he used as slippers. (This was an idea of Élise’s. A priest had refused to buy the shoes he had ordered, and the cobbler had sold them off cheap. They were of such good quality!)
They did not use the big lamp at night. At the slightest movement the flame of the night-light flickered and the shadow of the corner of the wardrobe started dancing on the ceiling.
Désiré lit the spirit-stove to heat the feeding-bottle in a saucepan; then, feeling cold in his nightshirt, he put on his overcoat, the only one he possessed, a black one with a velvet collar. He remained standing by the window whose panes were covered with a thin film of frost which was still transparent, and Élise’s gaze said helplessly, silently:
‘Dear God! Poor Désiré!’
Now Désiré was enjoying himself. He scratched at the frost-flowers, just as he used to do when he was a child—this gave his fingernails an extraordinary feeling which was quite unlike any other—and he threw a satisfied glance at the lighted window on the other side of the street, exactly opposite him.
It was probably the only lighted window in the whole district. It was at Torset et Mitouron’s, the wholesale ironmongers, dealers in stoves, pottery, rope and linoleum. Three floors of shops stuffed with merchandise and, on the second floor, in a little room where the buckets and brooms were stored, the night watchman. His window, like all the rest, was fitted with corrugated frosted glass bearing the inscription: ‘Torset et Mitouron’, and now and then Désiré caught sight of a stocky silhouette, a thick moustache, hair cut in a stubble.
‘Come to bed, Désiré. I can give him the bottle.’
Why? It was always he who fed the baby, without the slightest sign of impatience. Didn’t she understand that he liked it, that he liked everything about it, getting up, standing in the cold kitchen, seeing the milk go down in the bottle, carefully counting the drops of medicine, going back to bed, and dropping off to sleep straight away?
At six o’clock, when the alarm-clock went off, the light was still on across the street and his gaze greeted it. He knew that the man was making his coffee in a vessel whose shape Désiré knew only in silhouette.
He lit the fire, swept the room, went down to the entresol to empty the slops and brought up some fresh water. Even if he did not hum himself, the music was in him, a harmonious ebb and flow of thoughts similar to the flux of a calm sea, the gentle movement of a woman’s breasts.
Would he see the night watchman at last? The man came downstairs at eight o’clock: Désiré knew that from seeing the light go out at that time, on the shortest days of the year. He came downstairs just as the employees arrived and threw open the ground-floor shutte
rs. Désiré went downstairs too. But he had never met the night watchman, whom he knew only as a silhouette. Did he go out through the main door? Or before plunging into the town did he slip through a little back door which opened on to another street?
‘Leave it, Désiré. Madame Smet will do it.’
That wasn’t true. Madame Smet would do nothing. It was good of her to keep Élise company. It had been good of Valérie too to suggest her. It had been impossible to refuse. But old Mother Smet, who never took off either her black spangled bonnet or her mittens, and who always remained perched on the edge of her chair, as if she were paying a call, was incapable of doing anything, and she would probably have been found dead of hunger if her two daughters had not looked after her like a child.
She smiled beatifically at her daydreams while Élise fretted, blushed, coughed, and hesitated for a long time before plucking up courage to say in an imploring, apologetic voice:
‘Madame Smet, could you possibly put a little coal on the fire?’
Désiré thought of everything, peeled the potatoes, got the day’s bottles ready, and did everything to the best of his ability, with a sense of satisfaction, even if it was only a matter of wringing out a dishcloth.
‘Don’t you think the baby’s looking pale, Désiré?’
‘You’re just imagining things again.’
But he was a man! Only the day before, Élise had said again to Valérie:
‘You know, poor little Valérie, a man doesn’t feel things as we do. Even if the baby brings up all his milk, he doesn’t worry.’
Because he did what he could, all that he could, and considered that the rest would be given to him into the bargain.
Just now the night watchman on the other side of the street must be getting ready to go downstairs and would already have filled his big meerschaum pipe with the cherrywood stem. In the cold morning air, Valérie and her mother were trotting along, and in a few moments Valérie would leave Madame Smet, like a child being taken to school, outside Cession’s. She had not time to come upstairs, for she had to be at L’Innovation at eight o’clock.
Désiré was ready, his hat on his head. He stood looking vaguely at the trams full of workers and clerks who had got up early in the country or the outlying suburbs and who were wearing the resigned expression of people who have been awakened too early. On Sunday they would dawdle in bed.
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