‘Do you think they’ll arrest him?’
He was astonished to discover the thought which had been occupying Élise’s mind. How ridiculous to worry about that boy!
‘It’s dreadful for the parents…’
She felt sorry for them. She fretted over everybody’s troubles, suffered for everybody.
‘They had bled themselves white to have him educated …’
And she looked at the cradle, as if there were a connection between what she was thinking and the sleeping baby, between the latter and the lanky adolescent of the Place Saint-Lambert.
‘Don’t worry your head about that.’
Besides, it was time for him to go; he could hear the door downstairs opening, Madame Smet climbing the stairs. He brushed his moustache against his wife’s forehead, then against his son’s, and frowned again.
Why the devil was she thinking about that boy?
As for himself, he went into life, into this fine new day, as fresh as if he were acting in a play, immaculate from head to foot, without a speck of dust on him, alert in heart and limbs.
‘I wonder, Madame Smet…’
A word was trembling on the tip of Élise’s tongue, and though she held it back now she would end up by uttering it one day, by speaking of Léopold, of the two men lurking in the dark alley-way where she had wanted to adjust her suspender.
While Désiré, with his regular stride, was crossing the Pont des Arches, in the pink and blue light of the morning, Léopold, huddled, fully dressed, in an armchair, opened a sad pair of eyes and gazed straight in front of him at the bed on which a young man was lying curled up under a grey blanket.
It was on the Quai de la Dérivation, in a new district full of little red-brick houses: an extraordinary building, an old farmhouse, dating from the time when the town did not extend that far. There remained a cock and a few hens, and some manure in the farmyard, for a cab-driver kept his horse and cab there. The building had been converted into a number of little warehouses and workshops and, as there was a fine square patch of turf left, it was hired out by the day to the women of the district who came and spread out their washing on it.
To get to the flat where Léopold and Eugénie lived, you had to go up through a ceiling by means of a miller’s ladder, and there was a pulley outside the window.
Eugénie was not there. She came and went. At the moment she was probably working as a cook in some middle-class house, but she would certainly not stay there, for she loved changing.
‘Get up, my boy.’
Léopold’s chin was covered with stubble. His whole body was redolent with the previous night, heavy with drunkenness, heavier still with the thoughts he was turning over in his big head, and he was breathing with difficulty, groaning with every movement, as clumsy and awkward as a fairground bear.
‘Get dressed!’
No affection. Not a glance for the young man who pulled his clothes on, shivering with cold and fear.
In another part of the town, Désiré was walking along, sweeping his hat off to the people he knew.
‘He has such a stylish way of raising his hat!’
His neighbours could tell what time it was without looking at their alarm-clocks. Shopkeepers taking down their shutters knew whether they were early or late; big Désiré went by, swinging his legs along at such a regular pace that you might have thought they had been given the task of measuring the passage of time. He scarcely ever stopped on the way. People and things did not seem to interest him and yet he smiled beatifically. He was sensitive to the quality of the air, to slight changes in temperature, to distant sounds, to moving patches of sunlight. The taste of his morning cigarette varied from day to day and yet they were all cigarettes of the same brand, cork-tipped ‘Louxors’.
He was wearing a jacket with four buttons, closed very high up and reaching a long way down, with no sign of the waist-line, and made of a black or very dark grey material. He had handsome, sparkling brown eyes, a big Cyrano-de-Bergerac nose, and a turned-up moustache; his hair, which was brushed back, and his bald temples gave him a high forehead.
‘A poet’s forehead,’ Élise used to say.
It was she who chose his ties. She was afraid of colours, because they were a sign of vulgarity. What she considered distinguished were mauves, violets, purplish reds and mouse greys, with tiny designs, practically invisible arabesques.
Once the tie had been bought—one every festive occasion—it was hung on a celluloid holder and after that it did not change any more than if it had been cut out of zinc or painted on the starched shirt-front.
Crossing the Pont des Arches, Désiré spotted his cloud, a funny little pink cloud which, for the past three days, had been floating at the same time every morning a little to the left of the spire of Saint-Pholien, as if it had been tied to the weathercock. It was not the same cloud of course, but Désiré pretended that it was the same, his own special cloud, put there just to bid him good day.
It was the hour when, in the Rue Puits-en-Sock, the shopkeepers arranged their window-displays and emptied bucketfuls of water over the pavement to clean it. The alley-way that ran into the street gave out the smell of poverty as you passed, but it was not an unpleasant smell when you had known it since childhood.
It was also the hour when Chrétien Mamelin stood on the threshold of his hat-shop, holding a meerschaum pipe in his hand.
‘Good morning, Father.’
‘Good morning, son.’
They had nothing more to say to one another. Désiré stayed for a moment beside his father, the two of them standing with their backs to the old house, each as tall as the other, and both gazed at the bluish paving-stones, the tram rattling past them, the baker across the street who had come out for a breather, covered in flour and with laughter in his eyes, and the shop-assistant at Gruyelle-Marquant’s who was washing her windows with a chamois leather.
The whole street knew them. They knew that Désiré no longer formed part of the Rue Puits-en-Sock, that he was married, that he worked over in the Rue des Guillemins, but they approved of his coming every morning, winter and summer alike.
‘I’ll go and give Mother a kiss.’
The shop next door was called the Dolls’ Hospital. The window was full of dolls of all sizes. Old Kreutz, who was smoking a German pipe with a porcelain head, was standing on the doorstep, like old Mamelin.
In the morning they behaved like two little boys waiting for each other outside school. Had Désiré gone into the house? Then it was time. Did they wink at each other? In any case, some signal passed between them. There was a definite moment when old Kreutz, locking the door of his shop, walked a few steps and entered the hat-shop.
In the back-shop, among the wooden heads, Chrétien Mamelin took a bottle of Dutch liqueur, a bottle of Kempenaar, out of a cupboard, and solemnly filled two tiny glasses.
Then, and only then, glass in hand, the two old men looked at one another. It was almost a ceremony. They never drank a second glass. They would not drink either wine or spirits during the rest of the day. They looked at one another with a quiet satisfaction, as if they were gauging the distance they had travelled, Mamelin since the time when, in Italy, he used to sleep in barns, learning during the day how to plait straw and trying in vain to make himself understood to the Italians, and old Kreutz, whose French was intelligible only to initiates, since he had left the suburbs of Nürnberg.
Already the irons were getting hot and the hats were waiting. At Kreutz’s the glue was slowly dissolving and the workshop was littered with dolls’ arms and legs.
The baker across the street, wiping his white hands on his apron, came to his door for a moment and stood blinking his eyes again in the sunlight.
On the Quai de la Dérivation, Léopold, sitting opposite the boy while he had his breakfast, giving a start at every noise outside, drank half a jug of gin himself, and nobody could have said what he was thinking.
‘I’m boring you, aren’t I, Madame Smet? When I t
hink that I make you come here every day…’
Désiré pushed open the glazed kitchen door. His mother was alone. He kissed her. She did not kiss him back. She had not kissed anybody since her daughter had died, the daughter whose portrait was enclosed in the gold locket.
For all that it was early in the morning, her hair was sleek and shining, drawn back from her forehead, and she looked as smartly dressed in a cotton apron with a small check pattern as in her Sunday best. Nothing detracted from her serene dignity, neither peeling the vegetables, nor doing the washing-up, nor, on Fridays, cleaning the brasses. Nor was the kitchen, through which so many people passed and where so many children had lived, ever untidy.
Old Papa took advantage of Désiré’s arrival to get up from his armchair and go out into the yard, for his blindness did not prevent him from moving round the house and even round the district, where everybody regarded him as if he were a big friendly dog.
‘It smells good!’ said Désiré, as much because it really did smell good and he liked his food as in order to please his mother.
The soup was already on the stove. It was on the stove every morning before the family got up. The stove had been made specially for the Mamelins in the days when there had been thirteen Mamelin children, thirteen insatiable stomachs, and when nobody had ever opened the door without giving the family war-cry:
‘I’m hungry!’
Hungry at every hour of the day, at ten o’clock in the morning and at four o’clock in the afternoon, with every member of the family, at the beginning of every meal, cutting himself five or six slices of brown bread and stacking them beside his plate.
The cooker had ovens with revolving hot-plates on which you could bake tarts two foot wide.
From morning to night the kettle went on singing, next to the coffee-pot in white enamel with blue flowers, which had been dented near the spout, just like Élise’s, since time immemorial.
‘Do you want a bowl of soup?’
‘No thank you, Mother.’
‘That means yes.’
He had just had a meal of eggs and bacon. With his hat pushed to the back of his head, he none the less did honour first to the soup, then to a piece of cake which had been kept for him from the day before.
His mother did not sit down. She had never been seen sitting at table. She ate standing, while serving the others.
‘What did the doctor say?’
From the sound of her voice, you could tell straight away that it was useless to try lying to her.
‘The milk isn’t rich enough.’
‘Who was right?’
‘She cried all night.’
‘I knew all the time she was sickly. Still…’
This meant:
‘You would go and marry her. So much the worse for you.’
Désiré did not take offence. She was his mother. Now and then he threw a glance at the clock. His time was calculated to a minute. At exactly a quarter to nine he crossed the Pont Neuf, where the pneumatic clock was two minutes slow. At five to nine, he turned the corner of the Boulevard Piercot and the Boulevard d’Avroy, and this enabled him to be at his office in the Rue des Guillemins at two minutes to nine, two minutes before the other employees, so that he could open the door for them.
‘What did you have to eat yesterday?’
Truth to tell, Désiré’s big body liked nothing but well-done meat, chipped potatoes, peas and sugared carrots. His Flemish wife liked nothing but meat soup, red cabbage, pickled herrings, strong cheeses and bacon.
‘Does she even know how to fry chips?’
‘Yes, Mother, she does.’
He did not want to hurt her. And yet he would have liked to tell her that Élise fried chips as well as she did herself.
‘Haven’t you brought your collars?’
He had forgotten them. Every week, all the married boys brought their mother their collars, Sunday cuffs and shirt-fronts, for nobody else knew how to iron. Nor did anybody else know how to make sausages and white pudding, and Christmas cake and New Year waffles.
‘Don’t forget to bring them tomorrow. A bit more soup now, some of your mother’s real soup?’
Some time in the past, the children had scratched away a bit of the multicoloured film covering the glass window-panes. Through the holes you could see parts of the yard and an outside staircase leading to the upper floors. There were some poor people living over the shop, the sort of women you always saw wearing a black shawl, without a hat, carrying a string bag, and with the heels of their shoes worn down.
On the right there was the pump, and when it was used you could hear the noise three houses away. The flagstone was always wet like an ox’s muzzle, with greenish saliva on the stone sides.
There was also a zinc pipe. Now and then something would trickle down, then all of a sudden a jet of foul-smelling dirty water would spurt out, the dirty water of the people upstairs.
Finally there was the cellar. The top of the stone staircase was covered with planks which had been lined with zinc. The result was a heavy panel six foot long which had to be removed every time anybody went down. This panel had been made when the children had been little because they had all ended up by falling into the cellar.
Who had gone down there that morning? Whoever it had been, the panel had been removed, and it was Old Papa whom Désiré saw emerge, steal along the wall, and slip into the passage leading to the street.
His mother had seen him at the same time. She saw everything. She heard everything. She even knew what the people upstairs ate, just by looking at the dirty water coming out of the zinc pipe.
‘Old Papa! … Old Papa! …’
The old man pretended he had not heard. Back bent and arms dangling, he tried to continue on his way, but his daughter caught up with him in the narrow passage.
‘What were you up to in the cellar? Show me your hands …’
She opened, almost by force, the big paws which had handled so much coal in the mines that now they looked like worn-out tools. Naturally, one hand was holding an onion, a huge red onion which Old Papa had been intending to munch like an apple as he walked along.
‘You know perfectly well that the doctor told you not to … Get along with you! … Wait … You’ve forgotten your scarf again …’
And before letting him go she tied a red scarf round his neck.
In the meantime, standing in the kitchen, Désiré was setting his watch by the clock as he did every morning. A little later his brother Lucien would come and do the same thing. Arthur too. The children had left home but they knew that the brass clock in the kitchen was the only one that told the right time.
It would be Désiré’s one day. That had been decided a long time ago, as far back as anybody could remember. There were not many objects of value in the house and they had already been shared out. Cécile, the youngest, whom her mother had taught how to cook and how to bake the famous tart, was to have the stove. Arthur had staked a claim to the brass candlesticks on the bedroom mantelpiece. There remained the clock and the coffee-mill. Lucien would have liked the clock, but Désiré was his senior. Besides, no coffee-mill ground as fine as this one.
‘Are you going?’
‘It’s time.’
‘Well, then…’
She said ‘well, then’ as if they had just had a lengthy conversation.
‘Well, then … If she needs anything …’
She rarely pronounced the name of any of her daughters-in-law, of Élise, of Catherine, Lucien’s wife, of Juliette, Arthur’s wife, even less of Guillaume’s wife who was not really his wife since she had been divorced by her first husband so that they had not been married in church.
A poke at the fire in the stove. Désiré emerged on to the pavement, set his legs striding at their usual pace, and lit his second cigarette of the day.
He had never missed his daily visit to the Rue Puits-en-Sock. Lucien and Arthur had never missed it either. Only Guillaume, the deserter for all that he was the e
ldest of all the children, had made a bad match and had gone and opened an umbrella shop in Brussels.
In the ill-proportioned room overlooking the orchard where the women were spreading out their washing, Léopold, scowling fiercely, contemplated his handiwork, pulled at the painter’s smock he had made young Marette put on, and pushed in the shapeless, paint-spattered felt hat.
‘You’ve got the wallet and the sandwiches?’
When Léopold worked, it was usually as a house-painter, and his sisters turned aside in shame when they caught sight of him in the street, perched on a ladder.
‘The pots … Drink … Go on, drink!’
He made him swallow some gin and the boy looked as if he were going to be sick.
‘Some more!’
He spoke harshly, as if he were threatening the boy.
‘Come along. Shut the door.’
The boy’s teeth were practically chattering. It was the first time he had ventured out since the night of the Grand Bazaar.
Now they were out on the pavement, two house-painters with down-at-heel shoes, filthy smocks, and paint-pots in their hands.
‘Keep your mouth shut.’
There was a policeman at the corner of the Rue Jean-d’Outremeuse.
‘Keep walking.’
The boy would have been quite capable of halting in his tracks and bursting into tears at the sight of a policeman.
‘Keep a tight grip on your bucket.’
A bucket full of dirty water with a big sponge floating in it.
Désiré was walking along too. He was walking along looking at the sky, at the patches of sunshine on the pink bricks. He saw the backs of two painters and passed them without knowing who they were, without looking back at Léopold’s bearded face and the panic-stricken face of the young anarchist.
They followed the same road. All three of them went towards the Guillemins station, crossed the Pont-Neuf, and went past the bishopric just as a chubby canon with a blotchy complexion was ringing the bell at the gate, as he did every morning.
Pedigree Page 6
