When the baby was ready in his cradle, he had to be strapped in, as he was every day, while Désiré and Élise took the pram two floors down.
‘Mind the walls …’
They could make as much noise as they liked. The Delobels were on holiday, in a villa at Ostend. Only Madame Cession did not disarm for a moment. She was lying in wait behind the door, dressed in black silk, with gold chains round her neck, ready to rush out if one of the pram wheels happened to scrape against the wall in the semi-darkness.
There was room for it at the end of the passage, under the stairs, where nothing was kept but the dustbins and nobody ever set foot.
‘If you insist on having a pram, you must keep it in your flat.’
Désiré stayed downstairs. Élise went to fetch the baby. The bottles, underneath the mattress, were still warm.
‘She didn’t say anything,’ said Désiré, stepping out and pushing the pram as he often did on Sundays.
You might have thought he was doing it on purpose, and Élise had all the trouble in the world to keep up with him.
It was another Mamelin Sunday, and Désiré had no idea that there were going to be Sundays of a different sort. They went by way of the back-streets. This was a habit of Élise, who always took short cuts along narrow streets and past blind alleys where she invariably felt the need to adjust her suspender.
They had not got far to go. They soon reached the church of Saint-Denis and, behind it, a little old square with a provincial look about it, shaded by chestnut-trees and enlivened by the gay song of a fountain. Every morning the cheese market was held here, and the smell lingered on, spreading far and wide through the nearby streets and growing more insipid as the day wore on.
They were going to see Daigne, or rather Charles as they were in the habit of calling him. Charles Daigne, the sacristan at Saint-Denis, had married Françoise, the eldest of the Mamelin girls; he was the brother of the Daigne who worked at Monnoyeur’s and smelled so bad.
Charles did not smell bad. He smelled of the church, of the monastery. The whole house was impregnated with a sweet smell that was at once cosy and virtuous.
The heavy front door flanked by its two stones was polished like a handsome piece of furniture and adorned with gleaming brass knockers. There was not a stain, not a scratch, not the slightest speck of dirt to be seen, and the façade of the house, as an extra touch of cleanliness, had been painted with oil-paint, in a creamy white which harmonized with the cheesy smell of the square.
Nobody came to open the door. Désiré rang the bell by pulling a brass ring. There was no noise to be heard inside, but a well-oiled catch was released and the right-hand door-panel opened a fraction of an inch. Anybody who had not been told about it would not have noticed it and could have spent hours waiting on the doorstep.
The door was heavy, and opened into a solemn-looking porch with fake-marble walls and blue and white flagstones which were the same as those in the church.
The building belonged to the church council. The vast block in front was occupied by a barrister, Monsieur Douté, the president of this church council.
Désiré had never set eyes on him, nor had Élise. To avoid marking the flagstones with the wheels, they carried the pram in silence, walking on tip-toe, and scarcely daring to look at the flights of stairs on each side, or the doors with their stained-glass window-panes.
Did Monsieur Douté have a wife and children? They never heard anything, and only now and then did they notice a maidservant, silent and dressed all in black, who gave the impression of being a nun in mufti.
What if the baby, being carried along in his pram, started to cry? They did not dare to think of the effect this would produce in this calm, in this absolute silence where not even the smell of cooking could be distinguished.
Finally they reached the second door which separated the porch from the courtyard, a long convent yard, with tiny round paving-stones, polished like pottery. A green gate shut off that part of the yard which was reserved for Monsieur Douté, who had never set foot in it.
Élise was depressed. She was thinking about the odious twenty-eight windows, about the empty hours which were about to elapse, about what she had to do next. Would it be best to speak in the street, when they got back to the Rue Léopold? Or should she wait until they were in the kitchen where the fire would be sure to have gone out?
At the far side of the courtyard there were two smart little white houses, both meticulously clean, that of the church porter at Saint-Denis, Monsieur Collard of the thick moustache, and that of Charles Daigne, the sacristan.
‘Be careful how you shut the door, Désiré.’
For here a voice, an ordinary human voice, became a thunderous din, and the next day Charles received a written remonstrance in an icy style from the barrister.
‘Hush!’
The gravel had crunched under Désiré’s broad soles.
Nowhere else was the air as clear as it was here. Anybody might have thought he was in a world of porcelain.
The other Mamelins, used to the plebeian hurly-burly of the Rue Puits-en-Sock, never ventured here. Only Désiré and Élise came every Sunday to see Françoise who was always dressed in black.
Inside the house, where the air was a blue colour with a hint of purple, the two couples kissed. Charles smelled of incense and mustiness. He was tow-haired, with fair, frizzy curls. He had a gentle sheepish face, slow gestures, and a voice so monotonous that nobody ever waited for the ends of his sentences.
In his house, in his kitchen, in his bedroom, everywhere, it was as if you were still in church, and Élise kept having to call Désiré, who had a loud voice, to order:
‘Careful, Désiré!’
He suspected nothing. He went on blandly living his Sunday-afternoon life, but today Élise’s face was more pointed, she smiled her morose smile more often, and she kept repeating for no apparent reason:
‘Poor little Françoise …’
Françoise had a child too, a girl a year older than Roger. She was expecting another baby.
The windows had little panes as iridescent as soap-bubbles, but you could not see them, hidden as they were by two or three thicknesses of muslin curtains.
‘What are you doing, Désiré? Heavens, Françoise, he’s so free-and-easy…’
‘I’m in my sister’s home, aren’t I?’
He made no bones about opening drawers, about changing around objects frozen in religious immobility.
Everybody would have liked to go and sit in the courtyard, in the sunshine, in front of the white wall, but what if one of the children started crying?
Désiré made himself comfortable, tilting his chair back a little on account of his long legs. At the other end of the courtyard, the barrister’s windows were even more thickly lined with white curtains than Françoise’s. Didn’t a prisoner’s hand ever push them aside, didn’t an ivory-coloured face ever appear behind the window-panes?
The Mamelins had brought along an apple tart. They had it with some coffee, before Vespers and Benediction. Charles went off first, bare-headed, for he had only to cross the street to get to the narrow door of the sacristy. Monsieur Collard followed him, in full-dress uniform, and you always had the impression that his moustache smelled of spirits. People said that he drank.
‘Just imagine, Élise…’
He did it on the sly, and never went into a café, for fear of the church council.
Who was going to look after the children, then? It was Désiré’s turn. He could give a baby the bottle and tie its napkins better than any woman. When the children cried, he beat a drum to send them to sleep.
The two sisters-in-law went off to Benediction. Élise felt the need for something to soothe her heart.
‘If only you knew, Françoise, how nasty Madame Cession is!’
She was frightened now at what she had done. Just as she was leaving the Daignes’, she had caught sight of Désiré smiling blissfully, crossing his legs and lighting his cigarette, and it had struck h
er that it was an act of treachery that she had committed.
They said their prayers unthinkingly, in the shadow of a pillar. They saw Charles, holding a wax taper in one hand, coming and going around the altar, genuflecting every now and then.
Coming out of the church, they were greeted by the vague smell of the cheese and the song of the fountain.
‘But yes, you must stay to supper.’
‘It’s so much trouble for you, Françoise!’
Élise had a congenital fear of causing people trouble. She had never dared to occupy the whole of a chair.
‘I assure you it’s no trouble at all, Élise.’
‘Then let’s go and buy some meat at Tonglet’s. We’ll go shares.’
It was only a few steps away, on the corner of an alley-way where decent people avoided going. In ten years’ time, wherever she might be living, Élise would go on maintaining that only at Tonglet’s was the pig-meat any good, especially the larded liver.
‘A tenth of larded liver.’
They had brought along a china plate. In another shop, quite close, they bought fifty centimes’ worth of chips which they covered with a napkin. The plate was hot to hold, hot and greasy. They walked fast in the fading daylight which was casting a blue glow over the streets.
‘If only you knew, Françoise, how the Rue Léopold gets on my nerves…’
No. She must not say anything … Her sister-in-law murmured:
‘Hush … Careful…’
They had come to the porch, the famous porch which had to be crossed on tip-toe and which they were defiling with the smell of chips.
Désiré had laid the table and ground the coffee. Charles had come home, still surrounded with something of the half-light of Vespers and Benediction. They had supper. A little later, Charles would show them some of his photographs. He was incredibly patient. For a whole fortnight, every morning at six o’clock—the street had to be empty—he had levelled his camera at the General Post Office, near the Passerelle, and he had obtained some unique cloud-effects, greys of wonderful delicacy.
‘Next Sunday, if the weather’s fine …’
For months he had been promising to take a photograph of the whole family. They would have to be able to leave the children naked on a sheepskin.
Nine o’clock.
‘Heavens, Françoise! … As late as that! … And we’re keeping you up … I’ll help you with the washing-up …’
‘But no …’
The baby, in his pram, was warm and sleepy. They covered him up and raised the hood, for fear of the cool night air.
‘See you next Sunday! Come early.’
‘I’ll bring a Savoy cake from Bonmersonne’s.’
‘Careful … Hush …’
The porch.
‘Really, Désiré!’
He had pulled the door shut too sharply. Élise trotted along. She had never managed to keep in step with her giant of a husband who was pushing the pram along with the satisfaction of duty done. Other families were making their way home along the pavements in the same way, and sleepy children were perched on their fathers’ shoulders.
‘You’ve got the key?’
It would be best to wait a little longer. Élise trembled.
‘Listen, Désiré … There’s something I have to tell you … You won’t be too cross with me? …’
She wept as she walked backwards up the stairs, holding one end of the pram. The gas was alight on the entresol. The jet was sputtering.
She took advantage of the fact that they were jammed in the narrow staircase with the unwieldy pram.
‘I’ve taken another flat.’
Désiré had not said anything. Hadn’t he heard? Now they were home again. He struck a match, raised the glass of the lamp, and went over to the stove where there were a few warm, pink embers left.
‘You aren’t cross with me? If you only knew how unbearable Madame Cession is …’
Désiré took off his jacket, put on his priestly slippers, adjusted the wick of the lamp. Obviously upset, he looked around him at the kitchen, at the bedroom, at the night-watchman’s window which was already lighted, at all this which was his, which formed part of him.
‘Are you terribly cross? Remember there isn’t a single place in this district where I can take the baby.’
He did not dare yet to ask to what part of the town, to what unfamiliar setting she was taking them.
She sniffed and blew her nose, taking heart from his silence.
‘First of all, it isn’t any dearer: twenty-five francs a month. There isn’t any water on that floor, but there is on the landing just below, and the landlady will let us leave the pram in the passage.’
So for weeks on end, while he had thought that she was busy wheeling the child round the church of Saint-Denis, she had been pushing the pram all over the town, looking for ‘to let’ notices!
That was why, every evening, she had complained about Madame Cession, or about the noise of the trams which woke Roger up, or about the stairs which were so hard to climb!
Hadn’t he felt anything? Was he pretending not to understand?
‘If only you knew, Valérie, how he clings to his habits! Just the idea of moving …’
It was true. He was a Mamelin, and the Mamelins had never moved house. On his arrival at Liége, even before getting married, Chrétien Mamelin had settled in the Rue Puits-en-Sock and he had never budged since. All his children, except for Guillaume, who had installed himself in Brussels, had stayed in the same district.
‘Why should we be any better off somewhere else?’
Those were Désiré’s words. What could one say in reply?
‘What are we short of here?’
Élise had trotted all over the town, stubborn and secretive, and only Valérie had been admitted to her confidence. For Élise, one district was as good as another. Nothing attached her to any particular street. She was incapable of looking affectionately at a gleam of sunshine on the wallpaper, or the shadow of the big wardrobe on the ceiling.
She had taken a flat the day before in the Rue Pasteur. She had paid a month’s rent in advance. She had even … Yes, she had actually had the nerve to give up the flat in the Rue Léopold. She had told Madame Cession that they were leaving.
‘Good riddance!’ the latter had retorted. ‘We won’t have your pram on the stairs twenty times a day any more.’
‘Are you cross with me?’
He asked simply:
‘Where is it?’
‘In the Rue Pasteur.’
Then, suddenly voluble, she listed the advantages of their new flat.
‘It’s a wide modern street, in a new district, close to the Place du Congrès. The house is brand new and the rooms are bigger than these, with wide windows. The flat is on the second floor, but the stairs aren’t hard to climb and the floor is as white as the table. Yesterday I went and rubbed it down with sand.’
Without his knowing anything about it!
‘What did you do with the baby all that time?’
‘The landlady, who’s terribly nice, helped me to carry the pram upstairs. There isn’t any dust in the district. And you won’t have so far to go …’
He was not listening. He was thinking of the way he would have to go from now on, four times a day. The Rue Pasteur was only five minutes’ walk from the Rue Puits-en-Sock. He would pass in front of the church of Saint-Nicolas. He would go down the narrow Rue des Récollets, which came out right in front of the hat-shop.
He tried on his route as he would have tried on a piece of clothing, paying attention to the smallest details … Yes …
‘All right.’
But then he suddenly thought of the move itself.
‘We’ll have to move everything …’
And he took fright as he looked around him at their few pieces of furniture.
‘By noon tomorrow, it will all be over. I’ve been to see the chair-mender in the Rue Jean-d’Outremeuse who has a handcart. He’s coming
at eight o’clock with a workman he knows, and in three trips they’ll have taken everything.’
In that case, of course … All the same, he was a little sad, possibly a little distressed … Setting off … Leaving something behind …
‘You aren’t cross with me? You see, Désiré, the Rue Léopold has been getting on my nerves so badly that I should fall ill if I stayed here any longer.’
He undressed in silence. She lay down beside him. Only the night-light lit the room into which the glow of the gas-lamps filtered through the curtains.
Élise did not close her eyes. She had won. He had not said anything. He was not cross.
And Valérie had been so frightened! More frightened than herself!
‘You see, Valérie, with men…’
She did not yet add:
‘He’s a Mamelin, and when you’re dealing with the Mamelins, you have to present them with a fait accompli. Otherwise they’d spend the whole of their life in the same place.’
She did not think this quite so clearly as yet. She did not fall asleep straight away, for she was vaguely aware of the importance of this day. Only the day before, when she had gone to see the chair-mender, she had scarcely been able to breathe, and yet it had all been so easy.
‘Are you asleep?’
He said:
‘Yes.’
She would have liked to say thank you, to squeeze the tips of his fingers. But she mustn’t. He would have thought that she was sorry.
He was a man. He was a Mamelin. If you didn’t push him … For instance, at Monsieur Monnoyeur’s, didn’t they take advantage of him? It was Désiré who organized everything and he was paid little more than young Daigne. He did not dare to complain. When Élise spoke to him about asking for a rise, he changed the subject.
He was too attached to his habits. He was always satisfied. He did not want to see that they had just enough for the bare necessities of life.
The bare necessities … Those were the words she had used three days before to her sister Félicie, who had dropped in on her unexpectedly. Félicie had only to dip into the till when she wanted some money. Nobody ever counted. People bought their meat without looking at the scales.
Now that the Cession question had been settled, Élise kept repeating the two words: bare necessities. They took on a definite meaning. They became something like the programme of a new stage to be covered.
Pedigree Page 8
