Pedigree

by Georges Simenon

  ‘You see, Félicie, Désiré earns just enough to pay for the bare necessities.’

  At Monsieur Monnoyeur’s, three years before, the work had been divided into two sections, fire-insurance on the one hand and the new life-insurance on the other. It was Désiré who had been given the choice.

  He had chosen fire-insurance, as a matter of routine, because it was not much trouble, and it was Caresmel, who was far less intelligent, who had obtained the life-insurance section.

  And now life-insurance paid well. Caresmel made up to two hundred francs commission a month and, when his wife had died, he had been able to send his two daughters to an Ursuline boarding-school.

  ‘All that, Valérie, just to avoid changing his little routine. We Peters, we’d go to the ends of the world to make five francs extra.’

  She fell asleep. At two o’clock, for the last time in the Rue Léopold, Désiré got up to warm the bottle and he addressed a melancholy farewell to the night-watchman whom he would never see.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS the end of March and there was still ice on the duck-pond near the Boulevard d’Avroy; footsteps crackled along the paths of dark box-trees in which pale statues stood gesticulating.

  The town was empty, as dull as a penny postcard; like a postcard too, it seemed all black and white, barely relieved by a sickly pink tint in the west.

  People walked fast. They stopped. They set off again. They felt awkward, though they could not say why, possibly because of the extent of the pavement, of the boulevard, of this empty world, of this silence they were disturbing, and they unconsciously adopted poses as if they were at the photographer’s, the men adjusting their ties, pulling their shirtsleeves out half an inch, strutting along as if posterity were looking at them.

  They said half-heartedly to their children:

  ‘Give your bread to the swans.’

  They slipped crumbling pieces of bread into their woollen gloves or mittens, and stopped them from climbing the green railings or picking up pebbles.

  The swans were not hungry. It was Sunday. As soon as he was dressed in his Sunday best, Désiré was in the habit of tucking his right hand under the lapel of his black overcoat, holding his cigarette between two fingers of his left hand, lifting his bearded chin high in the air, and looking straight ahead, while Élise pushed the pram in which the child was sitting.

  Around the bandstand, which was not being used this particular day, a few people, here and there, had made so bold as to occupy a dozen or so yellow chairs among the thousands of folding chairs over which no attendant had thought of mounting guard. Both men and women wore black, whether they were people of independent means, craftsmen or workers: those who went walking on Sunday along the Boulevard d’Avroy were always dressed like that, with sometimes a mourning band, or a widow’s veil which the wearer lifted in order to blow her nose.

  Françoise’s house, that is to say Charles-the-Sacristan’s house, had been empty that afternoon, at the far end of the courtyard which a cold sun barely touched. Élise and Désiré had pulled the brass ring, plunged through the warm, silent canal of the porch, crossed the courtyard, and found the door locked, without any message, without any note such as Françoise usually left when she went out.

  ‘Your sister’s angry,’ Élise had sighed, turning the pram round with a thrust of her belly.

  Angry because Désiré and his wife had not been to see her for two Sundays in succession. Élise had warned Françoise:

  ‘When the weather’s fine, we ought to take the children out.’

  ‘Charles has his Benediction and his Vespers.’

  He would have them all his life, his Benediction and his Vespers! Was that a reason for never taking out little Loulou, who was as white as chalk? Élise had tried to insinuate as much. Perhaps she had said something about musty bedrooms? This was the result. Where could Françoise have gone? The Daignes didn’t know anybody. In any case, they could have left a note to say: ‘Come and join us here or there.’

  ‘She’s forgotten!’ said Désiré, without really believing it.

  They had pushed the pram along the Boulevard de la Sauvenière and then along the Boulevard d’Avroy, and they had gone round the duck-pond three times. They were not alone. Other families were circling round just as they were, the men solemn and impassive, the women in their Sunday best, turning round to look at a dress or a hat, the children not being allowed to play but forced to keep walking. The sound of footsteps echoed along the boulevard. The air was unnaturally crisp and there was an atmosphere of indefinable melancholy which made Élise want to cry.

  It wasn’t because of Françoise. Certainly not! If Élise went to Françoise’s every Sunday it was for Désiré’s sake. Not once had she failed to pay for her share of meat and chips, and every time she had offered to help with the washing-up.

  It went back further than that. It was something like an inner void which she did not feel on weekdays because of all her work but which on Sunday suddenly became perceptible, as annoying as a question which nobody can answer.

  A little earlier they had crossed the Pont-Neuf for a change, and they had gone along the Rue des Carmes, past the Schroefs’ big house with its door and shutters all closed, a house of such an impressive appearance, built of such immutable freestone, that it was like a monster crushing the street beneath it.

  Élise did not envy her sister. Not for anything in the world would she have married a Hubert Schroefs who had neither heart nor breeding. All the same, that freestone, that door which, during the week, saw the wholesale grocer’s wagons rolling by, those four shop windows with their iron shutters, that loggia on the first floor and those windows with the petrified curtains were an impressive sight. What were they doing inside? How did they spend their Sunday?

  Désiré had been unable to refrain from reminding her:

  ‘They treated you like a maid, less than a maid, because they took advantage of the fact that you were the little sister not to pay you anything. And you slept in the attic!’

  It was true. All the same, she protested.

  ‘Don’t say that, Désiré!’

  How she had wept in the days when they had been engaged and he had taken her home from L’Innovation in the falling dusk!

  ‘They insist on me living with them on the pretext that it isn’t decent for a young girl to live on her own. But it’s really because when the shop-girls have gone home in the evening they need somebody to look after the children … Then it’s Élise here, Élise there, always Élise … The others can go to the theatre … But little sister has to earn her keep…’

  They had been the only ones, absolutely the only ones in the Rue des Carmes when they had passed first the mass of ironwork and glass of the Meat Market and then the proud citadel which Schroefs, a former schoolteacher and the son of a Maeseyck peasant, had built; and yet, when Désiré had opened his mouth, Élise had said, just as if they had been in church:

  ‘Hush!’

  She had not dared to turn round. Perhaps they were in the loggia? They had not seen anything of each other since Élise had married a little clerk without any prospects.

  ‘You’ll understand one day, my girl! You’ll be sorry!’

  Because of that, for other vague reasons, and because it was terribly Sunday, she had tears in her eyes as she walked beside Désiré around the docks, pushing the pram along with her belly.

  Was it because she had already exhausted the pleasure of polishing and dusting her flat in the Rue Pasteur, with its spotless windows and the floor so clean that you could eat off it? Or because she no longer enjoyed pushing the pram along the wide, level pavements towards the Place du Congrès, with the magistrate’s wife waving to her over the plants in her window, as she went by on her way to see Madame Pain, who had a child of the same age as Roger and was married to an important traveller in coffee? Or because, in spite of everything, this winter had already left a feeling of emptiness in her heart?

  Yet they were
on the threshold of a spring which you could feel approaching, and the winter had been so mild that people had scarcely noticed it. And it had been a snug, cosy winter in the two new rooms with the new wallpaper, where everything was clean—just the two of them with the baby, and Valérie for supper on Friday, Valérie whom Désiré used to accompany, teasing her and joking with her, as far as the Pont des Arches which served as a sort of frontier.

  Désiré was always asking:

  ‘What haven’t we got, to make us happy?’

  He held himself erect, smoking his cork-tipped cigarette and looking straight ahead, his long body tilted slightly towards the pram as if to proclaim his solidarity with the baby and Élise.

  Possibly, in the wasteland of this Sunday afternoon, his thoughts went to the Rue Puits-en-Sock, where all the Mamelins, the brothers, the sisters, the brothers-in-law, the daughters-in-law, were going into the yard, into the kitchen, shouting, laughing, cracking a joke, or bellowing a loud ‘Hullo, everybody!’

  ‘Have you seen Désiré?’

  ‘He came this morning after the eleven o’clock Mass.’

  ‘I saw them after dinner going towards the Pont-Neuf.’

  There was no further mention of them. The gas was lit. It was lit earlier here than anywhere else, because of the fake stained glass which kept out the light. Old Papa solemnly filled his pipe from the tobacco jar which Arthur, the practical joker, had filled with horse-hair. Juliette, Arthur’s wife, opened her immaculate tulle blouse and released a white breast which she pushed towards her baby’s greedy mouth, while Catherine, Lucien’s wife, made sure that her baby’s bottle was not too hot.

  ‘Poor Désiré!’

  Arthur sang in a high baritone and played tricks on the others, Lucien calmly smoked his long worker’s pipe, Old Papa listened to them dreamily, and while Chrétien Mamelin stood on the door-step with old Kreutz, Madame Mamelin, cold and grey, cooked the supper, which would be eaten in shifts, the children having theirs first, the parents afterwards. Cécile would watch over the babies as they fell asleep, the tow-headed Kreutz sisters would look in to bid everybody a neighbourly good evening, and the door would go on constantly opening and shutting on other people of the Rue Puits-en-Sock.

  If the weather had been a little less chilly, they would have put some chairs out on the pavement, in spite of the tram which brushed past, but which, on Sunday, went by only every quarter of an hour.

  ‘Shall we go home now?’

  ‘You want me to push the pram?’

  ‘No, Désiré.’

  They could have gone back along the quays, where there was no longer a soul to be seen, but they returned through the town to have the benefit of a little light and warmth. Not that Désiré did not generate enough inner light and warmth for himself. He was smiling. He was walking along as erect as ever. He did not care if the lamps on the bandstand were not alight, if the remaining silhouettes, sitting on the iron chairs scattered around, looked like ghosts waiting for heaven knows what romantic performance; he did not care about the icy moon which could be seen in the sky at the same time as the setting sun.

  He kept on walking. The child, sitting in his pram, fell asleep and his head started nodding.

  ‘Give me the pram.’

  ‘Not in town.’

  They plunged into the Rue du Pont d’Avroy, the liveliest street in the town, and behind all the windows, in a halo of comfortable warmth, they could see people drinking cups of coffee filtered through silver percolators. smooth half-pints of beer, and port in delicate glasses, with a golden biscuit in a saucer beside each glass, while the cloud of cigar smoke thickened, and you could sense the collision of the balls on the green billiard-tables.

  They looked as if they were fleeing and it was Élise, seized with a sort of giddiness, who was walking the faster of the two.

  This procession, this flood of humanity pouring out of a long porch, these people stretching their limbs, still smiling and looking surprised to find a little daylight left outside, were coming out of the Walhalla, the café-concert, and Élise looked over their heads into the auditorium which she could just distinguish, a place of mystery with its hundreds of little red and white lamps, its marble tables, its Chinese lanterns and the muffled sound of the orchestra’s finale.

  The glance which she darted at the impassive Désiré afterwards was not a reproach. Even if he had offered to take her to the Walhalla, she would have refused.

  ‘It’s too dear, Désiré.’

  Hadn’t she spent the whole of her life in mourning? Once, and only once, she had gone to the theatre with Désiré, in the early days of their marriage, right up in the gallery; she had taken off her veil, put some Floramye on her handkerchief, and taken some sweets along.

  He never felt the need to go into a café. He was never thirsty and, when they went into the country, they took sandwiches with them which they ate by the roadside. Hundreds of people were buying waffles and, straight after coming out of the Walhalla, pushing open the glass door of a beer-hall.

  The bridge over the black, icy-looking water; the Boulevard de la Constitution, to shorten the journey home, for Élise’s back was beginning to ache; the tree-trunks; the massive stocky figure of a man on the kerb, obviously a drunkard, a bearded, scowling individual who had opened his overcoat and was urinating with a satisfied air, facing the passers-by.

  ‘Quick, Désiré.’

  She stole anxiously along under the trees, not looking back, and quickening her pace. She would have run if she had dared. She wondered if Désiré had recognized the drunkard.

  ‘He’s following us, isn’t he?’

  They had turned the corner of the Rue de l’Enseignement. The Rue Pasteur was the first on the left. Their house was the first in the Rue Pasteur. They could hear footsteps behind them.

  ‘I think it’s him,’ said Désiré.

  ‘Dear God! Let’s hope he doesn’t try to come in!’

  It was Léopold. The sound of his drunken footsteps echoed along the wall of the church club.

  ‘Do you think he recognized us? Open the door quickly. Help me to carry the pram in.’

  It was a positive rout, and they rushed into the house as if they were being pursued.

  ‘I can hardly stand! Light the gas …’

  He pulled at a little chain hanging from a wrought-iron lantern with coloured panes of glass, and the gas came on automatically. The landlady’s light was on. They took the child out of the pram.

  ‘You take him, Désiré.’

  They went upstairs. Opening the door, they were met by a familiar warmth and a smell unlike that of any other home. The clock was ticking, there were pink embers in the stove, and the table, which Élise had laid before going out, was ready for supper.

  ‘Do you think he saw where we came in?’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  He did not feel anything. He never felt anything, as Élise was always telling Valérie and her sister Félicie. As for her, she felt all too much, she felt so much that it hurt, indeed perhaps she even felt things which did not exist.

  Was that why she remained nervous, irritable, anxious after the encounter with Léopold? The next morning, when Désiré set off for the Rue des Guillemins, she was still very uneasy, and she went shopping earlier than usual, with the baby on one arm and her string bag hanging down her side, hurrying into the butcher’s and the greengrocer’s, and looking behind her as if she were being pursued.

  But when, at ten o’clock, she got back to the Rue Pasteur, Léopold was there, as dark and stocky as ever, standing on the opposite pavement and gazing at the windows of the house.

  She went bravely forward and took out her key, something which called for a whole series of gymnastics on account of the baby, the purse and the shopping-bag.

  ‘Come in, Léopold. Had you already rung the bell?’

  She was afraid that he had rung the bell and the landlady had answered the door. He smelled of alcohol. He muttered a few syllables wh
ich she could not understand. If only he didn’t stumble on the stairs and fall headlong!

  ‘Hold the banisters.’

  He was a heavy man. He crushed the steps under his weight and he still dragged his left leg a little. He looked around him at the neat kitchen, went across to Désiré’s wicker armchair by the stove, and sank into it.

  ‘What’s the matter? Wait a moment while I put the baby in his chair.’

  What was the matter? Nothing. He didn’t understand the question.

  ‘I came along to say hullo.’

  ‘I wonder if I’ve got a drop of something I can offer you.’

  She knew that there was nothing, that the carafe in the sideboard was empty.

  ‘Won’t you have a cup of coffee?’

  She poked the fire, moved the kettle and picked up the coffee-mill. She was still uneasy, she could not help it. It seemed to her that there was some significance in their meeting on the Boulevard de la Constitution.

  ‘Is Eugénie keeping well?’

  ‘Probably. She’s supposed to be in a big country house.’

  ‘Take your coat off.’

  He shook his head. She did not dare to insist. Never, however often he might come and sit down in the kitchen by the stove, would he agree to take off his coat or his bowler hat, which seemed to be inseparable from his bearded face and his bushy eyebrows. Never would he meet Désiré either, or make the slightest reference to him.

  He sat there, heavy and motionless. She did not know how to talk to him and spoke politely as if he were a stranger, and yet these were the two extreme links of the family chain which had come together, the eldest of the Peters and the little thirteenth child who might have been his daughter.

  He watched her coming and going, always on the move, as if she were afraid of suddenly finding herself immobilized in front of him.

  ‘You aren’t too hot like that? You won’t have a little milk in your coffee? A sandwich? There’s a bit of cheese left.’