‘You go out with the boy, my dear. Don’t bother about me. With my old legs …’
Élise sighed:
‘I assure you, Désiré, that if she wanted to, she could. But she doesn’t want to walk. It’s a fad of hers. She’d go a quarter of an hour out of her way just to catch a tram.’
They had been pleased to have Valérie’s mother when Élise had been alone, in bed, with the baby to look after.
Élise listened for the sound of the trams stopping in the Place du Congrès and footsteps in the Rue Pasteur, but all she could hear were the two or three measured steps Monsieur Lorisse took behind his big dog, which needed half the morning to relieve itself.
Then there was the matter of the sweets! Élise thought about it while she was shaking up the mattresses of the beds.
‘Why don’t you go on playing, Roger?’
‘I am playing.’
He wasn’t playing. He was gazing at the wonderful mist of fine golden dust which was coming from the bedroom and which was as it were absorbed slowly, irresistibly by the damp air of the street. When his mother beat the mattresses, it was as if there were thousands of little animals spinning around, coming together and parting again, while there were some feathers which stayed for a long time suspended in space. Just now, there was also the circle on the ceiling, another sort of animal, a luminous, impalpable animal, which trembled in one corner of the ceiling and suddenly rushed across to the other wall when somebody touched the window, for it was just a reflection of the sun.
Because it was the day for Madame Smet and Valérie, there were more saucepans than usual on the stove. Élise had not yet had time to do her hair or put her shoes on. She was busy polishing the washstand with the white marble top, and the pink china jug and basin which together looked like a big flower and were never used for fear they might be broken.
Ting-a-ling …
One ring. It was for downstairs.
Ting-a-ling … Ting-a-ling …
Two rings. Élise rushed to the window and leaned out, bending double.
‘Wait a moment, Léopold, I’ll throw you the key.’
That key which could never be found when anybody came!
‘Where did I put the key, Roger? I bet you’ve been playing with it again. Ah! Here it is.’
She wrapped it in a napkin which she threw out of the window.
‘Mind out, Léopold.’
And there followed a curious sound, a sound which was well known in the Rue Pasteur, at once soft and hard.
What had Léopold come for? He had never dropped in on Élise on a Friday before. He didn’t know that it was Madame Smet’s day. His heavy footsteps on the stairs. She hoped that he wouldn’t be too peculiar, that he wouldn’t smell of gin.
‘Come in, Léopold.’
Ting-a-ling … Ting-a-ling … Ting-a-ling …
She bent over the window-sill again like a puppet in a Punch-and-Judy show.
‘I’m coming, Madame Smet.’
‘Are you expecting somebody?’ Léopold asked suspiciously.
‘No, of course not.’
And as if the whole world knew Valérie’s old mother with her waxy face, she added with a smile:
‘It’s just Madame Smet. Sit down. What have you got there?’
He had an untidily wrapped parcel under his arm, but she had to leave him to go downstairs. He could hear her in the corridor saying:
‘Go up slowly, Madame Smet. Dear God! More sweets! You really shouldn’t!’
Those sweets! Those horrible sweets covered with pink sugar flowers which Madame Smet bought every Friday, heaven knows where, which had probably been out on display and which couldn’t possibly be given to Roger. Élise was obliged to glare warningly at him as soon as the bag was put on the table.
‘Don’t give him any now, Madame Smet. He’s just had his breakfast. Sit down. Do you know my brother Léopold?’
Léopold wanted to go. He didn’t like this and looked as if he thought it had been deliberately arranged.
‘Sit down, please, Léopold. This is Valérie’s mother. You know, Valérie. She was so good to me, they both were, when I had Roger.’
Roger looked at her. Élise opened the parcel.
‘Did you paint that, Léopold?’
She talked and talked, trying to put them both at their ease, so as to prevent them from getting the impression that they were in the way. She did everything at once, poking the fire, grinding Léopold’s coffee, putting up her hair which was falling down, and feeling about with one foot for her shoes which had slipped underneath the bed.
Now she brandished the picture Léopold had brought her. She knew perfectly well why he had come, why he had felt the need to bring something, and why he was staying on in spite of everything, he who was so unsociable, as if he were waiting for absolution.
The day before, because of Madame Smet’s day, Élise had done part of her shopping in the dark while Désiré looked after the child. She had gone to the nearest shop, the pork butcher’s in the Rue de la Province where she never went as a rule, and had come upon Léopold unexpectedly. She had nearly stopped in her tracks but had had the presence of mind to go on, to pretend not to recognize him, although she could have wept for shame. Her brother was standing against the wall of a house, the boarding-house which took anybody in, even bad women. Then the window of the basement kitchen opened a little way, a pool of light invaded the pavement, and Eugénie passed a packet to her husband.
Although Élise had hurried on, Léopold was bound to have recognized her. Now he had brought her a picture.
‘I thought you might like it, my girl.’
‘It’s our parents’ house, isn’t it, Léopold?’
‘It’s the Waterringen, yes.’
‘Look, Madame Smet. This is the house my parents were living in when Léopold was born. How long did you live there, Léopold?’
‘Till I was fourteen.’
‘You were telling me the other day that Mother, who was expecting Félicie, couldn’t manage to get into the carriage.’
Her present was a real canvas stretched on a frame. Léopold had done the picture conscientiously, like a house-painter, spreading the paint carefully, without any shadows or light or perspective, so that the house looked as if it were perched on a big piece of grass and the canal on the right were on the point of collapsing on to it.
‘Excuse me for doing my hair in front of you, Léopold. Madame Smet, make yourself comfortable. Tell us what Father did, Léopold.’
‘He was a dijkmeester.’
‘If you don’t explain, how do you expect people to understand? That means a dike-keeper, Madame Smet. It was his job to flood the fields or to dry them out. That’s right, isn’t it, Léopold? Just imagine, the boats went past higher up than the house. You explain, Léopold. You know all that better than I do.’
She went from one room to the other. She was looking for pins. She was always short of hairpins and she was in the habit of holding them between her lips while she did her hair.
‘Tell us how you used to go to school.’
‘It was a long way, an hour’s walk away. In winter, we used to go on skates with Hubert.’
Élise had never seen the Waterringen, but when Léopold came to see her, she liked him to talk to her about it, and she was even happier, now that she could see from the picture what it had been like. She would have liked Madame Smet to admire it too, but good Madame Smet shook her head at everything she was told.
‘And the time the doctor had to be sent for …’
‘I went on a sledge with Father.’
‘A sledge pulled by a horse, Madame Smet. Go on, Léopold …’
Ting-a-ling … Ting-a-ling …
Straight away, Léopold stood up.
‘Don’t move. I assure you I’m not expecting anybody. You know perfectly well that nobody ever comes to see us.’
Meanwhile Monsieur Lorisse and his dog, walking three yards at a time, had got as far as the Place
du Congrès, where they had to turn round and from which point they could vaguely see the two women in their loggia.
‘I can’t see who it is …’
She had leaned out of the window. She had not recognized the pearl-grey hat or the mastic overcoat. She coughed. The visitor raised his head and she exclaimed in unfeigned surprise:
‘Dear God, it’s Guillaume! But it can’t be!’
Then, all of a sudden, she was bustling about, juggling with things as if she had a dozen hands.
‘Stay, Léopold, do. It’s Guillaume. Dear God!’
All the pins she had dropped were promptly returned to her bent head of hair. Somehow or other she laced up her shoes while looking round the flat, seeing tiny things lying about which nobody else would have noticed.
‘Stay here! Just a minute, Madame Smet …’
It was Guillaume, Désiré’s eldest brother, who had arrived two hours before at the Guillemins station, without any warning, because he wanted to see the Exhibition, and because he had recently bought a mastic overcoat which had just been put on the market.
Coming out of the station, Guillaume could have gone to say hullo to Désiré in his office which was almost opposite. But he never did things like other people. He always had to spring a surprise. And he did not dare to go to the Rue Puits-en-Sock, because of the mastic overcoat on which, as a sign of mourning, he had merely pinned an armlet.
He had decided on Élise. To while away the time, seeing that it was too early, he had gone into a barber’s and he had stayed there half an hour being smartened up, powdered and perfumed. That was Guillaume all over. Downstairs, Élise could be heard saying:
‘Well, I never expected … Isn’t your wife with you? No, of course, she’s got to mind the shop.’
Guillaume owned a shop in Brussels, in the Rue Neuve, right in the centre of the city, a narrow shop selling umbrellas and walking-sticks.
‘Go on upstairs. Won’t Désiré be surprised! You didn’t drop in to see him?’
Just as they were about to come in, they found Léopold already in the doorway, his back bent, his beard black, more bear-like than ever with his eyes which never smiled at anybody and still less at this peculiar character who smelled of the barber’s shop and whose moustache was turned up in two sharp points.
Élise, for her part, smiled at everybody.
‘I don’t think you know my brother Léopold? This is Guillaume, Désiré’s eldest brother. Guillaume has a business in Brussels.’
‘Good-bye, my girl.’
‘Léopold, stay a bit longer, just a little bit longer.’
Léopold did not listen and plunged down the staircase muttering to himself.
It had been the eldest members of the two families who had met for a moment in the Rue Pasteur kitchen, the eldest of the Peters and the eldest of the Mamelins. Élise leant over the banisters.
‘Thank you for the picture, Léopold. I like it a lot, you know! Come back to see me soon.’
She knew that he was not listening, that he had come along looking forward to the surprise he was going to give her and the long time they would spend quietly talking about the house at Neeroeteren. Élise had never seen the picture before but she had often heard about it for he had already refused to give it to Louisa, who would so much have liked to have it, to Marthe, and even to Schroefs who would not have been averse to showing people his in-laws’ house.
She would have liked to accompany her brother to the street door, but she did not dare to leave Guillaume alone with the old woman whom he did not know and whom he greeted with solemn politeness.
‘Madame Smet, Guillaume … The mother of Valérie, my best friend, who helped us so much when I had Roger …’
‘My respects, Madame.’
Just like the theatre! Then, straight away, without realizing that every syllable counted, that his words were being registered for ever, that today he was playing a well-nigh historic part, he went on:
‘Now let’s see my little nephew!’
He had no children and seized upon this one like a toy. The idea had occurred to him, at the station, to give Désiré’s son a present he would never forget.
He obviously did not realize that Roger, sitting on his folding chair, was seeing him from below, as he so often saw his father. Above all, he could not imagine that, freshly shaven, with his moustache waxed and pointed and his cheeks powdered, smelling of lavender and brilliantine, he appeared today as a sort of demon Désiré, a Désiré played by a ham-actor who had turned up the points of his moustache too far, who had put too much bright gold, too much mocking gaiety in the brown pupils of his eyes.
Yet that was how it was. Roger was frightened and attracted at the same time. This was his father with a different accent, with more extravagant gestures, a louder voice, an extraordinary overcoat and an amazing stick with a gold knob, his father with a practically bald pate and more clearly defined features.
Élise got into a panic, opened the sideboard, and hid something under the shawl which she had just thrown round her shoulders.
‘Just a second, Guillaume. You won’t mind if I slip out for a second?’
This uncle from Brussels, the one nobody ever saw, even in the Rue Puits-en-Sock, because he had married a divorced woman and they had not had a church wedding, this was Guillaume, who appeared from nowhere just like the people you saw at the Exhibition coming down in a balloon, who landed in the Rue Pasteur, fresh and dapper, with light-coloured spats over his patent-leather shoes.
‘Take your coat off. I’ll be back in a moment.’
‘Yes, of course. But you aren’t going out for my sake, I hope.’
He was lying. He was pleased with life. He had seen the bottle which she had taken out of the sideboard and which she was going off with under her shawl.
‘You’ll watch the fire, won’t you, Madame Smet?’
She ran out, leaving the door ajar, because she had left her key upstairs, and rushed round to Dupeux’s in the Place du Congrès.
‘Have you got some bitter, Monsieur Dupeux? The best, you know. It’s for my husband’s brother who’s just arrived from Brussels.’
She explained everything, she always had to explain, as if she were in the wrong.
‘Fill the bottle. No, wait a minute, just half, like that, that’s enough. We never drink, you know.’
She returned out of breath, triumphant.
‘Guillaume, you’ll have a glass of bitter, won’t you?’
‘On one condition, and that is that you’ll entrust your son to me till this afternoon. All right?’
He was Mephistophelian.
‘We’ve got great plans, the two of us, haven’t we, sonny? Ssh! Don’t look at your mother. Don’t be afraid of your mother. Have we got great plans or haven’t we?’
Overawed, the child stammered:
‘Yes.’
Élise turned to Madame Smet to appeal for her help, but Guillaume said airily, as if he had known her all his life:
‘Come now, my dear Madame Smet, don’t let me down, don’t take any notice of my sister-in-law’s winks. It’s all agreed, then! Good health! And off I go with Roger. Roger’s mine, let’s say till four o’clock.’
‘Listen, Guillaume …’
‘It’s agreed, isn’t it? Have I or haven’t I come from Brussels just to see my nephew?’
‘Of course, Guillaume. Only let me change him at least.’
And she who had never entrusted her son to anybody, except for a few minutes to Madame Pain, now found herself obliged to give in, because Guillaume insisted and because Madame Smet was there.
What would Désiré say? If only Léopold had stayed! She tried to create a diversion.
‘Look, Guillaume: it’s my parents’ house at Neeroeteren. My father was a dike-keeper. The barges used to go past on a level with the roof of the house. I never saw it, but all my brothers and sisters were born there, except Félicie.’
He stroked his moustache, looking politely, without
listening. It was all one to him.
‘Go and piddle, Roger. You’re going for a walk with your Uncle Guillaume. You’ll be nice, won’t you? You’ll be good?’
Everything was going wrong. Nothing, today, was happening as usual. Weeks, months went by without seeing a living soul and then, all of a sudden, things happened in a rush.
She watched Roger go off with his uncle.
‘You know, Madame Smet, he isn’t used to children. I can tell that he’s got some bee in his bonnet. He is going to buy something for Roger. I only hope it’s something useful! With Guillaume, you can never tell.’
The kitchen seemed so empty without Roger. If Madame Smet had not been there, Élise, without saying anything, would have followed her son at a distance.
They walked along in the dazzling sunshine and Guillaume bent down slightly, without managing to adjust his pace to the child’s, talking to him as he would to an adult.
‘You see, if your mother had come with us, she wouldn’t have let me do what I wanted. I know her. She’s still dressing you like a girl.’
He was ignorant of the rites, for instance that you had to stop in front of the human dummies in black frockcoats who mounted guard outside the dress-shops in the Rue Léopold and handed out prospectuses to children. He did not know that these prospectuses were puzzles, that you had to find the Bulgarian or the huntsman in a jumble of lines. He wondered why his nephew insisted on walking over the grating outside Hosay’s where you could breathe in the hot chocolate air from the basement.
‘Are you tired?’
‘No.’
‘You’d like us to take the tram?’
‘No.’
He went into L’Innovation as if it were an ordinary shop, into L’Innovation where all the shopgirls knew Roger and where on Thursdays—yesterday, for instance—they passed him round like a doll as soon as Monsieur Wilhem’s back was turned. He did not know Valérie. He went past her counter without stopping, and Valérie got into a panic and trotted over to another counter.
‘It must be Désiré’s brother.’
‘What can Élise be doing to let him take the child?’
Guillaume was at home everywhere. Here he was, picking Roger up and standing him on a counter.
Pedigree Page 21
