It mentioned a smell similar to that of garlic, which would be found afterwards in the vomit and evacuations.
Now there existed one dish on which Berthe doted, indeed the principal speciality of La Bastide, which all the regular customers asked for and which appeared on the menu once a week, on Sundays: it was the calamary risotto.
He little suspected, at the time when he had been perfecting the recipe—for he had improved on the recipe he had been given—he little suspected that it would one day be invaluable to him. He was lucky in that, as he had been over the herbs, and in his habit of taking a siesta in the Cabin. Everything had its use in the end. One would have thought that providence . . .
He had to allow three Sundays to pass, for it was not so easy as it might seem to remove a portion of risotto without being spotted.
Using the experience he had acquired with the dog, he measured out a certain quantity of powder, which he mixed with the rice soaked in the sauce. At first, a few bright specks remained. Then, little by little, they became absorbed in the ink of the squid, which provided the base for the sauce.
Emile wanted to be sure that the dish had no smell, or anything suspicious about its appearance. Last of all, it was essential to taste it.
He took only a small mouthful, of course, had the courage not to spit it out again. The rice had no suspicious taste. It remained to be seen whether he would feel sick, and he stretched out in the shade, attentive to the reactions of his stomach.
Did his imagination play some part in it? There was no way of telling for sure. The fact remains that he was seized with fits of nausea. He forced himself not to vomit, and towards five o'clock he resumed his normal work, not without feeling drops of sweat on his brow.
Two or three times, as he passed, he looked at himself in the glass, and there was no doubt that he was pale.
It was February. He had spent almost the entire winter at it, preparing enough powder so that, if it should fail the first time, he should be able to start again.
Now that he had finished with the material items, he occupied his mind with putting the finishing touches to the other details, fixing a date for example, then rehearsing all that he would have to do.
One incident disturbed him for a while, since, by its consequences, it might have altered a great many other things. Not only did Madaine Maubi come to help in the kitchen and with the housework during the season but, during the rest of the year, on Madame Lavaud's day off, it was she who took her place.
She was a fairly large woman, with feet that caused her pain, and when she arrived she changed from her shoes into felt slippers. In summer, she would take off her dress and put on an overall with a small black-and-white check pattern. She carried both slippers and overall in a straw bag of the kind used by housewives in the Midi for doing their market shopping.
Emile had never paid any attention to these details, which were part of the household routine. Two or three times he had had occasion to remark:
'Strange! There are only three tins of sardines left . . .'
Or:
'I thought I had left some sausage in the refrigerator . . .'
One evening, when he was at the bar having a glass of wine with the postman, he had heard Berthe's voice in the kitchen.
'One moment please, Madame Maubi.'
The 'please' had made him prick up his ears and, keeping his gaze fixed absently on the postman, he had listened.
'I should like to have a look in your bag.'
'But, Madame . . .'
She must have suited the action to her words, since Madame Maubi protested:
'You have no right to do this. I forbid you . . .'
Berthe was stronger than she seemed and she had got the better of the charwoman.
'I shall complain to the mayor. You think you can do as you please just because you are the boss here . . .'
'Indeed? . . . And what about this? . . . Will you complain to the mayor of that too?'
The postman, who had not been listening, gave Emile a conspiratorial wink.
'A tin of tunny, a tin of pâté de foie, a lump of butter, a tin of peaches in svrup. I'm the one who'll be complaining to the police . . .'
'You'd do that?'
'I'm entitled to, aren't I? I can tell you, I've been watching you for a long time. I wanted to make quite sure. Are you going to tiy and say you don't get enough to eat in the house?'
'It's not for myself.'
Madame Maubi spoke in a dry voice. She didn't ask to be forgiven, didn't apologize.
'It's for my daughter, who's married a good-for-nothing, and my husband refuses to help because she did it without his consent.'
'It's not my business to feed her either. You can go. Maubi will continue to work for us, but I don't want to see your face in this house again Is that clear?'
'Are you going to tell him?'
'Who?'
'My husband.'
There was a silence. Berthe must be working out that although she could easily replace the woman, a new gardener would cause her much more trouble.
'I shall tell him I no longer need your services.'
'Nothing else?'
'Now go. But first put back what you have stolen.'
They were not to see Madame Maubi again, except in the distance, and if Maubi suspected the truth, he gave no sign of it. He too was attached to La Bastide, where he had already been working before Big Louis arrived.
Emile was relieved, for an upheaval in the household might have upset his plans.
Berthe said nothing to him. It was a matter that was no concern of his.
Next day he heard her telephoning to Cannes, to a domestic agency.
'. . . It doesn't matter . . . Resident or non-resident . . . She doesn't need any special training . . . It's for the heavy work . . .'
Berthe appeared to have decided to take on an extra member of the household, which, with the ever-increasing clientele, was beginning to become essential.
They saw, first of all, the arrival of a Polish woman, as strong as a horse, who eyed the kitchen around her as if to size up an enemy. An hour later, she was already on her knees, scrubbing the tiles with a brush.
She had been given the attic beside Ada's. During the night they could hear her moving about, and Emile knew that Berthe, like himself, was listening. Then the noises stopped. They had heard no footsteps on the stair, no door opening and shutting. Yet next morning the room was empty. In order to ensure that nobody would oppose her departure, the woman had left by the window.
Berthe telephoned again. The agency sent a woman of about thirty, who squinted and appeared to be permanently on the verge of tears.
This was the one they kept, however, for she never stopped working and above all she lowered her eyes in a docile manner whenever Berthe spoke to her.
Little was changed, after all, apart from the fact that the new woman, whose name was Bertha, but they now called her Marie, managed to get up before Ada, without an alarm, and was nearly always the first downstairs. Madame Lavaud made no changes in her habits, contenting herself with an occasional shrug at the uncomely face of the woman imposed upon her as companion.
Easter was approaching. There were two residents and others had booked rooms by post.
It was better for the house to be kept busy, from now on, for it made the time of waiting seem less long. Ada above all was becoming nervous, and if the others noticed nothing, in Emile's eyes she was taking on the appearance of a cat expecting kittens. Sometimes she wandered round in circles, had occasional black-outs.
'What are you thinking about, Ada?'
'Nothing, Madame.'
To cheer her up he would make the signal to her, after lunch. She had a special way of creeping to his side with curious humility. Each time, one might have thought she was silently asking his permission and, when she was in her place, one almost expected to hear her purring with contentment.
Sometimes, increasingly often, a shiver would run tJarough her a
s she lay motionless, her eyes open. Hoping to encourage her, he would say:
'Only two months to go.'
Then, only six weeks, one month.
If Emile had been asked how he proposed to organize his life with her when it was all over, he would have had difficulty in replying. To tell the truth, he did not think about it.
Certainly Ada was part of his plans, since she had been at the origin of what was about to take place. He did not envisage parting with her, and probably she still had the same importance.
At least so he supposed. In reality she existed, and that was all there was to it. She formed part of his life, both of his present life and of his future life, but he did not know in what capacity.
It was rather as if Ada had been superseded. The game was no longer being played on quite the same ground. Or again, at a certain moment, on account of Berthe. Ada had acquired an importance which was not really her own.
Emile sometimes reflected that he would no longer need to go and take his siesta in the Cabin, that Ada would sleep with him in the big walnut bed, that they would go upstairs together, in the afternoon, without hiding from anyone.
It was not, however, these images which he called to the rescue in moments of vacillation. It was in the past that he would delve to find his reasons, and even, more often than not, in the past in which Ada had not yet appeared on the scene.
It was no longer a question of causes, motives, still less of excuses. It was a matter of life and death to be settled between Berthe and himself, and it was urgent for one of them to win.
Who knows what Berthe might not be engineering all on her own? She had not accepted the situation with a light heart. A cold rage must be gripping her from morning to night, and nobody grows used to living with rages of that kind.
She said nothing, made no complaint. She had not even complained to her mother. Out of pride.
And, out of pride as well, she was bound to want it to change, at any cost.
He was suspicious, was careful not to eat just anything that came to hand, which was easier for him than for her. He was in the stronger position. It was he who reigned in the kitchen, and he had had plenty of time to bring his plan to maturity.
Easter was too soon, for there would not be enough disorder around them. Disorder was one of his trump cards. One does not react in the same way on a quiet Sunday as when there are forty guests on the terrace, people drinking at the bar and filling every corner of the house.
He must get through the period of calm, following the holidays, without impatience, must wait for the first flood of tourists.
He sometimes felt tired. It was inevitable. But he was conscious of having achieved what few other human beings have the courage to achieve: ten months, soon eleven months of preparation under the mistrustful eye of Berthe, sleeping each night in her bed, without giving himself away on one single occasion.
Wasn't it only natural to regret that there hadn't been any witnesses?
VIII
WHILE he was at the wheel of his van, threading his way amongst the obstacles and the commotion of the Rue Louis-Blanc, and then, higher up, as he skirted the cemetery wall on his way to Rocheville, yet another wave carried him forward.
He was not posing to himself, not putting on airs. If that had happened to him occasionally during the course of the past few weeks, rather as some people burst into song in the dark, he had rediscovered today, ever since waking up, the same contact with people and things which he had known in his childhood.
On the kitchen doorstep, for example, with his cup of coffee in his hand, he had taken in the scenery, had become one with it, and since then, along the road, at the market, in the harbour, he had not ceased to be an integral part of a fine Sunday.
On his way he looked at the old, reddened stones of Mougins on the hill, a new petrol pump beside which a small girl was playing with a doll, peasants in their Sunday best coming down the road as far as the bus stop.
Everything was linked together, living in an ample and serene rhythm. He turned to the left, and along the pebbly road which led off up the hill, pine trees sprang into the air, here and there allowing a glimpse of the Flat Stone which evoked a warm memory for him.
He did not hurry towards his destiny, and it was without haste, without feverishness that he drew up, singing in snatches, in the silver-coloured van, opposite the kitchen door.
He climbed out. Only four yards separated him from the door. There was nobody on the terrace. He did not expect to see anyone on it at this hour, and he had caught sight of the straw hats of the two residents, Mademoiselle Baes and Madame Delcour, floating along hedge-high in the lane to Pegomas.
As usual the two leaves of the olive-green painted shutters were scarcely ajar, so as to let in just enough light, while at the same time forming a barrier against the heat.
He opened one of them. He almost spoke, said a name, any name, the name of the first person he would see, so accustomed was he to there being someone there, male or female, to help him unload the crates.
For once, the kitchen was empty. It struck him all the more forcibly that the only sign of life, a strange vibrating life, was the lid of an enormous saucepan in which water was boiling.
He went into the dining-room, where the bar was, which occupied almost the whole of the ground floor. He had been expecting to see Berthe there busy writing out the menus, in her corner by the bay window.
There was nobody there, and on one of the tables lay the pale blue jumper he had seen Mademoiselle Baes knitting.
Disconcerted, he strode over to the foot of the stairs, cocked his head to listen.
He couldn't understand it, anyway didn't stop to think. This, in fact, was the only moment of real panic, which had no connection with what had been planned.
It did not occur to him that this was the hour at which, especially on Sundays, La Bastide appeared at its emptiest. A hotel is like a theatre, with its life in the wings on the one hand, and life in the auditorium on the other. On both sides of the curtain a certain time is needed for everything to get into step, and, for instance, when the first spectators came into the half-lit auditorium, an uninitiated person would scarcely be able to believe that a quarter of an hour later all the seats would be filled.
In the wings, too, among the stage-hands bustling about, the actors waiting in their dressing-rooms, a sort of miracle has to take place each night to ensure that everybody is on stage when the curtain goes up.
At La Bastide, everybody had more or less his fixed task. It was possible that Maubi had gone to fetch some vegetables from the kitchen garden, that Eugène, the new waiter hired the week before, was changing and combing his hair before everyone went to his post.
For each one in particular their absence was explicable, but what gave the house an unreal, disquieting atmosphere was the absence of everybody at the same moment.
For a few seconds he genuinely lost his hold on himself.
'Madame Lavaud! . . . Ada!'
He bounded up the stairs, opened the door of the first bedroom, then the second, which was the two Belgian women's. Finally, in the next room, he came across Ada dusting.
'What's happening? What are you doing?'
She could not understand what he was so excited about.
'There was a telephone call from some people in Marseilles to book two rooms. They are on their way and Madame told me . . .'
'Where is she?'
'Isn't she downstairs?'
'And Marie?'
The one with the squint, who was really called Bertha and whom they had rechristened. Not he. His wife, annoyed at a servant having the same Christian name as herself.
'I thought she was in the kitchen.'
He went down, found Marie in her usual place, looking as if she had never moved.
'Where were you?'
'In the toilet.'
It was idiotic. He was annoyed with himself.
'And Maubi?'
'He's gone to get some tomatoes
.'
'Eugène?'
'He must be there . . .'
She didn't say where. There was nobody besides himself who had noticed the momentary void and been affected by it.
'Help me unload the van.'
He was busy carrying the crates when Berthe and Eugène came out of the Cabin, and for a brief moment his sense of unreality returned. Because the Cabin served as his meeting-place with Ada, an association of ideas had just taken place in his mind.
His wife ignored him. Standing in front of the building, she was giving orders to which Eugène was listening attentively.
It was simple. Everything was simple and he had been wrong to allow himself to be thrown off his balance. In fact there had been not one, but two telephone calls from people to say they were coming. Berthe made no mention of them to him, merely announcing later, as she sat down at her table to copy out the menus:
'Seven extra.'
Apart from the couple from Marseilles, a family with three children was on its way from Limoges, and must at that moment have been somewhere on the road between Toulon and Saint-Raphaël.
Berthe had gone to make sure the Cabin was in order for the new guests, bringing sheets and towels, and taking not only Madame Lavaud but Eugène as well to help her make the beds.
Emile finally came back to reality again, annoyed at having been afraid without any reason, regretting it all the more because Berthe appeared to have noticed. There were a thousand nuances in her way of looking at him. At times, as with Emile's mother, it resembled the studied attention of someone with weak eyes trying to read small print. At others, it carried a trace of suspicion.
On some mornings she affected an air of melancholy and dignity, and one might have thought she was ready to trample on her pride so as to forgive him and take up their former life.
Her most common expression was one of loneliness bravely borne, the attitude of a woman who is doing her duty towards, and in spite of, everyone, and bears without complaint the burden of the entire household.
There was resignation, too, and more seldom a touch of indulgence, which irritated Emile even more. On these occasions she seemed to be calling the world to witness:
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