'My husband is young. Men remain children for a long time. He is infatuated with this girl and it will take time for it to pass. He is not responsible. One day, he will come back, and then he will find me again.'
Today it was another note again, which he knew too, one tinged with irony:
'My poor Emile! You think you are a man, without realizing that you're just a schoolboy, that I can read your thoughts behind your stubborn brow, that I know all . . .'
Madame Know-All! Usually it sent him beside himself with rage. This morning, he had been too disconcerted by the emptiness of the house.
Thank God she would not be looking at him much longer with one of those expression of hers, and he was going to prove that, however superior she might feel to others, she had been mistaken all along the line.
He went up to change, and on the stairs he met poor Ada, who must have been wondering how he was going to do it. Emile's decision having been taken, in fact, on the Sunday of the episode of the cassoulet, when Berthe had been so ill, it wasn't so difficult for Ada, whose eyes met his at that moment, to guess the method he had chosen.
She knew the date which had been fixed. He had begun by counting in months.
'In three months . . .'
'In two months . . .'
Then in weeks.
'In three ... in two weeks . . .'
And he had ended by murmuring soothingly:
'On Sunday!'
He hadn't mentioned the time to her, nor the risotto. Wasn't she something of a witch? At heart, she sometimes frightened him. She seldom spoke a complete sentence and often, when she came to him during the siesta hour, she did not utter a word.
She expressed herself principally with her eyes. People who didn't know her took her at first for a deaf-mute, and when he had seen her in the early days in the pine-wood this had been his first impression as well.
She belonged to a different world, the world of trees and animals, and he suspected her of knowing things which the common run of mortals do not know. He would not have been surprised to learn that she could foretell the future, or that she knew how to cast a spell.
Who knows if she hadn't cast a spell on Berthe, if it were not because of her that, unknown to himself, Emile was acting in the way he was ?
Fortunately he had become drawn, little by little, into the mechanism, into the routine of summer Sundays. From his kitchen, where he cleaned the calamaries with his own hands, so as not to lose any of their ink, he could hear the first cars drawing up. It wouldn't be long now before somebody called out gaily:
'Is Emile there?'
The customers enjoyed calling the landlord by his first name, putting their heads round the kitchen door, and, in the case of the more intimate ones, coming in and handling the fish.
'Well Emile, what's good today?'
It was worse for the ones who came with friends who didn't yet know the place. The latter used to try and show they felt at home.
'Come and have a glass of rosé with us, Emile. Come on!'
He would wipe his hands on a cloth, slip round behind the bar. It was all part of the job.
He had to make three trips that morning, gaining a brief respite from the heat of the oven.
Six customers, out of the ordinary run, arrived early, young people from Grasse on their way to Cannes for a football match, who had decided to have something to eat on the road. They had been misdirected and, dressed in their Sunday clothes, they were trying to affect an air of self-assurance, aware at the same time that they had come to the wrong hotel.
Seeing the menu and the prices, they had almost gone away. Then they had held a whispered council and had ended by ordering some bouillabaisse and vin rosé.
They were on their third bottle and were talking and laughing loudly, determined to have their money's worth.
The two Belgian women were at their usual table, while the family from Limoges, after a look round the Cabin, had installed themselves on the terrace. Emile had slipped a little packet into his pocket, which he had only to open at the right moment.
He knew the motions he had to go through. It was now a purely mechanical affair. The moment for reflection was past, let alone the moment for hesitation.
The empty packet would burn in a second in the flames of the range and there would be no trace left.
There would be three of them permanently in the kitchen, for a good hour more, Madame Lavaud, Marie and himself. Ada and Eugène were waiting at the tables. Maubi was dealing with the wine, sometimes outside, sometimes in the cellar.
Once or twice, before finally sitting down, Berthe would come in to glance, without saying a word. The best thing was not to look in her direction.
In any case, it was too late.
'Three bouillabaisses. Three!'
Maubi had just passed through the kitchen to go down to the cellar, and it was then, as Emile was serving out the portions on to the dishes, that a thought struck him, so simple, so obvious, that he wondered how it had not occurred to him during the previous eleven months.
Madame Harnaud!
He had foreseen everything, except her. In his mind's eye he had placed her in Luçon with her sister and her niece, as though she were destined to remain there eternally.
Now this was wrong. He knew her well enough. Berthe had not been alone in buying Emile. The mother had taken part in the transaction and perhaps, even, she was the one who first had the idea.
Already, when he was in Vichy and it had been suggested that he should go . . . Big Louis had written the letter, certainly, but hadn't his wife prompted it?
She knew her husband was ill. They were going to be alone, two women, in this Bastide with the fittings not yet finished and the clientele non-existent . . .
Emile remembered Madame Harnaud's discreet way of going upstairs, each evening, after the death of Big Louis, so as to leave him alone with her daughter.
What hope was there that this woman, once her daughter was dead, would stay on in Luçon without coming to defend what remained partly her property?
She would come running, no doubt about it. For the moment, she trusted Berthe to keep an eye on Emile. With Berthe gone, she would be forced to take on the task herself.
All this imprinted itself in his mind in the space of a few seconds. His forehead was bathed in sweat, because of the heat from the range, but it seemed unhealthy to him now, like the sweat when one has a fever.
With Berthe, there existed a kind of pact, and he no longer needed to hide from her to make Ada come to the Cabin.
His mother-in-law, on the other hand, was not in the pact and he had deluded himself in imagining that he could simply bring Ada down one floor and put her in his bed.
He had already found the solution. It didn't frighten him. If he had accepted it once, there was no reason why he should not accept it a second time.
It simply postponed the moment of his liberation. He would have to wait years, two or three perhaps, at all events many long months.
He knew by heart the sentence he had read in Dr. Chouard's consulting-room, and the words came back to his memory:
'The difficulty of making a precise diagnosis explains the frequency of successive acts of poisoning by the same individual, who can trust that he will not be brought to account until the day when the recurrence and similarity of the episodes provide a clue for the diagnosis.'
He must not worry about it at this moment. The other business would be dealt with in its own good time. At all events, since he possessed the solution, he would take both time and all the necessary precautions.
Ada was coming in and going out, bringing in empty plates, carrying others away. From time to time, through the door of the kitchen, the shutters of which had been opened wider since the sun had moved round, he went to glance out onto the terrace to see what point the customers had reached.
He saw Berthe sitting in her place, the new waiter, Eugène, going over to her, being waylaid before he got there by a customer aski
ng for a little more of the sauce of the bouillabaisse. Thus it was Ada who had to take his wife's order.
It was of no importance. Eugène would have done it just as well, since it was only a question of carrying a dish.
Before Ada came back, he took advantage of the fact that Marie was looking the other way and Madame Lavaud was in the scullery to pour the powder on to the plate of risotto and to burn the paper. It was done as quickly, as smoothly as a conjuring trick.
He was almost certain that Berthe had not ordered any hors d'oeuvre. She seldom had it on Sundays, both so as to save time, for she had to be finished before the customers in order to make up their bills, and because she liked lots of the calamaries.
They did not take her a dish, but, to simplify matters, just her helping on a heated plate.
'Risotto?' he asked Ada, who seemed all of a sudden to have turned a more lifeless colour.
She nodded.
'For Madame?'
He had avoided saying 'my wife' ever since the word had lost its meaning.
What was passing through his head at that precise moment was not exactly what could be called a thought. It did not reflect a decision, nor even a desire. It was more like the snatches of a foreign language one picks up at random when one turns the tuning-knob of the wireless, coming from a distant station which one cannot find again afterwards.
Why shouldn't there be images in the air, too, ideas, or scraps of ideas which come from God knows where and which we pick up for the space of a second without knowing what they refer to?
While Ada was turning round, plate in hand, to go back to the terrace, he had just seen her as she would be at thirty-five or forty years old, perhaps fifty, a sort of dark-skinned witch who would frighten children away.
'. . . the frequency of successive acts of poisoning . . .'
He had said nothing, had thought of nothing. Scarcely an image, springing from nowhere for an instant, which he had straight away-dismissed. He had other matters on his mind. He was not living in the future, but in the present.
It was no longer merely the day or the hour. It was the minute. He arranged a dish of bouillabaisse fish for three, added, as an afterthought, a little hog-fish, handed the dish to Eugène who was waiting.
He wondered whether it had been a mistake, a few minutes earlier, to go on to the terrace to see what Berthe was doing. Had she noticed it?
He mopped his brow, not with the cloth, but with his white apron. Ada would be back with another order. A minute. A few seconds.
She did not come back. It was Eugène who had had time to return.
'Two risottos.'
'Who for?'
'The Belgian women.'
He served them, and immediately afterwards felt an urge to light a cigarette. His hand was barely trembling, but it was trembling. The servant with the squint was coming and going as if nothing were happening. Madame Lavaud was sitting in the shade, with some peas in her lap.
He had to go and see. Maubi passed behind his back, with a load of bottles. As soon as he had seen, Emile would pour himself out a drink, as his throat was dry.
He had only four steps to take, he counted them, then raised his head. Berthe's table was the last on the left, by the bay window of the dining-room where there was nobody else, for in summer all the customers preferred the terrace.
He had his cap on his head, his cloth in his hand.
Suddenly, despite the sun, the colours, the movement, the commotion, the gesticulations of different people amongst themselves, the laughs and the raised voices, it was Berthe's eyes on his that he found.
The gaze was fixed on him, calm and hard, devoid for once of irony, and one might have thought his wife knew Emile was about to appear, and at what precise point, that she had prepared that look in advance to receive him.
He did not know what had happened, nor what was happening, but he was already sure that it was Berthe who had won. Doubt became impossible when, opposite her, at the same table, with her back to the kitchen, he recognised the head of Ada, her shoulders, Ada who was at this moment eating the poisoned risotto.
'Two lamb cutlets! Two!'
He preferred to see only her back, not to be obliged to look at her face. He imagined Berthe's voice.
'Sit down.'
Ada, standing, not knowing what to do, not daring to protest.
The plate pushed towards her across the table.
'Eat!'
She was eating. The plate was already almost empty. Emile went back into the kitchen to put the cutlets on the grill. The flames, which had burned the paper packet a little while before, made the meat sizzle, and brought pearls of blood to its surface.
'. . . the symptoms develop an hour or two after ingestion of the poison . . .'
'. . . painful vomiting, at first alimentary, then consisting of bile and blood, is followed by colic; abundant serous diarrhoea, in rice-water particles; violent thirst; constriction of. . .'
At all events, it was too late. Berthe had just told him so, without having to move her lips, with nothing but a look.
He was not allowed to intervene. That would have meant . . .
'Three meringues glacées! Three!'
He took the ice from the refrigerator, remained for a moment with his face exposed to the cold air.
'Two coffees!' said a voice behind him, which riveted him to the spot.
It was Ada. She was waiting for the two coffees. She was looking at him as the big yellowish dog must have looked at its master.
Did she expect something from him? He could do nothing for her. She belonged to the past.
He avoided her eyes, went on with his work, filled the dishes and put them on their trays.
He heard Eugène's voice in the dining-room.
'The bill for number 12.'
That meant that Berthe had taken her place beside the window and had begun totting up the figures.
'. . . the symptoms develop an hour or two after ingestion of the poison . . .'
It was better not to be there. Even if he took his siesta in the Cabin, there would be somebody to call him. He was not sure of being able to keep his head. Already he was no longer capable of looking Ada in the eye, as she came and went silently, her face devoid of expression.
He sought for a plausible reason to leave as soon as all the customers had been served. He could find none. He lacked lucidity.
Then, there was Berthe standing in the doorway. There were three witnesses: Madame Lavaud, Marie and Maubi, who was pouring himself out a drink.
'You haven't forgotten the football match?' Berthe was saying, in a natural voice.
He stammered:
'Just a moment . . .'
Madame Lavaud and Marie were capable of pouring out the coffees and putting the meringues on the plates.
Berthe was right. It was high time to leave for Cannes and to mingle with the crowd attending the football match.
She would see to everything. It was better that way. When he came back, it would all be over.
There wouldn't be so very much changed, either, since they had never stopped sleeping in the same bedroom.
He went up there to put on a white shirt, a pair of light trousers, and to run a wet comb through his hair.
He left by the back way, to avoid Ada, started the van up with such haste that he was already half-way down the hill before he noticed that he had not released the hand-brake.
Noland, 3 July, 1958
Sunday Page 13
