‘Aren’t you exaggerating, Hans?’
‘I don’t think so … There, look!’
He stopped her not far from a house where they could see a lighted window on the first floor, a blind made golden by the light inside, the silhouette of a woman. She wasn’t so easy to make out, but you could certainly imagine that she was undressing. Just then, another silhouette, the head of a man, emerged from the depths of the room, where the bed must have been.
‘I’m sure that if Joseph were here …’
‘What would he do?’
‘Nothing. He’d break out in a cold sweat. He’d swallow. His hands would shake, and he’d look in every dark corner, like a dog sniffing dustbins, in the mad hope of coming across a woman delayed on her way home …’
She shivered, and he felt it.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’re scaring me.’
‘Hasn’t Joseph ever scared you?’
‘Not until now. But now I’m not going to be able to look at him … Is it true, Hans, that you’ll never leave here without me?’
‘I think so,’ he said pensively.
‘Aren’t you sure?’
He stopped her under a streetlamp. He looked at her, face slightly wet from the drizzle, which was easing off.
Her eyes were anxious, her features drawn, but there was happiness all the same on her thin face with its sharp nose.
‘Come …’
Her dress was going to be soiled at the bottom, being too long for the muddy streets and especially for the quayside.
They could see the lock in the distance, black on grey, barges with rough white stripes painted on them, empty benches between the trees.
He repeated:
‘Come …’
‘What do you want to do, Hans?’
Then, a moment later:
‘Not here …’
‘Shh!’
She was looking around her with terror. It seemed to her that people were going to emerge from the shadows, that eyes were watching her from behind every tree. And, on top of everything else, something in her underwear was starting to tear.
‘If Joseph could only see us!’ he sneered.
She didn’t cry. She was too scared. But it was the most horrible minute of her life. She felt nothing. She was listening, listening so hard she could hear every drop of water on the foliage of the trees, a dog pulling on a chain in a yard.
‘Hans …’
He let go of her, looked at her with a smile.
‘What?’
‘I don’t understand … You … Watch out!’
They had distinctly heard footsteps. They saw shadowy figures, three of them, coming along the street. The one in the middle was a woman. The other two were recognizable as police officers, because of their caps, and they each held one of the woman’s arms, giving her a shake from time to time.
‘You’re brutes! Brutes!’ she was saying.
‘Pipi …’ Liesbeth murmured.
‘So what?’
‘I don’t know … I’m scared …’
‘Scared of what?’
‘Of everything …’
Perhaps even of the barges, which looked like big beasts crouching in the water, or of the posts of the swing bridge …
Hadn’t Hans mentioned a swing bridge from which his father …
‘Let’s go straight home!’
Moreover, she always felt physically sick when he’d just had his way with her, and it seemed to her that her whole being bore visible traces.
The two policemen and the woman had turned into the first street, which led to the police station. Liesbeth stumbled as she walked.
‘We shouldn’t have done it,’ she said mechanically.
Then she seized hold of his arm again, came to a halt and pointed to a thin thread of light beneath a ground-floor door in the row of unlighted houses.
‘They haven’t gone to bed yet!’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘There’s a light on in the shop!’
‘So what?’
‘They never put the light on in the shop at night. Something’s happened. I have a bad feeling about this …’
He shrugged and drew her after him, lighting another cigarette while she inserted the key in the lock. But the door swung open. Aunt Maria was there, very upright, as pale and grey as her hair.
‘There you are,’ she said in a neutral voice.
Anna was sitting on the stool that was used to reach the upper shelves, and for the first time Hans saw her crying, her eyes big and red, her distorted face making her look ten years older.
Joseph was looking at his cousin with dry eyes, but with an impressive fixity.
As for Liesbeth, she took a few steps forwards and threw an anxious look all around. Receiving no answer to her silent interrogation, she said in an imploring voice:
‘What’s the matter? What’s going on?’
‘Shh!’
Her mother pointed at the ceiling. That meant that her father was asleep and had to be kept out of all this.
‘Mother!’ Liesbeth begged.
Turning her head away, Aunt Maria said:
‘That woman came …’
‘Pipi?’
A nod.
‘She knocked at the door and yelled insults.’
Aunt Maria’s eyes came to rest for a moment on Hans, who was standing with his back up against the counter, looking at the transparent sign for Remy Starch: the blue looked much darker than during the day, because of the shutter behind it.
‘She’s saying now that …’
Maria Krull was finding it difficult to speak. Her lower lip was quivering, and her features had clouded over, making her look more like Anna, who suddenly burst into tears again.
‘She’s saying we’re the ones who …’
She couldn’t stand it any more. The look of pain spread until it convulsed her whole face, and she hid behind her cottonette apron with its small check pattern, which was always so carefully starched.
‘Mother!’
Liesbeth rushed towards her, but her mother shrugged as if to say:
‘Leave me alone! … I can’t stand it any more …’
While Joseph, motionless in his corner, looked down harshly at the grey floor.
6.
Suddenly they all froze, and there was silence. Each remained as he or she was, Aunt Maria with her face half hidden by her apron, Liesbeth anxious and imploring, Joseph with his head bowed and, behind the counter, Anna crying, ridiculous in petticoat and camisole, her hair pinned up.
The last noise had been a sniffle from Aunt Maria, and now there was a void. Hans opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind in time on discovering, near the glass door of the kitchen, what it was that had immobilized them: Cornelius. They hadn’t heard him coming, but there he was, looking at them. Not asking any questions, just looking.
He wasn’t inquisitive, or suspicious, or ironic, or anything else. He was simply there.
And the others didn’t know how to extricate themselves from the gestures that had been frozen when they had realized that he was there. Aunt Maria was embarrassed by her own tears. Liesbeth would have liked to smile. They didn’t even know exactly how long he had been there, in some corner of the dark house!
‘It must have been children … or a drunk,’ Anna suddenly had the presence of mind to say. ‘Don’t cry, mother.’
Cornelius was trying to understand, frowning just a little.
‘Somebody threw a stone at the shutter and broke a windowpane.’
Cornelius slowly looked round until his eyes came to rest on the shop window. The shutter was closed but, against that shutter, the uneven fragments of glass were clearly visible, and there was a distinct draught.
‘We’ll have to call the glazier,’ Cornelius said. ‘Shall we go to bed?’
That was all he said. They all followed him up the stairs, without another word. Aunt Maria was the last up, remai
ning behind to switch off the lights, and they heard her sniffle one last time. In the corridor on the second floor, Liesbeth’s hand brushed Hans’.
In each cell of the house, sleep was long in coming. Drizzle was still falling over the town.
Hans slept late, as was his habit when he had been drinking. He was naked on his bed. The window was open, and the sun was bright on the big trees, with a purer light than the previous days. The air was better, too, with a keener taste.
Eyes closed, limbs stretched, Hans savoured the little waves of air that came in through the window, swelled the curtain in passing and at last slid over his skin.
All the sounds merged together: the din of the lock, the bell of the tram, the noises from downstairs and the hammers of the boat-builder’s. His thoughts merged too. He didn’t so much think them as dream them, and they coalesced around Anna, but an Anna whose face looked strange, almost poetic, in a way that intrigued and attracted him.
Then, without transition, because of a fly that came to rest on his lip, he was up, a sly look in his eye, a bad taste in his mouth. For a long time, he scratched his scalp, while his eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the light and made out the trees, the water of the canal, the stern of a brown barge adorned with brass lettering.
As he took two steps forwards, something grabbed his attention, and the last wisps of sleep faded. His eyes more focused now, he looked down and beyond the central reservation, where two dogs were chasing each other, to the beginning of the lock, where a group of people stood, Pipi in the middle. They were looking towards the Krull house, and Pipi was gesticulating.
All alone in his room, Hans clicked his tongue, which must have meant:
‘Oh, well!’
Followed by a shrug. It wasn’t his fault! He brushed his teeth and dressed, glancing every now and again at the lock, where a boat was rising and the bargees still surrounded Pipi.
Nothing had happened yet, but all the same, Hans, who wasn’t impressionable, felt the need to look at himself in the mirror and keep repeating that it wasn’t his fault.
He heard Liesbeth walk into her room next door. That meant it was about ten, and she was going to make her bed, empty her waste water and do some dusting, while Anna, as soon as her lunch was on the stove, would come and perform the same chores in Hans’ room.
Hans went out and, seeing Liesbeth’s door open, took a couple of steps, without any kind of intention, simply to say good morning to her, perhaps to ask her if her mother had got over the previous night’s upset.
Liesbeth was bent forwards, turning over the mattress on her bed. She gave a start, turned and, against all expectation, put a finger to her lips and gestured to him to go.
Once again, Hans shrugged. Why did he go downstairs noiselessly, without making a single step creak? It wasn’t premeditated. He reached the ground-floor corridor, where it was always cooler than elsewhere and where the floor was covered in large blue tiles. Hearing voices, he recognized his aunt’s.
He didn’t need to see. Anna was sitting in front of the table with its red check oilcloth, peeling vegetables, while Aunt Maria, as always, was standing near the glass door leading into the shop, from which sunlight filtered through the guipure curtain.
‘… didn’t want to say!’
It was the end of a sentence. She was sighing. The characteristic scraping of the knife on the vegetables, doubtless carrots, could be heard.
‘… When people saw one more foreigner in our house …’
Aunt Maria’s head must be bowed, Anna assuming a sad, dignified air.
‘… Especially as he hasn’t done anything to pass unnoticed! On the contrary! … When I think how hard it was for us at the beginning. And even later! During the war … you were too small … your father was mobilized in a railway station on the outskirts of Paris … One day, a drunk I refused to serve a drink got it into his head, on the way out, to use the word “spy”. I thought they were going to break everything, smash the shop window, throw the furniture out into the street, just like they did to the Lipmanns, although the Lipmanns weren’t naturalized …’
Heard through the door, it was like a deep, regular hum. Hans did not move.
‘When the fire broke out at the Rideau yard, there were people who said it was us, because of our name …’
And, in another tone:
‘I’m glad the glazier’s coming.’
She put more coal on the fire, mechanically, thinking of something else.
‘Has Liesbeth said anything to you?’
‘No, Mother. About what?’
‘Nothing … She’s the one who’s most often with him.’
‘Because he runs after her!’ Anna asserted. ‘The sooner he goes, the better it’ll be for every—’
Just as she was about to say ‘—body’, he opened the door and repeated:
‘Everybody! … Good morning, aunt! Good morning, Anna! Have you kept a little coffee for me?’
He took down a cup and poured himself coffee from the pot standing on a corner of the stove.
‘So Pipi’s back, is she?’ he said.
‘She’s out there, by the lock.’
‘So I saw!’
Oh, yes, he had seen! He should have realized that he was in the way, but he didn’t say anything about leaving. He was smiling! He was cheerful! He was enjoying the sun, the quality of the air, the smell of the shop and the sight of the vegetables spread out on the table!
Couldn’t he see that the windowpane being broken in that sinister way was like the first wound to the house? Every time Aunt Maria turned in that direction – which she did constantly – she felt so disturbed that she would pass her hand over her eyes.
‘Where are you going, Hans?’
He had drunk his coffee and was heading towards the quayside.
‘To listen to what she’s saying!’
‘Hans, please don’t do that, I beg you! It’s the best way to get her even more worked up!’
‘All right. I won’t go.’
They were to remember that morning, when there was still nothing but a broken pane of glass, when the air was limpid, when you could see families passing by, off on their holidays.
Nobody was thinking about Sidonie. Even Pipi had probably forgotten, at least partly, that all this was about her, that the start of everything had been another sunny morning when a naked white form had been pulled out of the water.
Today, it was all about the Krulls, and people were looking at their house from a distance, the brown-painted shop, the name in slanted letters: ‘C. Krull’.
From time to time, their neighbour, the carpenter’s wife, appeared in her doorway to make sure that nothing was happening, that there was still nothing but a broken pane of glass.
Nothing happened until midday, except that they saw Potut pass by and take a seat on the bench where he sometimes dozed for hours on end.
On the other hand, no customers came in, and the shop bell remained silent. Out there at the lock and in the harbour, Pipi was turning them away. If they had errands for her to run, she went all the way to Rue Saint-Léonard.
The glazier came at 11.30 and set to work. The son of the Rideaus, a little boy, watched him for a while, until the carpenter’s wife called out:
‘You really should go home, Émile! Don’t stay outside that house!’
Aunt Maria heard. Hans, who was in the kitchen, turned to her, and their eyes met.
He wasn’t laughing now. There was a new solemnity in his eyes.
‘What did Joseph say?’ he asked.
Maria Krull hadn’t expected that. She couldn’t help shuddering and raising her head to the ceiling.
‘He’s busy with his thesis.’
So busy that, when he came down, he had the staring eyes of someone who has overslept. He gave a start as soon as anybody spoke to him.
They ate, each in his or her usual place. From his, Hans could see outside through the half-open door. Aunt Maria was on the same side as him, wh
ich was how they both discovered the new group, while a stew that nobody was enjoying steamed on the table.
Germaine, the plump, short-legged girl now famous in the Saint-Léonard neighbourhood, was sporting the most ridiculous hat, one most calculated to add a touch of the grotesque to her figure: a rimless cherry-red straw cloche, which made her look like a gnome.
What made the resemblance even stronger was her seriousness, her air of self-importance, the way she nodded when she had just said something, as if insisting:
‘That’s right! That’s the way it is.’
And her big eyes, like a doll that hadn’t quite come out right …
There she was, just opposite the house, on the other side of the street, accompanied by two girls and a young man who all worked in the same shoe shop. She was making no attempt to pass unnoticed, or to pretend to be busy with something else. On the contrary! She was gesticulating, pointing at the house, then at one of the upstairs windows, nobody was quite sure why.
Because from the kitchen, they couldn’t hear what she was saying. They could only see. And even then, only Aunt Maria and Hans! They heard their neighbour’s door open and close. The carpenter’s wife, obviously, coming to watch the show.
Unable to resist her curiosity for very long, she crossed the road and questioned Germaine, who solemnly resumed her explanation with a profusion of gestures.
Going to get a pot from the fire, Liesbeth saw the scene and turned anxious eyes, not to her family, but to Hans.
‘Has he replaced the glass?’ asked Cornelius, who had his back to the street.
‘Yes. He just finished.’
‘How much did he charge?’
‘Anna, how much did he charge? You paid him.’
‘I didn’t pay, because he didn’t have the bill. He has to ask his boss.’
Ordinary words, everyday gestures. The stew, followed by the plum compote.
On the quayside, Potut had left his bench and was now standing near Germaine, who was still talking. She was capable of talking for ever, with the same exaggerated solemnity, like a child taking herself seriously, the same categorical gestures, the same defiant glances at the Krull house.
Wasn’t she at least going to go home to eat?
Cornelius lit his pipe, as serene as a saint in his niche. Joseph’s right hand tensed. He stood up and went and planted his tall frame in the doorway. All they could see was his back.
The Krull House Page 8
