VI
The supervisor repeated for the hundredth time in two weeks that she’d rather not eat at all than to be deprived of coffee after her meals. The woman next to her nodded her head in agreement, and a long discussion commenced on the best way to make water drip through the coffee filter.
The little girl suffering from toothache was folding sheets of paper, her head pressed in a painful manner against her smock. She was thinking about the last visit she’d made to the dentist on the Avenue du Maine. All her stumps were rotten; he’d have to rip them all out, or fill them all. She’d chosen a middle course; she had eight teeth pulled and was trying to treat the others herself. For over a month her jaw had stunk of creosote. Now and then one of her upper molars gave her a sharp twinge that she was just about able to bear by squeezing her cheek between her fingers. She was thinking that the next day she’d have to go back again to that toothpuller, to open her mouth wide, to let him prod all her teeth with the tip of his probe, to let him dig around in the holes, and she began to cry in advance at the idea that once more he’d be stuffing damp cotton into the roots. Moreover, her mother was upsetting her every evening, declaring that she wouldn’t pay for these treatments, so the unfortunate girl was working herself to the bone with the sole aim of getting the decay scrubbed off her gums.
As for Puss-puss, he didn’t suffer with his teeth. He was perched on a bundle of paper and there, rolled into a ball, ears flat, he dozed, half asleep, opening an eye from time to time, keeping watch on the supervisor who, that very morning because of a filched pork chop, had ruffled his fur and called him wicked.
Fat Eugénie, that bulwark of over-ripe flesh, was engrossed in trimming endpapers. She was thinking about how to prepare a slice of veal in sauce without spending more than fifteen sous. Her neighbours, Sidonie and Blanche, were lamenting the fact that bookbinding work broke their fingernails and that they were obliged, on account of the dust, to wear only grey or black dresses.
As for Chaudrut, he was glueing covers and cooking up a new scheme. A bar owner to whom he owed eighteen francs had said to him: ‘If you don’t pay me back I’ll give you a black eye and kick your arse into the bargain.’All his other creditors moreover had decided to deal with him in an equally undignified manner. Fortunately his furniture couldn’t be seized, as it consisted exclusively of an iron bed and a mattress, but given that all the bars were closed to him, as were the cafés, he was being forced to find refuge in a new neighbourhood. But where? That was food for thought. Montrouge, Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Grenelle, he was already barred from. He was considering an assault on the Gros-Caillou quarter.
All this couldn’t help but make him feel uneasy. To add to his problems his mistress was becoming very importunate. She’d invented an abominable system for cadging off him. She’d demand slap-up meals and new dresses, then she’d tousle Chaudrut’s hair and show him her fingers, taunting him with mocking laughter: ‘Hey look, here’s four more deserters,’ adding that a girl would have to be gagging for it to stay with a man who was going bald. The clouts he gave her were losing their effect, his fists had become flabby. In their brawls, he was now getting as much back as he handed out.
As for Ma Teston, she was working without thinking of anything. She was like a well-oiled machine, a mechanical paper-folder paid so much per day. She was happy and what’s more nothing bothered her. Her husband was a childish, simple-minded man, who obeyed her every order without the least complaint. Until dusk fell she’d slave away on sheets of paper with her wooden knife, then return home at seven, prepare the supper, reel off all the workshop gossip to Alexandre, make him read aloud all the accidents and all the crimes recorded in the Petit Journal, wash the dishes, scour the cat’s bowl, mend woollen socks with a darning egg, and then at ten o’clock, without so much as a Hail Mary or an Our Father, get into bed, the sheets of which were worn thin by her sharp bones.
Her husband, who was flatulent, would fart here, there and everywhere, by the chimney, by the chest of drawers…but after twenty years of living together everything is permitted, is it not? Ma Teston no longer even heard the noise; as for him, he found it amusing whenever he trumped so loud it scared the cat, which would run under the furniture, then, laughing to himself, he’d go to bed in his turn, his head enveloped in a nightcap that brandished a pair of peaked horns.
All in all, this woman lived like a pig in clover, and from time to time, when she wasn’t heaping a load of insults over Chaudrut, her bête noire, or when she wasn’t complaining to the supervisor about the price of haricot beans, those vegetables that are so delicious with butter, she’d make a fuss of Céline, her favourite, whose mop of chromium yellow hair captivated her.
This latter was a bit undecided at the moment. Anatole was really a nasty individual! Céline was recalling his admiration for the fat lady at the fair and was starting to find him distinctly unfunny. What’s more, he was running through her savings and she no longer had a dress to put on her back or a scarf to wrap round her frizzy hair. She reflected on the miseries love caused, repeating to herself: ‘I’d prefer not to be loved at all, that wouldn’t cost me a thing!’
She was, in addition, tortured by envy. She happened to meet one of her former workmates at the bindery, Rosine, nicknamed ‘the cow’, a big gawk of a girl with protruding shoulderblades and gap teeth. Hunchbacked and, what’s more, as red as a tomato, she’d nonetheless managed to land a well-off gentleman, and she now had a gold watch and a charm bracelet! They’d chatted in a doorway and Céline had found the slattern’s opulence upsetting. ‘Yes, dear,’ the other girl had said to her, ‘I knock around with men of means now; no slaps and more dosh; there’s nothing to it, you know, you can get as many rich suckers as you want when you know how to bag ’em!’
So that’s the way it was then. After all, hadn’t she been followed by a black-hatted gentleman, and hadn’t that Gamel girl taken as her lover a man who strolled around in snazzy calf-leather boots? It’s true that she was no better than she ought to be, that she was also holding onto Alfred at the same time, a slob of the worst kind, and that she had her gentleman pay for their fine dinners under the pretext that he was her brother. All things considered, perhaps it wasn’t very nice to take a lover for his money, but at the end of the day it was worth it because she really needed fitting out from head to toe, she needed some handkerchiefs and stockings.
She felt a sudden covetous desire for that ideal state where she could drink a glass of wine whenever she felt thirsty, or buy herself some knitted mittens if she fancied them.
She didn’t hide the fact that these love affairs would be tedious at first. Fashionable gents would most certainly cramp her style; she’d often have to hold her tongue, and the good times that she counted on having would definitely be less amusing than the spontaneous drunken bouts she gave herself up to with Anatole, but in any case they couldn’t go on. These binges, it was she who was paying for them, it was only fair that someone else should pay for them now.
Désirée was calmer. She was recalling the previous evening and feeling kindly towards Auguste. He’d been very proper and hadn’t even asked her to let him kiss her. It was even a little naïve on his part. Oh, she’d have refused straightaway, but nevertheless this reserve indicated he was a boy who understood that he was dealing with a decent girl and that he respected her. Besides, what was she risking? Whenever she went out with her sister, Anatole always dragged Colombel along with him, which was tiresome. They’d stand there, facing each other, like two china dogs on a mantelpiece; certainly, she couldn’t ask for anything more than to have a young man who wouldn’t go too far, who’d put up with her caprices and accede to her whims.
Deep down, however, all these reasons she was putting forward counted for nothing. She liked Auguste and that was that. He was friendly, well-mannered with women, and when he came up close to you didn’t have that hot wine breath that other men had; he was clean-shaven and there were neither stains nor holes in his shirt: all
in all, he was a charming young man.
Auguste, too, was recalling, while applying a satin finish to sheets of paper with the press, every last detail of the previous evening: the moments when her skirt brushed against him, the dance of her earrings when she started to laugh, the beautiful curve of her neck which he followed with his eyes till it disappeared into her corset. He’d never find a better girl than Dêsirée, only he understood that he wouldn’t be able to indulge in any liberties with her until authorised by the mayor. So he was in love, but without any chance of success…at least until he could earn enough to put food in the pot and bring babies into the world! But for him, too, all this reasoning was a waste of time. Désirée seemed to him to be more ravishing and more captivating than any other girl. It was no use him saying: ‘I don’t need this, be reasonable my good man, this is stupid.’ He was attached to the girl’s petticoats. Whether he wanted to or not, he had to follow her wherever she went.
He ended up, like all indecisive men, exclaiming: ‘Oh, I give up, for good or ill, come what may!’ Putting on his coat, he followed the crowd of workers who were all leaving in a group; he caught up with Désirée at the doorway and suggested they walk back together.
She accepted. Auguste’s offer suited her all the more because Céline had a rendezvous with Anatole in a café on the Rue Lecourbe, and consequently the sisters would have to part company at the corner of the Boulevard des Invalides.
Auguste had prepared himself for the battle. He’d dressed suitably, wearing his Sunday-best hat, a small bowler the colour of amadou; he’d purchased a cravat with pink stripes and yellow blobs, and he’d decided to buy the young girl a glass of something special in a café along the way. Certainly, she’d appreciate these efforts, and by not taking her to a bar, he’d have the air of a young man who’d been well brought up.
The young girl was a bit intimidated, but she was indeed grateful to him for this attention. At first, she didn’t want to order anything they’d never drunk before, fearing that it might be too expensive, but he made her ask for a glass of Malaga wine. This seemed to him the ne plus ultra of luxury.
It was ‘absinthe hour’. The café was stuffed with people and they were beginning to light the candelabras. Désirée’s eyelids were stinging and she was leaning back awkwardly on the leather bench as her short legs barely touched the floor. Auguste asked for a small stool; she blushed, telling him: ‘No, no, I don’t need one.’ All the same, when she had it under her feet, she reflected that Céline, who was drinking cheap vermouth with Anatole, was certainly not so luxuriously seated, and she savoured the well-being of her comfortably positioned body, and the languorous atmosphere warmed by pipe smoke.
A little dazed, eyes blinking, she was watching a woman who was resting her head on a man’s shoulder. A big girl, she was poking out her tongue and scratching him playfully with her fingers. Every now and then she’d swallow a mouthful of absinthe and roll cigarettes between her nicotine-stained thumbs. Soon, Désirée saw her only through a fog of smoke, she was getting tipsy, though not from drinking. It was so hot and there was such a pervasive smell of alcohol, her brain was wandering. The café exulted and bawled with that abandon of men who get together, away from their wives, in order to amuse themselves. The waiter, hair dishevelled, his worn-out socks scrunched into over-sized slip-ons, teetered trays of glasses on his palms; to the left of Auguste a man lit his pipe and, his eyes raised to the ceiling, blew smoke rings while dusting off scattered bits of tobacco on his trousers; they could hear the shouts of the piquet players: ‘Ten, in clubs! Twenty, in diamonds!’, then there was the irritating clack of dominoes being shuffled; a man seated on a chair was leaning forward, his legs spread wide, and spitting; a soldier of the line, a silver chain attached to the top buttonhole of his greatcoat, was shouting his head off: ‘Alphonse, a beer!’, then there was the clatter of saucers, a dog barking, and the ‘hello!’ of a drinker who, having returned to his stool, had saluted a new arrival with a wave and then immediately stuck his nose in his cards again. Auguste had taken Désirée’s hand and was squeezing it gently. She let him do it, bewildered by the clamour of voices. He was afraid of pinching her fingers with their rings of silver and carnelian. She roused herself. ‘Oh, what dirty paws I’ve got!’ she said, trying to pull her tiny hand away; but Auguste kept hold, contending that she was lying and that it was his own that were dirty. ‘But then, when you work,’ he added, ‘you can’t expect to have fingers like glassine paper,’ and he told her something very curious. He’d gone down the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs recently and he’d seen some leather gloves in the window of a perfumery. The label next to them read: ‘Venetian night gloves.’ They both laughed at the thought that there were women in the world who wore gloves to go to sleep. He added that these gloves seemed as stiff as bits of wood, and she jokily replied that they wouldn’t be very handy for scratching yourself when you had an itch.
On the floor were spent books of matches, the old brands made with playing cards on the cover, and a mess of yellow sand onto which a wet umbrella was dripping. Désirée was wearing new boots with quite high heels and she wanted to go and fold up the umbrella so the young man could see her pretty shoes. He did admire them, in fact he even became a bit risqué, saying he’d really like to be taking those boots off, a remark which earned him two smacks on the head. He invited her to have another glass of Malaga, but she refused. ‘This wine goes straight to your head, I’ve got to be careful.’ Auguste protested that it was as mild as milk, but she persisted in not drinking any more. As he didn’t have much money, he didn’t insist.
In the meantime, some guitar players came in. They twanged mandolins with their fingers and scraped at the red boxes resting against their thighs. They played that unbearable music invented by the Italians, stopping after each piece in order to pass around a hat; Auguste, in a generous mood, gave them three sous. Désirée began to fear her lover was a bit of a spendthrift. He reassured her, claiming that it was the joy of being close to her that was making him do such foolish things, but to himself he thought that it would have been even better to tell her that the musicians looked so poor he didn’t have the heart not to give them anything: women, as long as it’s not one of their own sex who is the object, are always sensitive to acts of altruism. Then they chatted about music. Désirée admitted to him that she adored sentimental songs, those songs that touch a person’s soul, about little birds taking flight, about trees growing and lovers weeping; as for him, he preferred patriotic songs, those that stir you and where it’s a question of the tricolour flag or of Alsace. He knew one called The Child’s Letter, a song so sad it brought tears to your eyes. At any rate, neither of them disliked farces such as I Wouldn’t Dare or I’m from Châlons, which were very amusing, though it goes without saying they weren’t very poetic.
What’s more, Désirée was very familiar with the repertoire of the café-concerts and she confessed to him that on Sunday evenings she often frequented the Gaité dance hall. ‘Oh, you can have a great time at that place!’Alphonse was really funny when singing The Butcher’s Apprentice, and there was a young man with a waxed moustache who even closed his eyes in a swoon when he sang:
Oh, how your memory bewitches me, dear!
Alas, my poor heart can’t chase it away;
Ah, let me, I pray,
Shed one final tee…aaar!
Auguste spoke to her about the Bobino, which he claimed was a better show, but she said she’d never been there because the seats were too expensive; so he offered to take her there whenever she wanted. She refused at first, then accepted. So, he was now officially allowed to court her! He cavorted down the road, but she wouldn’t let him take her all the way to her door. He became bold, stopped Désirée in a dark corner where the streetcleaners stored their brooms, then, after having looked at her voraciously for a few minutes, he squeezed her tight and gave her a peck on the cheek with his dry mouth, and as she was running off, wagging a finger at him, he ran his tongue ov
er his lips, like a cat savouring the smell on its chops of some tasty morsel it’s just eaten.
VII
Désirée spread a towel over the folded shirts and her father sat down brusquely on the suitcase, which still refused to close. It was an old trunk covered in peeling boarskin and fitted with brass locks that were in need of some oil. Then Désirée and Céline threw themselves on the lid of the case, and jumped up and down on it. Vatard fiddled with the latch, turned the key with a grating noise, strapped on the belts and said: ‘That’s settled then girls, you take good care of your mother now; anyway, Ma Teston will come by in the evenings to keep her company; I’ll write to you as soon as I’m safe and sound.’
Suddenly, overcome by an access of emotion, he kissed his daughters. His sister, Mme Cabouat, was dying in Amiens and he was leaving in order to witness her last breath…and her last will and testament. He hadn’t left his corner of Paris for fifteen years and was preparing for this trip as if it were a journey fraught with danger and peril. He kissed his children on the forehead again, caressed his fat Eulalie’s pomaded braids, and, wanting to bring the tender embraces of parting to an end, grabbed his suitcase, hoisted it onto his shoulder and left for the Gare du Nord.
When he had disappeared around a bend in the road, Désirée left the window and gave the floor a cursory sweep. Céline, leaning against the wall, lost her fretful look and suddenly gave vent to her feelings, her loosened tongue working like the paddle of a waterwheel. Yes, she was going to dump Anatole! A replacement had been found, a tall youth, bearded and slim, who was neither handsome nor ugly; he was a distinguished man who dressed in new, immaculately brushed suits and a shiny black stovepipe hat, who had a ring set with a turquoise, and a fob watch. He also sported kidskin boots buttoned at the ankle, and smoked cigars that probably cost at least two sous apiece.
The Vatard Sisters Page 9
