The Vatard Sisters (26 page)
One Friday, he repeated to himself: ‘Come on, let’s think about this and try once and for all to come to a decision. It’s Saturday tomorrow, pay day; Désirée will surely come to collect the money she earned during the first few days of the week; be brave, take the plunge before you see her again.’ And that evening he laid siege to Irma and proposed to her. After hesitating a bit for the sake of propriety, the girl took his hand and amid mouthfuls of roasted chestnuts and bumpers of white wine they exchanged a resounding engagement kiss.
When he left, he felt an enormous weight had been lifted from his chest. There was no going back now, it was done. His mother, who’d known Irma since birth, cried for joy when she learned the good news. Auguste was almost surprised himself at not having married this girl sooner, and his love for Désirée now seemed childish and meaningless.
The next morning, when he went into the workshop, there was the usual hubbub of days when they dished out the pay; one woman, standing a little stooped, her hands on the work bench, was proposing they place a little bowl next to the boss’s office into which each worker could put a franc or a few sous to help the brother of one of them who’d fallen off some scaffolding and dislocated his arm. All the women in the bindery agreed. Neither Désirée nor Céline was there. The supervisor was noting down each girl’s work for the week in a huge ledger. The men, sprawled across the work tables, were absorbed in their calculations; Ma Teston, looking very pale and upset, blurted out: ‘I’ve just come from Vatard’s place, the poor dear woman bore the operation very well. She said: “Ouf!” that was all.’
‘She’s never talked so much in her whole life,’ joked Chaudrut. But this remark didn’t go down well, Ma Teston exclaimed that you’d have to be heartless to laugh at someone else’s misfortune like that. All the women agreed and their indignant grumbles reached Chaudrut at his seat.
The supervisor’s voice dominated over all the others as she shouted: ‘Come on, a bit of quiet! I’m totting up the ribbons, let’s see. Félicité, how many?’
‘Folded, forty. Sewed, fifty.’
The supervisor said it came to so much.
Félicité reckoned it was five centimes more. Everyone buckled down to adding up, hoping to find the supervisor in the wrong.
All during this time, the men, sitting long-faced, couldn’t nip out for a drink. The wine merchant’s wife, a fat busybody, was lying in ambush at the corner of the courtyard, waiting to grab them as they passed after they’d pocketed their pay and extract a down payment on the money they owed her.
But it was almost always a waste of effort. So the fat woman would make her way to the boss’s office, who just as regularly threw her out, replying to all her threats and complaints: ‘Too bad for you, you shouldn’t have given them credit.’ And she’d leave, furious, and arguments would erupt in the courtyard, especially when Chaudrut came out.
Every Saturday the boss threatened to fire him if these scenes didn’t stop. Thanks to this freebooter he couldn’t go into a bar without immediately incurring a hail of protests and without them begging him to force Chaudrut to pay the debts he’d accumulated on cassis and absinthe.
To avoid all these disputes he was obliged to buy his tobacco and cigars in another quarter.
What’s more, Chaudrut would invariably make the same excuses: ‘It’s my woman, she’s bleeding me dry, I’m a poor old man, I don’t have any willpower, I know it; but as soon as my affairs are in order, I’ll do my best to repay everyone.’
Out of the goodness of his heart, or out of weakness, the boss pretended to believe him, but of course these affairs were never sorted out. Chaudrut was, moreover, at liberty to leave them that way since his pay couldn’t be docked as he worked piece-rate and didn’t get a fixed salary.
Meanwhile, the supervisor was drawing up her columns of figures; a woman rushed into the workshop shouting: ‘There’s a very nice wedding at the end of the road! The patissier’s daughter is getting married! Oh, it’s true alright, everyone’s there!’
Some men who were loafing around added that they were giving away cake to anyone who passed by. A great clamour erupted in the workshop. On the pretext of going to the toilet or to the waterpump, a whole platoon of girls rushed outside. They arrived panting in front of the cake shop, the doors of which were open. Some well-dressed ladies were delicately sipping their mochas and eating tarts from a saucer, their little fingers pointing in the air. The mistress of the establishment stood there astonished at this invasion of stupidly giggling slatterns, and she asked them what they wanted. They admitted that they’d come to taste the cake. She immediately showed them the door. So then the whole troop turned tail, plunged into the street in disarray, shrieking, shoving each other with their fists, running in front of cabs, barging passers-by into bar windows, leaping wildly along the pavement, almost sliding under horses’ hooves in the mud, pursued by jeering street urchins and dogs yapping at their heels; they re-entered the workshop like a gust of wind, shouting that someone had played a trick on them, emptying a pack of insults over the bride, calling her ‘Sophie the Phoney’, ‘Pick-me-up Virginia’, ‘the Virgin of the Rue Mouf-mouf’. The mayhem was such that the supervisor had to resort to desperate measures: she tallied up the accounts of the most unruly and fired them on the spot.
The men creased up during these recriminations, finding the joke they’d played highly amusing. The foreman let them have their fun; that way he was hoping to avoid the incessant arguments that cropped up between them every Saturday.
It so happened that several of them worked together assembling the same books; some would pass the sheets, and others would fold them or put them in piles; so they’d created a group account, marking down a general figure for the work produced during the week, and then dividing up the money, with much quibbling and endless recriminations, that was paid in a lump sum by the boss.
The excitement caused by the departure of the women who’d been kicked out had still not calmed down when Céline arrived. She’d come to pick up her money and that of her sister. The others gathered round her and she confirmed the details given by Ma Teston, announcing that her mother was doing better, that Désirée and she would come back on Monday, and since she was in a hurry to get back to her father’s she looked for the little account books they had as workers paid by the hour and handed them to the supervisor, who verified them and marked them with a cross; then, crossing the assembly room, she asked Auguste to come down to the embankment the next morning, that she’d be there with her sister, and that they had some serious matters to discuss.
Auguste accepted, but showed so little enthusiasm that Céline’s suspicions were confirmed.
During the two or three days in which they hadn’t stirred from the house, the two girls had inevitably talked about their love affairs. Céline, disconcerted by Désirée’s inexplicable apathy, wanted her to shed some light on her feelings for Auguste. She found a coldness, an embarrassment in Désirée that stupefied her. The younger girl made no reply, couldn’t even really explain to herself the indifference she now felt for him. Vatard, for his part, was upset by how downcast his favourite looked. Céline’s words, ‘that it wasn’t worth sending for a doctor, that Désirée simply needed a husband,’ had struck home. He would no longer hesitate to grant her whatever permission she wanted now. He was only searching for a way to get rid of Auguste, to marry off his daughter if possible to another young man he had in mind, Amédée Guibout, a nephew of Tabuche’s, a young foreman earning good wages. Moreover, Désirée knew him well, they’d seen each other around for years and even though Vatard admired him and found him likeable, it had never occurred to him before that they might marry each other.
Vatard had revealed his plan to Céline, who now detested Auguste. Ever since finding out that one evening he’d dared to cast aspersions on Désirée, she considered him the lowest of men. And yet Anatole had said much worse to her. But she no longer thought about this and reserved her indignation for the man who’d had the temerity to insult her sister. She gladly volunteered to test the ground. The kind of heartache she saw in Désirée gave her hope of success. She resolved to proceed openly and one day when seated by the fire, as they kept watch over the belly of their sick mother, she said simply: ‘If you’re that fond of Auguste, marry him; Papa will agree to it, but think it over properly before doing anything so stupid.’A blush sprang to her sister’s cheeks when she learned that she was free to marry Auguste, but she didn’t cry for joy as Céline was fearing, she hung her head and listened as her sister continued: ‘After all, you’ve probably been the least stupid of the two of us. You wanted to get married, but not to live in poverty; you’ve got ambition, you’re doing well. I don’t know why you’d want to fly the nest now and give yourself to a good-for-nothing worker, to someone who can’t do anything. Why, I ask you? He wouldn’t even be able to feed you. Hell, you deserve a foreman at least! There are plenty of young men who are as reliable and as handsome as Auguste…look at Tabuche’s nephew for example. He’s a fine lad and he’d make a far better husband than Auguste. With him, you’d be a proper lady on Sundays; you’d have a bedroom like you’ve always dreamed of, and a dog, since you like them so much; you shouldn’t consign yourself to poverty… if you wanted to, you could be the smartest, best-dressed girl in the workshop.’ Désirée didn’t reply. She was thinking. Her sister had happened to touch on desires that, after having been suppressed, were suddenly reawakening more vividly than ever, now that she glimpsed a means of satisfying them. Her vision, her ideal – of a bedroom with a mirror and a coloured engraving on the wall, a husband she could boss around, a favourable financial situation, and the right to no longer have to get up so early in the morning or work so late in the evening at the workshop – was now being sketched out clearly before her. Yet she still couldn’t think of Auguste without a certain regret. They’d been friends for so many months. And besides, this would perhaps make him very sad. It’s hard to confess to someone that you no longer love them at the very moment when you could make them most happy. But the once longed-for permission to marry him had come too late; it was therefore natural that, in her present state of mind, she felt herself drifting further away from Auguste. The difficulties that had bolstered her waning affection for so long having been removed, whatever remained of her love was now running away like water under a raised sluice-gate.
Seeing her so sad and uncertain like this, Céline sought to land a knock-out blow on her weak spot. She said to her: ‘Come now, am I wrong? How could you afford to bring up the children you’d have with Auguste? Tell me how you’d manage it. He barely earns enough for himself, and he also has his mother to support. To get a bit of food on your plate you’ll have to sweat for it at work. And you’re not exactly strong. You’d kill yourself working like that. I spoke to you just now about Amédée, well, Papa would be delighted…and Amédée would be too, he likes you, everyone knows that. Ah, you’re a fine, well-matched couple you two. Hey, he’s supposed to be coming round this evening. Go and kiss him! If you’re worried about falling out with Auguste, I’ll take care of it. He doesn’t need to know, at any event, that father would have accepted him in the absence of anyone else. Besides, I think he has his flings on the side, Chaudrut swears to it, so he’ll just have to put up with being dumped. After all, he won’t be the first man it’s happened to.’
But Désirée declared that if she was going to break with him, she didn’t want to do it in a shabby way. She preferred to tell him to his face. So Céline, who was impatient to put an end to the matter, exclaimed: ‘Look, I’m going to go to the workshop to collect our money, I’ll ask Auguste to come to the embankment tomorrow. We’ll go together and it’ll be sorted out in an instant.’ And she hurried off so as not to give her sister time to change her mind.
Vatard, who was lying in wait, threw his arms round his younger daughter and began praising Amédée, saying that she’d be as happy as a queen with him and that their marriage would be a consolation for all the troubles he’d had in his life. They kissed each other affectionately. Désirée spoke very sagely about her new lover. Now that this young man wanted her for a wife, she discerned a thousand things about him that she’d never noticed before when he was only a good friend. He was handsome, fair-haired, athletic, and he liked to laugh. She wasn’t in love with him, but that would surely come. She already wasn’t that crazy about Auguste, so what would it have been like after several months living together? And what’s more, there was no use denying it, marrying him would have plunged her into poverty. Céline and her father were right. Moreover, she had said the same thing to herself many times, but for a while she’d lost her head and her dreams of blissful prosperity had deserted her. Now that she was no longer blind as before, she realised perfectly well that, deep down, Auguste was not at all the man she needed.
As for Vatard, he was dancing on air. He’d come to an understanding with Amédée that if the wedding took place the couple would rent a room upstairs in the same building. So Désirée could look after her mother as before, and, in order to live more cheaply, the two families could take their meals together.
His anxiety that he and his sick wife would be left solely in the care of Céline, who deserted her post every evening, was thus allayed. Unable to prevent his younger daughter from marrying, on pain of seeing her languish and pine away, he now vehemently set his heart on this union, was determined to hurry it along from fear of it breaking up, and he would rub his hands together, repeating to himself:
‘How shrewd that Tabuche is! He wasn’t wrong when he said, “Even if you don’t marry your first flame, they at least make the fires of love catch quicker in the one you do marry!” The main thing is to give the heart an initial shove, after that it goes by itself, as if on casters.’
