The Widow (4 page)

“Tati's what I've been called since I was a child. I don't even know why. He's gone to draw some wine…. You're a foreigner, I'll bet?”

It was as if she were hesitating to take definite possession of him. She was still a little wary.

“No. I'm French.”

“Oh! …”

Disappointment. She did not try to hide it.

“I could have sworn you were a foreigner. They pass this way sometimes, rather your style. The Chagots, at Drevant, had one for years, a Polack who used to sleep in the stable and could turn his hand to anything.”

It was the man's turn to murmur: “Oh!”

“What's your name?”

“Jean.”

All this time she was taking various things out of her baskets: two aprons, noodles, cans of sardines, a spool of black thread, a parcel of cold meat wrapped in wax paper. The old man came back with the jug full of ice-cold white wine.

“Why don't you sit down? … You wanted to get to Montluçon?”

“It's all one to me.”

“To get a job in a factory, eh?”

She had stoked the stove and poured water into a pan.

“Ever worked an incubator before?”

“I think I'd know how.”

“Wait while I go and feed the fowls. I think we might work out something.”

She sat down to take off her shoes and put on a pair of black sabots. The pink slip—an odd electric, bluish pink—still showed under her dress, and it was impossible not to look at the patch of skin on her cheek, hairy and so silky.

“You can have a drink. Look at the old fool: he doesn't dare help himself because I just caught him with that bitch of a Félicie.”

She poured out a drink for him. The old man was tall and thin, his face covered with a gray stubble, his eyes rimmed with red.

“You can have a drink, Couderc!” she shouted in his ear. “But when it comes to your bit of fun, you can wait quite a while yet….”

How many times had she made the round of the kitchen already?

Yet there had not been a single wasted movement. The two slices of ham had been put away in a cupboard. Water was heating. The fire, livened up, was purring away. All the parcels she had brought back had been put away, and now she was going out with a basketful of grain.

“Chuck … chuck … chuck …”

He saw her, in the sun, by the cart leaning on its shafts, surrounded by at least a hundred chickens, all of them white, with ducks, geese, and turkeys by way of background.

“Chuck … chuck … chuck …”

She cast the grain in handfuls, like a sower, but she did not forget Jean standing framed in the doorway.

It was hot. The sun was so high there was scarcely any shade left. The old man had sat down in his corner by the hearth, and kept looking at the floor.

Beyond the fence which enclosed the garden, Jean saw a narrow boat, varnished like a toy, drawn by a donkey and gliding slowly along the canal. And since the canal was higher than the yard, there was the odd sight of a boat passing at head height. A little girl in red, with flaxen hair, was running along the deck. A woman was knitting, managing the tiller with her hips.

“You'll eat with us. Saturday, we don't put on anything much, on account of it being market day. Now, look at the old goat and tell me if it isn't bad luck….”

She set the table. Coarse, flowered china, tumblers of thick glass. She opened a can of sardines. There was some beef, too, and slices of sausage.

“Would you like an omelet?”

“Yes.”

She was surprised. She had expected him to say no, out of politeness, and she smiled a secret smile.

The old man moved to the table and took a knife out of his pocket. In the glass clockcase a wide brass disk swung slowly to and fro. The cat jumped onto Jean's knee and was purring already.

“Push her on the floor if she worries you…. So you're a Frenchman? I'm not asking where you come from…. Do you like your omelet moist?”

She followed his gaze and saw his eye had been caught by an enlarged photograph of a soldier in the uniform of the African Battalion.

“It's René, my son,” she said.

She was not ashamed of his being in the African Battalion. On the contrary! She looked at Jean as though to say, “You see, I understand….”

They ate. The old man did not count. On one side, the light reached them only through a tiny window looking onto the road and on the other it came, more vibrant, through the door open onto the yard.

“I was wondering whether you'd get as far as Montluçon.”

“So was I….”

“I manage singlehanded, mind you. Couderc …” She felt the need to explain, “that's the old trash. My late husband's father. Each as bad as the other. I was saying he's just about to take our two cows out to graze, and putter around. And one other thing besides, the old tomcat! Look at that face he's pulling! There's some who say he hears more than he lets on, but I know better.”

She shouted, “Isn't it the truth, Couderc?”

He gave a start, but seemed not to understand. He just lowered his head over his plate.

“Couderc! Isn't it the truth that you're an old tomcat, and that you used to chase me around the wine shed even while your son was alive?”

She talked about it on purpose. It made her lips, her eyes, moist.

“Don't you like beef? … Have you come far?”

“Quite a bit, yes …”

“And you haven't got a sou left in your pocket….”

He hunted through his pockets. As if in mockery, he found a sou.

“A sou, yes.”

“We'll see…. First, we'll try and make the incubator work. I've wanted an incubator for a long time. Just think of it, the price chickens are now, you can hatch sixty-five all at once. The trouble is, it's secondhand, so I couldn't have the leaflet. There's a brass plate on top with things written on it.”

She got up to get the coffeepot, and sipped her coffee, eyeing her guest all the while.

“Some of them at market this morning must have said: ‘Tati's crazy! Now she's gone and bought herself an incubator.' ”

She laughed. “Think how they'd chatter if….”

Her eyes were eating him up. She was taking possession of him. She wasn't afraid. She wanted him to understand that she wasn't afraid of him.

“A little drop of something? The old man won't get one and that'll make him mad….”

She brought a bottle of home brew, and poured out a few drops.

“And now, we'll try and make the thing work. Don't worry about the old man: it's time he went to look after his cows pasturing along the towpath…. Do you understand how it works? … I know you put the eggs in here, in this sort of drawer. And the lamp, I suppose, hooks into the corner. What's that written on the brass plate?”

Perhaps she didn't know how to read? It was quite possible. Or else the letters were too small.

“
Raise the temperature to 102° and maintain it at that level for the 21 days of incubation
….”

“How are we to know it's a hundred and two degrees?”

“There's a thermometer.”

They were both squatting in front of the apparatus. The heat drenched their skin with sweat.

“Show me where the hundred-and-two-degree mark is.”

“If we're going to try it, we'll need some kerosene.”

“I've got some. Wait a minute….”

She got some from the shed. She cleaned the wick, lit the lamp.

“You're sure this is the place to put it?”

The big red bus had long since arrived at Montluçon, almost empty, having scattered its women all along the road. The driver was eating a snack in the shady dining room of a little restaurant, and he would start back at four o'clock.

From Montluçon to St. Amand, sometimes running alongside the Cher, sometimes sweeping away from it, the Berry canal, barely twenty feet wide, bore toy boats on its calm waters, blocked here and there by toy bridges, little draw-bridges you had to work yourself by hauling on a chain.

It was the end of May. The gooseberries were ripe. The strawberries were beginning to fill out. In one corner of the garden there was a wide bed of beans.

“If they say you've got to put water in, water is what you've got to put in!”

Tati was suspicious. Jean groped around. Where was the proper place for the water that would keep the incubator moist?

He had taken off his jacket. His thin shirt, with its blue and white stripes, was worn at the collar and wrists.

He was thin, and yet there was a touch of puffiness in his face.

“We shall soon see,” he said. “If the temperature reaches a hundred and two in a few minutes …”

“I've got some eggs all ready. All pure Leghorn. Where did you plan to spend the night?”

He smiled, which showed he had understood. Ever since the bus, before they had exchanged a word, they had understood one another.

“I don't know. Here, perhaps? Look! Ninety-nine … Almost a hundred … a few minutes now …”

“Would you sleep in the loft?”

“Why not?”

“And you would do what work there is to do?”

He took his stand in front of the yard swarming with poultry.

“So long as you're not afraid,” he uttered, stretching nonchalantly.

“Afraid of what?”

“You don't know where I come from….”

“No man has ever scared me yet!”

“And yet, suppose …”

“Suppose what?”

“Well, suppose I'd just come out of prison?”

It was as if she had guessed it already.

“Well, what then?”

“Suppose I made off with your savings tonight?”

“You wouldn't find them.”

“And suppose I murdered you?”

“I'm stronger than you are, my boy!”

“Suppose …”

“Suppose what?”

“Nothing …”

His playful mood had abated somewhat. He looked at her almost seriously. “You're an odd woman. Tell me, now…. The old man … didn't you say he was your father-in-law?”

“And you're surprised I mess around with him, eh? Well, first of all it's no fault of mine if he's an old tomcat. Then again, would you rather I let myself be thrown out of a house where I've done everything and let others benefit—pieces like that Félicie you saw?”

“Look! It's up to a hundred and two.”

“Do you think it's working, then? If so, we'd better carry it into the wine shed. Wait … I'll give you a hand.”

“Better wait till tomorrow to put the eggs in.”

She agreed, but reluctantly. “That means a whole day lost.”

Then, while they were settling the incubator in the cool shade of the wine shed: “It's up to you. As I said, I took you for a foreigner, a Polack or something. If you'd like a bed, your food, and a bit of money now and then….”

Over the gate he could see the girl sitting on the canal embankment, her baby on her arm. She was feeding it at her breast. The bridge was raised. A boat was being poled imperceptibly forward. Farther off, on the other side of the water, he could see a brickyard. Pigeons flew heavily in the still air.

“Mind you, I don't want to force you….”

Just then he gazed at the mole which looked like a bit of fur, at the broad face, the cunning eyes, the squat, solid body, the pink slip showing more than ever under the dress.

“We can always try,” he said, “seeing you're not afraid….”

Leading him back to the house like captured prey, she replied, “It'll take more than you to frighten me, my boy!”

There was no mistaking the familiarity of her tone. She had taken possession of him.

“Do you at least know how to use a crusher? Well, go and crush a sack of oats and wheat for the animals…. And you watch what a face Couderc pulls tonight!”

H
IS BED
, an iron one, set in the middle of the loft, just under the skylight, smelled of hay, with perhaps a hint of mustiness, which was by no means unpleasant. What puzzled him the whole of the time it took him to fall asleep were the drops falling one by one, at long intervals, inside the loft itself, almost within reach of his hand. Yet there was not a tap in the house. It was not raining, else he would have heard the drumming of the raindrops on the sloping glass of the skylight.

Abruptly, he switched from evening to morning and his only recollection of that night was of the smell, the smell of hay and mustiness, which became for him the smell of the countryside. The daylight cut out two bright rectangles above his head. In a corner of the loft stood a dressmaker's dummy, with its monstrous black torso, full yet without breasts, the geometric curve of the waist and those hips which came to a sudden stop, to be replaced by a leg in turned wood.

There was neither toilet nor basin, and he had to be content with pulling his trousers up over his shirttails, leaving the collar open, and smoothing his hair with his fingers.

The drops were still falling, from a kind of obscene udder suspended from one of the beams—a muslin bag containing white cheese. And on the floor was a bowl half full of a yellowish liquid.

All this, and other things besides, combined with the mattress to make up the smell: cloves of garlic, tied up with a scrap of bast, onions, shallots, and herbs that he didn't know—medicinal herbs, no doubt—so dry that they tumbled in a shower of dust as soon as they were barely touched.

He went down the staircase, which began by being no more than a miller's ladder and came out into the kitchen, where a few logs were blazing on the hearth. The stove was never lit first thing in the morning. Close to the ashes he saw a blue enamel coffeepot, with a big black star chipped off the enamel, and, as though already at home, he took a bowl from the cupboard, helped himself to coffee, hunted for the sugar, found it.

It was six o'clock in the morning. He saw nobody in the yard, but, hearing a noise in a shed, found Tati there busy scooping various ingredients out of bins and pouring them into a big cooking pot.