The Widow (7 page)

“Couderc was on the town council. He could have got himself elected mayor. He was a serious sort of man then, who wouldn't so much as look twice at a woman. I've never known how he came to start losing money. Some sort of partnership with a contractor who went bankrupt, and that made him sell the brickyard.”

Jean would have liked to see a portrait of Tati as a young girl. Had she even then had that air of authority, that way of looking people over as though reckoning just how far you could go with them?

She always looked at him in that fashion, as she had done on that first morning in the bus. She had grown used to him. She had held him naked in her arms, she had stroked his white skin. At dawn she would sometimes climb up to the loft and, before waking him, watch him for a moment as he slept.

But for all that she still spied on him, still kept him on the end of a string.

“I was seventeen when the boy, who wasn't much cleverer than his sisters, got me in the family way. I can still remember exactly how it happened. He was in bed with a sore throat. I had taken some broth up to him.

“ ‘You got a fever,' I said. And he said to me—he must have been rehearsing it for hours to get his courage up: ‘Look! … This is why I've got a fever!'

“Couderc was furious, but finally got us married. The daughters married too. Françoise married the watchman at the brickyard and the other one, Amélie, married a clerk from St. Amand.”

“Any coffee left?”

She looked at the time. The pendulum swung its shining disk from left to right and right to left behind the glass of the clock case.

She allowed herself a few minutes more.

“One day you'll have to tell me what you did.”

She looked at him more intently.

“Did you kill for a woman? All right! I'm not asking questions. I can see how it'd bother you.”

Come! It was time to get up, to shake off the warm numbness penetrating their every limb. She made sure there was not a drop of coffee left in the blue coffeepot, brought the kettle from the stove, poured the hot water into the dishpan, dropped in a handful of flakes.

“This afternoon you'd better go and hoe the potatoes. Any moment now I guess the old man will turn up. He's been hot and bothered for two or three days now, and if I don't let him have his way…. ”

And so he got to know the story of the Coudercs. He would learn a bit here and a bit there, and piece the bits together. Tati's husband alone he could not picture, and he had not been shown a single portrait of him. Perhaps there wasn't one in the house?

A man in poor health. And sad, so far as he could judge. He had died of pneumonia. While he was still alive, old Couderc had already made a habit of pursuing his daughter-in-law in the darkness of the outbuildings.

“You see,” said Tati another time during her after-dinner hour, “it isn't Françoise I'm afraid of. She's too stupid. Even when she was a child they made fun of her because she never took anything in. A boy made her believe that children are made with the nose, and she cried and cried over it. As for Amélie, I can stand up to her. The real pest is that slut of a Félicie who's always hanging around her grandfather and showing him her baby. She's a different breed, she is, and I'd be curious to know who fathered her. Not Françoise's husband, for sure. One look at her is enough to prove that.”

Jean saw her often from afar. Perhaps it was this very remoteness that impressed him so much?

Because of the canal embankment, all that could be seen of the house was the pink-tiled roof and the upper part of the white wall. It was Félicie's custom, as day began to decline and the sun was setting behind her, to take up position near the lock, her baby on her arm.

She was thin. She bent under the weight like the stalk of a too heavy flower. She would have seemed a mere child if the movement she made to support the baby had not thrown out her stomach, which gave her a mature and womanly look.

The blue of her smock and the red of her hair stood out from a long way off.

Jean would amble along the towpath and come nearer. He knew she watched his approach. He knew that under her greenish eyes there were golden freckles, and also that the watching made her screw up her nose.

So as not to startle her, he would exaggerate his nonchalance, stopping to watch an angler's cork or to pick a yellow flower from the bank.

The wooden-legged lock-keeper turned his cranks. His children were sitting on the doorstep and an armless doll lay on the gravel.

Jean would move a few yards nearer, and invariably Félicie would suddenly turn her back and hurry to her house, shutting the door behind her.

He was the enemy, no doubt of that. Once, as he moved nearer still, the door opened again, but it was not Félicie who appeared. It was her mother, Françoise, stupid and surly, who took up her stand in the doorway in defense of her lair.

“How's things?” he would ask the lock-keeper mechanically.

And the lock-keeper would dart a suspicious look at him, and turn his back too.

Jean was unconcerned. In his eyes, there remained the same lightness of expression. Was he thinking? Did he still need to think?

He was living uncovenanted hours, hours he had not reckoned on, and his head was full of light, his nostrils drunk with summer scents, his limbs heavy with peace.

“Jean! … Jean! …” called Tati's shrill voice.

She was there in front of her house, fists on hips, short of leg, short of neck, strong of flesh.

“Prowling around Félicie again, eh? Hurry up and clean out the rabbit hutches. I've been telling you that for three days now. If I've got to do everything myself, it's not worth my…. ”

Twice, three times a day the two of them would lean over the incubator, which for Tati was truly a magic box. She did not yet dare believe that sixty chickens would hatch out at once.

“Read out again what it says. I haven't got my glasses. You're sure we don't have to put more water in? At night I'm always frightened the lamp will go out and I don't know what stops me from taking a look. On Saturday I'll bring you back a razor and everything you need. By then I hope I'll get a letter from René.”

She had visitors first. On Thursday. The after-dinner slack was just over and she had begun the dishes.

“I want you to clear the weeds along the side of the house,” she had said to Jean.

For all along the white wall nettles had grown. He had brought a hoe from the shed. Hatless, his shirt open, a cigarette between his lips, he was beginning to hoe the ground when he heard noises at the end of the hollow path.

A hundred yards away, shaded by the hazels which let through only a few roundels of sun, a family group was approaching—a man in dark clothes with a little beard and a straw hat, a rather stout woman who probably perspired from walking, and a little boy in a sailor suit whom she was dragging along by the hand and who was whipping the air with a switch he had cut.

In peasant fashion, Jean stood still, watching their approach as though it were an interesting show. He noted that the family paused for a brief consultation. The woman took the opportunity to tug at her girdle, and then, her son having bent down to pick something up, she gave his hand a shake.

“What is it, Jean?” Tati called from the kitchen, seeing him stock-still.

He did not catch the words, for both door and window were shut. He merely saw the movement of her lips, and he opened the window a bit.

“Visitors, I think.”

Frowning, already beginning to tidy her hair, she came and leaned out.

“It's Amélie and her husband. I'm going to clean up a little. Tell them I'll be down in a minute.”

In a flash she had whisked the dishes into the cupboard and gone upstairs, where she could be heard walking busily about.

The others, who had covered another fifty yards, paused again on seeing Jean in front of the door, hoe in hand. Another consultation. The husband wore eyeglasses and there was a purple ribbon in the buttonhole of his lapel.

They finally stepped forward, having come to a decision. They marched past the young man as though he had not existed and Amélie pushed the door half open.

“Are you there, Tati?” she called into the emptiness of the house.

“If you wish to go in, Tati will be down in a minute.”

The woman drew back as if to avoid any contact with him. Her husband actually made a detour around Jean so as not to brush against him, and ordered his son: “Go ahead. Sit down on a chair and try to keep still.”

Just because they were pretending to ignore him, Jean went in too, leaving his hoe outside, and drew up chairs for them.

“Sit down. It's warm out, isn't it? I suppose you didn't walk all the way from St. Amand?”

The husband let slip involuntarily, “We took the bus.”

And his wife gave him a look of thunder for speaking to this individual.

Silence. She had sat down. The husband remained standing, mopping his brow, taking off his hat to run a handkerchief over his bald head.

“Sit still, Hector.”

Overhead, the heavy tread of Tati, who was hurriedly putting on her good dress and combing her hair.

Addressing her husband and still ignoring Jean, Amélie said, to break the silence, “I'm sure Father is out minding the cows. One of these days, with a sun like this, he'll have a stroke.”

At length Tati started downstairs, opened the door, and came toward her sister-in-law.

“Good afternoon, Amélie.”

Two kisses, one on each cheek, hard and dry as the peck of a bird.

“I didn't think you'd be coming today. Your husband has a day off? Good afternoon, Désiré. Go ahead and sit down! Good afternoon, Hector. Won't you say good afternoon to your aunt?”

“Good afternoon, Aunt. I'd like to go fishing in the canal.”

“I forbid you to go fishing!” cried his mother. “I've no wish to see you fall in the water. Stay here.”

Jean was ready to leave at a look or a sign from Tati. It was she who kept him back.

“Get the bottle of brandy, Jean. You'll find some blackcurrant syrup for Amélie just inside the cellar door.”

She brought some gold-rimmed glasses from the sideboard in the dining room.

“Well, what's the good news?” she asked, sitting down with a sigh of satisfaction. “You can stay, Jean. We have no secrets. Have we, Amélie? Is Désiré pleased with his new job? Is he still at the drugstore on the Rue Gambetta?”

“Still there!” was the tart reply.

“That's fine! Here's to you. Can the youngster have a drop of black currant?”

“Thanks! I would rather he didn't drink.”

“I'm thirsty, Mamma.”

“You'll get a glass of water. Father not here?”

“He must be somewhere about with the cattle.”

“How is he?”

“Same as ever.”

And then the declaration of war suddenly came.

“We had a letter from Françoise yesterday.”

“Well, my poor dear, if it's Françoise who wrote it, you can't have gathered much. She's never been able to write in her life and all she can read is large-sized print.”

“Félicie wrote it for her.”

“Is she in the family way again? Of course, what with all these boats passing and the bargees wanting their bit of fun …”

Jean stood with his back against the wall, arms folded, not bothering to light his cigarette that had gone out.

“At least,” Amélie struck back, “the gendarmes have never had to set foot in her house.”

“Why do you say that? You had a visit from the gendarmes?”

“Somebody has. Anyway, Françoise is coming. I'm surprised she's not here already.”

“What time did you fix?”

Unthinkingly, Amélie said:

“Three o'clock.”

It was ten to. Perhaps just to keep things going, Désiré reached out for his glass. His wife stopped him.

“I'd rather you didn't drink. You know it upsets you.”

“Well, my friends, we'll wait for Françoise. It's a good long time since I've seen her in this house. Of course, she does send her daughter over when I'm out to scrounge some ham or some eggs. Why only last Saturday—”

“Félicie has every right to come and see her grandfather.”

“She could ask my leave before taking my ham.”

“It's just as much Father's ham as yours. Everything here belongs to him, and therefore belongs to the family. That's the first of the things I meant to tell you.”

“Why? Have you come to fetch something?”

“Wait till Françoise gets here,” hissed her husband, fidgeting on his chair.

They saw Françoise go by the window. She hesitated a good minute or two before knocking at the door. She too was dressed up in her best. She had big timorous eyes, and she did not know what to do with her hands.

“Good afternoon, Amélie. Good afternoon, Désiré. Good afternoon, Hector. Am I late? I was frightened of getting here before you did, because, what with all the goings on here…. ”

A deep sigh.

“Sit down, Françoise,” said Amélie. “Is your husband keeping well?”

“He hasn't had an attack for more than a month now.”

“And the brickyard?”

“Going from bad to worse. One of these days it'll be put up for sale and I wonder whether the new owners would keep us on. Then we shall be out on the street. It's hard to think we have a house, and…. ”

Her eyes traveled around the walls, and then she heaved another sigh.

“We were just telling Tati you had written to us…. ”

That frightened poor Françoise. Undoubtedly she would have liked not to be brought directly into the affair.

“You haven't seen Father?”

“He doesn't even dare come near us. You can tell he's terrified, the poor man.”

And Amélie said, after a meaningful glance at the corner where Jean was standing, “That's easily understood.”