A Life (25 page)

When the Baron chanced by during these moments of melancholy, he would say under his breath:

'Jeanne, my dear, take my advice, burn your letters, all of them, from your mother, from me, all of them. There's nothing worse when you're old than going back over your youth.'

But Jeanne, too, kept her correspondence, and although she was quite different from her mother in every way, she was putting together her own 'box of relics', out of a kind of hereditary instinct for dreamy sentimentality.

A few days after their return the Baron had to absent himself to attend to some business, and he departed.

The season was magnificent. Mild nights, teeming with stars, followed upon calm evenings, serene dusks upon radiant days, and radiant days upon brilliant dawns. Mama soon began to feel  better; and Jeanne, no longer mindful of Julien's affair and Gilberte's treachery, felt almost wholly content. The countryside was full of flowers and scents; and the wide sea, forever calm, shone in the sunlight from morning till evening.

One afternoon Jeanne took Paul in her arms and went for a walk across the fields. She looked down in turn at her son and at the flower-speckled grass along the way, overcome by warm, boundless happiness. Every few minutes she would kiss her child, hugging him passionately to her; and then as some new heady aroma from the countryside wafted over her, she would feel faint, overwhelmed by an infinite sense of well-being. She began to dream of his future. What would he become? One minute she wanted him to be a great man of position and renown, the next minute she preferred him to be quite ordinary, remaining by her side, devoted and loving, his arms ever opened wide to embrace his Mama. When she loved him with her selfish mother's heart, she wanted him to remain her son, nothing but her son; but when she loved him with her passionate reason, it was her ambition that he should become a somebody out in the world.

She sat down at the edge of a ditch, and began to gaze at him. It seemed to her as though she had never seen him before. And she was suddenly astonished at the thought that this little person would one day grow up, that he would walk with a steady gait and have a beard on his cheeks and speak in a deep voice.

In the distance someone was calling her. She looked up. It was Marius running towards her. She thought that someone had called to visit her, and she stood up, annoyed at being disturbed. But the lad was running towards her as fast as he could, and when he was close enough, he shouted:

'Madame, it's her ladyship, she's not well.'

It was as though she felt a drop of icy water run down her spine; and she set off at great speed, her thoughts in turmoil.

From some way off she caught sight of a crowd of people gathered under the plane-tree. She rushed forward, and as the group parted she saw her mother lying on the ground, with her head resting on two pillows. Her face was quite black, her eyes were closed, and her chest, which had been gasping for breath for  the past twenty years, was now still. The wet-nurse took the child from the young woman's arms and bore him away.

'What's happened? How did she fall?' asked Jeanne, with a wild expression on her face. 'Fetch the doctor.'

And as she turned round, she caught sight of the priest, who somehow or other had received word. He offered to help and hastily pulled up the sleeves of his cassock. But neither the vinegar nor the eau de Cologne nor continual rubbing had any effect.

'She should be undressed and put to bed,' said the priest.

Joseph Couillard, the farmer, was there, as well as Père Simon and Ludivine. With the assistance of the Abbé Picot, they tried to carry the Baroness; but when they lifted her, her head fell back and her dress, which they had grabbed hold of, began to rip, such was the weight of her large person and so difficult was she to move. Horrified, Jeanne began to scream. They placed the enormous, limp body back on the ground.

They had to fetch an armchair from the drawing-room; and once they had seated her in it, they were at last able to move her. They climbed the steps one by one, and then the stairs; and when they finally reached her bedroom, they laid her down on the bed.

While the cook was removing an apparently endless number of clothes, the widow Dentu appeared opportunely, having turned up suddenly, like the priest, as if they had both 'smelt death', as the servants put it.

Joseph Couillard rode off at the gallop to inform the doctor; and the priest was about to depart to fetch the holy oil when the nurse whispered in his ear:

'No need, Father. She's gone, I can tell.'

Jeanne was panic-stricken and kept asking for assistance, not knowing what to do, what to try, what remedy to use. The priest pronounced absolution, just in case.

For two hours they waited beside the purple, lifeless body. Having now fallen to her knees, Jeanne was sobbing, wracked by anguish and grief.

When the door opened and the doctor appeared, it was as though she had seen a vision of salvation, of solace and hope; and  she rushed towards him, stammering out everything she knew about what had happened:

'She was taking her walk, as she did every day . . . she was well, indeed very well . . . she had had some broth and two eggs for lunch . . . all of a sudden she fell . . . and then she turned quite black as you can see . . . and she hasn't moved since . . . we've tried everything to revive her . . . everything?

She stopped, startled by the nurse's discreet signal to the doctor that it was all over. Then, not wishing to understand, she asked the doctor anxiously:

'Is it serious? Do you think it's serious?'

Eventually he said:

'I am very much afraid that . . . that it is . . . that it is all over. You must have courage, great courage.'

And Jeanne opened her arms wide and threw herself upon her mother.

Julien had returned. He stood there in astonishment, evidently put out, making no audible sound of grief or despair, taken too rapidly by surprise to be able to assume at once the required expression and demeanour.

'I was expecting it,' he muttered. 'I knew it wouldn't be long.'

Then he took out his handkerchief, wiped his eyes, knelt down, crossed himself, mumbled something or other, and on getting to his feet, tried to help his wife up. But she was clinging to the body and kissing it, almost prostrate on top of it. They had to drag her away. She seemed to have lost her reason.

An hour later they allowed her to return. All hope was gone. The room had now been arranged as a mortuary chamber. Julien and the priest were talking in low voices by the window. The widow Dentu was already beginning to doze off, comfortably ensconced in an armchair with the air of one who is accustomed to vigils and who feels quite at home from the moment death enters.

Night was falling. The priest came up to Jeanne, took her hands in his, and sought to comfort her, pouring upon this inconsolable heart the unctuous waters of ecclesiastical consolation. He spoke of the departed, singing her praises in churchy language; and, with that affected sadness of clerics for whom  corpses are their stock-in-trade, he offered to spend the night in prayer beside the body.

But through her convulsive sobbing Jeanne refused his offer. She wanted to be alone, quite alone, during this night of farewell. Julien stepped forward:

'But you can't do that. We'll both stay with her.'

She said 'no' with a shake of her head, incapable of speech. Finally she managed to say:

'She's my mother, my mother. I want to be left alone to keep vigil over her.'

The doctor murmured:

'Let her do as she wishes. The nurse can be in the next room.'

The priest and Julien consented, thinking of their beds. Then the Abbé Picot knelt down in his turn, prayed, rose to his feet, and left the room saying: 'She was a saint,' in the same tone of voice as he was used to saying: 'Dominus vobiscum.'
*

Then the Vicomte said in a normal voice:

'Are you going to have something to eat?'

Jeanne did not reply, unaware that he was speaking to her.

'Perhaps you ought to eat something,' he persisted, 'to keep your strength up.'

She replied absently:

'Send for Papa at once.'

And he left the room to dispatch a man on horseback to Rouen.

She remained plunged in a kind of frozen grief, as if she were waiting for the moment when she would be alone with her mother for the last time before yielding to the rising tide of despair and regret.

The shadows of evening had filled the room, veiling the dead woman in darkness. The widow Dentu began to move about quietly, fetching and arranging invisible objects with the noiseless movements of a nurse. Presently she lit two candles and placed them gently on the bedside table which stood at the head of the bed covered in a white cloth.

Jeanne seemed to see, feel, understand nothing. She was waiting to be alone. Julien came back. He had had dinner, and again he asked her:

'Are you sure you don't want anything?'

His wife shook her head.

He sat down, looking more resigned than sad, and stayed there without speaking.

The three of them remained like this, each sitting apart from the other, on their different chairs, not stirring.

Occasionally the nurse would snore a little and then wake up with a start.

Finally Julien got up and, coming over to Jeanne, enquired:

'Would you rather be on your own now?'

She took his hand in an involuntary gesture:

'Oh yes, leave me now.'

He kissed her on the forehead, and murmured:

'I'll come back and see you now and again.'

And he left the room with the widow Dentu, who rolled her armchair into the next room.

Jeanne closed the door, then went and opened the two windows wide. She was met in the face by the warm caress of night air at haymaking time. The grass on the lawn, scythed the day before, lay ungathered in the moonlight.

This sweet sensation grieved her, wounding her like an irony.

She walked back to the bed, grasped one of the cold, motionless hands, and began to study her mother.

She no longer looked as bloated as she had at the time of the attack, and seemed to be sleeping now more peacefully than she had ever slept; and in the pale light of the candles flickering in the draughts, the shadows cast on her face shifted this way and that, making her seem alive, as though she herself had moved.

Jeanne gazed at her avidly; and from the deep, distant recesses of her early childhood came a host of memories.

She recalled Mama's visits to the parlour at the convent, and the way she would hold out the paper bag full of cakes, and a whole multitude of small details, trivial incidents, little kindnesses, words, inflections of her voice, familiar gestures, the wrinkles round her eyes when she laughed, the great sigh she gave when she sat down out of breath.

She continued to stare at her, repeating to herself in a kind  of daze: 'She's dead;' and the full horror of the word struck her.

This woman lying hereMother, Mama, Madame Adélaïdewas dead? She would never move again, never speak again, never laugh again, never have dinner again sitting opposite Papa; she would never again say: 'Good morning, Jeannette.' She was dead!

They would nail her up in a box and bury her, and that would be that. They would never see her again. Was it possible? Really? She was no longer to have a mother? This dear face that was so familiar, beheld since the moment eyes could see, loved since the moment arms first opened wide, this supreme conduit of affection, this unique being that is a mother, more important to the heart than any other single being, was gone. She had only a few hours left in which to gaze at her face, this still face from which all thought had departed; and then nothing, nothing more, just a memory.

And she fell on her knees in a dreadful agony of despair. Clutching the sheet that covered the body and twisting it in her hands, her mouth pressed to the bed, she cried out in a heart-rending voice that was muffled by the bedclothes:

'Oh! Mother, my poor, poor Mother!'

Then, as she began to feel herself becoming overwrought, as overwrought as she had been that night when she ran off through the snow, she got up and rushed to the window to clear her head, to drink in the fresh air that was not the air around this bed, the air around this dead woman.

The cut grass, the trees, the heath, the sea in the distance, all lay in silent repose, slumbering beneath the tender spell of the moon. A measure of this gentle, soothing stillness communicated itself to Jeanne, and slow tears began to fall.

Then she came back to the bed and sat down, taking Mama's hand in hers again as though she were nursing her when she was ill.

A large insect flew in to the room, attracted by the candlelight. It bounced off the walls like a ball, flying from one end of the room to the other. Jeanne, distracted by its droning flight, looked up to see where it was; but she could only ever make out its shadow flitting haphazardly across the whiteness of the ceiling.

Presently she could hear it no longer. Then she noticed the gentle tick-tock of the clock and another faint sound, or rather an almost imperceptible whirring. It was Mama's watch, still going, forgotten about in the pocket of her dress which was draped over the chair at the foot of the bed. And suddenly a vague parallel between the dead woman and this mechanical object which had not stopped brought a new, sharp pang of grief to Jeanne's heart.

She looked at the time. It was barely half past ten; and she was seized with terrible apprehension at the prospect of spending the entire night there.

Other memories began to come back to her, memories of her own lifeRosalie, Gilbertethe, bitter disillusions of her heart. So there was nothing, then, but sorrow, grief, misfortune, and death. It was all just deceit and lies, things to make one suffer and weep. Where was there a little respite and joy to be found? In another life no doubt! When the soul had been delivered from its ordeal upon earth! The soul! She began to reflect on this unfathomable mystery, yielding readily to fanciful certainties only for these to be replaced forthwith by no less flimsy hypotheses. Where, then, was her mother's soul at this precise moment, the soul that had gone from this motionless, ice-cold body? Far, far away perhaps. Somewhere in space? Bur where? Evaporated like the scent from a dried flower? Or wandering about like an invisible bird that has flown its cage?