Pedigree (43 page)

‘Look.'

‘Come along.'

Further on, to distract his attention from all these window-displays, she asked:

‘What do you want St. Nicholas to bring you?'

He thought of Ledoux, with his thin face topped with unruly hair.

‘A box of paints, real paints, in tubes, with a palette.'

The pavements were crowded and you had to push your way along the middle of the street; the trams, which could move only at a walking pace, kept ringing their bells all the time; a mysterious force drew you on.

Now and then, to avoid an attack of giddiness, Élise pulled her son into an empty, icy alley-way. They took a short cut. Soon, as at the end of a tunnel, they found themselves back in the light and bustle of the shopping districts.

In every shop Roger was given something. Madame Salmon had given him a thin slice of Dutch cheese on the tip of her knife. At the Vierge Noire, he had been allowed to pick a sweet biscuit out of the box with the glass lid. For fear of losing her, he hung on to his mother's shopping-bag or her skirt.

‘Aren't we going to the Bazaar?'

For they were passing it on their way to say hullo to Valérie at L'Innovation. But it was impossible to get into the Grand Bazaar. There were queues outside the brass doors which kept opening and shutting, and you had to fight to get near the windows.

‘Dear God, Valérie! Six o'clock already and Désiré will be home soon.'

His cheeks on fire, trying all the time to look back, and clinging to his mother's shopping-bag, Roger was dragged along by a series of short cuts, through dark side-streets which did not smell of St. Nicholas's Day.

For all that he knew that Ledoux was right, he was not in his usual state; December, with St. Nicholas's Day, Christmas and then the New Year, was a month heavy with mystery, with sweet and rather disturbing impressions which followed one after another at breakneck speed.

The school yard was a livid colour. The big boys in the third and fourth years, in Monsieur Pender's classroom, were reciting all together a lesson as rhythmic as a song. Who noticed the first flakes? Despite the possibility of a gobstopper from Brother Mansuy, who was walking up and down with an innocent air, every head was soon turned towards the window, and to begin with you had to look hard at the roof opposite to make out the light particles of snow which were beginning to detach themselves from the sky.

The boys were in a fever of excitement. Darkness fell and the flakes became thicker and slower. In the waiting-room where the gas had been lit, the mothers could be seen around the stove, their lips moving soundlessly.

Brother Médard's electric bell, the prayer which was thrown to the echoes and came rattling back, the lines forming up, the door finally opening: it was settling! The snow was settling!

The children, whether they were in the first year or the sixth, dressed in little hooded coats or blue ratteen overcoats with gilt buttons, were promptly transformed into so many excited gnomes which Monsieur Penders had difficulty in keeping in two lines as far as the corner of the street.

A mysterious signal, and everybody rushed away through the flakes which kept sticking to your eyes and turned the street-lamps into far-away lighthouses on the ocean.

The Place du Congrès, with its huge stretches of darkness, its three ill-lit shops, and a few feebly glowing windows, was too big for the noisy band of schoolboys. A tiny patch of it was enough, the bit nearest the Rue Pasteur. Along the terrace, the water in the gutter had frozen; the bigger boys were already away, their satchels bumping against their backs. Some of them fell and picked themselves up again. Clogs slid best of all, after a preliminary clatter, while hob-nailed boots made white lines. Excitement mounted. Uneven patches of snow were forming on the terrace, and a light covering of snow was hemming the black branches of the elm trees. You had to pick it up in several places, in little heaps which weighed nothing, before you could make a ball out of it to throw at cold cheeks or a blue hood.

A big boy decided:

‘The little boys aren't allowed to use our slide.'

And the little boys watched them sliding along, their arms outstretched, bending their knees as if they were on springs. They tried to make another slide more their own size, a little further on, but there was not enough ice, and pebbles grating under the soles of their boots stopped them half-way.

Fingers were frozen, nostrils wet, cheeks tight-skinned and burning, breath short and hot, eyes shining.

A woman's voice called out in the mysterious distance:

‘Jean! … Jean! …'

‘Yes, Mother.'

‘Come home quick.'

‘Yes, Mother.'

Another go on the slide, another two.

‘If you force me to come and fetch you …'

One less! Grown-ups went past unnoticed, men in dark overcoats, women clutching their shawls, their hair powdered with snow. The light from the grocer's shop-window fell across the slide which was turning a bluish black.

You opened your mouth, put out your tongue and tried to catch a snowflake which left a taste of dust. You declared enthusiastically:

‘It's wonderful!'

And it was indeed wonderful, this first frost, this first snow, a world which had lost its everyday appearance, roofs dimly outlined against the soft sky, lamps which shed scarcely any light and passers-by who floated through space. Even the tram became a mysterious vessel, with its windows doing service as portholes.

You did not dare to think about tomorrow. Too many hours separated the present moment from the next day, and waiting would hurt.

The Grand Bazaar, this particular evening, would stay open until midnight, perhaps even later, and when the iron shutters finally came rattling down, the shop-assistants, pale and tired, their heads as hollow and noisy as drums, would find themselves standing dazedly in the midst of the ravaged shelves.

‘
St. Nicholas, patron saint of schoolboys,

Please bring me nuts, apples and toys,

To have some sweets, I shall be as good as gold,

I shall always do as I am told,

Singing tra la la la,

Singing tra
…

Another anxious mother called out in the dark:

‘Vic-tooooor! … Vic-tooooor …'

The group of boys melted away. Those from Bressoux had gone off in a bunch, still picking up snow along the Quai de la Dérivation. Armand was watching the hoods bobbing up and down from his doorstep. Some little street-urchins, who had come from heaven knows where, had invaded the slide, and Roger, walking a little unsteadily, kept close to the walls of the Rue Pasteur and the Rue de la Loi, and looked through the keyhole at the soft light in the kitchen before knocking on the letter-box.

Surprised by the warmth, he felt his eyes smarting; he would have liked to go to sleep straight away, to go to bed without supper so as to be up earlier the next day.

Désiré, on his return from the office, did not put on his old jacket as usual and his slippers had not been put to warm on the door of the stove. Élise was dressed to go out; even Mademoiselle Pauline wore a conspiratorial smile.

In the winter, Roger undressed in the kitchen, by the fire, putting on his long dressing-gown in white flannelette and his slippers, and his mother took his brick upstairs and tucked him up after making sure that the paraffin night-light was not smoking.

‘Be good. Sleep well.'

He listened. He said his prayers.

‘Dear God, please may I have no bad dreams and may we all three die together.'

For he could not bear the idea of following one day the hearse carrying his father and mother.

‘Dear God, please may I have no more evil thoughts. I promise.'

Shouldn't he give something in return?

‘I promise not to talk to Ledoux any more.'

He would talk to him again, that was practically certain, but what counted was that he should make a resolution not to talk to him any more. If he happened to do so, he would beg pardon and promise all over again.

Further proof that Ledoux really knew: one Thursday, when they came home about five o'clock, Élise had heard voices in Monsieur Chechelowski's room and had listened hard.

‘Be quiet, Roger. Don't make any noise.'

She had knocked on the door, pale and determined.

‘Excuse me, Monsieur Chechelowski … Excuse me, Mademoiselle …'

There had been a rather ugly young woman in the room who had looked at Élise calmly while smoking a cigarette with a cardboard tip.

‘You know, Valérie, she all but blew the smoke into my face. As for him, I thought he was going to take me by the throat, he was so furious.'

‘This is my room, do you hear,
I pay
!'

Roger had heard his mother tell the story several times, to Aunt Louisa, to Hubert Schroefs, to Cécile.

‘If you are engaged and your intentions are honourable, then you will understand and agree to move into the dining-room. It's all the same for you.'

For Monsieur Chechelowski had met a fellow-countrywoman who was studying medicine like Mademoiselle Frida and whom he intended marrying as soon as he had finished his studies.

‘A queer couple they'll make!' Élise prophesied.

That was of no importance. What mattered was that they had gone into the dining-room, the door of which Élise had deliberately left ajar. What mattered most of all was that she had said to Valérie, on the Friday, when Désiré had gone out to the Veldens':

‘You understand, don't you? Whatever happens, I won't have them coming
to do that
in my house.'

Roger repeated to himself:

‘Dear God, please may I have no more evil thoughts.'

No! He would not make that gesture with his fingers again. He did not even want to think, this evening, that St. Nicholas was Father and Mother.

Yet he had heard his parents going out. If he went downstairs, he would find nobody in the kitchen but Mademoiselle Pauline, who had been asked to mind the house and who was copying out some lecture notes by the fire.

It was so rare for Désiré and Élise to find themselves out together, especially in the evening, as in the old days when Désiré used to wait for the young shop-assistant outside L'Innovation!

She held his arm, and, being too short for him, looked as if she were hanging on to it. As soon as they got to the Rue Puits-en-Sock, they could scarcely move, and they in turn were gripped by the general fever of excitement and would have liked to buy everything they saw. Everything looked beautiful to them: there were rocking-horses covered with real skin and hair, electric trains, and dolls which you might have taken to be living babies and which lacked nothing but the power of speech.

‘It's too dear, Désiré. It's better to have something small but good.'

It was the workers, the people who lived in the back-streets, who were the biggest spendthrifts and jostled the passers-by at the shop doors, pushing brutally with their elbows in order to be served first, carrying on their shoulders tricycles, forts and cakes so big you could hide behind them.

‘They spend all their earnings like that and they won't have enough money left to pay the rent.'

It was their wives who bought meat at the beginning of the month without asking how much it weighed, their children had holes in their socks, and, by the fifteenth of the month, they had to start taking things to the pawnshop.

For a long time Désiré and Élise stayed out in the snowy night, going from darkness to light and queuing in front of shop-counters; and Élise's hand kept returning to its place on big Désiré's arm.

Mademoiselle Pauline, her breasts pushed up under her chin by her corset, worked quietly in the kitchen where the steam was trickling slowly down the oil-paint on the walls.

Noises, voices, the sound of doors banging interrupted Roger's sleep. Two or three times he awoke and stared at the flame of the night-light, but it was not yet time.

At last he heard the familiar sounds of the stove being lit and caught the smell of the paraffin which Élise insisted on pouring on the fire to hurry it up. He jumped out of bed, barefoot, his legs caught up in his nightshirt. He did not put his slippers on. The stairs were cold, the tiles in the hall icy.

The dining-room door was locked.

‘Wait, Roger. Your father will open it.'

Désiré came downstairs, his trousers fastened loosely over his nightshirt with its collar embroidered with cross-stitching in red cotton.

The family had never all been up so early before and this added to the exceptional character of the day.

On the first St. Nicholas's Day that Roger could remember, when they were still living in the Rue Pasteur, he had burst into tears at the sight which had suddenly presented itself to him. It had been too much for him.

Even now, although he was expecting it, the smell disturbed him: the smell of the tarts, the chocolate, the oranges, the raisins. The dining-room was no longer just another room in the house. On the tablecloth there were plates full of marzipan cakes, fruit and sweets, and you could not see everything at once. The gaslight had not been turned on, and only the dancing flame of a candle lit up this spectacle.

Why had he picked up a big orange which he held as he had seen the Infant Jesus at school holding in his hand a blue ball surmounted by a cross, a ball which represented the world?

Calm and solemn, he proceeded to carry out a methodical inspection, scarcely glancing at the hoop and the soldier's peaked cap (it was Uncle Arthur who had made it for him, who had even measured him for it), the Eureka rifle or the two picture-books, but going to sit in a corner to examine his paint-box.

‘Are you happy?'

An absent-minded yes.

‘Have you seen this?'

It was a Meccano outfit he had not been expecting and he granted it only a vague glance. When he looked up again, he saw Désiré who had gone over to Élise. He was giving her a little case containing a brooch. He was awkward, as he always was on these occasions, with his eyes shining and his moustache quivering. Roger had sworn not to have any more evil thoughts.