The Thibaults (30 page)

All through the day his imagination was busy planning out, down to the last detail, the interview of the next morning. He pictured them alone in the flat; they would, of course, have the whole morning to themselves without fear of interruption. He had made Lisbeth sit on the sofa, on his right; she bent her head forward and, standing, he gazed down, across the ringlets tumbling round her neck, on the smooth curve of her neck, and back under the loose bodice. She did not dare to raise her eyes, and he leaned over her, whispering: “I don’t want you to go away again, ever again!” And then at last she raised her head, with a questioning look, and he gave her his answer, a kiss on her forehead, sealing their betrothal. “In five years I’ll be twenty. Then I shall tell Papa: ‘I’m a child no longer.’ If they say:

‘She’s the concierge’s niece,’ I …” He made a threatening gesture.

“So now we’re engaged, you and I. You’re my fiancée!” The four walls of his room seemed too narrow to contain so much happiness. He went out and walked in the warm summer sunshine, dazed with ecstasy. “She’s mine! Mine! My sweetheart!”

Next morning he was sleeping so soundly that he did not even hear her knock and leapt from his bed only when he heard her laugh in Antoine’s room. When he went there Antoine had just finished breakfast and was about to leave. He had his hands pressed on Lisbeth’s shoulders and was admonishing her in a gruff tone.

“Make no mistake about it! If you let your aunt have any more coffee, you’ll have to deal with me!”

Lisbeth was laughing with that characteristic laugh of hers; she refused to believe that coffee served in the good old German manner, with plenty of milk and sugar, and gulped down piping hot, could possibly do any harm to the old woman.

Now, at last, they were alone. On the tray were some pastry twists sprinkled with aniseed; she had made them specially for him. Deferentially she watched him eat his breakfast. Jacques was vexed with himself for being so hungry. Nothing was working out according to plan, and he was at a loss to find a means of linking up reality with the scene he had planned out in fancy, down to its last detail. And, as a crowning misfortune, the bell rang.

It was a surprise visit. Old Mme. Fruhling tottered in; she was far from being fully restored to health, but she was feeling better, heaps better, and had come to say good morning to Master Jacques. After that Lisbeth had to help her aunt back to the lodge, and settle her down in her arm-chair. Time passed, and Lisbeth did not come back. Never had Jacques been able to endure the tyranny of circumstance. He stormed up and down his room, in the throes of a baffled fury that resembled the fits of rage that used to come over him in the past. Setting his jaw, he thrust his fists into his pockets. And presently he began to feel a grievance against Lisbeth.

When at last she came back, his mouth was parched and his gaze aggressive; he was so on edge from waiting that his hands were trembling. He pretended to be busy with his books. She hurried through the housework and said
au revoir
. He was still bending over his books. Sick at heart, he let her go without a word. But the moment he was alone, he flung himself back in his chair and his lips set in a smile of such undiluted bitterness that he went to the mirror to enjoy it objectively. For the twentieth time he pictured the scene he had composed in fancy: Lisbeth seated, he standing, her flaxen curls … In a rush of bitterness he placed his hand before his eyes and flung himself onto the sofa. But no tears came; all he felt was the throbbing of his nerves, a sense of baffled fury… .

When she came next day she had a downcast air and, thinking he was to blame for it, Jacques felt immediately contrite. As a matter of fact, the cause of her dejection was a disagreeable letter she had just received from Strasbourg. The hotel was full, and her uncle wanted her back. Friihling agreed to wait one more week, but no longer. She had thought of showing the letter to Jacques, but the look of timid affection on his face so touched her that she could not bring herself to say anything that would distress him. She sat down, without thinking, on the sofa, and, as chance would have it, at the exact place where, in his daydream, Jacques had intended her to sit. And now he, too, was standing beside her, just where he had meant to stand. She bent forward and he saw across a mist of flaxen ringlets the smooth curve of her back flowing away under the loosely fitting blouse. Almost mechanically he began to bend towards her, when suddenly she straightened up—a shade too soon. She looked at him with surprise, then, smiling, drew him beside her on the sofa and without the least hesitation pressed her face to Jacques’s, her temple resting on his temple, her soft, warm cheek upon his cheek.

“
Chéri … Liebling!
”

He felt like swooning with the delight of it, and closed his eyes. Lisbeth’s fingers, roughened at the tips by needlework, were fondling his other cheek, and now, very gently, they began to slip down underneath his collar. He felt the button come loose and a delicious tingling ran through his body. Her little hand seemed charged with electricity, as it slipped between the shirt and his skin; at last it settled upon his breast. Taking courage, Jacques moved his own hand towards her blouse, but found the way barred by a brooch. She unfastened the blouse to help him. He held his breath as he felt under his fingers the unfamiliar contact of another’s flesh. She made a sudden nervous movement as if he were tickling her, and all at once he realized that the soft warmth of a little breast was nestling in his hand. Blushing, he gave her a clumsy kiss; she returned it, passionately, full on his mouth. He was disconcerted, even a little disgusted, by the clammy moisture lingering on his lips after the warm pressure of the kiss. Once more she rested her cheek on his, unmoving; the silken flutter of her eyelashes lightly brushed his temple… .

Henceforth this was their daily ritual. She would start taking off her brooch in the hall and, as she entered, pin it to the door-curtain. Then they would sit on the sofa, cheek to cheek, nestling in their bodies’ warmth. Usually they were silent, but sometimes she would begin singing in a low voice a sentimental German ballad, which brought tears to their eyes; and for a while, pressing closely against each other, they would sway from side to side in rhythm with the song, mingling their breath and asking no better joys than that. When Jacques’s fingers moved a little under her blouse, or if he changed the position of his head to brush Lisbeth’s cheek delicately with his lips, she would gaze at him with eyes that always seemed to hold a mute appeal for gentleness, sighing: “Be loving,
chéri!
”

Once their hands had found the usual resting-place, they did not stray in quest of new delight; by an unspoken pact both young people avoided unrehearsed gestures. They had all the physical nearness they wanted in the long, insistent pressure of cheek on cheek and the fluttering of their breasts, like the ghost of a caress, under each other’s hands. For Lisbeth, who often seemed in a half-dream, it was the easiest thing to keep her senses under control; at Jacques’s side she was lost in a haze of poetic fancies, of ecstatic purity. As for Jacques, the need for keeping in check any more definite impulse did not make itself felt in any way. Those chaste caresses were an end in themselves, and the idea that they might be a prelude to more ardent gestures never so much as crossed his mind. If at moments the proximity of the young, warm body had a physical effect upon his senses, he was hardly conscious of it, and the thought that Lisbeth might have noticed it would have made him mortally ashamed, disgusted with himself. No gross desire ever came over him while he was with her; the gulf between his spiritual and his fleshly self was unbridgeable. The former belonged to his beloved; the latter had its sordid, solitary being in another world, the world of night, which Lisbeth never entered. If some nights, unable to go to sleep, he flung himself out of bed, pulled off his nightshirt and, standing before the glass, fell to kissing his arms, hugging himself with a sort of desperate frenzy, never on these occasions did he conjure up Lisbeth’s form to join the phantom rout of his imaginings.

Meanwhile Lisbeth was only too well aware that these idyllic days were numbered: she was due to leave Paris on the following Sunday, and she had not had the courage to tell Jacques.

That Sunday, at dinner-time, Antoine, knowing his brother was upstairs with the family, went to his room, where Lisbeth was awaiting him.

“Well, what about it?” he asked, with an enigmatic smile.

She shook her head.

“And you’re going away this evening, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

He made a gesture of annoyance.

“But it’s his fault, too,” she protested. “He doesn’t seem to think of it.”

“You promised to ‘think of it’ for him.”

She gazed at Antoine, despising him a little in her heart of hearts, for not understanding that, for her, Jacques was “different.” Still, Antoine was good-looking, she liked his imposing manner, and could forgive him for being like the rest of men.

She had pinned her brooch to the curtain and began to undress in an absent-minded way; her thoughts were busy with the journey before her. When Antoine took her in his arms she gave a short, nervous laugh, which seemed to die away deep down in her throat. “
Liebling,
” she whispered, “be extra nice this time—it’s our last evening.”

Antoine was out all the rest of the evening. Towards eleven Jacques heard him enter and walk at once to his room, as quietly as he could. He was just going to bed, and did not call his brother.

As Jacques got into bed, his knee hit against something hard, a package of some sort—evidently a “surprise” intended for him. It contained some aniseed twists, covered with a sticky coating of burnt sugar and wrapped up in tinfoil, and, inside a silk handkerchief with Jacques’s initials on it, a mauve envelope inscribed: “To my beloved.”

She had never written to him before. That night it was as if she had come into the room and was bending over his bed. He was laughing for joy as he opened the envelope.

Dear Master Jacques,

When you read this letter I shall be far away from you …

The lines grew blurred under his eyes; a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

… I shall be far away from you. I am leaving tonight for Strasbourg by the 10:12 train, from the Gare de l’Est.

“Antoine!”

The cry was so heartrending that Antoine rushed across to his brother’s room, thinking he had had an accident.

Jacques was sitting on his bed, his arms outspread, his lips parted, a look of wild entreaty in his eyes; it seemed as if he were dying and Antoine alone could save him. The letter lay on the counterpane. Antoine glanced through it without surprise; he had just seen Lisbeth off. He bent over his brother, but Jacques pushed him away.

“Don’t say a word, Antoine, please. You can’t understand, you can’t imagine… .”

He was using the same words as Lisbeth. A look of obstinacy had settled on his face and his eyes had a dark, brooding intensity that brought to mind the boy he used to be. Suddenly his chest began to heave, his lips trembled, and, as if he were trying to take shelter from an enemy, he rolled over and burst into sobs, crushing his face against the bolster. One of his arms was hanging behind him; Antoine gripped the quivering fingers, which instantly closed round his. At a loss for words, Antoine squeezed his brother’s hand affectionately, gazing at his bent back racked by sobs. Once more he was struck by the secret fires brooding beneath the crust of seeming apathy and always ready to blaze up in angry flames; and he took stock of the vanity of his educational pretensions.

Half an hour went by; Jacques’s hand unclenched; he was no longer sobbing, but his breath still came in gasps. Little by little it became more regular; he was going to sleep. Antoine did not move; he could not bring himself to go. He was thinking with dismay of the boy’s future. He waited another half-hour, then went out on tip-toe, leaving the door ajar.

Next morning Jacques was still asleep, or pretending to be, when Antoine left the flat.

They met, for the first time that day, upstairs, at the family table. Jacques’s face was tired and drawn, with a scornful twist to the corners of his mouth; he had the expression of children who take pride in thinking themselves misunderstood. Throughout the meal he was careful not to meet Antoine’s eye; he did not even want to be pitied. Antoine understood; moreover, he, too, did not particularly want to talk about Lisbeth.

Their life slipped back into its normal rut, as if nothing had happened.

ONE evening, just before dinner, Antoine was surprised to find amongst his mail an envelope addressed to him and enclosing a sealed letter for his brother. The writing was unfamiliar, but as Jacques was in the room with him, he did not want to seem to hesitate.

“Here’s something for you,” he said at once.

Jacques darted towards him, his cheeks flushing an angry red. Antoine, seemingly absorbed in a bookseller’s catalogue, handed him the envelope without looking at him. On raising his eyes he saw that Jacques had thrust the letter into his pocket, unread. Their eyes met. Jacques’s were aggressive.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” he demanded. “Haven’t I the right to get a letter?”

Antoine returned his brother’s look without a word, turned his back on him, and left the room.

Throughout dinner he conversed with M. Thibault, studiously ignoring Jacques. As usual after dinner they went down together, but did not exchange a single word. Antoine went straight to his room. He had hardly sat down when Jacques entered without knocking, approached him with a combative air, and flung down the open letter on the table.

“Now that you’ve taken it on you to censor my correspondence, you’d better have a look at it!”

Antoine refolded the letter without a glance at its contents, and held it out to his brother. As Jacques did not take it, he opened his fingers and let the letter drop onto the carpet. Jacques picked it up and thrust it into his pocket.

“Got the sulks, have you?” he jeered. “Well, they’re wasted on me!”