The Thibaults (36 page)

It seemed as if Lisbeth had intuitively felt his presence, or perhaps she had recognized his step, for she caught him up before he had reached the door of the flat. Hearing her step behind him, Jacques turned. For a few seconds they stood gazing at each other in a dark corner of the entrance-hall. Under the black veil her eyes were clouded with tears, and she did not see the hand he was holding out to her. He would have liked to weep in sympathy, but he was conscious of no emotion, on4y a vague boredom and a certain shyness.

A door banged on one of the upper landings. Fearing they might be caught outside his door, Jacques took out his keys. But what with his confusion and the darkness, he was unable to find the keyhole.

“Sure it’s the right key?” she murmured. He was profoundly moved by the slow cadence of her voice. When at last the door was open, she hesitated. Footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs from one of the upper flats.

“Antoine’s on duty at the hospital,” Jacques whispered, to persuade

her. Then, without the least sign of embarrassment, she crossed the threshold.

As he shut the door and switched on the lights, he saw her walking straight to his room. When she sat down on the sofa, each of her movements reminded him exactly of the past. Through the crape veil he saw her eyes swollen with weeping; grief had perhaps taken away some of the prettiness of her features, but it had added pathos. He noticed that she had a bandaged finger. He did not dare to sit down; he could not take his mind off the bereavement that had led to her return.

“How close it is tonight!” she said. “I’m sure there’s going to be a storm.”

She moved a little on the sofa; and the movement seemed an invitation to him to take the place beside her, his usual place. Jacques sat down and at once, without a word, without even taking off her veil, but simply drawing it aside, she pressed her cheek against his, exactly as before. The crape veil had an odour of dye and starch, and he found the contact of her moist skin disagreeable. He felt at a loss what to do or say. When he took her hand in his she gave a little cry.

“Have you hurt yourself?”

“
Ach
, it’s only a—a whitlow,” she sighed.

The sigh seemed to be for all her troubles at once: her sore finger, her bereavement, and the baffled tenderness fretting her heart. Without thinking, she began unwinding the bandage. When the finger was laid bare—livid and misshapen, with the nail displaced by the abscess—Jacques felt his breath stop short and for a moment his senses reeled as if she had suddenly exposed some secret place of her body.

Meanwhile he was beginning to feel, through his clothes, the warmth of the young body touching his. She turned her china-blue eyes towards him, plaintive eyes that always seemed entreating him not to be unkind. And then he had an impulse, stronger than his repugnance, to press his lips on the disfigured finger and make it well again.

She rose and with a dejected air started winding the gauze again round her finger.

“I’ll have to be going back now.”

She looked so worn out that he made a suggestion.

“Oh, let me make you a cup of tea. Shall I?”

She gave him a curious look, and only afterwards smiled.

“Thank you, I’d like a nice cup of tea. I’ll run across and say a little prayer; then I’ll come back.”

In a few minutes he had the water boiled, the tea made, and was bringing it back to his room. Lisbeth was not yet there. He sat down. Now he was all eagerness for her return. He felt his nerves on edge, but did not try to ascertain the reason. Why was she delaying like this? He could not bring himself to call to her; it would be like an affront to the dead woman. But what could be keeping her all this time? As the minutes passed he kept on going up to the tea-pot, feeling its declining warmth. At last it was stone-cold and, having no pretext for getting up, he stayed unmoving in his chair. His eyes were smarting with staring at the lamp and, with his exasperation, he felt the fever rising in his blood.

A sudden glare of lightning between the slats of the closed shutters jarred his nerves to breaking-point. Was she never coming back? He felt half asleep, so weary of everything he would have liked to die.

There was a low rumble, a black crash. That was the tea-pot bursting. Let it burst! The tea was pouring down in rain, lashing the shutters. Lisbeth was soaked through, water was streaming down her cheeks, down the black crape, washing the colour out of it till it was snow-white, white and translucent, a bridal veil.

Jacques gave a violent start. She had just sat down beside him again, pressing her cheek to his.

“Were you asleep, Jacques dear?”

Never before had she called him by his Christian name. She had taken off her veil and, in a half-dream, he seemed to see once more the well-beloved face of the Lisbeth he had known, though now there were dark rings round her eyes and the corners of her lips were drooping. She made a gesture of weary resignation.

“Now,” she said, “my uncle will marry me.”

Her head was bowed, and Jacques could not see if she was crying.

There had been sadness in her voice, but acquiescence too; perhaps her regret was touched with curiosity about the new life opening before her. But Jacques was not disposed to press such speculations too far. He wanted to believe her unhappy, to revel in the thrill of pitying her. Putting his arms round her, he pressed her body against his with all his might, as if he were trying to merge them into one. Her lips found his, and passionately he gave his mouth to her mouth’s kiss. Never in his life had he felt such an ecstasy of emotion. Evidently she had unfastened her blouse before coming in, for suddenly, almost without a movement on his part, the warmth of her young breast was nestling in his hand.

She shifted her position a little so that Jacques’s hand could move, untrammelled, under the dress.

“Let’s pray together for Mother Friihling,” she murmured.

He felt no inclination to smile; almost he believed he was really praying, such was the fervour of his caresses.

Suddenly she gave a little moan, and shuffled free from his embrace. He supposed that he had hurt her finger, or else that she was about to leave him. But she only moved towards the lamp-switch; after turning off the light she came back to the sofa. Close beside his ear he heard her whisper: “
Liebling
!” and then again he felt her soft lips crushed on his, her feverish fingers on his clothes… .

Another clap of thunder woke him; rain was hissing on the cobbles in the courtyard. Lisbeth? Where was Lisbeth? All was darkness in the room. He had half a mind to get up, to go and look for her, and even made a tentative effort to rise, propping himself on his elbow; but then a flood of sleep swept over him, and he sank back amongst the cushions.

It was broad daylight when at last he opened his eyes.

First, he saw the tea-pot on the table, then his coat inexplicably sprawling on the floor. Now everything came back to him, and he got up at once. A sudden, urgent craving had come over him to take off what clothes he still had on and wash his limbs in good clean water. The cold bath seemed like a purifying rite, a baptism.

Still dripping, he began to walk about the room, throwing out his chest, testing his muscles, and patting the cool, firm skin; the odious associations of this cult of his own nakedness had been completely blotted from his memory. Reflected in a glass he saw his slim young body and for the first time since a very long while he found that he could gaze at every part of it coolly, with unruffled equanimity. Remembering certain lapses of the past, he merely shrugged his shoulders with an indulgent contempt. “All that was childish silliness!” That chapter of his life, he felt, was definitely closed; it seemed to him that certain energies, after a long spell of incomprehension and deviation from their natural course, had at last found their proper function. Though what had happened during the past twelve hours was only vaguely present in his consciousness, and though he did not even give a thought to Lisbeth, he felt light-hearted, clean, and sound in mind and body. He had not the least impression of having lit on something new; rather, it seemed to him he had recovered a long-lost equilibrium, like a convalescent who, though delighted by his return to health, finds nothing new in it.

Still naked, he moved into the hall, and held the door ajar. He fancied he could make out Lisbeth in the darkened room where the dead body lay, on her knees and swathed in the black veils she had worn the previous night. Men on ladders were festooning the street-entrance with black draperies. He remembered the funeral was fixed for nine, and dressed in eager haste, as if for a holiday. That morning every act was a delight.

He had just finished tidying his room when M. Thibault, who had made a point of returning from Maisons-Laffitte for the funeral, came to fetch him.

He walked beside his father in the cortege. He had a vague sense of almost patronizing superiority as at the church he filed in with the others, amongst all those people who did not know; and without much emotion he clasped Lisbeth’s hand.

All that day the concierge’s room was empty. Jacques counted the minutes, waiting for Lisbeth’s return; but he would not own to himself the reason for his impatience, the desire smouldering in the background of his mood.

At four o’clock the bell rang, but when he ran to open the door, it was his Latin tutor. He had quite forgotten he had a lesson that afternoon.

He was listening to his tutor’s explanations of a passage of Horace with an inattentive ear, when the bell rang again. This time it was she. From the threshold she could see the open door of Jacques’s room, and the tutor’s back bent over the table. For a few moments their eyes met, questioning. Jacques had no idea that she had come to say goodbye, that she was leaving by the six-o’clock train. She did not dare to speak, but a slight tremor ran through her body and her eyelids quivered. Raising her bandaged finger to her mouth, she came quite close to him and, as if she were already in the train that was to carry her away from him for ever, threw him a hasty kiss and fled.

The tutor went on with the interrupted lesson:

“
Purpurarum usus
means the same thing as
purpura quâutuntur
. But there’s a shade of difference. Do you feel it?”

Jacques smiled as if he felt it. He was telling himself Lisbeth would be back quite soon and a picture was hovering before his eyes of Lisbeth’s face in the dusk of the hall, and the raised veil, and the kiss she had seemed to snatch with her bandaged finger from her lips, to throw to him.

“Go on translating,” the tutor said.

Note: As regards Parts I and II of The Thibaults the present Translator wishes to acknowledge the assistance he has derived from the previous version by Mr. Stephen Haden Guest.

THE two brothers walked along by the Luxembourg railings. The Senate clock had just gone half-past five.

“Your nerves are on edge,” Antoine observed. Jacques had been forcing the pace for some time, and his brother was growing tired of it. “Sweltering, isn’t it? Looks like a storm brewing.”

Jacques slowed down and took off his hat, which was pinching his temples.

“Nerves on edge? Not a bit of it. Quite the contrary. You don’t believe me? Well, I’m amazed at my own calmness. Each of the last two nights I’ve slept like a log; so much so that, on awaking, I felt stiff all over. Cool as a cucumber, I assure you. But you shouldn’t have bothered to come with me, you’ve such heaps of things to do. All the more so as Daniel’s going to turn up. Amazing, isn’t it? He came all the way from Cabourg this morning just for me. He telephoned a moment ago to know when the results would be posted. Damned thoughtful he is about things like that. Battaincourt promised to come too. So, you see, I shan’t be alone.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, in half an hour …”

Yes, his nerves are on edge, all right, thought Antoine. Mine too, a bit. Still, as Favery swears he’s in the list … Antoine brushed aside, as in his own case he had always done, all thought of failure. Casting a paternal glance at the youngster beside him, he hummed through closed lips:
In my heart, in my heart
… What that girl Olga was singing this morning; can’t get it out of my head. By Duparc, I suppose. I only hope she doesn’t forget to remind Belin about tapping number seven.
In my heart tra-la-la
…

And if I’ve passed, Jacques mused, shall I be really, really pleased? Not so much as they, anyhow, he added to himself, thinking of Antoine and his father.

A memory flashed across his mind.

“Do you know,” he said, “the last time I dined at Maisons-Laflitte—I’d just got through the orals and my nerves were in rags—when we were at the dinner-table, Father suddenly addressed me, with that special look of his, you know: ‘And what shall we make of you, if you’re not passed?’ ”

The picture faded and another memory crossed his mind. What a state I’m in this afternoon! he thought and, smiling, took his brother’s arm.

“No, Antoine, there was nothing unusual about that, of course. It was next day, the following morning. Look here, I simply must tell you about it. As I had nothing to do, Father told me to attend M. Crespin’s funeral in his place. Remember? And it was then that something happened—something quite inexplicable. I got there too soon and, as it was raining, I went into the church. I was thoroughly sick, you know, at having my morning spoiled like that; all the same, as you’ll see, that doesn’t really explain it. Well, I entered the church and sat down in an empty row, when—what do you think?—a priest came up and took the chair beside me. Mind you, there were any number of empty chairs, yet this priest deliberately planted himself next to me. He was quite young, still at the seminary, no doubt, smooth-shaven and smelling clean, of good mouth-wash—but he had disgusting black gloves and, worst of all, a huge umbrella with a black handle that reeked like a drenched dog. Don’t laugh, Antoine; wait and see! I simply couldn’t get that priest out of my mind. He had his nose buried in a prayerbook and I could just see his lips moving as he followed the service. So far, so good. But, at the elevation, instead of using the kneeling-desk in front of him—that, of course, I’d have understood—he knelt on the ground, prostrated himself on the bare stone slabs. I, meanwhile, remained standing. When he rose he saw me like that and caught my eye; perhaps my attitude may have struck him as provocative. Anyhow, I caught a look of pious disapproval on his face and h6 rolled his eyes upwards—it maddened me, his air of smug superiority. To such a pitch that—I can’t think what possessed me to do it, it’s a mystery to me yet—I drew a visiting-card from my pocket, scrawled a phrase on it, and handed it to him.” (As a matter of fact, all this was make-believe; Jacques had merely fancied at the moment that he might act thus. What prompted him to lie?) “He raised his nose from his book, and hesitated; yes, I had positively to force the card into his hand. He glanced at it, stared at me in consternation, and then, slipping his hat under his arm, quickly picked up his umbrella and—ran! You’d have thought he had a lunatic at large beside him. Well, for that matter, I was pretty mad at the moment; it was all I could do to keep a hold on myself. I went away without waiting for the service to end.”