The Vatard Sisters (20 page)
Désirée immediately asked Auguste for details about the couple opposite, and the other girl must have asked her lover a similar question, because she surreptitiously cast a curious glance at the walkers.
One day when the other girl was later than usual, Auguste and Désirée kept the young man company. His intended finally arrived. Then they all began talking and, after having chatted together for a while, the two couples, perhaps tired of their own tête-à-têtes, accompanied each other on the same side of the pavement and, in between kisses, to converse about clothes and love.
The moment was approaching when the young man had to leave; the night before his departure he invited Auguste and Désirée to come and have a drink, and all four went and sat down in the back room of a small bar nearby.
At the thought that the next morning he had to quit Paris, leave the woman he loved, abandon his work and his friends, and that by that very evening he’d no longer be master of himself, that he would be a thing, a mere nothing, moved and shifted at the whim of an order, the young man felt very depressed. Seated in front of his glass with downcast eyes, he remained silent. Auguste gave him some pointers about the soldier’s trade that were accurate, but not very consoling; at the end of each of his sentences the words ‘guardhouse’, ‘in the clink’, and ‘glasshouse’, kept returning like an obstinate refrain. According to him, it was a horrible torture for anyone weak, but for sturdy chaps like himself, and he thumped himself in the chest, it was a joke and that’s all. However, he added: ‘There were days when I was shattered, and I’m not saying that to discourage you but because it’s the honest truth.’ And as if, despite their intention to relieve his fears, they’d sworn to rob him of all consolation, his girl continued in an undertone, saying as she showed off her lover’s frail wrists: ‘He’s got such dainty arms, it’s always stopped him learning a strenuous profession. He’ll never be able to carry his rifle.’
He didn’t breath a word – he was no longer even listening. He was obsessed by this single thought: he had to leave, and he could already see himself in the regiment. He would exchange his jacket for a uniform with copper buttons, they would thrust a rifle into his hands, and there, in sun, wind and rain, he’d have to force himself to juggle with it. Then he thought of the rest periods, of walks regulated by the clock, in the streets at night, without a sou to buy himself a glass of wine or a crust of bread; he thought of the nauseating barracks, of going to bed without so much as a goodnight from his sweetheart, of waking in the morning without hope. But daily life in the garrison seemed to him more distressing still; before him now unfurled endless forced marches. He saw himself worn out by fatigue on the route, tired, broken, sweating under his pack, dragging himself along at the back of the troop with guard dogs running around; he heard himself called a good-for-nothing, a slacker; he saw himself fallen in a ditch, picked up, and thrown into the back of a wagon and, with the exaggeration that such anxieties engender, he imagined himself lying in a hospital, dying, while his comrades grumbled, annoyed at the sound of his death throes.
Désirée was very moved; she held out her glass to him to clink glasses, but their hands trembled and the dancing wine splashed on the table in large drops. They put their glasses down without having the heart to even take a sip. They were embarrassed, no longer knew what to say. Auguste stared at the tips of his fingernails, Désirée contemplated the young man’s delicate hands and the sight of these girl’s hands upset her. The thought that they would have to bear the same heavy loads as the fists of stronger men appalled her.
The other girl kissed her boyfriend, consoled him, wiping his nose with her handkerchief, swearing her eternal love for him, and she was no doubt in good faith at that moment.
They didn’t have the courage to drink a second bottle to the health of the patient, and Désirée, who was already very late, left, sick at heart, full of pity for her new friends.
When she returned home, Vatard was unbuttoning his braces with a melancholy air. Any other day she would have trembled before her father; this particular evening, she passed him without even noticing the look of thunder on his face, and once enclosed in her room, with that unconscious joy which results from the misfortune of others, she told herself that she was wrong to complain, that all in all she was happy, since however little she could see him, Auguste was at least still in Paris, near her, and not going off like the other young man to Landes, in the depths of southern France.
The evening Désirée spent on the Rue du Cotentin was worth three days’ respite to her father. If it wasn’t exactly a return to the flow of idle chatter that had once fluttered its wings against the windowpanes, at least now Vatard had only to put up with stifled sobs and silent gestures of irritation. His daughter became calmer, eating a little, practically drinking again, no longer staring around cagily with dark, angry eyes. The following morning, when the excitement of the night before had worn off, she’d expected an avalanche of reproaches. But her father had made no allusion to her returning so late at night. She was grateful to him for this and her tears ceased.
But this resigned calm didn’t last long. She quickly forgot the sadness of the conscripted soldier, made no more comparisons between her fate and that of others, and once again bemoaned the restrictions placed on her liberty in the evenings.
As for Céline, she continued to be insufferable. In the mean time, Anatole had disappeared. Rumours circulating around the workshop pictured him living in concubinage with some corset-maker, so she had reason to be calmer, and she was in fact less scared, but she was still in a foul mood. Now it was her painter she was cross with.
First of all, he would hardly ever take her out, didn’t give her any fun, would leave her sitting in a corner, bored, like some animal you know is there but which has already been fed. She had nothing to do except twiddle her thumbs, get up, sit down, dust a piece of furniture, patch a pair of breeches, or boil some water. Such distractions seemed insufficient to her. She began to wish that her lover needed something, so she could go outside, refresh her eyes in the open air and chat with the concierge on the way back up.
And what’s more, he wasn’t very generous, even though he must be less broke than he claimed, because he was always bringing back bits of old tapestry, tattered stoles, and glazed pots with broken handles or holes in the bottom, a pile of odds and ends fit only for the rubbish bin. He was really stingy! Fond of his own home comforts he never refused himself anything, but if she liked a piece of jewellery or wanted a dress, he wasn’t interested. Sometimes he would take her out for dinner, or pay for a seat at the theatre, but as to money, as to giving her any cash in hand, never. It seemed as if he wouldn’t treat her to anything unless he had a share in it himself.
Then one fine day he stopped taking her to the restaurant. What with her mania for ordering rabbit and picking its carcass clean with her bare hands, with her way of tucking in her napkin, of filling the glasses right to the brim, of laughing and fidgeting about in her chair, of dabbling around in the food with her fork looking for little onions, she was getting on his nerves.
Another fine day he stopped taking her to the theatre as well. Her childish glee, clapping her hands and bouncing on the seats, jumping up and leaning over the balustrade, carelessly kicking the surrounding seats, her habit of fiddling with the opera glasses and smudging the lenses, of eating apple and orange candy sticks, made him cringe.
Moreover, it was even worse the following day. She’d feel compelled to recount the whole play to him from the first scene to the last, going into raptures about the leading man’s acting, about the heroine and her white dress, about the castle and forest stage set, about the people seated near them, about the boxes, about the usherette, about everything. The ridiculous observations that she peppered her narrative with exasperated him, and he hurled himself at his paintbox, trying to absorb himself in his work in order not to listen to her anymore.
When they were out walking together she was perhaps even more tiresome; she would stop every five minutes in front of clothes shops, would eat cakes and apple turnovers and then borrow his handkerchief to wipe her fingers, would force him to halt and watch those interminable games of shuttlecock that shopkeepers in shirt-sleeves play on summer evenings down destitute side streets. Sometimes she’d drag him to the more opulent quarters, as she liked to stroll like a lady down arcades lined with shops and along the newly built boulevards. The painter detested the Palais-Royal and the
grands boulevards
, mostly because of her, as she’d loll around in front of jewellery displays, enthusing over anything with a Parisian label on it, making abominable remarks about the style of some perfume bottle placed in a small carriage of gilded bronze, or about a pendulum clock topped by a hunting scene, or miniatures of the Vendôme column or the Luxor obelisk at eighteen francs a piece; she’d giggle in front of framed advertisements, expressing the desire to see him wear a tie-pin in his cravat like those she was admiring – an enamel dog’s head or a postage stamp mounted on a golden pin.
All things considered, she behaved less idiotically on the outer boulevards. Since there was nothing to see, there was no reason for her to make any observations. Nevertheless, even though she often kept quiet, everything about her irritated him, from the way she drank her diluted cassis, licking her lips with her tongue, to the way she begged him for puffs on his cigarette so she could blow smoke through her red sugar-candy pipe, everything, right down to the manner in which she pomaded her hair, or shook her fake coral earrings, or showed off the silver ring she wore on her little finger.
He resorted to the pretext of being busy with work and excused himself from going out. Then Céline really got bored. What probably annoyed her most of all about the way Cyprien was behaving was the benevolent disdain he had for her. He treated her like a child one gives a comforter, a picture or a plaything to, in order to make it keep still. When she’d finished going through one portfolio, he’d take it away and place another in front of her, and crushed with boredom, she’d spend hours flicking through his collection of prints and etchings, sick at heart at having to look at these funereal images, regretting that no one had enlivened these black and white scribbles with some delicate colours, with apple-green or pink.
But this was nothing as long as she was alone with her lover, then it was simply insufferable; when he had friends over, it became humiliating.
They’d be there, a whole crowd of people laughing like geese whenever she ventured to throw in a word. One day, she told them about having seen, in the Rue de la Cherche-Midi, a really nice picture: a little boy in his nightshirt kneeling on a prie-dieu. They asked how much it would cost to have it framed, spoke of cold-cream, of cucumbers, of rose-petal pomade, made as many jokes as they could about this ‘little man’ praying. When they’d all had their fun, her lover had kissed her hand with feigned respect, saying: ‘Céline, you’re wonderful, you’re really too much, my girl!’
Yet there was no need to burst out laughing like that. Wasn’t this picture of a poor child in his nightshirt better than all their canvases, those unfinished daubs in which you couldn’t make out a thing? Wasn’t a nice, shiny picture like that what they should have been painting? One evening, pushed beyond endurance by all these men provoking her to make her talk, she told them frankly her thoughts on literature and painting. They could be summed up like so: in a novel she wanted to read about crime, in a painting to look at something nice. She was rewarded with fits of laughter.
Only on one occasion had she been listened to with something like attention, when she’d begun to describe the quarrel that had arisen between her boss and the foreman.
The owner was, it seemed, a good man who looked after the business side of things but who knew nothing about the work of a bookbindery. The foreman was a rogue of the worst kind who had made himself indispensable by firing all the good workers, mixing up piles of books, hiding sheets of paper, and burying covers in remote corners. Whenever he was absent or off sick there was complete confusion. No one could find a thing. So he took advantage of the situation, continually asking for raises, demanding that they hire his son, a frightful reprobate who’d been chased out of all the other workshops for misconduct, and the owner would back down, feeling faint after such disputes, preferring to submit to all these affronts rather than witness the collapse of his firm. Whenever the work became more urgent or more plentiful, the foreman’s demands increased in proportion. The other employees were well aware of these shabby tricks. The women generally blamed the foreman; the men, who despised him, freely admitted that he behaved like a scoundrel but deep down they were delighted at the humiliations he inflicted on the boss.
To cut a long story short, after having scoured the city in search of an experienced worker who’d served at least ten years in the bindery trade, the boss found the right man and had taken his revenge by firing the foreman and his son in one fell swoop.
Once launched into her tale, Céline had become eloquent, her eyes lit up, her hands gesticulated. With her words she conjured up the seething rabble of bindery workers, with a striking adjective she sketched out a portrait of the foreman, a likeness of the boss, she brought their arguments, their furious rages to life, describing the whole workshop listening with bated breath to their outbursts, and then laughing and making fun of them. ‘That’s just how it is,’ cried her listeners, ‘so true to life!’ And the painter had seemed charmed, had taken his mistress out the next day for a stroll; he’d treated her decently for once, like an important person.
Céline told herself that she’d probably been very witty without realising it, and she wanted to do it again.
She began to blather out all the gossip, all the tittle-tattle of the workshop; but either the stories were too threadbare or Céline had lost her manner, her knack of showing them off. They listened to her with a bored air, and as soon as they thought she’d finished, they spoke about something else, and didn’t bother with her any more.
