The Widow (5 page)

“Come and give us a hand!” she called out, already used to harrying him around.

Then, looking at his shoes, which he had not laced up: “There are some sabots in the washhouse. They're a pair of Couderc's sabots. Bring the hot water that's standing on the stove.”

What with the dew and the poultry droppings, the ground was slippery and the fowls' prints formed a crisscross pattern upon it.

The sun was up, but there was still some haze in the air. A long trail of mist straggled between the two rows of trees along the canal. The old man was evidently milking the cows in the shed, for the milk could be heard squirting rhythmically into the pail; a heavy breath of animal warmth came from that direction, and from time to time a hoof banged against the partition.

“Try and remember the quantities. I've done all this by myself quite long enough! One pail of grits … one pail of bran … half a pail of fish meal … pour on the water now, slowly, just enough to make the bran curl.”

There was a smell of bed and flannel about her. Over her pink slip, which she must have slept in, she was wearing an old light brown coat that had lost both buttons and lining, and her hair was tied up in a kerchief. Her legs were naked, with blue veins showing.

“Now, fill the pails…. ”

She kept glancing at him covertly.

“I had a little girl from the orphanage to help me. I had to get rid of her, on account of that bastard of a Couderc. He used to take her into the shed to feel her, and it's a miracle things went no further. There … come along.”

And, while he carried the pails, she ladled the feed with a wooden scoop and filled the galvanized-iron troughs, onto which the chickens rushed.

“Next come the pigs.”

He found livestock everywhere, in every corner, in every one of the outlandish buildings surrounding the yard: sitting hens; other hens sheltered, with their chicks, by a sort of trelliswork tent. And hutches piled one on top of the other, faced with wire netting, rabbits stirring inside.

When the three of them got back to the kitchen, Tati climbed on a chair and cut off three slices of ham, which she set on the frying pan. And so they ate, in silence, facing the window.

“Will you be able to go and cut some grass for the rabbits?”

“I think so.”

She shrugged. That was no sort of an answer.

“Come along and I'll give you the sickle and a sack. You only have to cross the bridge. Between the canal and the Cher you'll find all the grass you want.”

She called him back as he was moving off, with his crescent-shaped sickle held at arm's length.

“Try not to cut yourself…. ”

He still did not realize it was Sunday. It had not occurred to him. He was just a little surprised to see two barges moored above the lock, with hatches closed, as if the people inside were still asleep. Then he noticed a fisherman getting off his bicycle and settling down on the embankment.

The lock was a hundred yards or so from the house, and so narrow he could have jumped across. The shutters were still closed at the lock-keeper's cottage as well. The water of the canal seemed to be steaming gently, and now and again a bubble would rise to the surface.

Once across the bridge, he got a better idea of the lay of the land. Where the canal turned, a village appeared, or rather the beginnings of a village which would be about three quarters of a mile away. In front of him a meadow sloped steeply away to the Cher, whose clear water leapt over the pebbles, and immediately on the other side of the river there were thick woods.

The house where Félicie, the slut with the baby, lived was opposite the lock, between the canal and the Cher, and surrounded with heaps of pink bricks.

He bent down to cut the grass still wet with dew. An occasional bicycle passed along the towpath. He saw the hatchway of one of the barges being opened, and a woman not yet fully dressed came out to hang up washing on wires stretching from one end of the boat to the other.

A cow lowed. Old Couderc crossed the bridge behind his two beasts, their swollen udders heaving to the slow rhythm of their pace. As soon as they were on the grassy slope, they lowered their pink muzzles to the grass, while the old man, taking no notice, stood still, a stick in his hand.

Jean finally realized it was Sunday when he saw a whole troop of girls and boys bicycling by in their Sunday best, then a woman—doubtless the lock-keeper's wife—coming out of her cottage and making her way to the village, prayer book in hand.

He went up to the old man. “Well, now …” he said, as though the other had not been deaf.

And he winked at him, but Couderc, instead of responding to this overture, turned his head away. He was probably wary, perhaps frightened, for when Jean came closer, he took two or three steps in the direction of his cows, as if to maintain the distance between them.

So, with his sack almost full of grass, Jean returned to the house.

Tati, all dressed up and wearing a hat, was putting a saucepan on the fire, which she had finally lit.

“I suppose you don't go to church?” she said without turning around.

There was a smell of onion being cooked. She took some cloves from the cupboard, and two bay leaves.

“Give the grass to the rabbits. Have a look at my stew now and then. If it sticks to the bottom, add a drop of water, but only a drop, and put the pot on the side of the stove.”

A piece of mirror hung below a calendar. She looked at herself to straighten her hat, got her prayer book with its cover of black wool cloth. Then she turned to face him.

“You'll manage?” she asked.

And always that little glance in which he could read satisfaction, even a kind of promise, but a slight reservation as well. She was not distrustful. Only, she still needed to watch him for a time.

“I'll manage!”

“If you want to wash, just draw some water from the well. There's soap and a towel in the laundry.”

Why were her eyes filling with sudden laughter?

“You haven't got a razor, I'll bet. For today, you can use the old man's. It must be in his room. I'll bring you one when I go to St. Amand.”

A little while later, she was walking along the canal, short and solid, dressed in black from head to toe, clutching her prayer book to her bosom and holding an umbrella in her other hand.

He shaved in the kitchen, in front of the scrap of mirror, and then went to wash in the yard with the ice-cold water he drew from the well.

When he felt clean, with his chest bare under his open shirt, and his hair still damp, he wanted to smoke, but he had no cigarettes left. Nor had he the money to buy any.

By dint of prowling through the house, he managed to find a packet of rough-cut tobacco on the kitchen mantelpiece. Some pipes belonging to the old man were hanging in a rack. He chose one, and then, feeling a certain distaste for smoking a pipe Couderc had used before him, he went to the cupboard for the bottle of brandy, filled the bowl, and let the liquid trickle out through the stem.

From time to time he glanced at René, widow Couderc's son, stuck there in his frame, with cap, uniform, and the lopsided face of a degenerate.

“A little punk …” he growled.

He knew what he was talking about. A dirty little brute, and a liar in the bargain.

The stew was simmering, the meat was beginning to sizzle in the saucepan, and he did not forget, when he was afraid it might stick, to pour in a drop of water as he had been bidden.

After which he went outside, aimlessly, and reached the tow-path, as free as air, like a man utterly without ties.

The old man was still with his cows across the water. The fisherman had rigged two bottom lines fitted with huge red floats, probably for carp or tench, and now he sat motionless on his campstool.

Cyclists were still passing, and some of them had bunches of lilac tied to the handlebars, people doubtless on their way to visit relatives in town. One of the bargees, standing up in his dinghy, was giving the side of his unladen barge a coat of resin, using a long-handled brush.

Jean reached the lock. The lock-keeper—he had a wooden leg—was sitting on his doorstep, mending an eel trap. The door was open. A baby was crying. And on the other side of the water the house in the brickyard had its door open too, but it was impossible to see what was going on inside.

He was about to turn back, because of the stew to be watched. His pipe was rather strong. Before, he used to smoke nothing but cigarettes. He turned around as he heard the bells of two bicycles. Two gendarmes were riding slowly along and looked closely at him.

The gendarmes rode on for another quarter of a mile or so. Then they got off and came back to him.

“Have you got your papers?”

Unlike the women in the bus, these two had made no mistake. Their thick eyebrows bristled with suspicion. They looked at each other with all the cunning of men you can't fool.

From his hip pocket Jean fetched out some folded papers which they inspected. From their pouches they took other papers, compared the two sets, moved away for a brief whispered discussion.

“You know you're not allowed to leave the Département?”

“I know.”

“And that you must register as soon as you have a place to live?”

“I have one. I was meaning to come and report tomorrow.”

There was a tinge of respect in the attitude of the two officers. If Jean had been an ordinary tramp, they would have spoken to him much more familiarly. But here was a man about whom special instructions had been sent, a man who had just done five years at Fontevrault.

“Where are you living?”

“At Madame Couderc's.”

“She hired you?”

“As a farmhand.”

“We're taking your papers along. You'll get them back when the inspector's seen them.”

They mounted. Jean, hands in his pockets, jumped over the lock and prowled near the brickyard in the hope of seeing Félicie. He even glanced into the house. No doubt the little slut was at church, for all he could see, in the half darkness of the kitchen, where a bed had been set up, was the baby standing in a wicker frame which enabled it to walk. A woman noticed his presence and came to take a closer look. She looked crabby, had an evil eye. Finding nothing to say to him, she banged the door in his face, even if that left her in almost total darkness.

So, at loose ends, he went and sat down beside the fisherman, who made no effort to engage in conversation and kept on placidly throwing into the water the little pellets smelling of cheese that he used as bait.

Sitting there, he saw Tati come back from church. A little later he noted the two gendarmes, who were riding just as slowly as before along the towpath. They got off their bicycles outside the house and went into the kitchen.

They came out again a good quarter of an hour later, wiping their mustaches, which showed they had been given a drink.

Tati had not changed her dress. The cameo on her bosom produced almost the same effect as the downy mole on her left cheek. She had stacked the dirty dishes in a pail, wiped the table, and then suggested, “We might go and sit outside. Put the armchair and another chair in front of the door…. ”

He realized that this was part of the traditional Sunday ritual. The armchair was made of wickerwork, with a red seat cushion and a triangular cushion as a headrest. For all her Sunday best, Tati went and took off her shoes, which probably pinched, and came back in a brand-new pair of blue slippers.

“In a little while, we'll put the eggs in the incubator. This morning it was a hundred and one. If we turn up the wick a little more…. ”

But it was Sunday. She was in no hurry. The gendarmes had had their drop of brandy, as two unwashed little glasses bore witness.

“You took one of Couderc's pipes?”

By the way, where was the old man? He had disappeared immediately after the meal.

“I haven't any cigarettes left,” Jean admitted.

“I'll give you three francs to go and buy some. But don't you go and spend all afternoon in the village!”

And, as she watched him go, she spread some knitting on her lap and picked up her needles.

The village was almost empty. Two boys of sixteen or seventeen, their faces scrubbed shiny, shouted as they tried to amuse themselves.

On the way back, Jean met old Couderc, who had put on his Sunday clothes at last and, in his black suit and broad white tie, looked as if he were going to a wedding or a funeral. He was walking along the canal, his pace slack. He did not see, or pretended not to see, his new lodger.

“You didn't stay too long. That's good. That's good! Sit down. Take a chair with a back.”

He brought a chair from the kitchen, one with a straw seat, and settled himself astride it. Then, without speaking, he puffed out the blue smoke of his cigarette, and watched a little boy who was fishing with a stick he had cut in the woods.

Tati knitted on. Her needles made a clicking sound and now and then, when she counted her stitches, her lips could be seen moving. Whenever she turned her head, he knew it was to peer at him.

When, after a very long time, she finally made up her mind to speak, it was to say, “There's not a man living that can frighten me.”

Then, as if in anger, “You're all alike! You show off. You look as if you wanted to smash everything, when really …”

He did not answer. Perhaps he had become a little more grave? A shadow had passed. He could no longer see the little boy fishing.

“The gendarmes said to me: ‘From now on, it's up to you! You can't say you haven't been warned…. ' ”

Another silence, another row of knitting.

“And
I
said to them: ‘Don't you worry! He won't try to put anything over on
me
…. ”

“Did they tell you my name?”

“Passerat-Monnoyeur. An easy name to remember, seeing it's on all the bottles. Funny, your having the same name as the distiller at Montluçon.”