A Life (15 page)

As Jeanne slept on the right, her left nipple was often exposed when they awoke: Julien noticed the fact and christened it 'the Outdoor Type', while the other one became 'Lover Boy' because the pink flower at its summit seemed more responsive to kisses.

The deep track between the two became known as 'Mama's Avenue' because he often passed up and down it; and another, more intimate route was dubbed the 'Road to Damascus' in memory of the Val d'Ota.

When they arrived in Bastia, they had to pay the guide. Julien rummaged in his pockets. Not finding the necessary, he said to Jeanne:

'Since you're not using the two thousand francs your mother gave you, why not let me carry them? They'll be safer in my money-belt; and it'll save me having to get change'

And she handed him her purse.

They reached Leghorn, visited Florence, Genoa, the whole of the Corniche.

One morning, when the mistral was blowing, they found themselves back in Marseilles.

Two months had passed since their departure from Les Peuples. It was now the fifteenth of October.

Chilled by the great cold wind which seemed to be coming all the way from Normandy, Jeanne felt sad. For some time Julien had seemed changed, tired, indifferent; and she was afraid, though she knew not of what.

She postponed their journey home, for four days, unable to bring herself to leave this pleasant sunny region. It seemed to her that her tour of happiness was at an end.

Finally they left.

They were to go shopping in Paris for all the things they would need in setting up home at Les Peuples; and Jeanne was looking forward to bringing home some treasures, thanks to Mama's present. But the first thing she thought of was the pistol which she had promised to the young Corsican woman at Evisa.

The day after they arrived she said to Julien:

'Darling, could I have Mummy's money back? I want to do my shopping.'

He turned towards her with a look of annoyance on his face.

'How much do you need?'

She was taken aback and stammered:

'Well . . . whatever you think.'

He replied:

'You can have a hundred francs, but whatever you do, don't squander them.'

She did not know what to say, feeling embarrassed and at a loss.

Finally she said haltingly:

'But I gave you the money to . . .'

He did not let her finish.

'Yes, quite so. But since we share the same purse, what does it matter if it's in your pocket or mine? It's not as if I'm refusing to let you have any, after all, since I'm actually giving you a hundred francs.'

She took the five gold coins without a further word; but she dared not ask for more, and bought only the pistol.

A week later they set off on their way back to Les Peuples.

VI

In front of the white gate and its two brick pillars, the family and servants stood waiting. The post-chaise drew up, and long embraces ensued. Mama was crying; Jeanne, deeply affected, wiped away a tear; Father paced nervously up and down.

Then, while the luggage was being unloaded, an account of the journey was delivered beside the drawing-room fire. Words poured in abundance from Jeanne's lips; and within half an hour the story was told, all of it, except perhaps for one or two details forgotten in the haste of narrative.

Then the young woman went to unpack: Rosalie, who was also in a particularly emotional state, helped her. When they had finished, and all the linen and dresses and toilet articles had been put away in their usual place, the maid left her mistress; and Jeanne, feeling rather weary, sat down.

She wondered what to do next and tried to think of some occupation for her mind, some task for her hands. She had no wish to go back down to the drawing-room where her mother was dozing; she thought of going for a walk, but the countryside seemed so dreary that just looking at it out of the window made her heart sink with melancholy gloom.

Then she realized that there was nothing left for her to do, ever. Her whole childhood at the convent had been taken up with the future, and she had busied herself with fantasies. In those days the continual excitement provided by her hopes and aspirations had filled her hours so that she never noticed their passing. Then, hardly had she stepped outside the austere walls within which her illusions had taken shape, when her expectation of love had been immediately fulfilled. The man she had hoped for, and met, and loved, and married in a matter of weeksas one does marry when one is suddenly certainhad carried her off in his arms without allowing her a single moment's pause for reflection.

But the sweet reality of their first days together was now to become the everyday reality that closed the door on indetermin-  ate hopes, on the charming, anxious uncertainties of the unknown. Yes indeed, the waiting was over.

And so there was nothing left to do, today, tomorrow, ever again. And she sensed all this in some way as a kind of disillusion, as the collapse of her dreams.

She stood up and went to press her forehead against the cold window-pane. Then, having gazed for some time at the dark clouds rolling across the sky, she decided to go out.

Was this still the same countryside, the same grass, the same trees as she had known in May? What had become of the sunlit merriment of the leaves and the verdant poetry of the lawn with its blazing dandelions and blood-red poppies, where daisies shone like stars and yellow butterflies quivered whimsically as though pulled by invisible strings? And that heady air laden with life, and smells, and tiny atoms of fertility, was gone.

The avenues, drenched by continual autumn showers and thickly carpeted in fallen leaves, stretched away under thin, shivering poplars that were now almost bare. Their slender branches trembled in the wind, trying to shake off some last leaf that was ready to drop into the space below. And all day long, like a steady, lugubrious downpour, these final leaves, now all yellow, like large gold coins, endlessly detached themselves, spiralled in the air, fluttered, and fell.

She walked as far as the copse. It had a mournful air, like a room where a person lies dying. The towering walls of greenery that separated the lovely little winding paths and gave them their secret intimacy had been scattered to the four winds. Spindly branches jostled one another amidst the delicate lattice-work of intermingled shrubs; and as the wind swept the fallen leaves along, stirring them and piling them periodically into heaps, their dry rustle sounded like the rasping sigh of a mortal agony.

Tiny birds were hopping about in search of shelter, twittering as though they felt the cold.

The lime and the plane-tree, however, being protected by the thick screen of elders which had been deployed as a first line of defence against the sea gales, still wore their summer finery, and seemed to be dressed, the one in red velvet and the other in  orange silk, tinted thus by the first cold days according to the nature of their sap.

Jeanne walked slowly up and down Mama's avenue, beside the Couillards' farm. Something weighed upon her, like a foreboding of the long periods of boredom to come during the life of monotony and routine that was now commencing.

Then she sat down on the bank where Julien had spoken to her of love for the first time; and she remained there, daydreaming, her mind almost vacant, her heart quite numb, wanting to lie down, to sleep and thereby escape the sadness of this day.

Suddenly she caught sight of a seagull being carried across the sky by a gust of wind; and she recalled the eagle that she had seen, back there, in Corsica, in the darkness of the Val d'Ota. Her heart registered the sharp pang which comes with the memory of something good that is now over; and all at once she saw again the radiant island with its wild perfume, its sun that can ripen orange and citron, its mountains with their rosy peaks, its blue bays, its ravines where torrents race.

And then the bleak, damp countryside around her, the baleful falling of the leaves, and the grey clouds chased along by the wind, enveloped her in such a thick pall of desolation that she returned to the house simply in order not to burst out sobbing.

Mama, slumped in front of the fireplace, was dozing, being accustomed to the melancholy of the days and no longer conscious of it. Papa and Julien had gone off for a walk, deep in discussion about their affairs. And night fell, strewing gloomy shadow through the vast drawing-room which gleamed fitfully in the light from the fire.

Through the windows, a last vestige of daylight was sufficient to reveal the grubby spectacle of nature at year's end, and a grey sky which looked as though it, too, had been smeared with dirt.

Presently the Baron appeared, followed by Julien; and as soon as he entered the room, which was plunged in darkness, he rang the bell and called out:

'Come on, quickly, some light! It's miserable in here.'

And he sat down by the fireplace. As his wet feet steamed  beside the flame and the mud dropped from the soles of his shoes, dried by the heat, he rubbed his hands cheerfully:

'I'm sure there's going to be a frost,' he said. 'The sky's clearing to the north and there's a full moon tonight. It's sure to be a hard one.'

Then, turning towards his daughter:

'So, my little one, are you glad to be back home, back in your own house with your old parents?'

This simple question quite demolished Jeanne. She flung herself into her father's arms, eyes brimming with tears, and kissed him urgently as though asking to be forgiven; for despite her heart's efforts to be cheerful, she felt unutterably sad. And yet she remembered how much she had looked forward to the joy of seeing her parents again; and she was astonished to sense this distance from them and how it paralysed her affection: it was as though, after long thinking from far away about those one loves and having grown unaccustomed to seeing them at every hour of the day, one then felt, on being reunited with them, a kind of pause in one's affection until such time as the bonds of communal living should be retied.

Dinner lasted a long time, and there was little conversation. Julien appeared to have forgotten all about his wife.

In the drawing-room afterwards she dozed by the fire, opposite Mama who was fast asleep; and on being momentarily roused by the voices of the two men arguing, she asked herself in an attempt to stir her brain to action whether she, too, was going to be overtaken by this same dreary lethargy that comes from unbroken routine.

The fire in the hearth, a gentle, reddish glow throughout the daytime, was now coming to life, all bright and crackling. It darted long gleams of light onto the faded upholstery of the armchairs, onto the fox and the stork, and the melancholy heron, and the ant and the cicada.

The Baron came up to the fire and stretched his hands out towards the blazing logs with a smile:

'Ah, it's drawing well this evening. There's a frost, my dears, there's a frost.'

Then he placed his hand on Jeanne's shoulder and said, pointing to the fire:

'There you are, my sweet, the best place in all the world: the firesidethe fireside with one's nearest and dearest sitting round it. Nothing to match it. But still, it's bedtime. You young things must both be exhausted?'

Having gone upstairs to her bedroom Jeanne wondered how she could twice return to the same placea place she thought she lovedand yet find it so different on each occasion. Why did she now feel in some way bruised? Why did this house, this whole beloved countryside, everything for which till then her heart had danced, now seem to her so utterly depressing?

But suddenly her eye fell on the clock. The little bee was still flitting from left to right, from right to left, with the same rapid, constant movement, above the vermilion flowers. Then all at once Jeanne felt a surge of affection and was moved to tears at the sight of this little mechanical object that seemed to be alive, chiming the hours for her and ticking away like a heartbeat.

Certainly she had not been so affected when she embraced her father and mother. The heart has its mysteries whereof reason naught doth know.

For the first time since her marriage she found herself sleeping alone in her own bed, Julien having gone to another room on the grounds that he was tired. Indeed it had been agreed that from now on they would each have a separate bedroom.

She took a long time to go to sleep: she found it strange not to feel another body next to hers, having got out of the habit of sleeping alone, and she was kept awake by the nagging wind that was tearing at the roof.

In the morning she was woken by a great gleam of light, and her bed was tinged the colour of blood; and the window-panes, all spattered with hoar-frost, were coloured a flaming red as though the whole sky were on fire.

Wrapping herself in a long dressing-gown, she ran to the window and opened it.

A sharp, invigorating blast of icy wind rushed into the room, a biting cold that stung her skin and brought tears to her eyes; and  there in the middle of a crimson sky a large, round sun, bloated and rheumy like a drunkard's face, was rising behind the trees. The ground, covered in white frost, was now hard and dry, and it rang under the feet of the farm-people. In this one night the branches of the poplars had all been stripped bare of their remaining leaves; and beyond the heath could be seen the long, greenish line of the sea, flecked with streaks of white.

The plane and the lime-tree were rapidly shedding their foliage in the squalling wind. With each gust of icy air, swirls of leaves loosened by the sudden frost would scatter into the wind like a flock of birds taking off. Jeanne dressed, went outside, and for something to do, set off to visit the farmers.

Up went the Martins' arms in greeting, and the farmer's wife kissed her on both cheeks; then they pressed her to a glass of noyau. She went across to the other farm. Up went the Couillards' arms; the farmer's wife pecked her on both ears, and she had to partake of a small glass of cassis.

After this she returned home for lunch.

And the day passed like the one before it, only cold rather than wet. And the remaining days in the week were like the first two; and every week in the month was like the first.