A Life (33 page)

'Yes, it's true, Madame Jeanne, you have changed, and more than you ought. But you know, it's twenty-four years since we last saw each other.'

They fell silent, once more reflecting. Finally Jeanne muttered:

'Have you been happy at least?'

And Rosalie, hesitating for fear of stirring some memory that might be too painful, answered falteringly:

'Oh . . . yes, Madame . . . yes. I can't complain . . . I've been happier than you . . . that's for sure. But if there's one thing I've always regretted, it's not having stayed on here . . .'

Then she stopped abruptly, distressed at having made this unintentional allusion.

But Jeanne went on gently:

'But there you are, my dear, one can't always do as one wishes. You're widowed now, aren't you?'

Then, as her voice shook with anguish, she continued:

'Did you . . . have more children?'

'No, Madame.'

'And him, your . . . your son . . . How's he getting on? Are you pleased with the way he's turned out?'

'Yes, Madame, he's a good lad, and a hard worker. He got married six months ago, and he's going to take over my farm now, what with me being back here with you.'

Jeanne, trembling with emotion, murmured:

'Then you won't leave me again, Rosalie?'

And Rosalie replied brusquely:

'Certainly not, Madame, seeing as how I've made my arrangements so.'

Then they fell silent for a while.

Despite herself Jeanne began to compare their two lives, but without any bitterness in her heart, resigned now to the cruel injustice of fate. She said:

'And how did your husband treat you?'

'Oh, he was a good sort, Madame, and no idler neither, he did well for himself. He died of pneumonia.'

Then Jeanne sat up in bed, eager to hear it all, and said:

'Come, my dear, tell me everything, your whole life. It will do me good, now.' And Rosalie brought up a chair, sat down, and began to talk about herself, her home, the world she lived in, going into minute detail the way country folk like to, describing her farmyard, sometimes laughing at things long past which recalled happy moments, gradually raising her voice in the manner of a farmer's wife accustomed to giving orders. She ended by saying:

'Yes, I have my place in the sun today all right. I have no need to worry.'

Then she became embarrassed and continued more quietly:

'But I owe it all to you. So I don't want any wages, you know. Oh, no! Certainly not! And if you don't agree, I shall be on my way.'

'But you're not going to be my servant for nothing?' Jeanne objected.

'But of course I am, Madame! Money! You give me money?! But I've got almost as much as you. Have you any idea how much you've got left, after all your messing about with mortgages and loans, and all that unpaid interest piling up each time it's due? Have you? You haven't, have you? Well, I can promise you, you've got no more than ten thousand a year coming in now. Less than ten thousand, do you hear me? But I'll sort all that out for you, in no time at all.'

She had begun to raise her voice again, angry and indignant at the interest which had not been paid and the threat of ruin. And as the shadow of an affectionate smile passed across her mistress's face, she shouted crossly:

'It's no laughing matter, Madame, because without money we're all just ignorant country folk.'

Jeanne grasped her hands once more and held them in hers; and, still pursued by the thought that obsessed her, she said slowly:

'As for me, well, I just haven't had any luck. Everything's turned out badly. Fate has had it in for me.'

But Rosalie shook her head:

'You mustn't say that, Madame, you mustn't say that. You married badly, that's all. And that's no way to get married either, not even knowing what one's intended is like.'

And they both continued to talk about themselves in this way as if they were old friends.

The sun rose, and still they talked.

XII

Within the space of a week Rosalie had taken complete control of every thing and every person in the house. Jeanne obeyed in meek resignation. Frail and dragging her feet now as Mama used to, she went outside supported on the arm of her maid, who would take her for gentle walks, variously lecturing her or comforting her with rough, affectionate words, and treating her like a sick child.

They were always talking about the past, Jeanne with a catch in her voice, Rosalie in the even tone of the imperturbable peasant. The old servant returned several times to the matter of the unpaid interest. Then she insisted on seeing the papers which Jeanne, who was totally ignorant of business matters, kept hidden from her out of shame for her son.

After that Rosalie spent an entire week travelling to Fécamp each day to have things explained to her by a notary she knew.

Then one evening, having helped her mistress retire for the night, she sat down by the bedside, and said brusquely:

'Now that you're in bed, Madame, we must talk.'

And she outlined the present position.

When everything had been settled, there would be somewhere between seven and eight thousand a year in income. No more.

'But what of it, Rosalie?' Jeanne replied. 'I know I shan't live very long. I shall always have enough to get by.'

But Rosalie grew angry:

'In your case, Madame, quite possibly. But what about Monsieur Paul? Don't you want to leave him anything?'

Jeanne shuddered.

'I beg you, never mention his name to me. It's all too painful to think about.'

'On the contrary, I shall mention his name, Madame, because what you're doing is just not right, you know. Yes, he does some stupid things, but not all the things he does will be stupid; and then he'll be getting married one day, he'll have children of his  own. He'll need money to bring them up. Listen to me now. You're going to sell Les Peuples! . . .'

Jeanne sat up in bed with a start:

'Sell Les Peuples! How can you think of such a thing? Oh, no, never!'

But Rosalie was unmoved:

'I tell you, you're going to sell Les Peuples. You have to.'

And she explained her calculations, her plans, how she saw things.

Once Les Peuples and the two dependent farms had been sold (she had found a buyer) they would retain four farms at Saint-Léonard, which, once unmortgaged, would bring in eight thousand three hundred francs a year. They would set aside thirteen hundred a year for repairs and the upkeep of the properties, which would leave seven thousand, of which they would spend five thousand on the year's expenses. They would put two thousand aside to build up a reserve for emergencies.

She added:

'Everything else has been squandered, it's all gone. And I shall have the key, you understand. As for Monsieur Paul, he shall have nothing, absolutely nothing. He would take it all if he could, down to your last penny.'

Jeanne, who was weeping in silence, muttered:

'But what if he hasn't even enough to feed himself?'

'Well, he can come and eat with us then, if he's hungry. There'll always be a bed and something cooking in the pot for him. Do you think he would have done all the stupid things he has done if you hadn't given him a penny at the beginning?'

'But he had debts, he would have been disgraced.'

'But when you've nothing left, will that stop him getting into further debt? You paid them, all well and good; but you won't pay any more. I mean it. And now, good night, Madame.'

And off she went.

Jeanne could not sleep, deeply upset at the thought of selling Les Peuples and going away, of leaving this house in which her whole life was bound up.

When she saw Rosalie enter her room the next morning, she told her:

'My poor Rosalie, I shall never bring myself to leave this house.' But the maid grew angry:

'But that's how it's got to be, Madame. The notary will be here shortly with the person who wants to buy it. If you don't do this, in four years you won't have a button to your name.'

Jeanne lay there in a daze and kept saying:

'I can't do it, I could never do it.'

An hour later the postman brought her a letter from Paul, who was asking for a further ten thousand francs. What should she do? At a loss, she consulted Rosalie, who threw up her arms:

'What did I tell you, Madame? Oh, you'd have been in a fine pickle, the pair of you, if I hadn't come back!'

So Jeanne, bowing to her maid's will, wrote back to the young man:

'My dear son, I can do nothing more for you. You have ruined me; I even find myself obliged to sell Les Peuples. But remember that I shall always provide you with shelter whenever you need to seek refuge with your old mother, to whom you have caused so much suffering.

Jeanne'

And when the notary arrived with Monsieur Jeoffrin, a former sugar refiner, she received them herself and invited them to inspect the house as they pleased.

A month later she signed the contract of sale, and at the same time bought a modest house situated outside Goderville, on the main road to Montivilliers, in the hamlet of Batteville.
*
Then she spent the rest of the day walking alone in Mama's avenue, with agony in her heart and turmoil in her mind, bidding a desperate, sobbing farewell to the view, and the trees, and the worm-eaten bench beneath the plane, to all these things she knew so well that they seemed to be inscribed on her eyes and in her soul, the copse, the bank overlooking the heath, where she had sat so often and from where she had seen the Comte de Fourville running towards the sea on the terrible day of Julien's death, an old,  lopped elm she often used to lean against, the whole, familiar garden.

Rosalie came to take her by the arm and force her to return indoors.

A tall peasant lad of twenty-five was waiting by the door. He greeted her in a friendly tone as if he had known her for a long time.

'Hello, Madame Jeanne, how are you? Mother told me to come and help with the moving. I wanted to know what you'd be taking with you, seeing as I'll be doing it times when it don't interfere wi' me work on the land.'

It was her maid's son, Julien's son, Paul's brother.

She felt as though her heart had stopped; and yet she would like to have embraced the boy.

She looked at him to see if he resembled her husband, or her son. He was a strapping sort, with a ruddy complexion, and he had fair hair and blue eyes like his mother. And yet he looked like Julien. But how? What was it? She could not really say, but there was something of Julien in the general cast of his face.

The lad continued:

'If you could show me now, I'd be very obliged to you.'

But she did not yet know what she would decide to take with her, given that her new house was so small; and she asked him to come back at the end of the week.

From then on the move preoccupied her, bringing a sad distraction into her dismal, prospectless life.

She would go from room to room, seeking out pieces of furniture which recalled particular events, those pieces which, like friends, are part of a person's life, almost of a person's own self, known since childhood and to which attach memories of joy and sadness, dates in our lives, pieces which have been the mute companions of our sweet or sombre moments, which have grown old and worn alongside us, their material split in places, the lining torn, the joints loose, the colour faded.

She chose them one by one, frequently hesitating, troubled as though faced with some momentous decision, continually changing her mind, weighing the merits of two armchairs or  some old desk against those of a work-table she used to use.

She would open the drawers, trying to remember things from the past. Then, when she had firmly said 'Yes, I'll take this,' they would carry the object in question down to the dining-room.

She wanted to keep all her bedroom furniture, her bed, her tapestries, her clock, everything.

She took a few chairs from the drawing-room, the ones with the patterns she had loved since her early childhood; the fox and the stork, the fox and the crow, the cicada and the ant, and the melancholy heron.
*

Then one day, as she continued to prowl through every nook and cranny of this home that she was about to leave, she decided to go up to the attic.

She was astounded; it was a jumble of objects of every description, some broken, some simply dirty, and others taken up there for no apparent reason, either because nobody liked them any more or because they had been replaced. She noticed a whole host of ornaments that used to be familiar and which had suddenly disappeared without her having given them another thought, knick-knacks that she had once held in her hands, trivial little objects from the past which had lain about her for fifteen years, which she had seen each day without noticing them, and which suddenlyrediscovered here in this attic, among others still older, things about which she could remember where they went when she had first come to live in the houseassumed a new importance as forgotten witnesses, like friends encountered anew. They had the same effect on her as those people one has known for a long time but without their ever revealing their true selves and who suddenly, one evening, out of the blue, start talking compulsively and pouring out innermost secrets of which one had not the slightest suspicion.

She went from one to the other, with pangs of recognition, saying to herself.

'Oh yes, I was the one who cracked this china cup one evening shortly before I was married.Ah, there's Mama's little lantern, and the stick Papa broke that day he tried to open the gate when the wood had swollen with the rain.'

There were also many things up there which she did not recognize and which held no memories for her, having been handed down from her grandparents, or great-grandparents, dusty objects of the kind that seem to have been exiled to an age not their own, to look sad at having been abandoned, things whose past history and adventures nobody knows, because nobody has met the people who chose them, bought them, owned them, loved them, and nobody has known the hands which once used them as familiar objects or known the eyes which once looked upon them with pleasure.