Dimanche and Other Stories (7 page)

But the meal was long and heavy. Soon they began to flag, worn down by the silence and the effort of smiling all the time, of carefully avoiding any subject that might worry or upset their mother. She, however, was well aware that there was something unsaid between them, a quarrel in the offing. She tried to reassure herself: they never quarreled. They had nothing in common; they
lived separate lives. Nevertheless … she looked at them. How quiet Alain was. “Alain’s tragic expression,” his brothers called it irritably. A little twitch, a sigh, or a clumsy remark, which in anyone else would make them smile or pass unnoticed, drove them to an irrational, blind, almost violent fury if they saw or heard it in one another. So Augustin’s vague smile, Alain’s dark moods, and Albert’s clumsiness were at the root of all their grievances, all their resentment and suppressed anger.

“The children didn’t come?” Mariette asked Albert.

“No. They had other invitations. No matter how stupid their friends are, they’re all worth more to them than their father,” said Albert with a heavy heart, as he thought about Jean-Noël and Josée, so remote, so indifferent, who considered his only value to be in how much money he could give them. “They’re so cold, so hardhearted,” he thought, as he compared himself to them.

Augustin thought, “The only reason Albert comes here is to be able to say to his children, ‘I don’t put anything above family. You know I could find something more interesting to do than go to Grandmother’s for dinner on a Sunday, but I consider it a sacred duty.’”

Albert was looking for insurance against the future. Now that he was middle-aged, by performing his filial duty he was doing his best to buy for himself the certainty of growing old surrounded by his own flesh and blood, and by young people’s voices, which would block out the sound of approaching death.

“Why has Mariette come? Oh, to touch Mama for fifty francs, I suppose! And Alain …”

Augustin thought about Alain’s crazy plan, his dream; he and Albert were united, for once, fighting as strongly as they could. Alain had announced to his brothers that he had been offered a share in a rubber plantation in the Malayan archipelago. He was hoping to borrow the money for his journey and his initial expenses from them, and hoping to abandon Alix and the girls to their care, since he had only what little money he earned.

“Very convenient,” thought Augustin angrily. In any case, it wasn’t just about money: his leaving was really a devious way of abandoning Alix. And Alix and his own wife were sisters. “Alain’s always been a swine: he’s always had a special knack for persuading his brothers to get him out of hot water.”

Meanwhile, Albert was asking Alain, “What do you think of English shares at the moment?”

Albert was the unluckiest of men. Since he had inherited his wife’s money, he had been involved in every possible financial disaster. Alain always said that the English had decided to devalue the pound in 1931 purely because Albert had overcautiously converted part of his fortune into sterling.

Alain did not reply, so Albert repeated the question. Alain seemed to wake from a dream.

“What do I think of …? I have no idea, old man.”

“You must have an opinion, don’t you?”

“No.”

“But you’re in a better position than most, aren’t you?”

“Why? Do you think I’m a member of the court of the Bank of England?”

“Well, a banker who takes an interest in his work …”

“Actually I’m a banker who doesn’t take an interest in his work.”

“Come on, you must be aware of what people around you are saying? I’ve got money to invest … Alain, my dear little brother, for God’s sake, come down out of your ivory tower and be so good as to give me some sensible advice: should I sell my English shares?”

“No.”

“Ah! Why?”

“Just a feeling.”

“Do you think I’m going to trust your feelings?”

“Sell, then.”

“Ah,” said Albert, taking notice. “But why?”

“My dear man, what do you want me to say? Nobody knows a thing. Don’t try to be cleverer than other people: that’s how you’ve always lost your money.”

“Do you think so? Supposing I sold?”

“Oh! Listen,” muttered Alain, “sell, buy, do what you want, get them framed, but stop talking about them.”

“He’s charming, your Alain,” said Albert bitterly, turning toward their mother, his flabby face creasing into a sulky pout.

“What are you saying? I can’t hear you. What are you talking about? I don’t understand,” the old woman said in distress.

Her hearing had remained particularly acute, but when she did not like the topic of conversation she immediately stopped listening to it. Each sharp word the brothers threw at one another made her heart ache. She sympathized with each of them in turn. Poor Albert! He didn’t deserve the animosity his brothers showed him. They saw only the tactlessness of someone rich, and the selfishness. Yet he wasn’t a bad man. Only she understood his touching good nature and the excessive caution that led him into such terrible disasters; his fortune put a barrier between him and his brothers. Neither Augustin nor Alain was rich, but they did not get along either, although they had once been so close, such good friends. Ah, these children just did not like one another, although in her heart, in her memories of the past, they were linked so closely together. Each in turn had been her favorite, and she had been passionately involved in their worries and their moods. Clumsily she spent her life trying to make them closer to one another, trying to wipe out the misunderstandings and rivalries between them. “Clumsily, and in vain …” she thought sadly and bitterly.

Her daughters-in-law were irritated by her continual efforts to bring her sons together, by her never seeing them on their own, and by the way she was always pleading with them, “Alain, please don’t speak like that
to Albert, he is the eldest …” or “Albert, why don’t you ask Augustin and Claire to your house, they love you so much.” Albert would then invite Augustin, who would be horribly bored; neither dared refuse, “so as not to upset Mama,” and invariably it would end with arguments and cutting remarks. She knew that, but what else could she do? All she had at her disposal were the traditional phrases of motherhood: “Be quiet … Kiss and make up … Go and play together …”

“It’s all their wives’ fault!” she thought with veiled hostility. She cast a quick look at Claire and Alix as they sat facing her. They were both extremely pretty, with thick black hair that they had always refused to cut and pale complexions free of makeup. Even that upset her: she sensed that if Claire and Alix did not use makeup, it was less through personal taste than as a criticism of Mariette’s rouged cheeks. The mother sometimes saw arrogance in the pallor of their faces and thought their lips seemed bloodless, colorless. She usually managed to stifle her natural dislike out of a genuine effort to be kind, to love them as much as her own children, but this evening she felt tired, ill, and sad—overcome by bitterness and anger. It was all their fault: if her sons arrived late, if they were ill, if they were unhappy, she knew, she was sure, that it was all due to these outsiders.

Quietly she said, “Eat … You’re not eating!”

But her own food remained almost untouched.

“Are you ill, Mama?” asked Claire.

Her daughters-in-law took a particular, rather cruel, pleasure in seeming to defer to her and to appear loving. As young married women they had been so worried about incurring her displeasure (not that she had been tyrannical or wicked, poor woman; they had just been trying to humor the men they loved), that they still vaguely resented her for it. Now they knew, or thought they knew, that their husbands belonged to them alone; they had eroded the bond between the sons and their mother so cleverly and effectively, so worn it down, that it hardly existed any longer. Now they could afford to be generous. They could say, “Darling, think about your poor mother,” or “Alain, have you written to your mother?” But within the affectionately tolerant way they looked at her, there remained a repressed animosity and a longing for revenge.

Little Bernadette was stroking her father’s hand, as he distractedly fingered his sleeve. In a low voice, Alix said to her sister, “Poor child, it’s pathetic the way she adores Alain. And she gets nothing back,” she added, as she watched Alain pull his hand away.

“Pathetic,” Alain repeated, raising his eyebrows in ironic disapproval.

By a tacit, unspoken agreement, certain words were forbidden in the Demestre family. It was as unacceptable to use them as it was to cry or to complain in public. As a result, their conversations always sounded like a collection of clichés, from which any genuine or meaningful
words had been banished. Claire always said that through this excessive delicacy her husband and her brothers-in-law had reduced their vocabulary to words which, over time, had become gentle euphemisms. For them, as for many people, when they described someone as being “tired” it meant that in fact they were at death’s door. She had whispered this to Augustin, who had smiled and murmured, “You’re quite right, my dear!”

Theirs was one of those marriages that everyone acknowledged to be perfect: their politeness and mutual affection, together with a barely discernible hint of contempt in one of them, combined to present a smooth, impenetrable facade to anyone observing them.

Claire smiled. They understood each other well, she and Augustin. For a long time now she had been in the habit of talking like the Demestre family, while Alix on the other hand seemed to take pleasure in provoking them. Claire listened with astonishment to Alix’s loud voice; when she was little she had talked quietly and shyly. Where did this harsh, almost vicious tone come from? When she and Alain turned toward each other, they appeared inexplicably hostile and angry. Even when she asked him to pass her the salt, it sounded like a furious accusation.

As they all left the table, the mother whispered to Augustin, “What’s wrong with you children?”

“Nothing, Mother. Why should there be anything wrong?”

The three brothers remained together, leaving the women to go and have coffee in the salon.

Alain asked immediately, “Well, have you thought about it?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not …” he stopped, took a deep breath, then started again, trying to control his husky voice. “Is it really impossible for you to help me? It’s an excellent opportunity, you know, with great potential.” He did not dare shout at them, “Look, listen to me! I’m finished if you don’t help me. I can’t stand Alix and the life I have any longer. I want to go, I must go! If only you knew! Who’s going to understand me and help me if not my own brothers?”

Nervously he crushed an unlit cigarette in his fingers as he spoke. Even more brusquely than usual, he talked about the annual production of latex, in the faint hope that he might convince them of the soundness of a business he knew only by name.

“You’re priceless,” said Augustin, who never lost his temper, half-closing his eyes while a self-satisfied, faintly mocking expression crossed his face. “You can’t see how hopeless it is, this plan of yours; it’s typical of the Demestre family, and especially of Albert, our precious older brother. Naturally there are tobacco and tea plantations, factories, refineries, diamond and coal mines, and oil wells all over the world. But you have an infallible instinct for failure, a special nose for disaster—just
like Albert in all his financial affairs—so you’re going in search of rubber. With things as they are it’s the most catastrophic choice you could make, the one most likely to lose you your—sorry, our—money.”

“I want to go away,” said Alain, through gritted teeth.

“You’ve got a perfectly good job here, and it’s secure,” said Albert.

“I want to leave. You don’t know …”

“I do,” volunteered Augustin.

Alain shot him a brief look. “We don’t get along, my wife and I,” he mumbled.

“Really?” replied Augustin, ironically. “I’d never have guessed …”

“It’s your fault,” said Albert firmly. “The way you talk to her, your moods, your lack of interest in the children …”

“That’s my business, old man.”

“Exactly so,” said Augustin quietly. “Our life is our own business, it’s ours alone. It’s complicated enough without saddling ourselves with other people’s lives, with those of our brothers … especially yours, Alain. I’d like to point out that no one’s been helped and supported more than you. With your character, my poor fellow, marriage was the ultimate stupidity—almost a crime, in fact.”

“But the day I want to get away from it …” Alain murmured bitterly.

“Too late,” said Augustin, with unusual energy. “Even though it would be very convenient.”

“Do you know what’s held me back? You know that Alix has no money, no family, no one else in the world apart from your wife. You do know I couldn’t abandon her to nothing.”

“Yes, I do,” murmured Augustin.

For a moment he seemed to hesitate, then closed his eyes wearily. Claire would never forgive him for contributing to Alix’s unhappiness! Coping with her reproaches would be beyond him. And not to speak of the conjugal loyalty; it was a greater and more inflexible duty, he felt, than brotherly solidarity. To cut the whole thing short, he stood up, saying, “I just don’t understand you, old man.”

He was struck by the despairing look in his brother’s eyes. “His tragic face,” he thought with irritation and a strange feeling of remorse. He put his hand on Alain’s shoulder.

“It’ll work out in the end, old man, everything always does.”

They went to join the women, who were obviously wondering what had kept them. Martine and Bernadette were sitting at a small side table playing dominoes. Claire murmured, “The coffee’s cold …”

They drank it in silence. They heard the clock ticking. Each of them tried desperately to think of some news their mother might like to hear. Sabine talked about her servants. For a few moments the women became animated, then the conversation petered out again. During the longer and longer intervals of silence
they could hear the gentle whispering of the rain pattering on the cobblestones and the occasional blast of a whistle from a barge on the Seine.