The Impudent Ones

CHAPTER 20

AT FIRST GLANCE, ONE MIGHT HAVE TAKEN THEM FOR ORDINARY travelers coming home from holidays. They endured their private time together in silence. The joggling of the train soon put them to sleep in the confident, relaxed attitude of people who have had their fill of scenery for the year, and who only have eyes for their neighbors. When the Bordeaux train passed below Uderan, Maud and her mother barely gave a last glance at the house.

They didn’t arrive until eleven o’clock at night at the Austerlitz station in Paris. It was a beautiful night. The taxi that took them home went up the rue des Écoles and the boulevard Saint-Michel, whose facades were all ablaze with lights. Maud, who was sitting on the fold-up seat, noticed her older brother’s look of false annoyance. As they approached a large café, he knocked on the partition and stopped the car. It was then that their first argument broke out, partially obscured by the noise of passing cars, and shortened by the implacable ticking of the meter.

“Stop, taxi.” The shock was so unexpected that Mrs. Taneran was thrown toward the front by the brakes. Her mouth puffed up as if to say something, but no sound, no word, was able to come out. Jacques had already placed his foot on the running board. He acted as if he were getting out but then turned back toward his mother, and with a quick word, in the style of a consummate con artist, asked, “Do you have a thousand francs? I won’t be home late…”

Maud preferred to look elsewhere, for example, at the café whose light shone right into the taxi. As always in these cases, her nerves tightened, and she breathed with more and more difficulty as the oppression grew. Time stood still for a moment, ebbing with the slowness of a nightmare. Mrs. Taneran was debating within herself. In the crimson light, she appeared to be crying. “Sometimes you just don’t think! On the very night of our arrival!”

She repeated, “No, no,” getting up partway from her seat, then falling back down. Her big black hat had hit the roof of the car; she held it in one hand and straightened it with the other. On this particular night, the hat gave her a look of ridiculous solemnity.

Jacques’s voice was barely audible, but scathing. He whispered again, “I’m telling you to give me a thousand francs…, at least a thousand francs.” His hand reached out in the dark, like a beggar. Mrs. Taneran articulated several “nos,” as well as words like “forget it” and “it’s no use insisting,” phrases that revealed more and more panic and became less and less convincing. Her short sentences fell to the ground.

“You just took in fifty thousand francs, and you refuse to give me a bill? Is that it?” He had almost yelled, but without compromising himself, without drawing the attention of the taxi driver, who didn’t even turn around. His silent cry and its veiled threat had a great impact on the Taneran family circle. Mrs. Taneran stopped quibbling and reminded him right away, with a seared voice, “You’re not the only one in the family…”

Henry Taneran joined in, daring to budge a little in the back of the car by rolling his distraught eyes as if he were asking for help. Jacques continued methodically. “And you think that’s how it’s going to be?” he insisted. “I accepted, or rather we accepted, Henry and I, that you bring her back”—he pointed at Maud—“and now you’re treating us on the same level as her? What’s that supposed to mean?” Henry hesitated to join in with his brother, who kept repeating like a refrain, “And you think that’s how it’s going to be?”

The scene didn’t last more than two minutes. The click of Mrs. Taneran’s old purse could be heard. A hand stretched itself out, then disdainfully crumpled the bills and pocketed them. Soon Jacques was no more than an elegant silhouette disappearing into the night light, his right hand thrust into the pocket of his jacket…

The driver turned around at last, and it was Maud who reminded him of the address. In front of her, her mother squirmed about like a madwoman, talking to herself and struggling against a danger that she alone seemed to perceive. Her hardened voice broke from time to time, turning into a sob of helplessness that left her eyes dry. “You won’t end up with a thing, did you hear me, not a thing. And I’ll leave for elsewhere… Oh! I’m an unlucky mother…”

Maud, leaning toward the front, gazed at the small halo of light that preceded the car. Henry, sitting beside Mrs. Taneran, took on his usual attitude in these cases: an exasperated look. The rest of the trip was calmer. Mrs. Taneran became attentive to the moving of the taxi again. She recovered little by little from her emotions as they got closer and closer to home. Besides, the children always kept from bringing up again any of the words she spoke in such moments. They felt a certain mistrust for her fits of anger, which they found cowardly, because her outbursts came only after the danger had passed.

Maud noticed she hadn’t been targeted in this flood of reproach. Her mother always avoided speaking about any of her children in particular.

In braking, the taxi skidded on the slope of the street. The noise woke up the concierge. When Mrs. Taneran went by the concierge’s apartment, the woman, still half-asleep, poked her head out. “Oh! It’s you? People have come by several times looking for Mr. Jacques.” Mrs. Taneran approached her; she had regained her friendly look. The other woman hesitated and then spoke: “Yes, the police… Oh! I’m sure it’s nothing…”

Mrs. Taneran stopped, seized with emotion. “Oh, my Lord,” she said. Then she caught herself and tried to explain: “Of course, who else could it be?” She had the force of will to resist leaving the concierge too rapidly, while the other woman desperately stretched out her neck in order to learn something more.

The five flights were hard to climb. Henry and Maud followed their mother, whose shortness of breath betrayed her exhaustion. From time to time she stopped and turned toward Henry. “Do you know what that means? It’s certainly connected with the Tavares Bank…”

Henry refused to respond to anything. He lowered his head and tightened his mouth, and his eyes fled the gaze of his family; he had the kind of closed look of which people say, “You won’t get anything out of him.” And, in truth, whatever happened in his family, Henry Taneran proudly acted as if he were a disinterested party. The pleasure he took when people asked for his advice was such that he made it last right up to the limits of their patience.

Old Mr. Taneran appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a flannel bathrobe. No one had warned him of his family’s arrival, and he seemed quite surprised. Mrs. Taneran didn’t even give him time to open his mouth. “What’s this story about the police? The concierge doesn’t seem to know…”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t try to find out either. Your son’s affairs don’t concern me… How are you doing?”

His words came out so naturally that he must have prepared them in advance. His wife stretched out her ravaged face to him. He rubbed her cheeks against his unshaven cheeks as he embraced her, and did the same for Maud and Henry. Then he grabbed the suitcases his wife was carrying and set them down.

“Thank you,” she said. “I certainly thought of writing you, my dear Taneran, but I had to sell the property. I had your authorization with me, you know. A good sale? Yes. But couldn’t I wait until tomorrow to talk about it?” She dropped into a chair and removed her hat. “You really don’t know anything?”

“My dear wife…”

She stopped him with a gesture and added softly, “Everything’s okay?”

“Yes, thank you. I spent my whole time working, and you know that I like my work. However, I decided to leave for Auch in July this year. My dear, it certainly looks as if we will never take our holidays together. I’m so sorry…”

Almost at the same time, they said, “See you tomorrow,” and then he withdrew.

By the looks she was sending their way, her children understood that she was sinking little by little into a deep pit of anxiety. As he fled her, Henry was the first to say in an uncertain voice, “It can’t be much. Don’t get so upset…”

Maud sat down along the wall of the dining room, facing her mother. The bags were strewn in the middle of the room. Henry came and went, from one room to another…

Mrs. Taneran looked at her daughter with empty eyes. She didn’t say anything, aware that her children couldn’t calm her down. At a certain point, however, she thought she knew the answer and cried out, “Henry, it’s that woman, surely, if it’s not about the Tavares Bank…”

“Are you crazy! That’s over,” responded Henry from his room.

Mrs. Taneran shook her head and sank back into scratching her brain for an answer. She plunged silently into terrifying hypotheses, surfacing with difficulty, but feeling more reassured about things. Maud was thinking, “The police?” How easy it was for her to imagine Jacques between two agents, with a face that reminded her of the one he had worn a certain night at the inn.

It was a face disfigured by fear and on which shame was perhaps still written, in small, pale patches around his eyes and mouth—one that could be Jacques’s at the time of his death. A face feebly dangling above true sadness and bringing back for the first time his childhood face—a childhood emerging at last and stunned by death’s proximity. All that emanated from this face—the undying vanity, the perpetual lament arising from his pleasure-seeking, and an ugliness enveloped in beauty—would one day be shattered.

CHAPTER 21

“MAUD, GO TO BED.”

Mrs. Taneran wanted to wait for the return of her son alone. The look on her daughter’s face didn’t bode well. “I know you all detest each other. You’re never happier than when misfortune strikes one of the others. Now that it’s about saving him… If I wasn’t there, poor boy!” She went from anger to worry, like someone who suffers and seeks the position in which she will suffer the least.

“They’re going to take him away. You’ll see that they came to take him away.” She moaned, sometimes like a little girl, sometimes in the tragic way of a mother who is trembling for one of her own… “Nothing will have been spared me in this life, nothing. What’s going to happen, Maud?”

“Mother, it’s all the same to me.”

“I know, dear. You unfortunately have other things to think about.” Her mother was so used to her worries that only the most urgent ones counted for her. The others, with more distant deadlines, allowed one to breathe a little before envisioning them.

Maud approached her mother. She hadn’t kissed her since the morning. In the train, they avoided each other because of Jacques and Henry. Mrs. Taneran began to stroke her daughter’s head. Her fingers, a little numb, sank into her hair, lifting up the smooth, shiny mass. Her hand played with her round forehead, the slightly receding chin, and the broad cheeks of her child, while her anxious mind did not settle down. “You don’t know him, Maud, but at heart he’s a good boy. With me I would even say that he’s the nicest of the three of you, the most attentive…”

The naïveté of her mother always astonished her. But her mother’s caresses felt good on Maud’s face. After being deprived of her mother’s attention for so long, she welcomed it like a spring breeze. “He may be very likable, Mother. That congeniality hides him from you. But he’s so rotten that he’s as light as a branch of deadwood…”

Mrs. Taneran’s hand stopped instantly. They separated, with each one maintaining her position. And Maud, brutally, felt that she became the prey of an unnamed despair, in which this woman forever rejected her.

Mrs. Taneran shuddered. Was it possible to pronounce such a judgment so coldly? She, the mother, could suffer. But her illusions remained, despite her grief, indefinitely. It was because she believed in her son that she lived in a dreamworld, inaccessible to any contradictions of reality.

At certain moments, she hated Maud. Brutally, this child disfigured the object of her love. And what remained for Mrs. Taneran in confronting this particular form of suffering, without the freshness of her faith? “Be quiet—aren’t you ashamed? Just think of the fact that someone could come and take him away tomorrow. That dirty Tavares, that filthy toad…”

“If Jacques left Paris for a time,” Maud shot back, “it was surely because of this business. You thought it was something else, just like us, didn’t you? That he was weeping for his wife, that he was going to mourn for her in the country?”

All perceptiveness concerning her son embarrassed Mrs. Taneran. As the mother, she saw what was true, she saw with adorable grace his times of abandonment, even his most obvious weaknesses. “What can I say! I have no idea. It’s perhaps somewhat for the Tavares affair, and a little for everything…” Only she could find reasons to keep on loving him, to prefer him to the others.

“By the way, Mother, if he wanted to marry me to Pecresse, he’ll still want to do it; don’t you think he’ll arrange it when he finds out the state I’m in, so as not to lose the benefits of your deal with the Pecresses?”

“You’d best be quiet, Maud. You’re able to say such harsh things that sometimes I doubt your goodness. When your brother hears that you’re expecting Durieux’s child, he’ll be the first to give you good advice, do you hear…?”

Maud kept quiet. George’s house passed before her eyes, sad and tranquil, open to the countryside. The yew trees swayed in front of the windows, and in the distance one could see the Uderan pine forest. Little by little the daylight disappeared. One by one the crickets sang their hearts out. Up above, at L’Oustaou, the velvety moles were adventuring toward the pine forest, full of fear. George didn’t come in. It felt as if he were prowling around the house. They had separated for reasons that were difficult for her to understand. But Maud suddenly thought it would be easier now for her to live with George.

The ceiling light brutally lit up the room, in which the luggage was still strewn on the furniture and the floor. No noise was coming from the back rooms, where Henry slept, and old Taneran snored in the adjoining room. Everything seemed calm and the same as usual.

Why then was Maud crying for once? Her child’s tears wrongly reassured Mrs. Taneran. Wasn’t she crying because of remorse? She had truly been shaken up. Her daughter’s words reminded her mother of the misery of her own life. Even if she spoke of it often, Mrs. Taneran rarely felt it in all its depth. She, too, wept, but softly, already as an old woman would.

At last she spoke to Maud. “You’ll be happy with Durieux. Why say such ridiculous things to me? You see that you regret them afterward. You know I’ll miss you… Obviously, my life is not happy. A mother’s duty is always toward the most unfortunate of her children, the one everyone else abandons…”

CHAPTER 22

MAUD WENT TO BED, BUT SHE COULDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT. Her mother had calmed down a little. She came and went, unpacking the suitcases, rummaging through them. From time to time she tiptoed into the room, opened up the closet, went through things, and put things away. Tireless, Mrs. Taneran continued to circulate mysteriously throughout the house, coming back once again. They were so used to her nighttime goings-on that they didn’t bother anybody. Maud listened to her; each of her movements in the silence of the house took on the specific merits of patience and unrelenting fervor. Maud felt alone and had nothing more to hope for than what she already knew.

Soon she would return to Uderan and would get married. Then she would leave for Bordeaux with George. She wouldn’t come back to Uderan until the holidays, and that was certainly enough, given that the Pecresses’ hatred of them and the farmers’ disdain for them would always be simmering beneath the surface. George worked with his father and led an inconsistent life, sometimes steady, sometimes debauched. She didn’t clearly see what place she would have in his existence. Her life had begun at the exact moment she had spoken to her mother and had gained the certainty that no other solution would present itself for such a clearly defined situation.

Maybe George was already waiting for her. When they had separated in the morning, he had appeared calm and almost satisfied. Probably they didn’t love each other anymore. She blushed at the idea of going back, of forcing him to take her back. How could she dare to appear before his eyes? She couldn’t stay here, though. Her mother had chosen to leave her, and the separation had already happened in her heart. She had understood this in hearing her mother’s gentle, sympathetic voice this evening.

No doubt she would leave as soon as this week—the sooner the better. At any rate, the time she spent here would be useless.

If Jacques had not existed, perhaps her mother would have kept her. In any case, she wouldn’t have abandoned her so quickly, with this sort of unconscious relief. Without realizing it, Mrs. Taneran continued to create a vacuum around her older son and would do so right up until the time when only he would remain to receive the fullness of her love, once her duty had been fulfilled toward the others.

Maud wasn’t upset with her mother; it was to her older brother that her thoughts kept returning. He was the one her hatred surrounded and whom she would have liked to be able to suffocate from a distance. She felt him pressed up against her, destiny against destiny. They were as closely linked as two victims, entangled together. Yet she couldn’t do anything. In terms of all the evil he had done, she felt it as much as if she had done it herself.

He had chased her, and misfortune had come to her. Perhaps, for his part, he had wished for it, like his mother, who for weeks hadn’t shown any sign of life and had contrived with him to leave Maud alone.

The idea of her brother created a strange hurt, not exactly painful, but intolerable—a hurt she felt beating inside of her like an abscess.

So, he would have been assured of a life annuity from Uderan? That Pecresse would have provided for him? Mother, crazily, would have let him do it… It was possible…

How weak her mother was! There it was: she saw clearly what her mother had become, a creature without any strength, gifted with an illusory will that could be broken like a nutshell. Nothing. And it was Jacques who, day after day, had reduced his mother to nothing.

Since a very young age, Maud had imagined him as nasty, but in an instinctive and childish way, not more. Now she understood that it wasn’t about a natural tendency such as courage or devotion. Jacques was mean as a sort of reverse action against himself. Doing good discouraged him in advance, and he carefully avoided it. He didn’t dare try to be better, because every beginning, even that of an attitude, is arid and desolate like the break of day.

Thus, he found it preferable to sink little by little into meanness, and to deliver a more decisive blow each day to Taneran, Maud, and his mother, whom he held well in hand. His life took on unity and strength. He won victories; he got stronger. That’s why every happy scene saddened him. Just thinking about it sent chills down Maud’s spine…

The sound of the doorbell drew Maud from her numbness. Her mother’s footsteps headed toward the door. Maud strained to hear. A kind of curiosity and also hope made her sit up in bed… Her mother was going to speak to him. Perhaps it was the beginning of a catastrophe so serious, so horrible, that it would eclipse everything else for a certain time… Crazy, she was crazy to believe it, or even anticipate such a windfall.

Her brother’s resounding voice echoed in the hallway. When he came in, he always woke up everyone and didn’t show any qualms about it. On the other hand, when he was sleeping, what perfect calm was maintained around him!

It was true; this voice drew her back into the past. It announced the same dreaded hours approaching dawn every night. Jacques boomed at his mother. “You’re not in bed, what’s the matter with you?”

“Be quiet,” she pleaded. “I’m begging you to be quiet. The police were here for you while we were away…”

He was silent and then replied, “What are you talking about?”

Mrs. Taneran repeated what she had just said. Jacques must have been drinking, because his voice was sticky and he articulated slowly, like someone waking up. Soon Maud didn’t hear them anymore. Maybe they were talking very, very quietly… And then Jacques went at it again, with sudden brutality: “Oh! They came? When? How many times? For heaven’s sake, talk!”

“It’s up to you to tell me, my dear…”

“It’s Tavares,” he replied. “I just need to play dead.”

“You signed?” queried his mother. “For how much?”

“Fifty thousand,” retorted Jacques, “but I’m telling you I just need to play dead. They won’t get me for a few loan payments… Besides, it’s old business, you remember…”

Maud fell back onto her bed. At the tone of her brother’s voice, she understood there was no real danger. Nothing bizarre, nothing. Only Tavares, and with him, she knew, there was always a way to work things out. Life would take on its infernal ebb and flow.

They had entered the dining room. From time to time she picked up bits of sentences, like, “So you’ve finished crying?” and then, “Oh, I was so fearful, my dear. Why did you do that?”

“It was for Muriel. I wanted to come to you, but surely you know me by now. I would have died rather than ask you for money. What can I do, I’m just like that!” Little by little he perked up again and held his head higher.

Maud deeply resented the filth of each of his words. Just the effect of his voice made her feel altered. She hadn’t heard him for a long time, but he was still at the same place: he was still using his same old lies and pathetic exaggerations.

He was playing a new role in the eyes of his mother and Maud found he had increased in boldness and strength. Oh, what a show-off he was!

“I’m a fellow people don’t really understand. Of course, I’m not talking about you! I’ve always said, ‘You’re a saint.’ But them…”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Obviously, it would be better to pay… I’m not a crook. Fake papers, that’s basically not my strong suit. I was recommended to the bank as Muriel’s husband…”

He smelled the fifty thousand francs received the day before from the Pecresses that his mother had in her possession. “She won’t say anything,” thought Maud, “she won’t tell him they don’t have anything now on account of me…” And effectively, Mrs. Taneran let him go through all his useless tactics of cozying up to her. Perhaps she herself forgot that she owed this money to the Pecresses, if Maud wasn’t going to marry John.

“Obviously, I was saying, it’s better that I pay… I’ll go back to work, and I’ll pay. It’ll take me ten years, but I’ll get there…”

At the same time, his mother persisted in not offering anything. One had to really not know her (and he knew her well) to think she would decide from the outset not to give back the sum to the Pecresses. But Mrs. Taneran would let things unfold on their own until she came to a point of no return.

“It’s not the first time something like this has happened,” Jacques continued. “If you only knew how many times I’ve spared you from something like this you’d be amazed, my dear mother, amazed…”

And certainly, she would never be so naïve as to offer him what he wanted today. But one night, between them, and just between them, she would brusquely take the money from her closet, between two piles of sheets, and give it to him without saying a word. The passing days would have weakened their memory of the Pecresses, whose image was already fading. As for the Grants, they lived in reality.

Right up until dawn they talked together like that, softly. Mrs. Taneran let herself be beguiled, basically happy with these confidences that brought her closer to her son.

Maud didn’t sleep. She didn’t listen, either. She waited for the morning in order to leave. As soon as the first rays of dawn caused the night to fade, she got up. Then, not knowing what to do, she stayed glued to the middle of her room. She realized that before her departure for Uderan something was going to happen.

Already that something was inside her, in her mind, which little by little got used to it and let it take shape. Then she felt it on the outside, very small but living and focused and looking at her like the eye of a motionless bird.

The door of the dining room opened. Jacques said to his mother as he yawned, “They’re sleeping. By the way, it’s better not to tell anything to them or the old man. And especially not to my sister. You can say whatever you want about her; I know what I think about her now. I know women. Happily, she’s going to be on her way…” They went toward the kitchen.

“Come,” said the mother, “I’m not going to go to bed now, it’s too late. I’m going to make a little coffee.”

Maud slipped into the kitchen before them and waited. As soon as they saw her, they stopped in their tracks in the doorway. They didn’t dare enter, held back by a vague fear. Mrs. Taneran tried to smile. “Are you crazy, my dear? What are you doing there?”

Jacques advanced very decidedly, pale and seized abruptly by anger that deformed his face. “What are you doing there? Let me at her, Mother…”

In truth, Maud didn’t know what she was doing there. She only guessed that she irritated Jacques, in all her weakness, in all her distress simply presented, to the point of stirring up in him a desire for murder: the way one wants to kill an inoffensive animal after having wounded it, without thinking, without hatred. She looked at her brother, so pale in the early morning light, blown up with anger. He was looking around him for something he could use to crush his sister’s face.

“You were spying on us, weren’t you? Oh, you’re lucky I’m holding myself back!” He lowered his arm slowly, with difficulty, in a gesture that showed how much he suffered for not having hit her.

Mrs. Taneran stammered a few words incoherently. She blushed, obviously ashamed at having been caught with her son in an intimate moment of complicity. Ah! That Maud! Wasn’t it enough that she was pregnant, yes, illegitimately pregnant!… How unjust, when for once she had had a bit of happiness! Mrs. Taneran yelled, “Go to bed, do you hear me? You’re a piece of dirt, a piece of dirt! Give that chair to your brother…”

In the next room, they could hear Henry stretching and yawning. Maud got up and gave the chair to her brother. Next, she turned around, feeling lighter…

And they barely heard the noise of the entrance door, which she closed behind her with great care.

CHAPTER 23

THE PASSERSBY BEGAN TO CRISSCROSS THE ROADS; THEY looked rested and walked briskly. In the heavily populated neighborhood of Clamart, which rises early, the cafés were already opening. The customers, almost all men—factory workers—jostled one another at the counter in front of their hot coffee. They came out with cigarettes hanging from their mouths, joking around with one another on the almost empty streets, and looking happy to breathe in the fresh morning air that didn’t yet reek of the tiredness of the day.

In the lower part of town, which gave the impression of painful insomnia, the Seine flowed by. From place to place, the morning light filtered through the mist and cast a shimmering light on its green waters.

Although she hadn’t slept, Maud felt nearly herself. She wrapped around her the coat she had grabbed in haste and began walking quickly. The slightly pungent wind snapped from time to time like a sea breeze and took away her breath. She walked faster and faster, like someone who is sustained or lifted up by some kind of hope, or caught up in a pleasant thought, with a forgotten smile fastened to her lips and her eyes blurred…

But soon she felt hungry and she tottered. Her empty head was filled with a harsh ringing noise, and her legs carried her as feebly as if she had been walking on the bridge of a boat. She had experienced this sensation for some time. She entered a café and drank a coffee with cream. She gently inhaled the odor, her arms leaning on the damp counter, and each sip made her feel a bit more comforted. The air in the café was humid and acidic, and saturated with human breath.

Soon Maud felt better and ordered another coffee. Customers were continuously coming and going. As they brushed by her, they stared and judged her. When she raised her eyes, she met their gazes, some simply curious, others already emboldened. A kind of irritation seized her. She stared at them in turn with an impertinence that was supposed to be courageous but only looked ridiculous.

“Dogs,” she said to herself, “they’re dogs; they’re not going to leave me alone…” The men noticed her look and shrugged their shoulders. She calmed down after that and felt embarrassed… She went out.

It was then that the day appeared to return to its true worth, stretched out between empty hours. If she had a task to accomplish, it would take her at most a few minutes. But what would become of her until then? And yet it seemed impossible for her to imagine acting any differently. She thought of nothing and no one except the agonizing abyss of the day into which she was slowly plunging, and which seemed to close in over her like the sea over a living shipwreck, too slow to die or reach the bottom.

However, she had already experienced empty days, from winter days with few hours of light, to those spent in her room at Uderan, contemplating without really seeing the summer landscape swollen with heat. But today didn’t resemble any other; it was too resistant, too deep, too long to journey through.

As time went by, she found herself more and more alone, ever farther from the familiar shores of her life. The thing she had to do gradually took on more importance, without becoming bigger, and became more and more precise, while around her everything became vague and blurred and disappeared, as Maud found herself alone with it…

This vision didn’t stay with her. Both annoying and tempting at the same time, it was no different than Maud herself. It was not exactly like a mirror, in which she couldn’t have avoided seeing herself, but rather the very image of her solitude—a mirror over which she leaned, knowing only that she should have seen herself there, that she was there… without seeing herself.

Soon there was nothing but the two of them, this image and herself, in the immense sadness of the world. Maud knew that the only way to have done with the day and everything else was to do the thing she had in mind, which presented itself to her with more and more urgency. But, through sheer fear, she didn’t yet dare to break this last mooring cable.

She walked quickly and soon had covered quite a distance along the route her mother used to take her sometimes on Sundays. Today the idle strollers were missing; in thinking back, Maud no longer recognized herself in the little girl who walked, tired and dreamy, beside Mrs. Taneran.

Clamart was already distant, although looking over her shoulder she could make out the huge white hulk of the building in which they lived. Fog enveloped it, and the different floors could not be distinguished one from another. “As soon as I reach the woods of Meudon,” she told herself, “I’ll come back toward Paris. And while I’m waiting, I’ll go to our neighborhood.”

She killed time as best she could, continually fascinated by the thing she had to do, but not yet feeling resolved enough to do it outright, shamelessly. Patiently, she let herself be vanquished. She was waiting for the idea that had seized her, and to whose power of suggestion she was confusingly subjected, to come about on its own.

At the edge of the Meudon forest, she avoided going into the shadows cast by the trees and turned back. The lunch hour had passed, and people were returning to work. All at once, Maud found herself in an abandoned garden, which looked to her to be public, on account of the number of children playing there. She sat down for a moment. She thought about lunch. She had some money in her purse, but after starting out toward a restaurant, she came back to the garden, finding it unnecessary to eat.

A freshness fell from the foliage of the chestnut leaves. No one passed by in front of her, and from the bench where she was sitting, at the corner of the garden, she followed the boisterous movements of the children who were running around, stirring up visions of astonishing lightness. The world was in its place, diverse, immense.

Back home, life was probably continuing on as usual. They ate late. Right now, her brothers were snoring, and her mother was busy, lovingly preparing a meal. At noon hour she would say simply, “Let’s sit down at the table without that crazy girl…” If Mrs. Taneran was a little worried, her worry was only on the surface. This dirty business with the Tavares Bank was at most a question of money. At worst, she would be obliged to appropriate the sum of money paid by the Pecresses. If they found fault with that, she would come to a private agreement with them. She would know how to handle them. At any rate, the whole thing would be put off until later.

All of that wasn’t worth her slowing down the sacrosanct schedule of the day. As for forgery, she had confidence in her son. Her son could not do anything really wrong. He could deceive people, of course, and appear odious in the eyes of some… So what! She laughed it off—she, his mother, knew that all of that was only filthy foam floating on pure water, on the delightful nature of her child.

“He’s a fake, of course,” she must have said to herself, “but he’s my son. He has reasons for not hesitating to do what he did.” She felt strong and peaceful, as in the early days of her maternity. Life was going just fine.

In the shade, Maud gently reflected on the thing that wouldn’t leave her. She thought about the mother of her childhood, her childhood with its soft gray eyes. And this woman still showed her gentleness. Oh, what a vile deed she was going to carry out against her, what a nasty job, indeed! She tried not to think about it. “When Jacques leaves, Mother will die of grief.”

She couldn’t do anything about it. Her mother had died the night before. She could envision her mother in the future, wrapped up in the memory of her absent son, alone with old Taneran. Maybe at that moment she would expect some tenderness from her daughter. Mrs. Taneran would be exalted by misfortune, lost in a final illusion about her son.

Around three o’clock, Maud went back to her neighborhood, as she had promised herself she would do, but avoided crossing Clamart. The detour she obliged herself to take would be long, but her legs would have taken her even farther, if only she had been able to escape the infernal circle drawn around her by her idea. Little by little, walking very quickly, she lost sight of her family, as well as her reasons for sacrificing them forever. In one go, retracing her footsteps, she arrived at the police station of Clamart.

All of a sudden, she found herself in front of the clerk of the police station, standing still and feeling stupid, encumbered by her own body, whose weight was no longer lightened by the walk. And immediately she had the impression that the thing substituted itself for her.

“You have come to our place several times, regarding my brother Jacques Grant,” she declared in a firm voice. “It’s about the Tavares Bank. Well! I’ve come to tell you he’s back…”

The clerk appeared surprised. He went toward the cupboard and pulled out a yellow file. Maud would have liked to leave. He said to her in a haughty voice, “Wait a minute, I’ll take a look…” One minute, three minutes, five minutes, went by while the man consulted his file. Maud stood near him, her mind a blank.

Then something pitiful happened: after a moment, the man lifted his head and looked at the young woman without saying anything, as if he questioned her mental state. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said at last. “We went to your place, it’s true. The Tavares Bank where your brother did business was a gang of crooks. Because we found his name, we went looking for him. At the same time, we suspected his complicity. But actually, he was the one who was robbed. He should have lodged a complaint. I don’t see what you’ve come here for…”

At the sense of relief she felt, Maud realized how afraid she had just been. When she went out, her legs could hardly carry her. With difficulty, she headed toward a small square, where she sat down on a bench.

She knew this place, not far from home, very well; on one side was a pharmacy, and on the other, a little Protestant church surrounded by a well-tended garden and nicely trimmed shrubs; the church was made of wood; its porch was topped by a frieze of veneered wood and decorated with openwork on which a Latin inscription was displayed in gold letters. The wall of a public school constituted the third side of the square. There were no children going in or out. The church door, as well, remained closed.

It was very chilly and the benches were empty. From time to time, Maud became physically aware of the cold. She remained motionless as much as possible because the slightest gesture sent shivers up her back. Besides, her walk had tired her out so much that she didn’t feel the need to make the slightest movement. She barely felt the rhythm of her respiration, which regularly broke through the stuffiness of her chest with a fresh breath.

She had nothing more to think about in regard to what had just come to such an abrupt end. She had reached, all at once, a definitive point of no return. It stopped being an issue in her mind, unless she forced herself to think about it.

Little by little, evening came. She remembered having seen it through Durieux’s window, day after day, rising from the horizon, slowly thickening the thin line of the Dior. Shades of gray and mauve and sometimes a brilliant strawberry red blended and mixed together, before all slipping into a humid grayness. Soon the countryside could hardly be distinguished, except for the bright line of the river. It was then that the powerful and radiant night tide rose, swollen with vapor. Odors rose from the plowed fields, the bushes, the clover fields, the vegetable gardens. There were walnuts not far from the house, and the scent reached Maud, glazed and intensely bitter. It was the moment when she feared standing out too vividly on the luminous backdrop of the window, which she closed with regret.

Oh yes, she certainly remembered. Her misfortune was undoubtedly enormous. She considered it without sadness and even with a kind of satisfaction. It stretched out around her, much more imposingly now than when it was right then and there—a vast region over which she had reigned.

She had done what was important. Jacques’s fate no longer depended on her will—she couldn’t do anything about it! Her mind stood still at the certainty she now had, like a serpent coiled up around itself.

Intermittently people entered the pharmacy, whose door opened with the ringing of a bell. Soon the window was intensely lit up. Time passed, and it felt good to let it go by without expecting anything from it.

However, Maud soon felt a malaise that sharpened quickly until it became painful… she was hungry. The sensation soon became very unpleasant. The memory of her child came back to her. It was quite strange but reassuring that this distant phantom was always near her in spite of her life’s worst vicissitudes.

What an idea, all the same, to denounce her brother. Preposterous! In reality, Jacques had been cheated by Tavares!… She tried in vain to hold on to her hatred, but the reasons she had given herself slid from her mind like sand running through her fingers.

The police scared Jacques. “What a joke!” she thought. And her mother, who was so upset! It wouldn’t have taken much for her to laugh out loud. What cowards, what insignificant little nobodies who didn’t even keep their crooked promises: her family!

Her torment vanished altogether. It got dark, slowly at first, as the light died down, and then brutally, with a blackness that spread and stretched out over them. Night was no longer something far away and impalpable, but something that brushed up against her skin, like the presence of a huge, peaceful beast that wanted to lick her. She felt the shadow inside herself, too, filling her throat and almost stopping her from breathing.

Tomorrow she would write, or else her mother would do it. Next, she would wait for George’s reply, or that might not even be necessary. Shame had disappeared from her conscience. It was time for her to go—to leave them behind.

In reality, she wasn’t going away feeling good about it, but feeling, instead, a sense of curiosity. How would George appear to her, now that she was going to belong to him?

Maud got up and decided to go home, reasonably. The day now stretched out behind her, like a mountain she had climbed and come back down. She walked calmly in the dark, without feeling any other burdens inside except that of the child she was carrying.

CHAPTER 24

THREE DAYS AFTER MAUD’S DEPARTURE FROM HIS HOME, George received a letter from Mrs. Taneran.

Upon receiving the letter, George Durieux went up to L’Oustaou. There was a chilly fog that morning. He came back slowly at noontime and returned just as slowly after lunch. One by one, he meticulously filled the waiting hours.

He ended up on the station platform well before the train’s arrival. Maud appeared warmly dressed already, as they were in Paris, her features somewhat drawn, with a wide-eyed, anxious look. She waited until George came to her, his eyes fixed on hers.

Her gloved hand was in George’s, both of them inert. But all at once, her staunch look gave way and her hand regained its strength and expressiveness. “Do you have a car? It’s for the suitcase…” She had a big, brand-new suitcase of the kind used by boarders: her mother’s final act of generosity. They had wanted to do things decently…

They left. In the distance, alongside the highway, Uderan lifted up its treetops in the moonlight. “You know that they had seriously committed themselves to a deal?” said Maud, making an effort to address George in a familiar way. “Mother even received the fifty thousand francs. Did you know? What a laugh, all the same!”

Her cheerfulness grated in the cold wind. She snuggled up against him. The car was open, and the wind was howling over their heads. “You’ll see how windy it is at Bordeaux on certain days!” said George.

“At Bordeaux?” Maud asked gently.

“Yes,” he answered, “and as for the fifty thousand francs, don’t worry, they’re already taken care of.”

There was a long silence as she grew accustomed to the idea. “They’ll be awfully happy in Paris. You did that to please them?”

“Yes,” replied George, “why not please them?”