Green Mare - 1933

Four

While his mother was bending over the stove Alexis stealthily crossed the kitchen behind her back and took his place at the table, which was laid for the evening meal. He had important reasons for not wishing to be seen. Clotilde and Gaston paid no attention to their brother’s entry: with their elbows on the window-ledge they were seeing who could spit farthest. Gustave spat impetuously and in too much of a hurry, loudly applauding his own achievements. Clotilde, on the other hand, spat with care and economy and without saying a word. The result was a foregone conclusion: after five minutes Gustave had run out of spit and his sister was beating him by a yard or more.

“You see, you’re no good at all,” she said coldly. “You’re not even worth playing with.”

At that moment the dog, Blackie, came in and lav under the table, where they followed him. He was called Blackie because he was black. His predecessors had been called Bismarck, in token of the war. The first had suffered from this, at least for a time, the most hideous misdeeds being attributed to him simply for the pleasure of abusing “that pig of a Bismarck.” But with the passage of the years Bismarck had become a pet name which the elder children, Juliette and Ernest, still bestowed on Blackie from time to time without thinking.

Alexis, with his head resting on his hands, was pretending to be half-asleep — against all likelihood, because the two youngest were pulling Blackie’s ears and a great hubbub was coming from under the table. Vocal explosions were followed by angry murmurs, and then Clotilde announced in a small, clear voice:

“Mummy, Gustave’s trying to poke my eye out with Blackie’s tail.”

“No, I’m not! Anyway, she said I was a fat donkey.” “I didn’t!”

“You did!”

“Well, only after you tried to poke my eye out.”

“As if anyone could poke your eye out with Blackie’s tail!”

“Well, you tried!”

“I didn’t!”

Adelaide threatened absently to slap them both and went on cutting bread for the soup. She was thinking with some disquiet of the interview her husband had had with his brother two hours earlier. Never had she known Ferdinand to be so put out. After nodding to her without troubling to come into the house, he had gone off in the gig lashing the bay horse furiously.

Honore came in as it was growing dark. He was preoccupied and said as he sat down at the end of the table: “Let me have my food quickly. I want to go round to Messelons to see how Philibert’s getting on.”

“Juliette went this afternoon,” said Adelaide. “What’s more, she hasn’t come back yet, your darling Juliette, although it’s half-past eight.”

“Why ‘my darling Juliette’?”

“Because she knows her father never scolds her for anything, and she takes advantage of it. Why don’t you try and find out what she’s doing?”

“Perhaps she’s gone into the church to say a few pravers,” said Honore chuckling.

“It’s all very well to laugh. You think everything’s all right because her grandad left her a bit of money. But the day she finds herself in trouble it’ll take more than a dowry to get her the right sort of husband.”

Honore wagged his head, finding it hard that he should be so constantly assailed with tales lacking all substance. He had no reason at all to doubt Juliette’s virtue: not that she was spared temptation — a pretty girl like her! — but she had her pride. He had noticed, moreover, that young men are very much more likely to take liberties with penniless girls. Adelaide lit the lamp and put the bowl of soup on the table.

Honore was about to serve himself when a scream arose between his legs, so harrowing that even Alexis looked up in consternation. Adelaide cried out that the child must have swallowed an open safety-pin. Honore thrust back his stool and plunged his head under the table. There was another scream even more heartrending than the first, and Clotilde emerged into the light of the lamp.

“Mummy,” she said in a calm voice, “Gustave was pulling the hairs on my legs.”

Gustave turned red with indignation.

“It isn’t true! She hasn’t got any hairs on her legs, any more than I have!”

Adelaide picked up her daughter to inspect her. Clotilde stuck to it that she had hairs on her legs, although it was apparent to everyone that they were perfectly smooth. Undismayed, she maintained that Gustave must have pulled them all out. Her mother then slapped her to teach her not to tell lies. Clotilde laughed aloud at the slap, but then pursed her lips while her face took on an expression of cold rage. Gustave gave vent to noisy demonstrations of triumph which nearly got him into trouble as well. His father, furious after the fright Clotilde had given him, included both children in a thunderous denunciation:

“If you two brats don’t behave you’ll both get something to yell about! Sit down at the table at once, and don’t let me hear another sound from either of you.” He glared at them while they obeyed his orders, and grumbled as he filled his plate: “Hair on their legs! The conceit of it! Not yet ten, and showing off like their Uncle Ferdinand!”

When he was in a bad humour Honore was much given to discovering points of likeness between his children and their uncle, as though nothing worse in life could happen to him than to have sons resembling his brother. In the end he always took comfort, reflecting that it could not possibly be true and that he had done nothing to deserve so lamentable a punishment.

That evening, after his talk with Ferdinand, such comparisons were inevitable. Honore passed his sons under review. Ernest, the eldest, had a sharp profile not really like that of Ferdinand but not wholly dissimilar. And a thin, high, eunuch’s voice, God help us, which really was like his uncle’s!

And then Alexis. Being able to examine him in the flesh, Honore did so, and was surprised to find him huddled on his chair, shoulders rounded and head bent over his plate.

“What’s the matter with you? You aren’t generally as quiet as this.”

“That’s true,” said Adelaide. “What’s wrong with him this evening?. . Aren’t you feeling well? You look very flushed.”

Suddenly perturbed, she leaned across the table to see him better. Alexis crouched lower still, but he could not hide his shirt-collar from his mother’s searching gaze.

“Stand up! Come round here and take off your waistcoat.”

Alexis got up slowly with a beseeching glance at his father, who was not untouched by his evident distress. Gustave and Clotilde watched with eyes sparkling in the wicked expectation of wrath to come. Nor were they disappointed: his shirt was torn from the neck to the waist, and nearly half one of his trouser-legs was missing. Adelaide stalked round the miscreant with short paces, minutely scrutinising him with eyes that missed nothing. There was a dreadful silence. Alexis had turned pale.

“You know what I promised you last time,” said Adelaide. “To-morrow you’ll wear those trousers to Mass.”

“Mother, you might let me explain-”

“You’ll go to Mass in those trousers. I shall be just as ashamed as you, but we can’t help that.”

“Come, come,” said Honore. “Let him say whatever he has to say.”

The saving words gave Alexis some reassurance.

“It wasn’t my fault. We were just playing quietly down by the Trois-Vernes when a boy came along and-”

“What boy?” asked Adelaide.

Alexis did not want to speak the name. Parental justice nearly always gave rise to absurd complications. He tried to get out of it with a burst of eloquence.

“A great silly lout of fourteen who always comes and interferes with us when we’re looking after the cows. We weren’t doing him any harm. We were just playing, and-”

“Who was it?”

“Well. . well, it was Tintin Maloret.”

The name caused Honore to sit upright on his chair. He glared angrily at his son, a nincompoop who let his shirt be torn by a Maloret! So this one, too, took after his uncle!

“Do you mean to say you didn’t even knock his teeth down his throat?”

“Give me a chance! He took me by surprise when I was bending down, but I let him have it back when I got up again. I know he tore my clothes, but you should have seen what he was like! He went off limping with both legs!”

Honore’s face lightened in a half-smile.

“Limping, was he? Well, you were quite right to defend yourself. That crowd, you’ve got to watch out for them, they’re all alike.”

Adelaide remarked that the damage done to Tintin Maloret could not make good the damage to her son’s clothes. She wanted justice to be all-encompassing, but seeing the danger Alexis sought to forestall it by feeding his father’s wrath.

“Whenever there’s any trouble it’s practically certain to be Tintin’s fault. Only the day before yesterday he dragged Isabel Dur behind the Declos’s hedge and pulled her skirts up!”

But at this Honore merely smiled with indulgence. At their age it was a matter of no importance, and after all everything had to be learnt. These scuffles between little girls and boys, legs in the air and hands furtively exploring beneath skirts, seemed to him no more than charming and innocent diversions. As Alexis pursued the subject of Tintin’s depravity, with more than a hint of hypocrisy in his voice, he said at a venture:

‘'You've forgotten to mention that you were helping him."

"What me-¹’

"Yes. you!”

Alexis was thoroughly disconcerted.

"Well, only because Isabel would struggle so much. And all I did was to hold her legs.”

"What!" cried Honore. rising in his wrath again. “You mean to say you held her legs while young Maloret had all the fun?’’

“Well, as a matter of fact we took it in turns.”

Moved to laughter by this avowal. Honore calmed down again. He was well enough pleased that his lads should enjoy tumbling the girls. In this at least they did not resemble the gnat-blooded Ferdinand, who had passed his dreary youth amid stiff collars and books of catechism finding what solitary pleasure he could, the poor Little would-be priest, because a would-be priest he had been and a would-be priest he remained, no matter what he said. (To Honore's ideas, no full-blooded male could possibly be a priest, or a Royalist or a Bonapartist either, if it came to that: a man must be singularly lacking in gusto if he could remain indifferent to the bosomy and beamv figure of the Republic.)

Alexis resumed his place beneath his father's benevolent and contemplative gaze; but Adelaide was still bent upon his undoing.

"Trust vou to take his side." she said to Honore; “but while the little wretch is playing about with the girls the cows go off and get themselves blown in the clover. There won't be much laughing when one of them dies of it!”

Honore’s expression changed abruptly.

“Is that true, what your mother says? "

"Of course it's true." said Adelaide. "Rougerre came in to-night with a belly on her that you’d think she was on the verge of calving!”

“God Almighty,” cried Honore. flying into a rage again, “vou let a cow get into that state!. . Will you kind's- tell me exactly what you've been doing this afternoon?"

Alexis defended himself with ability', maintaining that

Rougette was not at all blown, but that she always looked a bit that way when she had been grazing well.

“All that happened was that while I was fighting Tintin she strayed over to Rugnon’s pasture, but that isn’t the sort of rich grass that would do her any harm, anything but, in fact.”

“Well, that’s true,” said Honore, calming down once more. And when his wife talked of going round to see Anals Maloret about the shirt her son had damaged, he said: “I don’t want to hear any more about it, and you’ll leave Ana'is alone. If there’s anything to be said to the Malorets, I’ll say it.”

At this point Juliette came in, breathless from running, and sat down beside her father.

“Just as well you ran,” said Adelaide, “or you wouldn’t have been back before midnight.”

“Yes,” said Honore. “You really ought to come home a little earlier.”

But there was no real rebuke in his voice. Juliette glanced at him and they laughed together. He was incapable of being stern with her. To him it was still a matter for pride and wonder that from his skinny and short-tempered wife he should have brought forth this tall girl with soft, dark eyes, a tranquil laugh and proper curves in all the proper places.

“At least you needn’t go so far as to praise her,” said Adelaide bitterly. “If she’s come home at all, you can be quite sure it’s only because there are no more young men hanging about outside.”

“That’s quite true, Mamma. But then, I told them to go home.”

“No need to tell us that there were several of them!”

“There were three.”

“So long as there are three sweethearts,” said Honore, “there’s nothing to worry about. And who were they, the young scoundrels?”

Juliette named them: Leon Dur, Baptiste Rugnon and Noel Maloret. At the third name Honore knitted his eyebrows and exclaimed under his breath. The infernal Malorets seemed to crop up everywhere. However, he made no comment, but asked casually:

“And do you know yet which is to be the real one?”

Juliette flushed slightly and answered in a non-committal voice:

“I can’t say.”

She lowered her eyes to her plate. Honore regarded her in silence for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and went out to call on the Messelons.

Since seeing his brother, Honore had been thinking over the problems to which Zephe Maloret’s candidacy for the office of mayor would give rise. Open opposition, the only kind which he considered decent, would entail serious consequences. He would have to leave the Hau-douin house even if Ferdinand did not compel him to do so, and being homeless, without money and almost without land, he would have to rent a cottage in Claquebue or elsewhere and hire himself out as a day-labourer to maintain his family in poverty. It would perhaps be more sensible to get a job in a factory, because only in a town could his wife and children hope to find work. “Well, and why not?” he reflected. “Alphonse works in a factory.”

But the idea was hateful to him. To go and work in a town at the age of forty-five! Never again to feel soft earth beneath the toe of one’s sabot, as sensitive as the flesh itself; never to look for rain or sun, never to be alone in the circle of the horizon. . instead of this, to have one’s gaze cut short by walls and ironwork, to use tools shared by everyone, to piss at fixed hours in a fixed place. . But if it must be done, it must. Honore had no intention of compromising either with his long-nourished anger or with his Republican conscience. Nevertheless he would be thankful to avoid a battle which must cost him so much, and he tried to hope that Messelon, despite his illness and his seventy-two years, still had a grip on life. He was impatient to learn how he was.

The Messelons were just finishing their evening meal. There were ten of them seated round the long table, besides the mother, who ate standing, as the custom was. The lamp was turned low, and they talked in undertones because the door to the sick-room was half-open.

“I’m late in coming,” said Honore in a low voice. “So much work to be got through during the day.”

Old Mme. Messelon signed to one of her children to fetch him a chair.

“It’s kind all the same, Honore. Philibert will be glad to know you’ve come, he spoke to me of you this morning. Things aren’t going well with him. I’m afraid he’s near the end. A man you’d never have thought he’d go so soon, so full of life, and strong and straight as a tree.”

She turned her head, calling all the Messelons to witness. There was a movement of heads round the table, a grave, acquiescent murmur.

“Yes, he was strong. . And full of energy, you’d never believe. . No one like him anywhere for getting the work done. .”

The old woman smiled in her pride and her grief.

“It’s a week since he ate anything — anything to speak of… A week to-morrow, Honore! And such a strong man!.

Honore uttered words of hopefulness by which he himself was somewhat fortified. A thin voice, trembling at the end of each sentence, came to them through the half-open door.

“Is that you talking in the kitchen, Honore? Come in here.”

Honore went into the bedroom preceded by the old woman carrying the lamp. Philibert Messelon lay in the bed, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes dimmed. Seeing him so wasted and so pale that one might have thought him dead already except for the little gasping breaths that passed painfully between his grey lips, Honore felt pity clutch him by the throat. He forced himself to say cheerfully:

“Good evening to you, Philibert. They told me you were ill, but you aren’t looking so bad.”

The old man turned his lustreless eyes towards him and signed to him to sit down.

“I’m glad you came. You’re only just in time.”

He still spoke in the dry voice of authority with which he presided over Municipal Council meetings; but now it quickly weakened from shortage of breath, and sometimes failed entirely.

“I'm nearly done for,” he said.

Honore and his wife joined in protest. He made an impatient movement.

"One can't choose. But just in the middle of the harvest. . it's hard.’’

ou'll be up by the time the grass has grown again,” said Honore.

"I shan't see it,” said Philibert Messelon, faintly smiling. “I shall be helping it to grow.”

He closed his eyes in exhaustion; his hand clutched his panting chest and a rasping sounded in his throat. Honore began to tiptoe out of the room to let him rest, but he said without opening his eyes:

“Stay where you are, son. Out you go, missus, and shut the door. I want to talk to him.”

When the old woman had left the room Philibert half-opened his eyes. Honore, now seated beside the bed, waited in curiosity. He made a questioning movement of his chin. The old man did not at first answer, seeming to have forgotten his presence. But suddenly he raised himself on the pillow; a light shone in the eyes which he now fully opened; his face and hands grew lively, while anger and irony lent a twist to his tired mouth. He said in a harsh voice raised to the limit of his strength:

“So it seems that the priests are cropping up again!” Honore was silent for a moment while he wondered if word of Maloret's manoeuvres had already reached him. He wagged his head and said cautiously:

“All this talk about Boulanger, one doesn’t know what to think. He’s got Republicans on his side as well as Clericals. I don't know anything about politics, but I’m bound to sav I've no confidence. .”

Philibert cut him short with an irritated gesture. It was upon General Boulanger that he had been reiving to carry out the true Republican policy: that is to say, to reconquer Alsace and Lorraine, to put down reaction, to liberate Poland and to get rid of every tyrant in Europe.

“A soldier’s what we need,” he said; “and one that isn’t an aristocrat. But that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. There’s something more urgent. Honore, they’re scheming to get the mayoralty of Claquebue.”

“Philibert, what are you talking about? You’re imagining things.”

“There's more than one that wants to see me out of the wav so as to take mv place. The priests aren’t asleep.”

“All the same, there are only four Clericals on the Council,” said Honore.

“Yes, but they’re a stubborn, dangerous lot. And it’s not only those. .”

Honore felt his fears take shape. He thought of his brother’s house: a roomy house with place for man and beast; a solid house with chimneys that drew, a garden in front, a garden behind, and fields all round. Not wanting to betray his disquiet he made an effort to reassure the dying man:

“Listen, Philibert, I’ve been a Republican since longer than yesterday. I get around, I see people and I hear what they saw I was at the Council meeting on Thursdav evening. You can trust me to know what’s going on. And I can tell you one thing: there’s no danger at the moment.”

“But God Almighty, I see people too! The cure has been here three times this week-”

“Oh, the cure! You've only got to be stuck in bed with a cold and he’ll come rushing round.”

Philibert was seized by a spasm of rage which shook his entire body.

“But why the devil did he want to come and talk politics to me? The spirit of harmony, he talked about, and ‘if you could persuade vour friends to be a bit more moderate’ and I don’t know what else. . By God, if I didn’t need him to help me die I’d have had him thrown out!. . That bunch are always trying to climb on our backs!.

Exhaustion and fury robbed him of his breath; his chest heaved rapidlv while pain and terror darkened his eyes and constricted the muscles of his neck. With his mouth wide open he thrust out his arms, uttering a prolonged gasping sound which caused Honore to fear for an instant that he was going to die on the spot. Taking his hand, he said gently:

“Philibert. . Steady, Philibert.

“To climb on our backs. the old man repeated faintly.

Honore fanned him with his hat. By degrees his breathing grew easier, while his strained face slowly relaxed. He went on without wasting an instant:

“Until we’ve really got them down we’ve got to go on watching them.”

“No doubt about that,” said Honore nodding.

“And another thing that’s certain is that Zephe Maloret’s out to be the next mayor,” said Messelon with a sharp glance at him.

“What makes you think so, Philibert?”

“You needn’t try to bluff me. You must know perfectly well what Zephe’s up to, now you’ve so suddenly become friends.”

Honore, growing thoughtful, paced up and down the room for a moment under the old man’s sardonic gaze. Then he sat down again and said:

“If you know so much about it you ought to know I wouldn’t touch Zephe with a bargepole.”

Philibert uttered a little derisive laugh.

“I’ve heard that before. Your father was just the same — full of big talk about people he took a dislike to, but ready to crawl on his stomach when there was something to be gained by it.”

Honore had little respect for the memory of his father, whom he had despised during his lifetime; but he never spoke of him except in praise. He behaved thus, not from any sense of filial duty, or from pride, but simply because he regarded the good repute of his parents as a family possession which had to be properly looked after. He searched for a wounding reply, but the old man, having regained his breath, cut him short.

“Your brother came to see me late this afternoon. He repeated all the stuff the cure said, a bit more emphatic, that’s all. What it amounts to, according to him, is that we’re threatened with serious developments abroad, and that in order to meet them the country has got to be united. .

Philibert could not restrain a grin as he recalled these views. W here he was concerned, it would be time enough to think about events abroad when the country had been cleansed of the gangrene of reaction which was undermining the vital forces of the nation.

“Conciliation, moderation, spirit of harmony — just like the cure said. . And seeing that the Clericals in Claque-bue already have four members on the Council, we might as well show our goodw ill by letting them have the mayor too. Zephe Maloret isn’t really so hot on holv water— that's what your brother savs — and quite friendly to us Republicans. . And he doesn't see win’ there should be any difficulty, particularly as you agree with him!’" Honore paused on the brink of an avowal which it irked him to make to Philibert. Nevertheless, he made it: “I might as well tell you, seeing vou aren’t going to last much longer. The fact is, although we don’t show' it. I’ve never got on well with Ferdinand, and I had a row with him this afternoon about what we’re talking about. I told him he’d always find me against him and against Maloret, and that if he was going to try and push that swine into the Mairie I'd clear out of our house, which is his property, as you know. That’s what I said, and I meant it.^-’

The old man wriggled on the bed, laughing softlv.

“I knew it!. . Oh, God, Honore, it hurts me when I laugh!. .”

He fought again for breath, and then said soberly: “Don’t worry about the house, you can always move in here. Where there’s room for a dozen there’s room for twenty. Your boys can sleep with ours, and the girls can go in together. You’d work for us, naturally.”

“Yes,” said Honore. “But it would be better to keep things as they are. And if people know I’ve had to leave our house I shan’t have the same standing in the village when it comes to dealing with Zephe. If only you could manage to hang on a bit longer-”

“It's no use counting on me," said Messelon apologetically. “And anyway there’s nothing more I can do.” “Just a month. That’d give me a chance to look round.”

“It’s too much, Honore. When a man’s only got three days of life left it isn’t reasonable to ask him to drag it out for a month. Besides, an invalid costs money.”

“I don't mind paying for the extra time. It’s not as though your food-”

“Yes, but there’s medicine, and the time people have to spend looking after me.”

“I'll pay for all that. You don’t want Zephe to be mayor of Claquebue, do you?”

“Well, look — three weeks. That’s the most I can manage.”

“All right — but starting to-morrow afternoon?”

“Very well. But it’s understood you’ll pay the chemist and twentv-five sous a day?”

Honore promised. And smiling at the thought that he was still earning his living, the old man caused his flicker of life to shrink till it was no more than a pin’s-head in the darkness, so that it might last another three weeks from to-morrow afternoon, Sunday.