Ginette did not move but went on waiting, hoping fervently that Christiane would arrive.
When she saw her come in, she stood up with a smile. Christiane frowned. “Oh no, I do hope she’s not going to come and annoy us!”
Just for a second, however, she hesitated, wondering if it might not be rather good fun and very “modern” to introduce her friends to the woman and invite her to join them for a drink.
“No, I don’t think so. She’s too obvious, she’s not amusing, and those stories about her and her Maurice are a bore …” she thought.
At the age of fifteen, when she had found out how much she would be worth, she had learned how to look at people she did not want to acknowledge, how to look straight through them as if they were made of glass, with a cold, fixed stare as if she were looking for something just behind them; how to raise her eyebrows and allow a small, thin, icy smile to play on her lips.
She looked intently at an increasingly pale Ginette, conveying by her attitude, her silence, and her condescension that she was trying really hard to think of this unknown woman’s name, that she remembered having seen her somewhere before and exchanging a few meaningless words with her, but that she could not say exactly when or where that might have been; then she turned away.
Ginette remained quite still and alone with her drink, her shoulders hunched. A world that was blissfully lighthearted and happy glittered right next to her but was inaccessible, as if it were enclosed in a transparent bubble. It shone and sparkled, gleaming before her very eyes, but it was not for her. Nothing would be, for her, ever again … She listened to the happy young voices ringing out, “Hey, Marie-Claude, Marie-Solange, Dominique, over here!” With a fresh and insolent laugh, a childish voice declared, “They’re as ugly as anything, those tarts! And you pay for them! That’s what you prefer to us, you idiots!”
A pink-skinned, blonde girl, with clear, sparkling eyes, exclaimed rapturously, “What a night! The amount we’ve drunk! Look, I bet I’ve got circles under my eyes, haven’t I?”
They were safely on those happy shores, never buffeted by storms, where only a light, perfumed breeze would blow. Ginette looked at them, as, from an old boat being tossed on the waves, one might watch the elegant, proud shapes of palm trees and hills disappearing on the horizon. These were islands in paradise where she could never set foot. A bitter mist of tears rose into her eyes. She tightened her hands so fiercely around her glass that it broke; dazed, she looked numbly at the splinters of glass and the blood on her dress.
One of the girls laughed loudly; another started the gramophone, which covered up their cruel, high-pitched voices.
Reproachfully, the bartender said, “Out of it already?”
Ginette slowly got to her feet, then slowly wound the faded old blue scarf around her neck and tied it under her chin; the scarf had replaced the fur collar, long since sold. She opened the door, silently slipped out, and disappeared into the cold night.
Liens du sang
[ FLESH AND BLOOD ]
[ I ]
ANNA DEMESTRE STOOD ON TIPTOE TO KISS HER sons: she was an old woman, short and thickset. She tried hard to look lighthearted and happy, but her tired eyes barely lit up under their pale, round lids; only the corners of her mouth lifted in a smile, then her plump face, now creased by old age, relapsed into its usual sullen expression.
“I was beginning to worry,” she said to her sons nervously, timidly. When her daughters-in-law came in, she said in a sharp, plaintive tone, especially for their benefit, “I was worried. It’s eight o’clock …”
She led the way into the cold, cramped parlor, where the uncomfortable armchairs waited in a circle facing the empty fireplace. Albert and Augustin shrank back imperceptibly from the arms she held out to them.
The brothers were not at all alike, yet oddly similar. Albert was a heavy-jowled, bald, pink-skinned man in his fifties, with unhappy eyes. Augustin was shorter and thinner, graying at the temples; his pleasant features were beginning to coarsen, and his sensitive, faraway expression at times made him look like a sleeping cat.
Their mother asked both of them in turn, “How are you? Is everything all right, my son?”
They responded, loudly and heartily, in the falsely animated voices they used only for talking to her.
“Of course, Mama!” replied Albert. “I’m very well! What about you? Filthy weather, isn’t it?”
Augustin, trying to wipe the thin, cold, abstracted smile off his face, rubbed his hands together cheerfully. “Am I well? I should think so! Never better!”
Then they fell silent, looking at her affectionately, although without seeing her, without noticing that her face was yellower this evening than on recent evenings. They were good sons. For a long time now they had only told her pieces of good news, but these were rare: usually they could not think of anything very much to say to her.
“Here’s Alain,” said Mme. Demestre, recognizing the sound of her youngest son’s footsteps outside the door.
Alain came into the room. He and Augustin were alike, although Alain was taller and thinner. His hard, sharp face wore a taciturn, ironic expression, but it still showed some sort of spark, something long since extinguished in Augustin.
The brothers shook hands, muttering a halfhearted “How are things?”
They stood for a moment in front of the fireplace, silently avoiding one another’s eyes. Then they drew up the armchairs, sighing as they sat down. Their wives were still tidying their hair in the hall. As soon as they came in, all three men stood up as one and went to join them.
When they spoke to their wives, their voices immediately took on their usual low, muffled, irritable tone, and their faces, undisguised, lost their mask of cheerfulness and calm. A sort of complicity isolated each couple. When Alain, who was not a good husband, said to his wife, “Couldn’t you have explained to that idiot Angèle that the letter was urgent?” he revealed a glimpse into a part of his life about which his mother knew nothing, full of worries and hopes she did not understand and never would.
As she sat in their midst, the mother glanced from one to the other. Her eyes were piercing, but pale with age, gleaming mistily like water in a pond. Nothing irritated her daughters-in-law more than those greenish eyes examining their faces and following their every movement, while her expression remained sullen and lifeless and her heavy, pale eyelids, finely creased like those of some night bird, scarcely flickered.
During these Sunday gatherings the daughters-in-law always sat together on the same sofa. Two of them, Claire and Alix—the wives of the two younger brothers—were sisters. With Alix were her two daughters, Martine and Bernadette: perfect china dolls, blonde, pale-skinned, and with straight hair; two bare little necks rose above identical collars, embroidered by Alix.
Anna Demestre noticed the little girls’ collars. She beckoned them toward her and sighed as she felt the gathered cotton linen.
“Are these the collars you embroidered, Alix? They’re beautiful,” she said with an effort, although one could see from her intent expression that she was eagerly looking for a fault in the workmanship. “They’re too tight, you poor little things,” she said with ill-disguised triumph as she slipped a finger underneath the collars. “You’re suffocating …”
She was happy now, and looked for her glasses so that she could admire the delicate embroidery. “It’s wonderful, Alix. Your work is as delicate as a fairy’s.”
Claire and Alix exchanged looks. It was always like this: when their mother-in-law was invited to dine at one of their houses, when they had carefully cooked one of her favorite dishes, she would immediately look suspicious and disappointed. Even if she thought it was excellent, and said so, she recovered her serenity and her appetite only after declaring, “There’s too much cream, my dear,” or “It’s very good pastry, but too heavy.”
She made less of an effort to be kind to Albert’s wife Sabine, a chubby, faded blonde, in spite of the fact that she was the most placi
d of creatures, and the easiest to live with. The granddaughter of a famous surgeon, she was rich as well: Albert had inherited a substantial fortune from his wife’s family, while Claire and Alix had been married without a dowry.
The three daughters-in-law huddled together on the old sofa; the effort they made not to yawn was making their eyes water. They contemplated with distaste the furniture and the walls of the icy little parlor. The front rooms overlooked the Rue Victorien Sardou, the quietest, grayest, and ugliest street in the area, while the windows at the back opened on to the grounds of the Sainte Perrine home for the elderly, at this time of day and this time of year a desolate chasm of wind, rain, and shadows.
Occasionally the three brothers punctuated the silence with cold, terse comments. It was always like this. They met every Sunday at their mother’s house, but for the rest of the time each led his own life, with his own worries and his own circle of friends, utterly different from the lives, the concerns, and the relationships of his brothers. Prosperous Albert; Augustin, who had a reputation for seeing things only through his wife’s eyes; Alain, permanently withdrawn in his gloomy thoughts. They sometimes looked at one another as if astonished to be in the same room together, speaking so familiarly. Sometimes (this evening especially, thought Anna Demestre) they seemed barely able to tolerate one another. Were they enemies? Certainly not: it was more that they were strangers who had nothing left in common, apart from their names and a few physical characteristics. When they spoke to one another, or even to their mother, about one of the others, saying “that oaf Albert,” or “that pig Alain,” their tone of voice was the same, not because of any ill feeling but because of their long-standing brotherly habit of complaining about one another!
“Mama, he did that to me … he’s taken my things, Mama …”
“Mariette is late,” said Claire.
Mariette was the sister of Albert, Augustin, and Alain. Still a pretty woman, she was beginning to show her age: she was one of those delicate blondes who, on reaching forty, appear to wither overnight, like a corsage of flowers worn to a party. She had led a chaotic and unhappy life. Once, to her brothers, she had been “our Mariette, our little Mariette,” but now she was “good old Mariette, poor Mariette.” She had stupidly married a much older man, and even more stupidly divorced him. She had been ravishing; wherever she went, love followed. Her life had been too dazzling, begun too early, and although she had apparently been destined for happiness, everything had ended disastrously, nobody quite knew why. Now, alone and childless, she was getting old and was dependent on her brothers, who passed her from one to the other like an awkward parcel.
She arrived just as they were sitting down in the dining room. The mother looked at her with unusual perception. “Poor Mariette, she used to be so pretty …”
She didn’t see her sons getting older and plumper, losing their hair, their looks, and their youth; whereas, perhaps as a result of some sort of feminine insight, only in Mariette did she see the devastating effects of age.
They began to eat.
The old white porcelain lamp had been converted to electricity and its circle of lightbulbs shed a harsh glow over the tablecloth. The velvet chairs, the thick carpets, the soft, padded place mats, the maid who silently came in to put the dishes on the sideboard without making the slightest noise or without even clinking the cutlery, at first all this seemed very agreeable to the Demestre family. It made them feel calmer. They exchanged a few pleasantries, and, as they tasted the soup, exclaimed cordially, “Oh, Mama, what a delicious consommé!”
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 Al
bert 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 …”