The Blue Room Read online

  ‘Can we eat at 6.30?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  They ate early because Marianne went to bed at eight o’clock. She had her own apron with little blue checks. She had just lost two front baby teeth, and the gaps gave her an almost pathetic expression. It was as if, for a few weeks, she were a child and a little old woman at the same time.

  ‘Can I come with you, Pop? I promise not to make a noise.’

  The office, with its pine shelves full of green boxes and piles of brochures, looked out on the road, and Tony was anxious to see the Citroën go by.

  Next door was what the architect had called the living room, the largest room in the house, intended to serve as both dining and sitting rooms.

  During the first week they had discovered that it simply wasn’t practical for Gisèle to shuttle back and forth with the dishes, leaving the table to check food on the stove, and they had decided to eat in the kitchen.

  That room was large and cheerful. The scullery was used for washing and ironing. Everything was well planned, remarkably clean, never untidy.

  ‘Your wife, I take it then, could be called an excellent housekeeper?’

  ‘Yes, Your Honour.’

  ‘Is that why you married her?’

  ‘When I married her, I didn’t know that.’

  Things had developed in three stages, actually, if not four. The first in Saint-Justin, in his house, when the police sergeant, then the lieutenant, had hounded him with questions he found baffling. Then it was Inspector Mani’s turn, in Poitiers: he specified dates, compared times, reconstructed Tony’s comings and goings.

  At first no one was interested in his thoughts and outlook – especially not the police, or perhaps they simply found his private life unsurprising and basically like their own. With Diem and then the psychiatrist, even his lawyer, all that would change. Whenever Tony appeared before the examining magistrate, for example, he arrived from prison, in the police van that would soon ferry him back there, whereas the magistrate went home for lunch or dinner.

  It was Diem who made him the most uneasy, perhaps because they were about the same age. The magistrate was a year younger than Tony and had been married for a year and a half. His wife had just had their first baby. The magistrate’s father, not a rich man, worked as an office manager in the Social Security Department, and Diem had married a typist. They lived in a modest apartment, three rooms and a kitchen, in the newest neighbourhood in town.

  Shouldn’t they have been able to understand each other?

  ‘What was it, exactly, that frightened you that night?’

  What answer could he give! Everything. Nothing in particular. Nicolas hadn’t turned the shop over to his mother and taken the train for no good reason. He hadn’t come to Triant just to sit at a little table on the terrace of the Hôtel des Voyageurs and drink some lemonade.

  When Tony had left the blue room, Andrée was still naked on the bed and showing no sign of going anywhere soon.

  ‘Did you consider Nicolas a violent man?’

  ‘No.’

  He was, however, a sick man who had been morose and withdrawn ever since childhood.

  ‘Did you wonder, in Triant, if he might be armed?’

  He hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Were you afraid for your family?’

  They weren’t managing, he and Diem, to use words that meant the same thing to them both, to place themselves on the same footing. They were always a little out of step with each other.

  Pencil in hand before a pile of invoices, he pretended to work, now and then placing a meaningless cross next to a number to look busy.

  Sitting at his feet, his daughter was playing with a toy car that had lost a wheel. Beyond the lawn and the white fence, he could see the road about twenty metres away and, across a meadow, the backs of some village houses, their yards and small gardens where dahlias were in bloom. In one spot an enormous yellow sunflower with its black heart stood out brightly against a grey wall, near a barrel.

  When he had come home, he had automatically checked the clock: 5.45. At 6.20, Gisèle came to ask him, ‘Can I start serving now?’

  ‘Maybe a little later. I’d like to finish this before dinner.’

  ‘I’m hungry, Pop!’

  ‘It won’t take long, my pet. If I’m late, you’ll sit down to eat with Mama.’

  It was around then that he felt flooded by a panic unlike what he had felt earlier, when clutching his clothes and dashing upstairs in the hotel. This was a heart-wrenching, bodily anguish, an abrupt rush of fever that forced him to go and stand by the window.

  When he lit a cigarette, his hand trembled. His legs felt shaky. A presentiment? He spoke to the psychiatrist about it – or, rather, Professor Bigot persuaded him to discuss it.

  ‘That had never happened to you before?’

  ‘No. Not even when by some miracle I survived a car accident unharmed. And yet that time, when I came to, sitting in a field without a scratch, I began to cry.’

  ‘Were you afraid of Nicolas?’

  ‘I always found him disturbing, somehow.’

  ‘Even back in school?’

  As luck would have it, just before 6.30, the Citroën appeared at the top of the rise. It drove past the house with Andrée at the wheel, her husband beside her, and neither of them looked in his direction.

  ‘Ready when you are, Gisèle …’

  ‘Then dinner is served. Go and wash your hands, Marianne.’

  They had begun their evening meal as usual: soup, a ham omelette, salad, a camembert and some apricots for dessert.

  Outside the windows lay the kitchen garden the couple tended together, where Marianne crouched for hours, pulling up weeds.

  The runner beans had reached the top of their poles. Behind the wire fencing of the hen-house at least a dozen white Leghorn hens were pecking away, and there were shadowy forms in the rabbit hutches.

  The day seemed to be winding down like any other summer day. A mild breeze came in through the open window, with an occasional breath of cooler air. Fat Didier the blacksmith was still busy at his forge. Nature was calm and settling in for the night.

  Professor Bigot’s questions almost always came out of the blue.

  ‘Did you have the feeling, from that evening on, that you had lost her?’

  ‘Who? Andrée?’

  He was nonplussed, because he hadn’t thought of that at all.

  ‘You’d been caught up, for eleven months, in what can certainly be called a grand passion …’

  And that was not how he would have described it. He desired Andrée. After a few days without her, thoughts of their tumultuous, ardent hours together would haunt him with memories of her smell, her breasts, her belly, her boldness. Sometimes he lay awake next to Gisèle for hours, tortured by incredible fantasies.

  ‘What do you think about going to the cinema?’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Thursday.’

  Gisèle was a little surprised; they usually went to the cinema once a week, in Triant, just twelve kilometres away.

  On other evenings, Tony would work in his office while his wife washed the dishes, then joined him to sew or darn socks while he worked. Now and then they would pause to chat briefly, almost always about Marianne, who would be starting school in October.

  Once in a while, they would sit in front of their house, gazing out at the gathering dusk, the red and grey roofs in the moonlight, the dark mass of the trees with their barely whispering leaves.

  ‘What’s showing?’

  ‘An American film. I saw the poster, but can’t remember the title.’

  ‘If you want to go … I’ll tell the Molards.’

  When they went out in the evening, one or both of the Molard sisters came to stay with Marianne. The eldest, Léonore, was thirty-seven or -eight; Marthe was a bit younger, but they seemed of no particular age and would turn into old maids without anyone even noticing.

  Both had round, moonlike faces with
indistinct features and wore the same dresses, the same coats, the same hats, as some twins do.

  Often they were the sole worshippers at the seven o’clock mass, where they took communion every morning, and they never missed vespers or benediction.

  It was they who helped Father Louvette in the church, putting flowers on the altars, tending the cemetery, and they again who sat up with the dying and laid out the dead.

  They were seamstresses, and passers-by could see them working through their front window, where a big café-au-lait cat often lay napping on the sill.

  Marianne did not like them.

  ‘They smell bad,’ she said.

  They did indeed have a particular odour about them, the one found in churches and dry-goods stores, plus a hint of the smell in sickrooms.

  ‘They’re ugly!’

  ‘If they weren’t here to take care of you, you’d be left alone in the house.’

  ‘I’m not scared.’

  Gisèle smiled her own little smile, a faint one that barely curved her lips, as if she were trying to keep it to herself.

  ‘You ascribe that to her sense of discretion?’

  ‘Yes, Your Honour.’

  ‘What do you mean by that? Able to keep a secret?’

  More words!

  ‘That’s not how I think of it. She didn’t like to be noticed. She was afraid of taking up too much room, of disturbing people, of asking them any favours.’

  ‘Was she already like that as a child?’

  ‘I believe so. After a film or a dance, for instance, she would never have admitted that she was thirsty, so that I wouldn’t have to spend more money.’

  ‘Did she have women friends?’

  ‘Only one, a lady neighbour older than she was, with whom she took long walks.’

  ‘What attracted you to her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never asked myself that.’

  ‘Did she seem safe and reassuring?’

  Tony stared at the magistrate’s face, trying to understand.

  ‘I thought she would make …’

  He couldn’t find the right word.

  ‘A good wife?’

  That wasn’t quite it, but he sighed and said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  And when there was no answer: ‘Did you want to sleep with her? Did you go to bed with her before your marriage?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t desire her?’

  He must have, since he married her.

  ‘And she? Do you think she loved you or that it was the marriage itself that appealed to her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think …’

  What would the magistrate have replied if he had asked him the same question? They made a good couple, that’s all. Gisèle was tidy, energetic, unassuming, the perfect housewife in their new house.

  He was glad to come home to her in the evenings and until Andrée he had never had any serious affairs, even if he did take advantage of the odd opportunity.

  ‘You maintain that you never considered a divorce?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Not even during these last few months?’

  ‘Not for one moment.’

  ‘Yet you told your mistress …’

  Then Tony suddenly raised his voice, even banged his fist on the little magistrate’s desk without realizing it.

  ‘But that’s just it, I never actually said anything! She was the one talking! She was naked on the bed. I was naked in front of the mirror: we’d just, the two of us … I mean, you know this as well as I do. In such moments, who worries about words? I could barely hear what she was saying. Listen: for a good long while, I was watching a bee …’

  He suddenly recalled the bee: he had even opened the shutters wider to let it fly out.

  ‘I was nodding or shaking my head while thinking of other things …’

  ‘What, for example?’

  It was too discouraging. He couldn’t wait to get back to his prisoner cage inside the police van, where no one asked him any questions.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  While Gisèle dashed next door to alert the Molard sisters, Tony put Marianne to bed, then showered and changed his underwear, as he did whenever he had seen Andrée in Triant. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

  ‘If we have more children, we can put the boys in one bedroom and the girls in the other,’ Gisèle had said when they were discussing the new house.

  After six years, they still had only Marianne and had used the third bedroom just once, when Gisèle’s parents had visited Saint-Justin during the holidays.

  They lived in Montsartois, six kilometres from Poitiers. Germain Coutet, journeyman plumber, was a heavy man built like a gorilla, with a ruddy face, a booming voice, and he began every sentence with: ‘I’ve always said …’ or ‘What I think is …’

  From day one it was easy to see that he envied his son-in-law, envied him his bright, orderly office, the modern kitchen and especially the gleaming shed where the machinery was kept.

  ‘Me, I still think it’s a mistake for a workman to branch out on his own …’

  He opened his first bottle of red wine at eight in the morning and drank all day long. He could be found loudly holding forth in all the village bistros and, although never drunk, would become increasingly categorical, even aggressive, as the day wore on.

  ‘Who goes fishing every Sunday morning? You or me? So there! Who has three weeks of paid holidays? And who doesn’t need to come home at the end of the day and bust his brain over a bunch of numbers?’

  His wife – fat, passive, with a prominent stomach – never challenged him. Could that explain why Gisèle was so shy?

  Towards the end of their stay, there had been some heated arguments, and the Coutets spent no further holidays in Saint-Justin.

  After speaking to the Molard sisters, Gisèle had time to put away the dishes and even change her clothes. She barely seemed to move yet never appeared to hurry as she went about her chores, which got done as if by magic.

  A last goodnight to Marianne, in the warm shadows of her room. Downstairs, the Molard ladies were already bending over their sewing.

  ‘Have a good time.’

  It was all very familiar, a scene so frequently repeated that they paid no attention to it any more.

  The engine started. Side by side in the front seat of the van, they left the village behind, where someone was working late in his garden while most others, sitting on chairs in front of their houses, were taking quiet advantage of the cool evening air, a few listening to a radio playing somewhere behind them in an empty room.

  They drove in silence at first, lost in their own thoughts.

  ‘Tell me, Tony …’

  When she paused, he felt a pang in his heart and wondered what would come next.

  ‘Don’t you think that for some time now Marianne has been looking a touch pale?’

  Their daughter had always been thin, with long arms, long legs, and her complexion had never been rosy.

  ‘I spoke to Dr Riquet about it earlier today, when I ran into him coming out of the grocery store …’

  Hadn’t she been surprised to see that Nicolas had vanished, leaving his mother behind the counter? Hadn’t she thought it strange?

  ‘As he says, we have nice fresh air, but children need change. He suggests that, when we can, perhaps next year, we should take her to the seaside.’

  He startled himself with the speed of his reply.

  ‘Why not this year?’

  She hardly dared believe it. Summer was Tony’s busiest season, so they hadn’t taken a single holiday since their move to Saint-Justin. They’d spent their savings on the property, but they would be paying off the house and machinery shed for a few years yet.

  ‘You think we could?’

  Once, the first year of their marriage, while they were still in Poitiers, they had spent two weeks at Les Sables-d’Olonne, renting a furnished room from an
old woman, where Gisèle cooked their meals on an alcohol stove.

  ‘It’s already August. I’m afraid there won’t be anything left.’

  ‘We’ll go to the hotel. You remember that hotel, at the very end of the beach, a little before the pine woods?’

  ‘Les Roches Grises. No! Les Roches Noires!’

  They had dined there one night on an enormous sole to celebrate Gisèle’s birthday, and the Muscadet had made her a little tipsy.

  Tony was happy with his decision: he would be cutting off contact with Andrée and Nicolas for a while.

  ‘When do you want to …’

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  Before being absolutely sure about this holiday and choosing specific dates, he would have to speak to his brother. It was in order to see Vincent, in fact, that he was taking his wife to the cinema. He drove past the Hôtel des Voyageurs without stopping and turned into Rue Gambetta, where he found a parking space right outside the Olympia. On the pavement, one could tell the Parisians from the local people by the way they dressed, the way they walked and gazed at the lighted shop windows.

  Tony and Gisèle always took the same seats, in the balcony. During the intermission after the newsreels, documentary and cartoon, he suggested, ‘How about a beer at Vincent’s place?’

  The terrace tables were almost all occupied, but Françoise found one for them and wiped it with her cloth.

  ‘Two beers, Françoise. Is my brother here?’

  ‘At the bar, Monsieur Tony.’

  Inside the café, men were playing cards in the yellowish light, regulars whom Tony had seen a hundred times sitting in the same corner, with the same customers to watch and comment on each play.

  ‘Well?’

  His brother answered in Italian, which was unusual, for they’d been born in France and had spoken Italian only with their mother, who had never managed to learn French.

  ‘I’m not exactly sure what happened. I have the feeling that everything’s fine. He was there, on the terrace …’

  ‘I know. I saw him from upstairs.’

  ‘Ten minutes after you left, she came down, relaxed, as if she hadn’t a care in the world, and crossed the café calling out: “Do thank your wife for me, Vincent …” She was speaking loudly enough for her husband to hear. She left the same way, carrying her handbag. Just as she reached the corner of Rue Gambetta, she suddenly seemed to notice Nicolas: “Well! What are you doing here?”