The Krull House Read online

  3.

  Between the time Sidonie died and was thrown naked into the canal and the time when people started to take an interest in her, no longer as a poor, sickly young girl but as one of the elements in a drama that was bigger than her, at least ten days passed; ten days during which, all things considered, there was no Sidonie at all, neither the flesh and blood one who had died nor the other who was not yet born.

  Nobody was doing it deliberately. She wasn’t being ostracized. The inspector and the prosecutor’s office had visited the scene of the crime, and a small crowd had followed their movements along the canal.

  The following morning, it was in perfectly good faith that the newspaper was to write, on its local news page, which was never well printed:

  Saint-Léonard neighbourhood. Bargees pulled out of the canal, near the lock, the body of one Sidonie S—, a shop assistant, who seems to have spent a night in the water. According to the post-mortem, before being thrown in the canal, Sidonie S— was subjected to an appalling assault and strangled. An investigation has been launched.

  Much further on, two lines without a headline:

  The police have arrested one Potut, suspected of being the perpetrator of the appalling attack on Quai Saint-Léonard. Potut was too drunk to be interrogated meaningfully.

  It should be added that the following days were particularly hot. As happened every summer, the water in the canal began to smell. Fly papers had to be put in every corner and within a few minutes were covered in a thick black layer of buzzing flies.

  There were also prize-givings in the schools. And also a ridiculous little merry-go-round, a merry-go-round for children, pushed by a pony, which was set up next to the Rideau boatyard, perhaps because there was nowhere else for it to go during the holidays; from time to time, the owner would set it in motion, and its shrill music could be heard from as far away as the lock.

  Even if they had asked Aunt Maria, who tended to have premonitions about many things, she would probably have asserted that there would never be a ‘Sidonie case’.

  The proof of this was that the very day the body had been discovered, she already had other concerns. The window display in the shop came up to her eyes, which meant that by standing upright, without needing to get up on tiptoe, she could see what was happening outside.

  Passers-by who stopped in front of the shop window sometimes jumped on suddenly discovering the top of that head, those eyes, that forehead, that silver hair in the calm semi-darkness of the shop. Some went away embarrassed, or annoyed, as if they had been caught off guard.

  That day, Aunt Maria was looking further, over towards the canal bank, where figures bustled about and onlookers followed the efforts of men in two small boats.

  These men had been given the task of dragging the canal for Sidonie’s clothes.

  But what concerned Maria Krull, what irritated her, was Hans, who was going from group to group and holding forth. He was all the more easily recognizable in that he was dressed in light grey, without a hat, the collar of his shirt open, and always with that excessively casual and nonchalant air of his.

  As his French was still elementary and his accent terrible, he was obliged, in order to make himself understood, to use big, sweeping gestures. Aunt Maria was losing patience.

  ‘Someone absolutely must tell him,’ she murmured to Anna, opening the door to the kitchen.

  Anna wasn’t allowed in the shop, any more than Liesbeth was, because it wasn’t seemly for young girls to serve drinks.

  It was Aunt Maria’s domain. Even the most insolent of drunks didn’t faze her, and she would throw them out like a man. Anna ruled over the kitchen, but between customers her mother would half open the door with its guipure curtain.

  That day, she opened it more often than usual, gradually building up a genuine conversation which, from sentence to sentence, from sigh to sigh, filled almost the whole day.

  ‘People already blame us for being foreigners! … If only he didn’t get involved in everything that happens …’

  It was the day for cleaning the knives and the silver, which Anna rubbed with a pink paste that gave off a sour smell.

  Aunt Maria came and went, passing from the smell of the shop to that of the paste and the soup, always calm even though anxious, her hands flat on her belly.

  ‘We should tell him not to talk to the neighbours. In town, it doesn’t matter. He can see whoever he likes there. But here, in the neighbourhood … I’m sure he tells everyone he’s German …’

  Maria tilted her head to the right: she had suffered for so many years from being German that she had lost count.

  Then the bell would ring, and she could be heard on the other side of the door, sighing again, because her female customers almost all had the habit of being unhappy, and Aunt Maria would share their complaints.

  ‘You should give him sugared water once an hour,’ she would recommend a bargee’s wife carrying a baby who was literally green. ‘When I had my third …’

  Her forehead peeked out through the window, her white hair, her eyes, and when she again opened the kitchen door it was to exclaim:

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Do you know what he’s doing now? He’s in a boat with those men, helping them to drag the canal!’

  ‘I don’t like him!’ Anna had declared once and for all.

  In saying this, her eyes were heavy, heavy with resentment, with secret thoughts.

  Joseph was working upstairs. He had been working far too much for some time now, and, whenever he came downstairs for meals, his complexion was like papier mâché, his eyes so tired that the eyelids flickered constantly like those of birds dazzled by the light.

  ‘You should get some air.’

  ‘I’ll have plenty of time for air once I’ve presented my thesis.’

  He was like his mother, always sorrowful, always dignified and resigned, seeming to proclaim like Job:

  ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!’

  When he came down for dinner that evening, he knew something was happening from his mother’s more hermetic silence, his sister Anna’s expression, his cousin Hans’ slightly forced gusto.

  It was Hans who said:

  ‘They finally fished out the clothes. They were literally torn to pieces.’

  His aunt coughed and indicated Liesbeth with a look, which Hans didn’t understand immediately. When he did, he concealed his smile behind a pout.

  So they didn’t talk about Sidonie. They didn’t talk about anything, really – just the heat, which, if it continued, might hinder traffic on the canal, as it had two years earlier, when the water had been too low for a whole month.

  As they left the table, there was something indefinable in Aunt Maria’s attitude, something comprehensible only to the Krulls, something that said:

  ‘Don’t go too far. Let Hans leave. We have to talk.’

  That made Hans, who had a sixth sense, all the more cheerful. Nevertheless, he decided to go out, announcing:

  ‘I’m going to town, but I’ll be back …’

  Maria Krull, unable to stay idle, was peeling potatoes. They didn’t switch the lights on. In summer, they liked to remain in semi-darkness until it was impossible to see anything. Even if they didn’t sit outside, the shop door and the kitchen door were left open, so that they had a constant view of the canal and the dark-green trees.

  ‘Listen, Joseph. Maybe you should talk to him … No, stay!’

  Joseph had been on the verge of going upstairs to his room and getting back to his exercise books.

  ‘Just now, he came to see me in the shop. He didn’t seem at all embarrassed. He asked me if I had any small change.’

  Old Krull was sitting in his armchair, haloed by the twilight and the thin smoke from his pipe, holding his eyelids in such a way that it was impossible to make out if his eyes were open or closed.

  ‘I thought it was because he didn’t want to go upstairs and get his wallet. I asked him ho
w much he wanted, and he said: “Give me a hundred francs …” ’

  Liesbeth left the room for no reason: it wasn’t time for her piano lesson, and they had no idea where she was going to hide herself away.

  ‘Then,’ Maria Krull continued, her monologue interspersed by the sound of potatoes falling into the bucket, ‘he told me he hadn’t been able to get his money out of Germany, that the customs officers were very strict, that he could have been sent to prison or a concentration camp. What do you think, Joseph?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  He stood there, so tall that it looked as if he might not be able to get through the door.

  ‘Has he told you how long he’s planning to stay with us?’

  ‘He hasn’t mentioned it to me.’

  ‘You should try and worm it out of him. He strikes me as so inconsiderate! Do you think he’s a scrounger?’

  In Maria Krull’s mouth the word ‘scrounger’ meant something very particular, encompassing the notions of indecency, bad manners and dishonesty.

  ‘People already think badly of us!’

  ‘You’re exaggerating, Mother!’ Joseph said without conviction.

  ‘Have you ever seen any of our neighbours come into the shop for anything? They prefer going an extra five hundred metres to another grocery.’

  It was very characteristic of her. She wasn’t crying. She never cried. But often, in the evening, when she let her thoughts take over, she would assume a monotonous, complaining tone, and as you couldn’t see her eyes, you might assume they were wet.

  ‘I really think you should talk to him, Joseph!’

  ‘No, Mother. You’re the one who should talk to him.’

  ‘Anyone would think you’re all scared of him!’ Anna muttered.

  There was nothing more in the newspaper about Sidonie. Even in the neighbourhood, people hardly mentioned her, firstly because Potut had been arrested and the mystery solved, secondly because everyone had children and it was best not to talk about such things in front of them.

  Even the police inspector didn’t think there was a ‘Sidonie case’!

  They had brought in Potut after finding him blind drunk in the station waiting room, where he often spent the night.

  It wasn’t until the following day that the inspector had had the man brought to his office and asked him point-blank:

  ‘What were you doing the day before yesterday?’

  The former croupier was a strange mixture of stupefaction and sharpness, or more precisely, even though he was most often in a stupor, shifting from one leg to another, a clear, sharp look would suddenly appear in his eyes, which was quite unsettling.

  ‘Well, are you going to tell me what you were doing?’

  He was shown a photograph of Sidonie’s body, taken in the morgue: definitely not a pretty sight.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Potut needed glasses to see clearly. He had a pair, with dirty lenses, in his pocket, mixed up with cigarette ends, pieces of paper and string, and all sorts of other things.

  When he recognized Sidonie, he simply said:

  ‘Well, well …’

  Then he repeated four or five times:

  ‘Well, well … well, well …’

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed, you dirty old man? Did you really need to strangle her on top of everything else?’

  The inspector puffed at his pipe. He was in no hurry. He turned from time to time towards his secretary and gave him a wink.

  ‘What night was that?’ Potut asked.

  ‘Sunday. Don’t pretend you don’t know.’

  ‘What if I told you where I was on Sunday night?’

  ‘Oh, of course! You have an alibi.’

  ‘I was with that fellow from Marseille!’

  ‘What fellow from Marseille?’

  ‘I don’t know him. I’d seen him once or twice around Les Abbesses. He’s an educated man, someone you can talk to.’

  Little by little, Potut told his story. They had met on a bench on Sunday evening. This fellow from Marseille, a shabby tramp, was eating a piece of bread he’d been given by some people living in a caravan.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’ Potut had asked him.

  ‘Why, do you have money?’ the other man had replied.

  ‘If the wife’s not at home, I may find some under the mattress.’

  Thick as thieves, they had made their way to the canal, where Potut had made his new friend stay behind while, as resourceful as a little boy, he had slipped on to the barge. Pipi was already asleep, so fast asleep that he had managed to take the thirty-six francs remaining under the mattress.

  ‘Three ten-franc coins, one of five and one of one!’ he specified.

  Then they had gone on a drinking spree. They had walked the streets on their unsteady legs, dragging their feet. Potut had ended up at the railway station, he didn’t remember how.

  ‘Well, we’ll see if we can find this fellow from Marseille. I’d be very surprised if we do.’

  ‘I can even tell you what we talked about!’

  ‘I’m not interested in that. It won’t keep you out of prison.’

  Twice in twenty-four hours, Pipi was arrested because she was drinking more than ever and when she was drunk, she took it out on the police, cursing them and blaming them for letting her daughter be raped.

  The nights were almost as hot as the days and all the windows in the neighbourhood were kept open, with the result that as you passed in the street you had the impression you could hear people tossing and turning in their beds, sweaty and uncomfortable, attacked by mosquitoes.

  It was on the Tuesday morning that Hans, who was going around in circles in the house, suddenly sat down astride a chair opposite his cousin Anna.

  Liesbeth had gone out to her piano lesson. For two days now, Hans hadn’t had a chance to be alone with her, and whenever she was in her room she kept the door locked.

  Sometimes, Hans opened the door to Joseph’s room, always finding his cousin determinedly buried in his work. Joseph would raise his eyes wearily, then pick up his pen again, carefully avoiding all conversation.

  ‘Someone should tell him not to keep disturbing Joseph!’ Aunt Maria had sighed during one of her appearances in the kitchen.

  Someone should tell him …

  It was becoming a refrain. There were lots of things to tell Hans, but nobody did. They were all content with talking behind his back.

  It was irritating to know that he was in the house, at a loose end, nosing everywhere, sitting down here or there, humming German songs, or coming into the shop, even when there were female customers.

  ‘But I try to make him see …’ Aunt Maria would say.

  He didn’t see, or didn’t want to, his demeanour as cheerful as ever.

  ‘So, Cousin Anna, still glum?’

  That morning, she was scrubbing the stove, her hair tied at the back with a handkerchief, her face spattered, her mood all the more aggressive.

  ‘I’m not glum!’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re happy.’

  ‘Do you think life is happy?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

  ‘It’s obvious you haven’t been living in this house since you were born!’

  ‘That’s just it! I’ve never known a more appealing house.’

  She threw him a brief glance, thinking he was making fun of her.

  He wasn’t! Or if he was, he was hiding it perfectly.

  ‘It’s so pleasant. Everything’s pleasant. And warm! And so quiet!’

  Aunt Maria came in, sighed when she saw Hans, opened her mouth but closed it again without saying a word.

  Only Uncle Cornelius’ assistant laughed at Hans’ jokes and listened to the stories he would come and tell him as he peeled strands of wicker.

  No Sidonie … No ‘Sidonie case’ … But, in the house, there was a ‘Hans case’.

  ‘If he asks me for money again …’

  ‘I hope we’re not going to support him!’

&
nbsp; ‘Someone really should tell him …’

  But nobody did! And the most annoying thing was that they had the impression that he knew, that he guessed at all these little mysteries they were weaving around him.

  Liesbeth’s nose had never seemed so sharp. She hardly ate. When this was pointed out to her, she blamed the heat, and Hans would look at her with a mischievous gleam in his eye.

  Until Wednesday evening … Everyone was going to bed, and old Krull, with that gesture straight out of a stained-glass window, traced a little cross on each person’s forehead with his thumb.

  Starting up the stairs, Hans said to Liesbeth under his breath:

  ‘See you later, in my room …’

  He left his window open, leaned there on his elbows and smoked a cigarette, hearing the others undressing in the other bedrooms.

  Joseph wasn’t asleep, hadn’t gone to bed: leaning out, Hans could see a halo of light at his window. There was nobody on the quayside, and the stillness of the barges on the black, somehow eternal water was almost dramatic.

  Suddenly Hans turned. He hadn’t heard the door open or close, he hadn’t been aware of any footsteps, but he wasn’t too surprised to see Liesbeth standing rigidly behind him.

  Her unlit face was pale, her eyes big and feverish as she looked at him. For a moment he felt as if he were in the presence of a sleepwalker.

  ‘Come and sit down, Liesbeth,’ he whispered, drawing her to the edge of the bed.

  She remained stiff, but didn’t resist.

  ‘I’m really pleased you came. I thought maybe you were angry with me.’

  This was the hardest part. His cousin’s icy body had to be warmed up, and all the thoughts she had crammed into her little head for several days had to be dispelled.

  ‘Come closer …’

  ‘Listen, Hans, I came to have a serious talk …’

  ‘Shh!’

  Firstly, they could be heard. Secondly, he had no desire for a serious talk.

  ‘I don’t know what you have in mind, but if you left me alone now …’

  Then two things happened at the same time, on different levels, and Hans managed to stay attentive to both.

  Firstly, Liesbeth, clinging to him with incredible vigour, burst into sobs so loud that you might have thought the whole household would hear them.