The Krull House Read online

  He almost went back to his room without kissing her. He thought of it as he was already by the door and retraced his steps.

  ‘See you later,’ he murmured, his gaze elsewhere.

  That morning, while all the family were having breakfast in the kitchen, he was more pensive than usual and kept looking at Joseph, who hadn’t yet washed.

  Apart from the fact that they were both very tall, there wasn’t the slightest physical resemblance between them: not the shape of the face, not the complexion, not the eyes …

  And yet that girl had detected a family likeness, and Hans was realizing that she was right!

  His father, too, resembled old Cornelius, minus the beard, but then they were brothers.

  That day, Liesbeth seemed a happy, healthy young girl, while Joseph, who didn’t look at anybody, ate quickly, without pleasure, and went up to his room immediately afterwards.

  For an hour, nothing happened. Hans went to get cigarettes from a shop 300 metres from the house and on the way back stood for a long time watching the lock in operation. Meanwhile, between customers, Aunt Maria had come and said to Anna:

  ‘Do you think Liesbeth might be falling in love?’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Him!’

  ‘I hope not, for her sake!’

  ‘There are moments when he scares me. He has a way of looking at each of us in turn …’

  She was interrupted by the shop bell and found herself face to face with Pipi.

  ‘Give me something to drink, old girl!’ sighed Sidonie’s mother, who was in one of her self-pitying periods.

  It was always one thing or the other with her. Either she would be aggressive and insulting or she would grab the first person she met and cry on their shoulder. At such times, she forgot to hate Maria Krull and even called her ‘old girl’.

  ‘You shouldn’t drink so much, Pipi! Don’t forget you’re in mourning.’

  ‘You think I can forget? You think I can forget? If only you knew …’

  Aunt Maria turned her head towards the door to the kitchen, which had opened, and blinked on seeing Hans in the doorway.

  ‘Do you need something, Hans?’

  ‘No, aunt.’

  Pretending not to understand, he sauntered into the shop, like someone planning to stay for a while.

  ‘The thing is, Maria, you landed yourself a good husband, but mine was drunk every night and beat me so much I kept having miscarriages … So …’

  Aunt Maria was embarrassed by the presence of her nephew, who sensed that, without him, she, too, would feel pity and start to lecture Pipi. He sensed more clearly something he had already guessed at: that between the two women there was a complex feeling, a mixture of attraction and hate, a need at times to stand up to one another.

  Wasn’t it that Aunt Maria saw in Pipi something like a caricature of herself, what she might have become if she hadn’t been determinedly virtuous?

  And if Pipi kept coming back to the Krulls, sometimes tearful, sometimes insulting, didn’t that mean she was unable to do without the grocery?

  He opened the door with the Reckitt’s sign on it and remained standing there in the doorway, facing the quayside, his back to the two women.

  ‘They’re as alike as Joseph and I are alike!’ he thought.

  It wasn’t yet very clear in his mind, but ideas were taking shape, new relationships of cause and effect, subtle links between people.

  ‘What would you have done if your husband had beaten you?’ Pipi asked, on her second drink by now.

  ‘I’d have prayed!’ Aunt Maria replied, with an impatient glance at Hans, who was still motionless in the doorway.

  They couldn’t carry on like this, with Hans the way he was! No more than the black cat …

  It was a story they didn’t talk about, because nobody was proud of it. And ever since it had happened, they had refused to have a cat in the house, in spite of the damage caused by mice.

  That particular cat was called Beardy. They had got him from a bearded bargee when he was very small, and the name had stuck. He was a very ordinary black cat, a male they had had to neuter because of the smell.

  Around the second year, his fur had started to fall out, and they had tried several ointments, without success: Beardy was suffering from a skin disease, and his body was covered in scabs.

  ‘We’ll have to drown him,’ they would say every day.

  And one day Cornelius’ assistant was given the task. They gave him an old sack and watched him walk alongside the canal, until well beyond the boatyard.

  They didn’t talk about it for the rest of the day. Just as they were sitting down to eat, a black cat pushed at the half-open door, rubbed against everyone’s legs and sat down in his usual place, in the basket they hadn’t thought of removing.

  It was Beardy. And from that day on, the cat looked at the people in the house with a strange expression that must have been one of reproach. They all felt so guilty, they didn’t dare stroke him any more.

  Had a miracle occurred? Within two weeks, his skin disease had healed, but there was still his gaze, his implacable presence, his air of judging everyone …

  They stood it for a month, two months. They didn’t dare try the trick with the sack again. They were ashamed of calling the pound, just for a cat.

  It was Joseph, fifteen at the time, who made up his mind to take the animal out in the yard and kill him with a rifle shot at point-blank range.

  Hans caused the same kind of unease. He had brought mysterious thoughts into the house, and whenever he looked at the others, it was as if he was judging them in his way.

  Aunt Maria was embarrassed to be caught like this, having a friendly conversation with a drunk, a woman who relieved herself in the street and spent at least one night a week at the police station.

  Did she guess that Hans was comparing them as if they were interchangeable, as if, for example, circumstances being different, Aunt Maria could have become Pipi and vice versa?

  Upstairs, Joseph was gradually finishing his thesis in his fine, regular handwriting. Liesbeth was launching passionately, and happily, into a Chopin étude.

  Pipi left. Aunt Maria coughed and finally dared to say:

  ‘Hans!’

  He had to be talked to! Too bad!

  ‘Listen, Hans, you shouldn’t come into the shop all the time. It’s all too easy to see you’re a foreigner. We’ve already had lots of problems, even though we’ve been in France almost for ever.’

  ‘All right, aunt.’

  He smiled, his smile all the more disquieting in that, as he looked at his aunt, he was trying to imagine her peeing at the kerb.

  At the same time, he was thinking:

  ‘I bet there are times she envies the old drunk!’

  And, aloud:

  ‘In that case, I’ll go and spend some time with Anna. That’ll help me with my French.’

  He knew that Anna would gladly have crossed herself when he approached, as if the devil had appeared. In her case, too, it was because of the temptation!

  ‘You’re looking beautiful this morning, Cousin Anna.’

  She was hot, because she was making jam and the oven was full on.

  ‘You know I don’t like it when you joke.’

  Why was it a bad morning for everyone, except for Liesbeth, who still hadn’t got over sleeping with Hans?

  She was apart from the rest of the family, playing her ringing solo, which penetrated the whole house without arousing an echo in anyone else’s heart.

  Perhaps it was the threat of a storm, even though there was only one very small white cloud in the sky.

  Hans continued teasing Anna, enjoying making her blush, but he did so half-heartedly, without gusto. The truth was, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He had too many things on his mind.

  And yet nobody could have suspected what was brewing. The ways of chance were far too complicated.

  Even when Pipi returned on an errand for the people on a m
otor barge:

  ‘If you knew the shock it gave me to see him back on the barge! They hadn’t warned me … He didn’t blame me. He’s not the kind of man who bears grudges. All he said was …’

  It was Ninie who started it. She was still going to school. Although the holidays had begun two days earlier, pupils from poorer families who wanted to have a free stay at the seaside had to present themselves at the school with a certificate of poverty to register.

  Ninie, who hadn’t got over her fear from the previous evening, said to a friend:

  ‘I bet Sidonie was killed by a foreigner.’

  ‘Why a foreigner?’

  ‘Because I know there are some in the area, and yesterday, if me and Germaine had let it happen …’

  The examining magistrate had so little interest in the case that he had gone on holiday in spite of everything. Admittedly, he owned a small villa just twelve kilometres outside town, and the inspector had been told to phone him if there was any news.

  ‘If you know something, you must tell.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because you must!’

  ‘If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have said anything.’

  The two girls started arguing as they stood in line. The teacher intervened.

  ‘What’s going on with the two of you?’

  ‘It’s her, miss! She knows who killed Sidonie, but she doesn’t want to tell.’

  ‘You know who killed Sidonie?’

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  But the other girl insisted:

  ‘She told me that last night a foreigner tried to—’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘I swear she told me.’

  One thing had led to another. The headmistress, who was busy with the registrations, had also come to see what was going on. Ninie found herself in the headmistress’s office, rigid with embarrassment.

  ‘What did you tell your friend? Don’t lie now! If you do, you won’t go to the seaside.’

  ‘I told her it must have been a foreigner who did it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because last night, me and Germaine—’

  ‘Who’s Germaine?’

  ‘A friend who runs errands for the shoe shop where Sidonie worked.’

  The office still smelled of school.

  ‘Where were you and Germaine?’

  ‘At a dance hall.’

  She had dared to admit it, but her courage didn’t hold out, and she burst into tears.

  Soon afterwards, the headmistress and Ninie walked into the police station of the Saint-Léonard neighbourhood. At two o’clock, a uniformed officer presented himself at the shoe shop and asked for someone called Germaine.

  ‘I haven’t done anything!’ Germaine protested when they brought her.

  The inspector wasn’t pleased to have the two girls in his office.

  ‘What did he ask you?’

  ‘If we’d noticed anyone following Sidonie on Sunday night. He must have known her.’

  In the guardroom of the station, the officers were in their shirtsleeves, like Joseph Krull in his room.

  At four in the afternoon, the sky became overcast, but the same thing had happened in the past few days without the expected storm breaking out. A policeman on a bicycle got off outside the Krull house and went into the shop.

  ‘Do you have anyone foreign here?’

  Aunt Maria panicked, immediately thinking of papers not in order and fines.

  ‘We have my husband’s nephew who—’

  ‘He’s German, isn’t he? I’d like to talk to him.’

  She walked through the kitchen, which was empty. At the foot of the stairs, she called out:

  ‘Hans! Hans! Someone’s asking for you!’

  Hans was still teasing Anna as she did the rooms on the first floor.

  ‘I’ll be right down, aunt!’

  ‘You’re wanted at the station,’ the policeman said to him. ‘Bring your papers with you. Follow me.’

  A few raindrops fell as they turned the corner, making wide circles on the porous cobbles.

  Hans saw Germaine and Ninie immediately he entered the inspector’s office. They were trying to put on a bold front but didn’t dare look him in the face.

  ‘Is this him?’

  They nudged each other in mutual encouragement. Germaine stiffened.

  ‘Yes, inspector. And I swear he kept talking about Sidonie …’

  ‘Do you have your passport?’

  Hans handed it over.

  ‘How come it doesn’t have a German visa or a border stamp?’

  ‘Because I sneaked across the border.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was frowned on for my political ideas.’

  He was accustomed to police stations and official places in general.

  ‘When I found out they were going to put me in a concentration camp, I took refuge in France.’

  ‘Which way did you come?’

  ‘Via Cologne and Belgium.’

  ‘How did you manage it?’

  ‘When we crossed the border, I hung on to the underside of the carriage.’

  This was a Hans the Krulls didn’t yet know, a Hans who was terse and sure of himself, defying the authorities.

  ‘Why didn’t your relatives declare you as they should have done?’

  ‘I have no idea!’

  ‘Last night, you accosted these girls at the fair. What were your intentions?’

  ‘I didn’t have any, inspector!’

  ‘Why did you take them to a dance hall?’

  ‘They asked me to.’

  ‘No!’ Germaine cried indignantly.

  ‘Don’t forget, I was the first person to notice Sidonie’s body in the canal. I even gave you my name. I was there before the bargee.’

  ‘I remember something like that. What of it?’

  ‘Nothing. I was curious, that’s all. I told myself that a friend of Sidonie’s—’

  ‘How did you know she was her friend?’

  ‘Because I’d seen them together.’

  ‘When?’

  Hans paused, and there was an ironic gleam in his eyes. When? If he told them …

  Well, too bad!

  ‘On Sunday evening.’

  ‘You saw them together on Sunday evening?’

  ‘Yes, inspector, at the fair.’

  ‘Did you already know them?’

  Should he also admit that he had previously seen Sidonie under a streetlamp on the quayside, lips glued to a man’s?

  ‘No.’

  The girls were so overawed that they had moved closer together and were holding hands. As for the inspector, he was furious: all this was horribly complicated, and he foresaw all kinds of pitfalls.

  ‘Why didn’t you come to the station earlier?’

  ‘I gave you my name and address. You didn’t send for me.’

  It was true, damn it! None of this made any sense!

  ‘Be quiet, you two!’ the inspector yelled at the girls, because the younger one had whispered a few words in her friend’s ear. ‘First of all, at your age, you shouldn’t be wandering around a fairground at night. I’ll send you to a reformatory, I will! Especially you, because you’re the oldest and you led your companion on.’

  He left all three of them in his office and went into the next room to phone the examining magistrate. The girls were so scared that they flattened themselves against the door.

  Nobody had wanted this. Sidonie had been dead for a week, and now it was as if Sidonie were coming back to life.

  ‘All right,’ the inspector declared at last, bad-humouredly. ‘I don’t want to arrest you yet. I’ll just warn you that you’re under surveillance, and I advise you not to leave town. You may go. As for the Krulls …’

  He didn’t say what he would do with the Krulls. He was waiting until he was alone again with the girls and could question them in depth.

  ‘I said you could go.’

&
nbsp; Hans shrugged and put his hand on the door knob.

  ‘Goodbye, inspector.’

  ‘Goodbye!’

  Hans’ last look – an involuntary one – was at Germaine’s plump figure. The inspector, too, was ogling her big breasts.

  5.

  Leaving the police station, Hans had the demeanour, the sidelong gaze of a street dog on the lookout for trouble.

  Rue Saint-Léonard, on which all local business was centred, was a narrow street with trams running down the middle at the level of the pavements. All the houses were shops, mostly food shops that communicated their smells to a whole stretch of the street.

  Suddenly Hans’ eyes came to rest on a name above a shop front: ‘Pierre Schoof’. And below, in thin cursive script: ‘Butter, Eggs, Cheese’.

  The smell overflowed from its part of the street and mingled with that of the greengrocer’s next door, where baskets overran the pavement.

  Hans had stopped. He almost stuck his nose to the window, like a dazzled child.

  He gazed in at Monsieur Schoof, a Monsieur Schoof who was very different from the way he was when he visited his friends the Krulls, more alert, rounder, with a glowing, fluid cordiality.

  In the shop, encased in white marble, three people were serving: Monsieur Schoof, Marguerite in a dazzling white apron and another girl, an assistant who hadn’t yet attained the same degree of pinkness as her employers.

  The contrast was striking between these three well-groomed people, lacquered like show animals, whose very smiles made you think of something edible, and the resigned, dark-clad housewives, hair pulled back from weary faces, waiting their turn on the other side of the counter and observing the readings on the scales with gloomy anxiety.

  Hans went in.

  ‘May I speak to you for a moment, Herr Schoof?’

  He had said this in German, which made Schoof look nervously around. Opening a glass door, he replied in French:

  ‘Come in here. I’ll be right with you.’

  It was the back room of the shop, a combination dining room, kitchen and lounge, just as shiny as the shop, without a speck of dust, without a mark on the highly polished furniture.

  ‘I’m all yours, Hans … It’s best not to speak German in the shop. Most people think I’m Dutch, and I prefer it that way … What can I offer you?’