Sunday Read online

  'Yes.'

  'Get the coffee.'

  'All right.'

  He did not ask her to come to him that day, for decency's sake, perhaps out of tact. He pretended to take no notice of Berthe, who affected the gestures of an automaton and only addressed him, in a neutral voice, about serving the customers.

  After his siesta, he took the van and went into Cannes to see a girl, the first one he could find, in order to calm his nerves, and, by an ironical twist, he knocked at three doors before he found one at home.

  'Whatever's the matter with you?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Been fighting with the wife?'

  'Get undressed and shut up.'

  On these occasions, he gave the impression of a petty cad, a thug of the kind one sees playing the tough guy in bars. A sentence was taking shape in his head, to which he did not yet attach any meaning, and he did not foresee that it was to become an obsession.

  'I shall kill her!'

  For now he hated her, not just for this or that reason, but for everything.

  He no longer told himself that she had bought him, that there was nothing in her but pride and peasant rapaciousness.

  He did not even dwell any longer on her attitude the day before, nor on the bargain she had proposed to him, or rather the conditions she had dictated.

  The matter had gone beyond the stages of reason and sentiment. The sentence surged up from his subconscious, like something self-evident, an indisputable necessity.

  'I shall kill her.'

  He did not believe it, was not sketching any plans, did not feel himself to be a potential murderer.

  'You're kind of queer today,' his partner remarked. 'Anyone would think you were looking for someone to pick a fight with. I'll be all covered in bruises later on the beach.'

  He had to go home, because of the guests' dinner. He was a little anxious, as he went into the kitchen, for he was wondering whether Berthe had kept her word. Had she just said what she had, the evening before, to quieten him, and had she taken advantage of his absence to chase Ada out of the house?

  Ada was there. Berthe was busy with her accounts. She was in her element. She would have been more lost if she had been deprived of her cash-desk than of her husband.

  Had her mother been unhappy, since the death of Big Louis? She had gone back to her sister and her niece, into their spinster world, as a fish drawn for a moment from the water would return wriggling to its own element.

  It made little difference if he were being unjust.

  'I shall kill her/'

  This time, he said it to himself in front of her, looking at her, with her head bent over her papers, and it was already more serious.

  No fibre in him trembled, nor pity, nor feeling of any kind.

  Once again, it was not a project, nor even a resolve. It remained vague, outside the realm of consciousness.

  He was not living, at the moment, in a solid world, but in a kind of luminous mist where objects and people were perhaps nothing but illusions.

  He went and helped himself to a drink at the bar, a few paces away from his wife. For she was still his wife. Usually, as soon as he picked up a bottle, she would raise her head to see what he was drinking, and to murmur, when she deemed it necessary:

  'That's enough, Emile.'

  He was waiting for it. Did she still dare to say it? Was it still her business?

  Deliberately he emptied his glass at a gulp, poured out another, as if he were hoping that she would stop him.

  If she had any urge of the sort, she suppressed it and continued to concentrate on her sums as if she were unaware of his presence.

  So it was established once and for all: he was free!

  On condition that he went on sleeping in the same room, in the same bed as she did, and hid himself away to make love with Ada.

  He threw his glass to the floor before going off into the kitchen with a sneer.

  Free, eh?

  VI

  HE still had a disturbed, incoherent phase to pass through, with his head in a turmoil. The season was at its height, all the bedrooms, all the tables on the terrace were occupied, and often the last to arrive had to wait at the bar for others to finish eating before they could get a place.

  Apart from the waiter Berthe had sent for from Lyons, called Jean-Claude, who was too blond and rolled his hips like a woman, they had had to hire a local youth, with thick hair and black finger-nails, and Maubi came in to lend a hand as well.

  In the kitchen Emile would from time to time pick up a cloth to wipe his brow, so covered with sweat that after a while he couldn't see properly, and the pauses between getting each meal became shorter and shorter. There was no question of going out in his boat, or of playing bowls, and it was through all this activity that he used to think, when he found time, about his personal affairs.

  As one of his colleagues in the basement kitchen of the grand Vichy hotel used to say, the machine must be fed. There, one might have thought one was in a factory. Instead of stoking the furnace of a locomotive with coal, they were ceaselessly filling the service-lift for the maîtres d'hôtel and the head waiters upstairs standing ready to hurry over to the tables.

  He felt that Madame Lavaud was watching him, quickly noting each new sign of nervousness he showed.

  Everybody, inevitably, had noticed that Berthe and he no longer addressed one another except for essential remarks, in a flat voice, which, to himself, he used to call a cardboard voice. Were they not wearing cardboard masks over their faces as well!

  What was stopping him from being satisfied? Almost every afternoon, even when he did not desire her, he would give the signal to Ada. She joined him in the Cabin and, automatically, because it was for this that he had asked her in the first place, she began by removing her dress.

  'Lie down.'

  He had read that the larger apes huddle against one another to sleep, sometimes in entire families, without distinction of sex, and it could not be for warmth, since they lived in the heart of Africa. Was it to reassure themselves? Or through need of contact?

  In captivity, when people tried to separate them for the night, they would become frantic, and in this book which had fallen into his hands, it was claimed that some of them pined away and died.

  Sullenly, fiercely, he clung to Ada, his hand upon her shoulder, her back, her stomach, no matter where, and he tried to make himself sleep while she lay still with her breathing almost suspended.

  Something was disturbing him, and he would ask himself questions to which he could not or did not want to find satisfactory answers.

  Supposing things had taken a different turn and, against all likelihood, Berthe had left, for example, thus giving him back his liberty; would he have married Ada?

  The answer ought to have come to him clearly, and yet this was not the case. He even asked himself sometimes whether he loved her, and the very fact of posing the question made him angry with himself.

  Ada did not judge him, did not spy on him to correct him, to make him into what she would have wished him to be. If she was attentive to his actions and behaviour, to his expression, the curl of his lip, it was to divine his wishes and to do everything that lay in her power to make him happy.

  Was he sure, on his side, that he looked upon her altogether as a human being? He had nothing to say to her, remained content with caressing her, and for her, as for an animal, it was enough.

  He would never leave her, for he needed her, especially at present. Berthe had, knowingly, put the two of them in a position at once painful and ridiculous.

  They were not allowed to leave. They could touch one another in private, even though everybody was certainly aware of what was going on. In front of other people, he was not even allowed to look at her.

  He was a prisoner, like a May-bug on the end of a line, and it was Berthe, with her appearance of melancholy dignity, who held the other end of the line.

  It was again a religious term which came back to him, despit
e the fact that since he had left Vendée he had not been to Mass, and religion had never much concerned him. Had these words, perhaps, an incantatory value for him?

  He was in limbo. He was part of the household without having his place in it, was the master but without a master's rights, and he loved without being sure of loving.

  Admittedly, he no longer needed to deceive as he had had to before, but it came to the same thing in the long run.

  Perhaps another word was more accurate? Hadn't Berthe, at the time that she had settled his future, excommunicated him?

  He caught himself suspecting people of thoughts which almost certainly they did not have. When Pascali came to drink his glass of wine, he now used to wonder what went on inside his head, that head like an apostle's in a stained-glass window, or a bandit's, for the mason might well have been one as much as the other.

  Why, one fine morning, had Pascali brought his daughter, still only a child, to La Bastide? It was to Emile, not to Berthe, that he had entrusted her. And Pascali must know men.

  Since then, every time he came and sat in the kitchen, wasn't it to see how Emile and Ada were getting on?

  Hadn't he guessed, and hadn't what had happened been what he wanted? In this way Ada would not hang about in the streets of Mouans-Sartoux and the dance-halls, passing from the arms of one boy to those of another, only to return home one day pregnant.

  All this was probably false, but for weeks now he had thought like someone in a fever, enlarging some things in his mind, creating others out of nothing. At certain moments, he became so unsure of himself as to wonder whether it were not he who was in the wrong and Berthe who was right.

  It was impossible for things to last like this. It is claimed that a man can live a long time without eating or drinking. It is more difficult to live without one's pride, and his wife had taken his away.

  He would never forgive her.

  How long did this phase, the most painful of all, last? The same time, more or less, as a real illness, three or four weeks. He had no more points of reference, as he no longer noticed the days.

  And it was in an unexpected fashion that he emerged from it. It happened on the hottest Sunday of the year, with cars overtaking on all the roads, the beaches covered with bathers, people storming into the restaurants at Cannes, where they simply could not cater for everybody.

  There were customers in shorts, women in bathing-costumes, children crying, and Jean-Claude never stopped uncorking bottles of rosé. Some would be asking for the bowls so as to be able to play beneath the terrace, others wanted sandwiches, to go and eat in the mountains.

  As on every other Sunday he had put bouillabaisse and calamary risotto on the menu, but he hadn't been able to get all the fish he would have liked from the fishermen. He had a leg of mutton in the oven, cold meat in the refrigerator.

  From half-past twelve the terrace had begun to fill up and, at the moment when Berthe was about to sit down in her usual corner, two large American cars had drawn up, disgorging a dozen people between the two of them.

  'Can we eat?'

  Jean-Claude had come in to announce:

  'Twelve more lunches.'

  Juice from the mutton was draining into the wood of the table, the saucepans were steaming, the air smelt offish, garlic, boiling oil.

  'Warn them there won't be enough bouillabaisse or risotto for everybody.'

  Berthe was serving aperitifs to the new arrivals. They were all talking, laughing, moving about, and Maubi was constantly having to go down to the cellar.

  'Madame is asking what she can have to eat.'

  He ought to have put aside a helping of risotto, as it was her favourite dish, which she ate every Sunday, but he hadn't done so. The mutton was nearly ready. He was already carving the cold meat he had reserved for dinner.

  'Ask her if she would like me to open a tin of something.'

  The staff would eat from it as well. It was not the first time.

  'What did she say?'

  'She would like some cassoulet.'

  In the way of tinned food, apart from sardines, tunny fish, different kinds of fruit in syrup, they had chiefly cassoulet and concoctions with sauerkraut. It was not the season for eating these things, but they had no choice.

  He opened the cupboard, selected one of the large two-litre tins sold specially to restaurants. The label was pockmarked with rust he noticed, without attaching any importance to it, since that often happened.

  It was past three o'clock when the terrace finally cleared and the activity died down. Emile, who had hastily swallowed an anchovy here, an olive or crust of bread there, was no longer hungry and, taking off his cap and apron, he emptied a glass of wine before heading for the Cabin.

  He had made no sign to Ada. In all the confusion he had hardly noticed her. In the kitchen the staff were beginning to eat, before setting about the mass of washing-up.

  This time he slept, exhausted. He had not locked the door. It took him a good while to come to his senses when somebody shook his shoulder, and he did not understand what was happening to him when he saw Jean-Claude, in his white jacket, bending over him.

  'Monsieur Emile! . . . Monsieur Emile! . . . Come quickly! . . .'

  'What's the matter?'

  'Madame . . .'

  At first he thought it was an accident, perhaps a dispute with some customers, a brawl.

  'She is very ill. She says she is going to die.'

  'Did she send for me?'

  'I don't know. I didn't go up.'

  He crossed through a patch of sun, found the shade again on entering the house. Ada standing at the foot of the stairs. Their eyes met, and it seemed to him the girl's expression was more intense than usual.

  'Who is up there with her?'

  'Madame Lavaud and Madame Maubi.'

  He went up, and at that moment he would have been unable to say what he was hoping. He saw Berthe, bending over a basin beside the bed, her face crimson, trying in vain to vomit.

  'You must...' Madame Lavaud was saying. 'Make another effort... Stick your finger in your mouth . . .'

  Berthe's eyelids were swollen with tears. Noticing Emile, she stammered :

  'I'm going to die . . .'

  'Has somebody telephoned the doctor?'

  'You realize Dr. Guerini's out in his boat,' replied Madame Maubi. 'It's Sunday.'

  'And Chouard?'

  'I think my husband has rung him.'

  He went downstairs, not sure where he ought to be.

  'It must be the cassoulet and the heat,' Maubi was explaining. 'I once saw a whole wedding ill on account of the foie gras, and two of them even died.'

  'Was Chouard at home?'

  'He was asleep.'

  It was not long before he arrived, pushing his bicycle up the hill, for he no longer dared to drive a car.

  'What has she had to eat?'

  'We had an overflow of customers. I opened a tin of cassoulet.'

  'Did anybody else have it as well?'

  He wasn't sure. He turned to Maubi, who nodded affirmatively.

  'The entire kitchen.'

  'Nobody else ill?'

  Chouard went up. Emile didn't follow him, sat down in the nearest chair and mopped himself.

  'We suddenly heard groans,' Maubi was saying. 'Then a voice calling for help . . .'

  Once again, Emile's eyes met Ada's.

  Was everything resolving itself, just at the moment they least expected it?

  He felt no pity for Berthe. He had had none for Big Louis either, when he had died. At Champagne, as a child, he had grown used to people and animals dying, and sometimes his father would kill a calf or a pig in the yard; he himself had learned as a small child to cut the throats of chickens and ducks.

  It was more a sort of peace which descended upon him, a sudden relaxation.

  His fever was abating. He looked around him with his eyes clear once more, and told himself:

  'I mustn't seem to be indifferent or, worse still, relieved.'<
br />
  To occupy himself, he went into the kitchen.

  'What's happened to the empty tin?'

  'It's in the dustbin.'

  He went and searched for it himself, rummaging without revulsion among the left-overs from the meal, and the guts of the fishes. A short while later, he placed the tin on the table, after sniffing it.

  'It doesn't smell.'

  There were the traces of rust, but because of the climate most of the tins in the cupboard bore similar marks.

  Ada, too, seemed more at ease, but wasn't it from seeing him relaxed at last?

  He went and poured himself out a glass of spirits, gave one to Madame Lavaud, who had just come downstairs and was clasping her bosom as if she was going to be ill as well.

  'Drink that.'

  'Oh, it's not the cassoulet I'm afraid of. My stomach will digest anything. It's just seeing her like that . . .'

  'What is the doctor doing?'

  'He has called for hot water, lots of hot water. I fetched some from the bathroom, and now . . .'

  The few customers still left on the terrace were asking what had happened. Jean-Claude didn't know what to say to them.

  'Tell them Madame has been taken ill.'

  Impatience overcame him, and he ended by going upstairs and listening at the door. He heard nothing but hiccoughs, water being poured into the basin, a little at a time, Chouard's voice repeating monotonously:

  'Relax . . . Don't tense yourself. . . There's nothing to be afraid of. . .'

  He himself cannot have been at his best at this time of day. Dragged from his siesta, he was almost certainly suffering from a hangover, and Emile went and fetched him a glass of brandy, half-opened the door.

  'For you, Doctor.'

  They had removed Berthe's clothes, and she had only a Turkish towel round her stomach. Seated in a chair, bent double, with her mouth open, she was staring at the basin placed at her feet, but she had time to raise her eyes towards her husband.

  He preferred to shut the door again, a shade paler. He didn't know where to go and, after a quarter of an hour spent wandering from the dining-room on to the terrace and into the kitchen, he decided to start on the dinner.

  When he finally heard Chouard's footsteps on the stairs, he went to meet him, with his cap on his head, automatically collected the bottle of cognac on the way.