You have to have waited patiently outside a telephone booth occupied by a woman to really appreciate just how much the fairer sex likes to talk.
I’d already been waiting my turn for a good ten minutes in that provincial post office that smelt of sadness, with only the sympathetic face of the switchboard girl to sustain me, when the lady in the booth finally ended the chatter she was paying for.
As it was a booth with frosted glass, until that point I’d had only her voice to go on in forming an impression of her.
I don’t know why, but I had expected to see someone short, plump and awkward emerge. When she appeared, however, I realized how arrogant it is to think you can put together a picture of a person from their voice.
In reality, the person for whom I stood aside was a woman of around thirty, slim, blonde, with blue eyes that were slightly too large.
If she had lived in Paris she would have possessed the thing she most lacked, namely a certain sense of elegance. The white blouse she wore, and especially her black suit, the work of some elderly dressmaker with a subscription to the Écho de la mode, deprived her figure of eight-tenths of its power. You had to really love women, the way I did, to see that under her badly tailored garments this one had a waist like a napkin ring and admirable curves…
I was watching her walk away when the operator on the line gave a triumphant cry: “You’re through to Paris!”
Being “through to Paris” in this case meant hearing the faint voice of my friend Fargeot peppered with intolerable crackling.
Because of the long-distance call he already knew it was me.
“Hello Blaise! I’ve been waiting for you to call… Well?”
I didn’t answer straight away. In the booth there lingered a curious scent which moved me in a strange way. I breathed it in, half-closing my eyes… It conjured up many indefinable and fragile things… Vague things, things long gone which would never exist again and which almost made me feel like crying.
Fargeot’s voice sizzled like a doughnut in boiling oil.
“Well then, out with it! Hello? I’m asking you…”
“No luck, my friend. The job was already gone.”
His pained silence was renewed proof of the concern he had for me. He was a good guy. He had pointed out the job advertisement, then even lent me the fare.
“What do you expect?” I said consolingly. “I’m always last in the queue when they’re giving things out.”
He gave me an earful.
“You’ll never get anywhere with an attitude like that, Blaise! You’ve got a loser’s mentality. You delight in renunciation… The more life kicks you in the backside, the happier you are. A masochist, that’s what you are.”
I waited for the hothead to finish pouring out his resentment.
“Do you really think this is the moment for psycho analysis, old pal?”
That shut him up. In a different tone, he asked, “When will you be back?”
“As soon as possible. It’s as quiet as a rainy All Saints’ Day in this godforsaken place.”
“Have you got something to eat at least?”
“Don’t you worry, my stomach has hidden resources.”
“Fine, I’ll expect you for dinner this evening. Don’t lose heart, Blaise… Are you familiar with Azaïs’s law?”
“Yes, life is split fifty-fifty between troubles and joys… Assuming that’s right—and since I’m thirty now—that would at least suggest I’m sure to live to sixty!”
With that I hung up because the bell signalling the end of my three minutes was sounding in the earpiece.
Turning round to leave the booth, I felt something odd under my feet. It was a small crocodile-skin wallet. I picked it up, thinking to myself it was sure to contain anything but money. Before now chance had thrown purses in my path at moments when I was damned glad to find them; so far, though, they had contained nothing but devotional medals, trouser buttons or worthless foreign stamps.
Nevertheless, I slipped it into my pocket and went to pay the telephonist for my call, all the while pondering the possible contents of my find.
I made a swift exit from the post office… The station wasn’t very far away. I had nowhere else to go, so I made my way there quickly. I was putting off going through the wallet just for the hell of it, so that I could enjoy a few delicious moments of hope. But once at the station, instead of getting my ticket home I hurried towards the toilets.
Feverishly opening the wallet, the first thing I discovered was a bundle of eight 1,000-franc notes folded in four.
“Blaise, my boy,” I thought. “You’ve won the consolation prize.”
I continued my investigations. From the other compartments I dug out an identity card in the name of Germaine Castain. It had the blonde woman’s photo glued to it. In it she was younger and less pretty than a few moments ago… I looked at the picture, suddenly captivated by the woman’s sad expression.
In addition, I found a tiny photo in the note section. It showed a man of my age, with heavy features. That was all the wallet contained. I was on the verge of throwing it into the lavatory bowl, having withdrawn the providential money first of course, when I remembered the woman’s large, melancholy eyes…
I haven’t always been very honest in my life and scruples have never kept me awake when I’ve been tired; however, I believe I’ve always been a gentleman when it comes to ladies.
I came out again with the wallet. An employee was glumly sweeping the tiled floor.
I went up to him. “Excuse me, do you know a lady called Germaine Castain?”
“Rue Haute?”
The card did indeed have this address on it. I gave him a cursory nod.
The employee waited for me to go on, leaning on his broom. He had a worn, infinitely bored expression.
“Does… er… does she live on her own?” I asked after a moment’s hesitation.
The second question seemed to surprise him.
“Of course not,” he said, sounding almost reproachful. “She’s married to the undertakers.”
It was my turn to be astounded.
“To the what?”
“To the underta—that is, to Castain, the director. You must know Castain? He’s a right bad lot, another one.”
The tone in which he’d said “another one” implied a great deal. I could see that for this poor drudge the world was made up of “bad lots”.
“How do I get to Rue Haute?”
“Go across Place de la Gare… turn right into Rue Principale… straight on until it begins to go uphill. From that point on it’s called Rue Haute.”
I gave him a friendly little gesture of thanks and left, with the man’s doubtful look fixed on my back.
When I’d been told at the rubber factory that the job I was going for had already been filled, my initial reaction had been one of intense relief. Provincial life does nothing for me; quite the reverse, it drags me down. Striding along the narrow streets of the town, I’d had the feeling I was plunging into a tunnel, and the idea of living here had filled me with terror. Only afterwards, on realizing that I had no job and no future, had I truly regretted arriving too late.
I chewed on my bitterness as I strolled across to Rue Haute. So what force for good was driving me to go and give back the wallet? To me the 8,000 francs were a godsend, whereas they wouldn’t make a dent in the budget of that ill-turned-out little middle-class housewife. However much I thought about it, I couldn’t understand my attitude.
Chance was kind enough to give me the wherewithal to get by for a few more days and I was declining the windfall? Was it from a need to shock the woman in the nasty black suit? Or…
With hindsight, I think my crisis of conscience owed more to the town than to Germaine Castain. I needed to create a happy memory to combat the disillusion aroused in me by this smug little place.
After a moment I noticed that Rue Principale was beginning to slope steeply upwards and an enamel plaque told me it was already Rue Haute.
Midday was striking just about everywhere in different tones. There was a lot of activity in the town’s main thoroughfare. It was awakening a little from its accustomed lethargy. On the opposite pavement I spotted a mean little black shop whose door was decorated, if that’s the right word, with a wreath painted in moss-green. White letters announced “Funeral Director”.
I stopped, undecided: I could still turn round and go and catch my train in peace.
Then I noticed a small, dirty, sallow man lurking behind the windowpane, eyeing the passers-by as if they were the potential dead, which of course they were.
“The husband,” I said to myself.
He looked like an old, sick rat. Life couldn’t be much fun for the blonde with a companion like him.
The man gave off a whiff of nastiness. That was what decided me, I think. The possibility of pushing the door handle, the chance to get inside the lair and see a pretty woman with an air of resignation about her was easily worth 8,000 francs.
As I crossed the road I remembered the photograph inside the wallet and thought to myself that the blonde woman didn’t necessarily want her husband to find it there, so I took it out of the compartment and slipped it into my pocket. Then I went up to the door and drove the yellowish little man back into the interior of his shop. The inside was even more wretched than the outside. It was cramped, dim, lugubrious and it smelt of death. There were death notices on the walls, along with coffin handles, crucifixes in metal or pearls, marble plaques with coats of arms, and artificial flowers, which together made the place look rather like a fairground shooting gallery. I stopped, looking at the small, yellowish man. He had grey hair, lying flat, a pointed nose with a red tip, and keen eyes. His thin lips twisted into what he hoped was a welcoming smile.
“Monsieur?”
“May I speak to Madame Germaine Castain?”
That took the wind out of his sails. Clearly no one had ever come asking for his wife. I thought he was going to ask me for an explanation, but he thought better of it and went over to the small door at the back.
When he opened it a smell of fried meat came out, tickling my taste buds.
“Germaine! Have you got a moment?”
From his voice I sensed he was not tender towards his wife. With pounding heart—God knows why—I stared at the door.
She had changed her black suit for a printed skirt which suited her a great deal better. Over it she had tied a little blue apron not much bigger than a pocket handkerchief. I found her a hundred times prettier done up like this.
“Monsieur would like to speak to you,” Castain rasped.
She flushed, and looked at me fearfully. I guessed from her expression that my appearance seemed vaguely familiar but that she couldn’t place me.
“I found a wallet which belongs to you,” I murmured, pulling it out of my pocket.
She turned slightly pale.
“My God,” she breathed. “So I’d lost it.”
Naturally the coffin salesman lost his temper.
“You’ll never change, will you, poor Germaine…”
He grew talkative.
“How can we ever thank you, monsieur? Is there money inside?”
“Yes.”
He snatched the wallet out of his wife’s hands. Her pallor intensified. It was a damn good thing, I thought, that I’d removed the photo of the guy with the thick-set features. For the moment it was a lot better off in my pocket than in Madame Castain’s wallet. Sure enough, the undertaker thoroughly examined the crocodile-skin case.
“Eight thousand francs,” he sighed. “Well, you’re an honest man, monsieur, that’s for sure.”
The heartfelt thanks made me laugh.
“Aren’t you going to thank monsieur, then?” exclaimed Castain.
“Thank you,” she stammered.
She looked as if she was about to faint.
“There’s really no need, anyone would have…”
“Where did you find it?” asked the husband.
His voice was filled with suspicion. The woman threw me a desperate glance.
“OK, sweetie,” I thought. “You don’t want me to mention the telephone booth.”
Immediately I had made the connection between the little photo and the telephone call.
“I can’t tell you,” I replied. “I don’t know the town.”
I finished with a vague gesture. “Over that way, in the street.”
I will never forget the look of wild gratitude she shot me. I had just made her life worth living again. Castain insisted on offering me an aperitif. I didn’t object. It had been quite a while since I’d had a sniff of alcohol and I was in dire need of a drink.
We left the shop, went along a narrow corridor dimly lit by one feeble bulb, and emerged at last into a dining room so sad it made you want to scream.
“Please, do sit down.”
I would have preferred to get the hell out of there. This dining room was like a tomb. It was long and narrow and its only daylight came from a sort of hatch in the wall, opening onto a courtyard. The furniture was neither better nor worse than that usually found in the homes of small provincial shopkeepers, but within these walls with their yellowing wallpaper, the colour of incurable diseases, each piece as good as conjured up some funerary ornament. How the devil could a woman live in such a place?
Castain sat me down and poured me a glass of a bilious liquid he ingeniously dubbed “house aperitif”. It was bitter and sugary at the same time and I had never swallowed a medicine as ghastly.
I was secretly cursing myself for my honesty while the graveyard rat was congratulating me on it. Deep down the situation was not without its piquancy.
“You’re not from round here, then?” the yellowish man asked.
“No… Paris.”
“Are you a sales representative?”
“I’d like to be… That’s actually the reason I came to your town. A friend told me that the rubber factory was looking for a salesman. I’ve already worked in the chemical industry.”
There was a dark disapproval in his voice when he asked, “In short, you’re out of work?”
“In short, yes. Two years ago I left my job in Paris to work with a scoundrel who claimed to be setting up a building firm in Morocco. The few assets I had went into that. For two years I kicked my heels in a little office in Casablanca. It was unbearably hot and I never saw a soul, not even my associate… I came back last month. I had tried to find a job over there but with what’s going on now the Frenchman is a commodity it’s increasingly hard to find a place for… To cut a long story short, here I am back in France, out of money and out of work. It’s no joke.”
“Are you married?”
“No, fortunately.”
I had spoken without thinking. I quickly turned to look at the young woman standing motionless against the door frame.
“I mean ‘fortunately’ for the woman who might have married me,” I clarified.
She smiled at me. It was the first time, and to me it was as if a ray of light had come over the room.
“No success here then, with the job?” asked the undertaker.
“They’d just taken on a candidate who was quicker than me.”
“Would you have liked to work in this area?”
“I’d like to work anywhere, especially here. I like this area. I just love the provinces.”
That was all nonsense, obviously. I was only saying it to please them.
He took hold of his disgusting bottle of “house aperitif”.
“Another little teardrop?”
He certainly spoke like a funeral director.
“No, really, I never usually drink.”
He expressed his clear approval by lowering his eyelids briefly.
“You are so right… I understand. In my house, my father was an alcoholic and it was Achille Castain who paid the price.”
And he added with a certain pride which, nevertheless, failed to impress, “Achille, that’s me.”
The moment had come to take my leave. The woman had scuttled back to her stove.
“Well, Monsieur Castain, it’s been delightful to meet you.”
“Thank you again.”
We shook hands before we reached the shop doorway. His was dry and cold.
He didn’t let go. His fingers were like the talons of a bird of prey.
“I wonder, monsieur…”
I realized then that I hadn’t introduced myself.
“Blaise Delange.”
I waited for him to continue, but he seemed to hesitate. There was something uncertain in his small, quick eyes, which must have been unusual for them.
“Did you want to say something?”
He was looking me up and down with great care, completely unabashed. I refrained from telling him where to get off.
“I may have a proposition for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes, does that surprise you?”
“God… that depends on what it entails.”
The blonde woman had come back from the kitchen, having poured a little water over her roast veal.
“Are you going?” she asked.
Her voice contained a vague regret. Her large eyes appeared even more sorrowful.
“I’ve got a train to catch.”
But her husband interrupted. “Do you know what I was thinking, Germaine?”
He was addressing me, in fact, but talking to his wife simplified matters.
He cleared his throat and, without looking directly at me, went on: “I need someone to assist me because my health isn’t all it could be. Since monsieur is looking for a job… it seems… until something in your line comes up…”
I swear I wanted to laugh. That was really the most extraordinary suggestion anyone had ever made to me! An undertaker, me? I saw myself with a cocked hat and buckle shoes, black cape over my shoulder, walking in front of a funeral procession. No, it was too ridiculous.
I stopped myself from laughing, however.
“Assist you in what?” I asked. “I don’t know anything about your profession, Monsieur Castain, except that it’s not exactly a bundle of laughs.”
“You’re making a mistake there, it’s as good as any other.”
I’d offended him. Like everyone with stomach problems, he was over-sensitive.
“I’m not denying that, but I still believe yours demands certain, er, talents that I in no way possess.”
“But which you can acquire. Of course there’s no question of you organizing funerals, but our trade includes a certain sales side which tires me out. Our work, you see, begins with a catalogue. We sell tangible things, Monsieur Delange. Are you afraid of the dead?”
In a flash I went through the list of all the dead people I knew.
“I wouldn’t say afraid… I… they intimidate me.”
“That timidity is easily got rid of, believe me. I was like you to begin with. And then you get used to it.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m well aware that the layman imagines all sorts of things about our profession. Or rather, he finds it hard to admit it’s an ordinary profession. Yet I can assure you that gravediggers’ bread tastes just the same as other people’s.”
At that moment the telephone rang in the shop and he went to answer it.
I found myself alone with his wife. I took out the photograph, which was still in my pocket, and handed it to her discreetly.
“Here, before I go…”
She hastily slipped it into the neck of her blouse.
“Thank you,” she stammered.
For some time we stood looking at each other without a word. She was the kind of woman you long to see slightly unhappy so that you can console her. The click signalling the end of the phone call sounded.
“Stay,” she breathed.
Did she really say that? I’m not sure. Even now I wonder whether I guessed at rather than heard the word. It set my blood on fire.
Castain returned, with a satisfied air.
“That was a call about a client,” he crowed. “The good thing about our profession is that we’re protected against unemployment, you see. Of course, we had a little dip when penicillin came along and these new sulphonamides aren’t doing us much good, but other than that… What do you say?”
I sensed the woman’s intense eyes on me. I didn’t dare look at her.
“We can always give it a try,” I sighed.
He wasn’t offering me a king’s ransom, of course: 20,000 francs per month, plus lunch and a ridiculous percentage on business I brought in above a certain value.
Castain assured me that I could, in this way, increase my monthly salary by some 1,200 francs. Taking into account the much-vaunted midday meal, that would add up to a decent sum in total.
The undertaker assured me that in this backwater I could live like a prince on such an income. He knew a small hotel where I could find lodgings at a good price. In short, the more reluctant he saw me to be, the more enthusiastically he praised this new existence.
“And, after all,” he finished, “if things don’t work out we can still always go our separate ways, can’t we?”
I agreed.
“Right. So you’ll go to Paris and come straight back with your trunk?”
I’d thought to myself that if I set foot in the capital again I’d never be able to tear myself away to come and bury myself—or, rather, bury other people—here in the back of beyond.
“It’s not worth it. I’ve a friend who can send my things on. If you’ll permit me, I can phone him.”
“Call him right away.”
Castain was delighted. His wife set another place while I was waiting to be connected. The delicious meat smell got my juices going. I hadn’t eaten very much for some time and a proper meal was rather tempting.
I got through to Fargeot and explained very briefly that I had found a job to tide me over.
“In what line?” He sounded worried.
“At the funeral director’s!”
“No, be serious.”
“I’m deadly serious… I’m going to sell coffins, my old pal. You’d never imagine what nice ones you can get.”
As I spoke, I was looking at the samples pinned to the walls of the sinister shop.
“So much so,” I went on, “that it breaks your heart to stick them in the ground.”
We agreed arrangements to settle the bill for my boarding house in Boulevard de Port-Royal and he said he’d see about sending on my suitcase that same day.
With my mind at rest over this, I joined my hosts at table.
It was a convivial meal. Castain was overexcited by my presence.
“By the way, do you drive?”
“Yes, why?”
“I’m thinking of the hearse. I have someone for the funerals, of course, but he works as and when. Aside from those, there are private transfers, if you get my drift. Changes of tomb, deliveries to the morgue…”
Germaine Castain was giving me glances of silent encouragement. She sensed how barbaric such language appeared to me and was doing her best to sweeten it. I think she understood that I had accepted because of her. That made things easier between us in one way. But it made them a hell of a lot more complicated in another!
I was impatient to find myself alone with her for a decent length of time so that I could ask her about her life. This strange couple concealed a mystery, and I was eager to find it out.
But the hoped-for tête-à-tête didn’t happen that day. In the afternoon Castain took me first to the Hôtel de la Gare where, on the strength of their friendship, he persuaded the manager to give me a room overlooking the street for the price of one on the railway line.
Next we went to see the clients who had phoned that morning. These were well-to-do people, the owners of a sawmill, if I remember correctly. The grandfather had died in the early hours. Before crossing the threshold of their house, my boss gave me a lesson in applied psychology.
“You see, Delange,” he said. “We can’t expect anything on the business front here. It will be the second-lowest category and a pauper’s coffin.”
“Why do you foresee that?”
“The fact that it’s the grandfather. That’s ten years now they’ve been spoon-feeding him and changing his sheets three times a day. If they could they’d stick him in the dustbin. You’ll see.”
He rapped on the door with the old brass knocker and a wrinkled maid came to open the door, weeping for form’s sake. She led us to the room where the family were receiving neighbours to view the deceased and recounting his death for the twentieth time.
The dead man’s son, a tall, red-faced fellow with hair that was already white, took us into the dining room. Without asking, he set three glasses on the table and reached for an old bottle of Burgundy which had been brought out of the cellar to await us. While the master of the house was busy looking for a corkscrew, Castain whispered in my ear: “It’s these bastards that are killing me with their obsession with offering drinks. And you can’t refuse or they get annoyed.”
“Let us move on to the cruel necessities of the occasion,” he intoned, words he clearly had off pat.
The feigned sorrow on his face made me giggle. He noticed and shot me a furious glance. From his briefcase he was extracting a small portfolio containing photographs of caskets, catafalques, crucifixes and other funerary accoutrements.
“What do you have in mind, Monsieur Richard?”
The big red-faced man shook his head.
“Just what’s strictly necessary,” he declared straight out. “You knew my father? He had simple tastes.”
Another knowing look from Castain. In his eyes was written in block capitals: I TOLD YOU SO.
He nonetheless sighed: “Do you think so?”
When it came to talking business he was a real idiot, I thought. That got me angry.
“Monsieur Richard,” I started. “The strictly necessary is something you can do yourself. You have planks—all you need to do is put four of them together and you’ve got it. What we, on the other hand, provide is a way of paying one last tribute to your father, and of proving to your nearest and dearest that you considered him more than just a burdensome old man!”
Castain was aghast. His mean little eyes grew huge and I saw myself distorted in them as in some diabolical mirror. His right shoe was desperately searching for my left, which I’d carefully tucked up onto a bar of my chair. As for our customer, after jerking upright in his seat, he suddenly appeared very downcast.
“To be sure,” he murmured. “To be sure, I’m not saying…”
I’d got into my stride, and to be honest I could sense the fellow was in my thrall. Plus, for my own part I was keen to savour the humour of this unusual profession.
“But Monsieur Richard, you are saying… and you’re saying, ‘what’s strictly necessary’. I won’t do you the insult of believing that you’re motivated by saving money in circumstances like these, and you won’t do me that of thinking that I want to take advantage of your grief. But let’s face up to things. You have just lost the one to whom you owe everything. What would people think if they saw you giving him a hasty burial, hmm? You know them. Always ready to gossip and put people down. They’d say you were ungrateful or—and this would be worse for your standing—they’d say you lack the means to put on a good show.”
That was a direct hit, not to his heart but to his pride.
“You’re right,” he declared.
And, to Castain, “He’s right. And I like people who speak their mind. Does he work for you?”
“Yes,” said Castain, astonished to see how easily I’d triumphed. “He’s from Paris.”
After that he had only to take out his order book and announce the prices. The man who sold planks was ripe for the picking. I think if we’d had a parade of the Republican Guard in our catalogue we’d have sold him them along with the rest.
When we left, Castain said nothing for some time. Irritated by his silence, I provoked him:
“Well boss, how was that for starters?”
He stopped walking. With a shrug of the shoulders he murmured:
“Your methods are a little brutal… But in any case, the results are terrific!”
“Isn’t that all that matters?”
“Indeed. But some people in Richard’s place wouldn’t have stood for it.”
“So? What does that matter, since you don’t have any competition? No, Monsieur Castain, the clientele likes to be chivvied. Most people are bad at making decisions so they’re grateful if you do it for them.”
He wasn’t entirely convinced.
He retreated into sullen silence until we got back. Germaine was minding the shop. She was doing accounts at an ink-stained writing desk. When she saw me her eyes lit up with happiness.
“He’s a winner!” declared Castain, hooking his felt hat with its upturned brim onto a coffin handle. “You know big Richard from the sawmill? He’s a tough guy, eh? Well, he’d won him over in no time.”
I hadn’t anticipated such an outburst of enthusiasm.
“Will you stay for dinner?” suggested the sallow little man.
I avoided looking at the woman.
“No, let’s stick to what we agreed, lunches only. In any case, I’m very tired and thinking of an early night.”
He didn’t insist.
“As you wish… Would you like an advance on your salary?”
“Not for the moment. We’ll discuss it later.”
“All right.”
I took my leave with a vague feeling of guilt towards the woman. In leaving her I felt I was abandoning her deep in a lonely cemetery or in some chamber of horrors where her discreet charm would simply fade away.
The dining room at the Hôtel de la Gare was very conventional, but had a certain good-humoured intimacy about it. This atmosphere made a happy contrast with Castain’s shop. I ate the set menu at a communal table along with some travelling salesmen and a temporary schoolmaster.
After peeling an over-ripe pear, pretentiously called “dessert” on the menu, I felt a need to enjoy my own company in a shadowy corner.
In addition to which, it was still too early for bed. I decided to go to the station to buy something to help me get to sleep, namely cigarettes and magazines.
It was a beautiful spring night, vast and blue, with unknown stars and scents wafting by on the ripples of the breeze. From the hotel doorway I began to breathe the night in almost voluptuously. It reassured me.
I was inhaling for the third time, when I noticed a voice calling me in the darkness.
“Monsieur Blaise!”
I turned to my right. There was a hedge of privet bushes in boxes bordering a terrace. I made out a shape and the light patch of a face. Again the voice called, “Monsieur Blaise.”
I moved forwards then into the shadows and recognized Germaine Castain.
She was standing motionless against the wall of the hotel, beneath the dining-room window. An old coat was thrown round her shoulders, and her hair—perhaps because of the breeze—was in a mess. Her eyes had a strange shine to them. On closer inspection I could see she’d been crying.
“Madame Castain,” I murmured. “What’s the matter?”
Instead of replying she made for the area set back from the square. Here the station concourse formed a cul-de-sac because of the railway track. There was the embankment, the plane trees, the cubic form of a transformer box.
We stopped behind the transformer. All of a sudden my heart was racing. I longed to take her in my arms.
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Yes you are.”
She used her fingertips to check.
“Forgive me for calling you Blaise—I don’t remember your surname.”
“Not at all, I’m glad you did. Answer me, why were you crying?”
“Because he’s hit me again!”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“He beats you?”
“Yes, often.”
I was alarmed. Certainly I’d suspected that life with Castain must be lacking in charm for his wife, but I had never dreamt he was knocking her about!
I clenched my fists.
“That horrible man. Daring to lay hands on you—why does he hit you?”
Her face was serious now. She had regained her self-control and looked thoughtful.
“Because,” she said finally, “because it brings him a bit of relief, I think. The weak take revenge for their weakness on those who are even weaker.”
I asked her the question which was eating me up, and truthfully I didn’t believe I could put it so crudely: “Why the devil did you go and marry that fellow? You’re like chalk and cheese!”
A train passed slowly by at the top of the embankment in a paroxysm of asthmatic puffing. Its red glow set Germaine’s face on fire and I saw that her eyes had an angry glint in them.
“Why does a young girl marry a dried-up old man? Just read one of the stories you see in the magazines. I was young… I loved a boy my own age… he got me pregnant. His family were against our marriage and sent him abroad somewhere so he’d forget me. Ever since I was a little girl Castain had been cornering me in dark places. He took advantage of the situation to ask my mother for my hand in marriage. The dear woman was a poor widow, in despair over the mistake I’d made. She was so insistent I jump at this generous offer that I accepted. Only, you have to beware of devout people. They’re the worst bastards on earth.”
From her lips the word “bastard” took on a wider meaning. It summed up all her rancour, all her immense despair.
I put my hand on her shoulder. She shook me off.
To hide my embarrassment, I asked: “And then?”
“Then, nothing. His age, his position and his feigned generous heart meant that every right was on his side. He began by taking me to see some midwife who specialized in ‘premature births’. I didn’t have the child. Castain won right across the board. He’s always treated me like a dog. Now whenever he feels like it he seizes on the first opportunity that comes along to beat me.”
This story lacked poetry. It was like a drama from a Zola novel that shocks both intelligent people and the vulgar bourgeois.
We remained motionless for some time, without a word. Another train went past and each of its carriage windows lit up Madame Castain’s beautiful, sad face.
“Why haven’t you left him?”
She tossed her blonde hair. I felt a lock brush my face and once again I resisted the desire to hold her close, cradling her pain.
“You see, Monsieur Blaise…”
“You can just call me Blaise.”
“That wouldn’t be proper.”
“OK, no need to say another word about it, it’s all becoming clear. You stayed because one scandal was enough to fill your little life of inactivity, isn’t that so?”
I had spoken harshly. She moved away from me.
“Why are you being unkind?”
“I’m not being unkind, I’m indignant. I like the people I associate with to have some sense of dignity. I think it’s disgusting that you let yourself be beaten like… well like a dog, actually!”
I thought she would run off, but she didn’t even flinch. I went on: “Besides, a little bird tells me you’ve got some compensations, isn’t that right?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m thinking of the photo hidden in your wallet. I’m also thinking of your phone call at the post office, because that’s where I saw you.”
“Yes, I know.”
“If I hadn’t used my head I could have given your undertaker good reason to give you a beating you wouldn’t forget in a hurry, couldn’t I?”
“That’s true… yes. You’re very clever, Blaise, and very sensitive. Your thoughtfulness…”
“Never mind my thoughtfulness! Answer me: you have a lover, haven’t you? A woman who goes to the post office to make calls when she has a telephone at home doesn’t want to be overheard by her husband.”
Her voice sounded strict: “I do have a lover, yes.”
“I’m not reproaching you. I’d even say I approve entirely…”
“Thanks!” she said ironically.
“Who’s the lucky man?”
You may or may not believe me, but jealousy was gnawing at my insides. Yes, I was jealous over this girl I hadn’t even laid eyes on twelve hours before. ...
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