III

 

 

Several days then passed, and the only thing that happened was that the next morning Milliquet went to ask her for her papers.

They were in order.

The consul had organized them himself in a large yellow envelope wrapped with a rubber band; she had handed the envelope to Milliquet without saying a word.

She was dressed. She had a black handkerchief around her head. She was seated on a small straw chair.

“This is so everything is in order, you understand. I’m going to go see the municipal secretary. If by chance there is anything missing, he would tell me…”

She didn’t move at all; during this time, Milliquet stood in the middle of the room and busied himself with looking through the envelope, pulling on the rubber band with his fat red-haired fingers.

“Here’s your birth certificate, that’s good… Oh! You won’t be twenty until next March. For the time being, I’ll be your guardian, but I’ll still have to get that settled…”

He continued rifling through the papers.

The birth certificate, passport, letters of recom-mendation, his own address, written in large, carefully-formed letters at the end of an itinerary, with the title: place of destination – nothing more, no mention of money; and he asked again, “Is this all?” the remains of his scruples preventing him from daring to be more precise: she nodded her head again, without saying a word.

She seemed to be cold, she was holding herself tightly in her shawl. It was clear she hadn’t yet unpacked her suitcase and it gaped open at the base of the wall. And Milliquet looked at his niece again, but he must have thought it would be better not to insist for the moment; she had certainly not yet recovered from the weariness of her trip; he slipped the envelope into his pocket, “Okay, it’s understood. I’ll take it over then.” Then, as he left, he contented himself with saying, “And then, when you’d like, you can come downstairs. You’ve got to meet your aunt. She’s waiting for you.”

The Milliquets took their meals in the kitchen; they’d set a place for her; at noon, they called up for her but she didn’t come.

“Are you going to keep taking your young lady her food in her room?” asked Mrs. Milliquet. “A lodger! That’s what she is. Well, if you’ve got the money…”

And the serving girl, a fat, disheveled girl with dirty arms, shoved the cutlery around on the platter, “Two floors three times a day! I should have been warned…”

“Besides,” she added to Mrs. Milliquet, “for what she eats! That’s not only wasted time, that’s what I call ‘tortured’ food.”

However, a great change was preparing itself in the air and on the other side of the water on the mountain. Rouge, who came every day (it was an old habit) stopped himself at the edge of the door, and, raising his head, said, “This time I think we’re set for some real fine weather.” It was Thursday. Leaving, he raised his head and noticed that the phenomenon up on the mountain was more than a change in weather, it was the entire season changing. Rouge added nothing to his remark; it wasn’t that he wasn’t intrigued, and he wasn’t the only one, as no one in the neighborhood or the café regulars, nor any of the people who had come out of curiosity in those first few days, had yet seen the young lady, but when anyone said to Milliquet, “So, about this niece?” he answered, “She’s resting.”

So Rouge, too, had to be content with this answer. People were saying in the village, “The young lady is certainly a quiet one.” At the same time, a ladder of sunshine had descended from a hole in the sky, like a boat throwing a rope to someone cast overboard. To get home, Rouge had to follow the shoreline which hugged the fields, then some pine tree woods. There, a new voice came to him from deep in the forest. When the cuckoo sings, the girls say to each other, “Do you have any money in your wallet?” and when the answer is yes, it’s a good sign, because it means you’ll have money for the entire year. Up in the mountains, the south wind was fighting with the north wind. Down on the lake, the cuckoo was singing. Then the clouds moved all together and began to tumble about, rolling on top of each other where the sky inclined toward the south. By Saturday the sky was completely clear; meaning that everywhere in the village at the same time everyone was making themselves nice for Sunday. It’s more than a change in weather, it’s even more than a change of season: everything makes itself beautiful up there like never before, up above the Dents d’Oche, on its points and peaks. On the Cornettes, on the Billiat, on the Voirons, on the Môle, the Salonné; in the gorges, on the plateaus, all around the rock walls and the pasture land. Everyone has picked up their great birch broom, the great hard birch broom we use in the stables; next, we go with the straw brooms and the flat brush. And everywhere above you, because of the snow, the mountains were shining like upturned white ceramic cups, like the tops of plates. Nothing but a few little clouds, pushed quickly toward the south above the mountain range, just a few tiny sailcloths filled with wind and which vanish at an angle, while below, on the water, there was also this little sail, and it looked like one of those clouds, one of those tiny little clouds left behind and fallen down; it was Rouge who was taking advantage of the weather to go out in the boat with Décosterd…

Saturday afternoon, Milliquet was busy taking out the benches and tables from the storage shed where he kept them for the winter. The serving girl had helped him, but not without making him understand that this wasn’t her job. They had gone together behind the house to get the heavy, green-painted wooden tables which they carried each at an end. From time to time, Milliquet raised his eyes toward two small windows on the second floor, but they stayed closed. While he rested a moment, the serving girl next to him, in her gray flannel caraco which was badly buttoned across her big chest, was breathing heavily with her hand splayed flat on her kidneys. The terrace was extremely important to Milliquet, especially on Sundays when the weather was fine, because of people strolling along; and these days a lot of shopkeepers had their own car or a little truck which could be converted into a Sunday car. Since already his establishment wasn’t doing as well as it should have (a manner of speaking), he made sure never to miss this extra profit. And so he re-attached himself to one of those six long tables, much too long and heavy, he noticed now, because they were kitchen tables, but he’d gotten them second hand for cheap, and had repainted them himself to make garden tables.

It was underneath the plane trees which stood behind the wall of the river walk, over which we could see the water, and we could also see a part of the mountain between the wall and the heavy branches which flattened out above you. Later in the season, when they were adorned with leaves, they became like a ceiling that not even the sun, nor a glance, could penetrate. But for now, they were still naked and looked like thick, age-worn beams that the heat had warped and twisted in every direction, with swollen spots and black holes and cracks. With their forked ends and criss-crossings, they made a kind of pattern above your head framing diamond-shaped pieces of sky; the pattern was black, the diamonds blue. The sun came; the trees weren’t yet completely dry on their lower half.

It was Sunday, it was Milliquet’s terrace, a terrace with a view on the lake to the front, to the east toward a street, and to the west toward a smaller street, on the other side of which some people were playing ninepins. Here, we are sheltered from the north wind, and as the sun turned itself toward us, it became warmer in the still air, while the wind fell further out on the lake making a thousand little ripples which escaped out toward the larger expanse of water.

After eleven o’clock, the game of ninepins grew noisy; we could see above the wall that the players had taken off their jackets. They’d removed their iron gray Sunday jackets; they were wearing clean white shirts they’d put on that morning. The ninepins were tumbling down like a burst of laughter. In the café were those who’d come to drink their aperitif and there were more people than usual because the weather was so fine (and maybe also for another reason). Those who were playing ninepins were drinking where they played; we were drinking with the game of ninepins and we were drinking in the café. The serving girl was coming and going; Milliquet was coming and going; Mrs. Milliquet herself finally put in an appearance;—up above, no one had yet moved, while the mist cleared beneath the branches of the plane trees, while the terrace slowly lost its humidity.

The noon bells ring.

Now it is Rouge who begins to speak. Rouge was saying, “As for me, I came at two o’clock with Décosterd. On Sundays, I buy him a drink.”

“The terrace,” Rouge was saying, “was already half full with people we didn’t know; these weren’t people from around here. The café was also pretty full and there we were among friends; but what I mean is, or what I’m about to say is that Milliquet had a lot to do (it’s good for him, this doesn’t happen every day). He was serving in the café, the serving girl was serving on the terrace; as for Milliquet’s wife, she was scolding in the kitchen. We could tell right away there was once again some trouble in the house, even if, at least for him, the job suited him well, and even too well. But for many people too much or not enough is all the same; they complain for the famine and they complain for the feast, because happiness comes from within and a person either carries their own happiness or they don’t. This was when the serving girl, who was running, dropped a glass. Right when Mrs. Milliquet arrived.

She started to yell, “This is not a life…”

Milliquet said, “What do you want me to do about it?”

The rest of us in the café were having fun. There were about ten of us, but she didn’t really care, because, when she’s got an idea in her head, she won’t let go for anything. “What do I want? Ah, well, let’s talk about it… when someone is worn out already first thing in the morning and going to be just as exhausted in the afternoon, and all evening and up to midnight or one o’clock at fifty-three years old, and there’s this missy upstairs…”

All the while people were calling to Milliquet and he was saying to his wife, “Be quiet! Be quiet, won’t you… Yes, I’m coming…”

“A missy who had to have her dinner again in her room, a day like today, say it’s not true, come on, tell these men it’s not true if you dare… yes, sirs, we brought up dinner to this tiresome girl, that’s what I’m saying…”And she kept going because once she’s gotten started, it was never a short complaint; so Milliquet made up his mind. He served one more customer, then I watched him go out by the hallway door…”

She’d gone back to stretch out on her bed. She got up and went to sit in a chair, she didn’t know why she was sitting; she went back to lie on the bed, she didn’t know why she was lying down. In her mind was a great jumble of images coming and going in every direction; then one of the images grew and placed itself before the others; it was a boat deck. And then an oiled cloth with a plate and a glass, or a fat lady with a yellow and white armband, her gray jacket cinched at the waist and buttoned over a guimpe with a high collar. One of the woman’s whalebone corset stays entered into a fold of skin beneath her chin each time she opened her mouth… The wall in front of her has gray paper with little white roses. The wall comes to her through the other image which grew smaller and became transparent like when the weft of a cloth becomes worn. Having gotten up, she goes to the wall to touch it. Then she moves again to the chair, again she balances herself, the chair rising slowly beneath her to then descend again even further, and all the while she feels a coldness around her heart. It seemed to her that night had come. She heard the horns screaming in the fog. Someone knocks and the door opens. She sees, without raising the head that she’s hidden in her hands, she sees between her fingers that they’ve brought her a meal on a tray; then she must have cried again for a long time; she must have slept, must have slept for a long time; it’s impossible to tell when a person has started to sleep or finished sleeping. The nights and the days have all mixed together, like lacing the fingers of one hand with the other hand. She is here, but, at the same time, she sees the hospital, a pot of tea, the iron bed, the white sheets, the night light, the temperature sheet fixed to the wall with thumbtacks; —she hears the rain fall on the roof, she hears the sparrows tapping their beaks against the gutters with little dry pecks or even the squeak of the tinplate under their claws;—and now? Oh, they’ve buried him! Then they take her into some offices. She goes to a photographer, they glued her photograph onto a page of a notebook; they affixed a wet seal to half of her photograph and half of the written page. She cries a great deal again. She’s cold. She stretches out on her bed; she rolls herself up in her blankets. She finds herself in a train wagon very close to the engine; the engine whistles, whistles again, the brakes grind against the wheels; a jolt, the train stops abruptly…

“Juliette!”

She recognizes the name her father gave her; then someone has tried to open the door, but the door is locked.

“Juliette, will you answer?”

The person tries again, “You’ve locked yourself in now. What is this kind of behavior? This can’t go on much longer… You’re going to come down. We need you…”

She had seated herself on the bed; she said, “I’m coming.” She finds herself seated on the bed, surprised. The person went back down the stairs. She is surprised because it suddenly seems to be daylight. The wall in front of her has changed color. She wonders first if she isn’t still dreaming, but she sees that it stays, the wall remains before her;—it moves and at the same time the ceiling moves. A number of pretty little moons are up there, having all the same movement, like they were sewn one to another: they make her think of a lace pattern, while a square of sunlight comes across like a carpet on the wooden floor. And these things are all real. There is also a warmth which comes to her; she throws off the blanket she’d had wrapped around her. She is like a person just waking up, and this time it’s for good. The burst of laughter of the ninepins outside makes her turn her head toward the two small windows which face the front of the room beneath the roof; here, she is again surprised. She can see nothing at first, because there are two lights: the light from above and the light from below, from the sky and from the water. We were playing ninepins, we were tapping with a glass or a carafe on the tables, there were loud conversations going on all around, we were calling the owner;—in the windows was all that water burning in rows of sparkles, and burning white like a fire of wood chips. Below is the water, but there are three things. The water is below, then she looks a little higher and sees the land (if it is truly land on that other bank, when it looks more like sculpted air, air which has been squeezed between your hands). It was like air surrounded by air, blue surrounded by blue, until higher up, but then she didn’t understand at all anymore: up there the beautiful laundry-like fields of snow were hanging on a rope of sky…

“And that was when,” Rouge was saying, “Rossi’s workman began to play. It has to be said that he’s an artist, not two like him in the area. And the instrument! An instrument with twelve bass notes in exotic wood, sculpted with flowers so real you’d like to pick them… An instrument which costs five hundred francs at least, and you’ve got to hear the details of the high notes; a goldfinch couldn’t do better. And an instrument like that can be heard a good kilometer away. The proof is that she heard it up in her room, and she was even lying down and she heard it from her bed (he was making things up now). It’s the music that got her to get up, the music that brought her downstairs. Milliquet alone couldn’t have done it. If he says different, he’s bragging. Without the music, I swear, she would never have moved; in fact, she’s the one who told me. And then, remember, when she arrived… we could all see why she was coming and for whom. A girl like that and music just go together. No one had seen her yet, and until that day she was like a dead person; but there you go, girls are just like that: a little dance tune will revive them. It’s because of the countries where they come from, warm countries. You just have to remember the way she came in…”

Mrs. Milliquet was coming out of the kitchen and just closing the door. Her hand stayed motionless on the doorknob; the noise of voices in the café came to a halt like someone had cut the sound with a pair of scissors.

There wasn’t a single noise behind the corridor wall where it was like a first wave of silence, in front of which the noise from the terrace continued to be heard, until it was silenced in its turn.

For a moment there was nothing but the rolling of a ball on the well-oiled plank, like when a storm begins; then the burst of the ninepins; then, “Four… ?” Into the deep silence, a voice said, “Four…”

“No, five… oh, yes, five… I didn’t have…”

Then also over at the game everything was interrupted.

This was as she walked up to just beneath the plane trees.

The silence still lingered in the café.

She looked around her, at first she turned her back to the windows, then she turns toward the windows and the sunshine,—this is the moment when Chauvy stood up.

Like usual he was wearing his old bowler hat, his piss-colored jacket with its hodgepodge of buttons all sewn with string, his little cane, and his broken shoes; he walks forward and stands himself before her.

He puts his hand to his hat.

He doffs his hat, while his huge dirty beard dips forward toward the floor and was replaced by his bald pate shining between two tufts of hair.