CHAPTER VI
It was strange that Thérèse only remembered the days that followed the departure of Anne and of the La Traves as of a period of torpor. At Argelouse, where it had been agreed that she should find the best means of working on Azévédo and making him give the girl up, she thought of nothing but rest and sleep. Bernard had agreed not to live in his own house, but in Thérèse’s, which was much more comfortable and where Aunt Clara spared them all the worries of housekeeping. What did other people matter to Thérèse? Let them arrange their own affairs. She refused to emerge from her stupor until the child was born. Bernard annoyed her every morning by reminding her of her promise to see Jean Azévédo. But Thérèse snubbed him: she began to be less able to endure his company. It may be that her pregnancy, as Bernard believed, had something to do with her ill-humour. He himself was just undergoing the first attacks of an obsession so common in the men of his race, though it rarely shows itself before the thirtieth year: the fear of death, that seemed at first so astonishing in a young man of his solid physique. But what could one say when he protested: “You don’t know what I feel like.” Men like him, mighty eaters, sprung from a lazy and overfed race, have only the appearance of strength. A pine tree planted in a manured field shoots up quickly: but very soon the heart of the tree grows rotten, and it must be cut down in the height of its strength. “It’s nerves”: people would say to Bernard: but he himself felt the flaw in the metal. Besides, though it was almost inconceivable, he hardly ate, he was no longer hungry. “Why don’t you see a doctor?” He shrugged his shoulders with affected indifference: as a matter of fact, uncertainty seemed to him less terrible than a possible verdict of death. In the night Thérèse was sometimes awakened with a start by his gasps for breath: Bernard’s hand sought hers and he laid it against his left chest so that she could feel the intermittent beating of his heart. She lit the candle, got up, and poured some valerian into a glass of water. How lucky it was, she thought, that this mixture was harmless! Why wasn’t it mortal? Nothing really soothes, and brings sleep, unless it does so for all eternity. Why was this querulous creature so frightened of what would bring him relief once and for all? He went to sleep before she did. How could she lie and wait for sleep beside this great carcass whose snorings sometimes turned to choking agony? Thank God, he no longer came near her,—he thought love-making the most dangerous of all activities for his heart. The cocks of dawn brought the farms to life. The Angelus of Saint Clair tinkled in the east wind; Thérèse’s eyes at last closed. Then the man’s body began to stir once more: he dressed himself quickly, like a peasant (he scarcely put his head into cold water). He crept like a dog down to the kitchen, sniffing after the scraps in the larder: breakfasted on the remains of a bird, or a wedge of cold spiced meat, or even on a bunch of grapes and a crust of bread rubbed with garlic: his only decent meal in the day. He threw some bits to Flambeau and Diane whose jaws were chattering. The mist had the smell of Autumn. It was the hour when Bernard was no longer in pain, when he felt his all-powerful youth once more within him. The pigeons would soon be coming over: it was time to see about the decoy-birds, and take their eyes out. At eleven o’clock he found Thérèse still in bed.
“Well: and the Azévédo boy? You know my mother is waiting for news at Biarritz, at the Poste Restante.”
“And your heart?”
“Don’t talk about my heart. You’ve only got to start talking about it and I begin to feel it again. That shows it’s nervous: don’t you think so?”
She never gave him the answer he wanted.
“You never know: you alone can say what you feel like. There’s no reason because your father died of angina pectoris ... especially at your age.... Evidently the heart is the weak point of the Desqueyroux family. How absurd you are, Bernard, with your fear of death! Don’t you ever feel as I do, profoundly convinced of your own uselessness? No? Don’t you think that the life of people like us is already terribly like death?”
He shrugged his shoulders: her paradoxes were really too tiresome. It is easy enough to be witty, he said: you have only to say exactly the opposite to what is sensible. But she was wrong to waste her efforts on him: she had better save herself for her interview with young Azévédo. “You know he is going to leave Vilméja about the middle of October?”
At Villandraut, the station before Saint Clair, Thérèse thought: “How shall I persuade Bernard that I was never in love with that young man? He will certainly believe I adored him. Like every one who knows nothing about love, he imagines that a crime like mine could only be a crime of passion.”
Bernard would have to understand that at that time she was far from hating him, although she often found him a nuisance: but she did not suppose that any other man could help her. Bernard, all things considered, was not so bad. She hated the descriptions in novels of marvellous creatures that no one ever meets in real life. The only outstanding personality she thought she had ever known was her father. She tried to persuade herself that this obstinate, suspicious old radical was something of a figure. He was a man of many interests: manufacturer, landed proprietor (besides a saw-mill at B——, he handled his own resin and that of his numerous relatives in a factory at Saint Clair)—but, above all, a politician, whose brusque manner had done him harm but made him much respected at the Prefecture. And how he did despise women! He even despised Thérèse, when every one was praising her intelligence. And now since the tragedy: “They’re all hysterics when they aren’t fools,” he used to say to his lawyer. And this old anticlerical had his ideas of decency. Though he would often hum a refrain from Béranger, he could not endure certain subjects being mentioned in his presence,—indeed, he blushed like a schoolboy. Bernard had heard from Monsieur de la Trave that Monsieur Larroque had been a virgin when he married: “and since he has been a widower I have always understood there was never any talk of a mistress. He’s a character, your father!”
Yes, he was a character. But if Thérèse’s view of him, at a distance, was rather highly coloured, as soon as he was with her, she took the measure of his mean soul. He seldom came to Saint Clair, but more often to Argelouse, as he did not like meeting the La Traves. In their presence, although politics were forbidden, the old stupid quarrel began the moment the soup was brought in and soon became embittered. Thérèse would have been ashamed to take part in it: she took a pride in never opening her mouth, except when they touched on the religious question. Then she rushed to Monsieur Larroque’s assistance. Everybody shouted, so much so that Aunt Clara caught a few scattered phrases, joined the mêlée and, in the raucous tones of the deaf, let loose all the fury of the hardened radical, “who knows all about what goes on in convents”; she was, Thérèse thought, really more of a believer than any of the La Traves, but she was in open war against the Almighty who had allowed her to be deaf and ugly, and to die without ever having known love nor passion. Since one day when Madame de la Trave had left the table, by common consent they avoided metaphysics. However, politics were quite enough to make them all lose their tempers; though they all, whether they belonged to the Right or the Left, were in full agreement on this essential principle: “Property is the only good thing in the world, and the ownership of land is the only thing worth living for. Must we give up anything and, if so, how much?”
Thérèse, “who had property in her blood,” was quite willing for the question to be put in that cynical way, but she hated the pretences under which the Larroques and the La Traves masked their common greed. When her father announced his “irrevocable devotion” to democracy, she would interrupt him, with “Oh, spare us that sort of thing; we are all friends here.” She said that lofty sentiments in politics made her feel sick: the horror of the class-war was not very obvious in a country where the poorest own property, and their only ambition is to own more: where the common love of land, sport, eating and drinking, draws every one together, middle-class and peasant, in the closest fellowship. Moreover, Bernard had some education: he was generally considered a very promising young man, and Thérèse even congratulated herself on the fact that he was a man one could talk to: “A good deal above the average in fact.” Such was the view she took of him until the day of her meeting with Jean Azévédo.
It was the time of year when the coolness of the night lasts through the morning: and by the early afternoon, hot as the sun had been, a faint mist foretold the dusk. The first pigeons were beginning to come over, and Bernard hardly ever came home before evening. On that day, however, after a bad night, he had gone straight off to Bordeaux to get himself examined.
“I was feeling at peace with the world,” thought Thérèse: “I was walking along the road, I forget at what time, because a woman who is going to have a baby ought to take a little exercise. I avoided the woods where shooting was going on because you have to stop every minute, whistle, and wait until you hear a shout for you to go on: but sometimes a long whistle answers yours: a flight of birds has settled among the oaks, and you must crouch down and wait. Then I came back: I was dozing in front of the fire in the drawing-room or the kitchen, and Aunt Clara was bringing me anything I wanted. I paid no more attention to the old creature, who was always droning out stories about the kitchen and the farm, than a goddess does to her serving-maid: she talked and talked so as not to have to try and listen: mostly depressing anecdotes about the peasants whom she looked after with a sort of cynical kindness: old men who could do no more than die of hunger, others condemned to work until they died, sick men with none to care for them, and women broken by toil and exhaustion. Aunt Clara quoted some of their most shocking remarks in the ingenuous rustic patois, with a sort of amusement. As a matter of fact, I was the only person she cared for, though I never even noticed her kneel down, unlace my shoes, take off my stockings, and warm my feet with her old hands.
“Balion came for orders when he was going in to Saint Clair on the following day. Aunt Clara drew up the list of commissions, and put together the prescriptions for the sick of Argelouse. ‘You will go to the chemist in the first place; Darquey will want quite the whole day to make them all up....’”
“My first meeting with Jean.... I must remember every detail: I had decided to go to that deserted shooting-hut where I used to eat my lunch with Anne and where I knew, since then, she had so loved to meet her Azévédo. No, I did not look upon it as a pilgrimage. But the pines in that neighbourhood have grown so tall that it is no longer possible to watch for pigeons there, so I ran no risk of disturbing the sportsmen. That shooting-hut was useless now, for the surrounding forest hid the horizon; the tree-tops were no longer far enough apart to reveal those broad vistas of sky against which the watcher sees the rising flights of birds. How well I remember: the October sun was still hot: I toiled along that sandy road, tormented by flies. And how heavy I felt! I longed to sit down on the mouldering bench inside the hut.”
As I opened the door a young man came out, bareheaded; at the first glance I recognised Jean Azévédo, and at first I thought I was intruding on a rendezvous, his expression looked so confused. I wanted to go away but he would not let me; it was strange that he was so intent on my remaining: ‘Not at all, please come in, Madame; I assure you that you are not disturbing me in the least.’ Why did he ask me if one could see from outside what was going on inside the hut? I was astonished that there was no one there when I went in, as he insisted. Perhaps the shepherdess had fled by another exit? But I had not heard the rustle of a single twig. He, too, had recognised me, and he was the first to mention Anne de la Trave’s name. I was sitting down; he standing up, just as in the photograph. I looked through his tussore shirt at the place where I had stuck the pin: mere curiosity, without any warmer feeling; I remembered without the slightest irritation what Anne had written to me: ‘I press my hand against the place where I can feel his heart beating ... what he calls the last caress allowed.’ Handsome? A high forehead, the velvet eyes of his race,—cheeks too large;—and, what I so dislike in young men of his age,—spots, the signs of overheated blood; a general unpleasant clamminess; and worst of all, moist palms,—which he had to wipe with a handkerchief before shaking hands. But he had fine burning eyes, and I liked his wide mouth, always a little open to display his pointed teeth, like a puppy panting with the heat.
And how did I behave? I was very strong on the family, I remember. I already tried to be very severe and accused him in grave tones, ‘of bringing distress and dissension into an honourable household.’ Heavens! how I remember his amazement, his boyish burst of laughter: ‘So you think I want to marry her? You think I aspire to that honour?’ I was astounded as I measured with a glance the abyss between Anne’s infatuation and the young man’s indifference. He defended himself vigorously: why on earth should he not yield to the charm of a delightful child? He was not aware that flirtations were forbidden, and just because there could not be the slightest question of marriage between them, this one had seemed to him quite innocuous. Of course, he had pretended to share Anne’s intentions.... And when I tried to wave all this haughtily aside, he vehemently burst out that Anne herself could bear him witness that he had been careful not to go too far; that in any case he was quite sure that Mademoiselle de la Trave owed him the only hours of true passion that she was likely to know in her dreary existence: ‘You tell me she is unhappy, Madame; but do you think that she has anything better to look forward to than this same unhappiness? I know you by reputation: I know you aren’t like the people round here, and I can talk to you frankly. Before she sets out on her dreadful voyage in one of those old houses of Saint Clair I have provided Anne with a stock of sensations and dreams,—enough to save her, perhaps, from despair and, in any case, from becoming brutalised.’ I forget if I was irritated by this shocking conceit and affectation, or even if I noticed it. As a matter of fact he spoke so quickly that at first I did not follow what he said; but my mind soon got used to his flow of speech: ‘Fancy thinking I could possibly want such a marriage; settle down in this sandy desert, or burden myself with a girl of her age in Paris? I shall always have the most delightful recollections of Anne; and at the moment, when you surprised me, I was indeed thinking of her.... But how can one tie oneself down, Madame? Each minute should bring its own joy,—and a different one.’
“This combination of intelligence and the greed of a young animal in one and the same being seemed so strange to me that I listened without interrupting him. Yes, I was certainly fascinated: cheaply enough, in all conscience, but I was. I remember the trampling of hooves, the tinkling of bells, the wild cries of the shepherds which announced the approach of a herd of cattle. I told the young man that our being together in the hut might perhaps seem odd: and I wanted him to answer that it would be best to keep quiet until the herd had passed; I should have enjoyed the silence side by side, the feeling that we shared a secret (for I, too, was becoming exacting, and wanted each minute to bring me something that would help me to live). But Jean Azévédo opened the door of the hut without protest and politely withdrew. He only followed me to Argelouse after having made certain that I saw no objection in it. How quickly we seemed to get home again, although my companion found the time to touch on many subjects: and he threw a strangely fresh light on those I thought I knew something of: on the religious question, for instance; as I was repeating what I used to say at home, he broke in: ‘Yes, no doubt ... but it’s more complicated than that....’ Indeed, some of his remarks seemed admirably new and illuminating.... Were they really so admirable?... I am pretty sure I should think it all poor stuff to-day: he said that he had long believed that nothing was of any importance except the search for, the pursuit of, God: ‘One must set forth across the sea; and avoid like the plague those who think they have found what they want, settle down, and build themselves shelters to sleep in; I have long despised them....’”
“He asked me if I had read the Life of Father de Foucauld by René Bazin: and as I pretended to laugh, he assured me that the book had been a revelation to him: ‘Perhaps,’ he added, ‘to live dangerously, in the deeper meaning of the words, lies not so much in seeking God, as in finding Him, and having discovered Him, living within His orbit.’ He described to me, ‘the great adventure of the mystics,’ and complained of his temperament that prevented him attempting it; ‘he could not remember having ever been pure.’ Such shamelessness, such absence of reserve, was such an utter change from our rustic caution, the silence which we all maintain about our inner life. The gossip of Saint Clair does not go below the surface: hearts are never laid bare. What do I really know about Bernard? There must be infinitely more in him than that caricature which seems adequate when I have to bring him to mind. Jean talked, and I said nothing: nothing came to my lips but the usual phrases of our family discussions. Just as in these parts, all the vehicles are built to the same gauge, that is to say, broad enough for the wheels to fit exactly into the ruts made by the farm carts, all my thoughts until that day had been built to fit the mental gauge of my father and my parents-in-law. Jean Azévédo was wearing no hat. I can still see his shirt open over his boyish chest, his rather heavy neck. Was I physically attracted at all? Oh, no, indeed! But he was the first man I had met for whom the life of the mind counted above everything. His masters, his Paris friends, whose sayings or whose books he so constantly mentioned, prevented my thinking of him as in any way unique: he was one of a large and distinguished company,—‘those who live,’ as he called them. He quoted names, not imagining for a moment that I might not know them; and I pretended that it was not the first time I had heard them.
“When the fields of Argelouse came into sight at the turn of the road: ‘Already!’ I cried. Smoke from burning grass drifted over the surface of the desolate soil now barren of its rye; through a gap in the embankment poured a herd of cattle looking like a stream of dirty milk, and they wandered off over the sandy heath. Jean had to cross the fields, to reach Vilméja, and I said: ‘I’ll come with you: I’ve been so thrilled by all this.’ But we found no more to say to each other. The rye stubble hurt me through my country sandals. I had the feeling that he wanted to be alone, no doubt to follow up at leisure some thought that had come to him. I pointed out that we had not talked about Anne; he assured me that we were not free to choose the subjects of our conversations, nor even of our meditations: ‘or else,’ he said loftily, ‘one would have to submit to the methods invented by the mystics.... Creatures like ourselves always are borne upon the stream, and walk down inevitable slopes....’ He related everything, in fact, to what he was reading at the moment. We agreed to meet again to arrange some method of dealing with the question of Anne. He talked absent-mindedly, and when I asked him a question, did not answer: suddenly he bent down, and with a boyish gesture picked a mushroom, showed it me, and then put it to his nose and lips.”