Few indeed are those who continue to be openhanded after they have acquired the means for it. Such as these are princes among men, before whom one must bow down. Certainly Josephin was not rolling in money, but in addition to his salary, which he managed with care (he practiced the so-called envelope system, but, too cheap to buy real envelopes, he would make them out of newspapers or grocery bags), he made extra money with some small well-calculated deals. Working for the railroad, he was entitled to travel free once every two weeks.
So every other Sunday he would take the train into what was called the “interior”—that is, the bush—and he would go around the Arab farms buying eggs, scrawny chickens or rabbits at low cost. He would bring back this merchandise and sell it to his neighbors at a fair profit. His life was well ordered in every aspect. He was not known to have a woman. In any case, between his week of work and his Sundays devoted to trade, he lacked the time needed to pursue sensual pleasures.
But he had always proclaimed that at forty he would marry a well-placed woman. Until then he would stay in his room, amassing money and continuing to live part time at his mother’s. Strange as it seemed, given his lack of charm, he nonetheless carried out his plan as he had said, and married a piano teacher who was far from ugly and who, with her furniture, brought him at least a few years of bourgeois bliss. It is true that Josephin ended up keeping the furniture and not the wife.
But that was another story, and all Josephin had not foreseen was that after his quarrel with Ernest he would not be able to take his meals with his mother but would have to resort to the costly delights of the restaurant. Jacques no longer remembered the origin of the drama. Obscure feuds sometimes would divide his family, and in truth no one could sort out their causes, especially because all of them were so lacking in memory that no one could recall the reasons for the feud but would confine themselves to keeping alive consequences they had accepted and digested once and for all.
About that day, all he could remember was Ernest standing at the table in the middle of the meal shouting insults, incomprehensible other than “Mzabite,” at his brother, who remained seated and went on eating. Then Ernest struck his brother, who got up and fell back before coming at him. But the grandmother was already hanging on to Ernest, and Jacques’s mother, white with emotion, was pulling at Josephin from behind. “Let him be, let him be,” she was saying, and the two children, their faces pale and their mouths open, watched motionless and listened to the flood of enraged curses that were all flowing in one direction until Josephin said sullenly, “He’s a dumb animal. You can’t do anything to him,” and circled the table while the grandmother held on to Ernest, who wanted to run after his brother.
Ernest was still struggling after the door had slammed. “Let me go, let me go,” he said to his mother. “I’ll hurt you.”
But she had seized him by the hair and was shaking him: “You, you, you’d hit your mother?”
And Ernest dropped into his chair sobbing, “No, no, not you. You like the good Lord for me!”
Jacques’s mother went to bed without finishing her meal, and the next day she had a headache. From that day on, Josephin never returned home, except once in a while when he was sure Ernest was not there, to visit his mother.
l There was another rage Jacques did not like to recall because he himself did not want to know its cause. For quite a while a certain M. Antoine, with whom Ernest was vaguely acquainted—a fishmonger in the market, of Maltese origin, quite handsome in bearing, slender and tall, who always wore a strange dark derby and at the same time a checkered bandanna that he rolled and knotted around his neck inside his shirt—would come by their home regularly before dinner. Thinking about it later, Jacques saw what had not struck him at the time, that his mother was dressing a bit more smartly; she was wearing brightly colored aprons, and you could even see a hint of rouge on her cheeks.
This was also the time when women were beginning to cut their hair, which until then they had worn long. Jacques liked to watch his mother or his grandmother perform the ceremony of combing and fixing her hair. With a napkin around the shoulders and a mouth full of hairpins, they would comb their waist-length hair for a long time, then put it up, pull a headband very tight around the bun at the nape of the neck, riddle it with hairpins that they would withdraw one at a time from the mouth, their lips parted and teeth clenched, and would stick one by one in the thick mass of the bun.
The new style seemed both ridiculous and shameful to the grandmother, who, underestimating the true power of fashion, declared without bothering about logic that only women who “walked the streets” would let themselves so be made ridiculous. His mother had taken that for granted, and yet a year later, at about the time Antoine was calling, she came home one evening with her hair cut, looking fresh and rejuvenated; she said, outwardly cheerful but behind it one could sense her anxiety, that she had wanted to give them a surprise.
It was a surprise indeed to the grandmother, who, eyeing her from head to foot and contemplating this irremediable disaster, merely said to her, in front of her son, that now she looked like a whore. Then she went back to her kitchen. Catherine Cormery stopped smiling, and all the sorrow and weariness of the world appeared on her face. Then she saw her son’s intent expression, and tried to smile again, but her lips trembled and she dashed weeping to her bedroom, to the bed that was her only refuge for rest, for solitude, and for sorrow. Jacques, bewildered, went to her. She had buried her face in the pillow; her neck, exposed by her short curls, and her thin back were shaking with sobs.
“Maman, maman,” Jacques said, touching her timidly with his hand. “You’re very beautiful like this.”
But she had not heard him, and with her hand she asked him to leave her. He retreated to the doorway and, leaning against the jamb, he too began to weep with helplessness and love.*
For the next several days the grandmother did not speak a word to her daughter. At the same time, Antoine was received more coolly when he called. Ernest, especially, kept a distant manner. Though he was a swell and a smooth talker, Antoine could certainly sense something. What was going on? Several times Jacques saw signs of tears in his mother’s beautiful eyes. Ernest would usually remain silent and would scuffle with Brillant. One summer evening, Jacques noticed that his uncle seemed to be watching something from the balcony.
“Is Daniel coming?” the child asked.
His uncle grunted. And suddenly Jacques saw Antoine arrive after not having come for several days. Ernest rushed out, and a few seconds later muffled sounds came up the stairs. Jacques dashed out and saw the two men fighting silently in the dark. Ernest, heedless of the blows he was taking, was striking and striking with fists hard as iron, and a moment later Antoine rolled down the stairs, got up with his mouth bloody, and took out a handkerchief to wipe off the blood, all the while keeping his eyes on Ernest, who went off like a madman.
When he went back inside, Jacques found his mother sitting in the dining room, not moving, her face still. He also sat down without speaking.m And then Ernest came back, grumbling curses, and darted a furious look at his sister. Dinner took place as usual, except that his mother did not eat; she simply said “I’m not hungry” when her mother insisted.
Once the meal was over, she went to her room. During the night, Jacques woke up and heard her turn over in her bed. Starting the following day, she went back to her black or gray dresses, nothing but the clothing of the poor. Jacques found her just as beautiful, even more beautiful for being more distant and absent in spirit, now that she was settled forever in poverty, in solitude, and in old age soon to come.n
For a long time Jacques held a grudge against his uncle, without knowing just what he was blaming him for. But, at the same time, he knew he could not hold him to blame, and that if the poverty, the infirmities, the elemental need in which all his family lived did not excuse everything, in any case they made it impossible to pass judgment on those who were its victims.
They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives. And, in any event, he could not doubt his uncle’s animal-like devotion first of all to the grandmother and then to Jacques’s mother and her children. He had felt that devotion to himself the day of the accident at the cooperage.o Jacques went to the cooperage every Thursday.
