The Wretches Page 5

  Monsieur Rooland slammed the door shut again, and the whole scene was lost in darkness. Then Jess did something I didn’t see coming: he slapped me. I don’t know if he thought I’d deliberately lured him out there, or if he was just taking out his anger on me… As he slapped me, he shouted something in his language. I didn’t understand, but I knew it was an insult from the look that went along with it. And that was when the sorrow hit me: an immense, total sorrow, like I didn’t believe it was possible for a human being to feel. I broke down in tears next to the car, while the two shadows continued to move behind the frosted windows.

  Jess had gone back inside. I looked up at the sky. I wanted it to see my unhappiness. But there were no fluffy clouds and tropical seas up there any more, just our poisonous Léopoldville sky.

  An unfriendly sky. One that said “no” to the people down below. I went stiffly over to the gate, like a robot. The dead, empty, echoing street swallowed me up.

  I walked back home in a daze, just like the old days.

  NINE

  It must have been at least two in the morning when I came to a stop in front of Arthur’s place. He and Mum would have hit the sack hours ago. I hesitated. My cheek was still burning from the slap. My heart too. I took a handful of gravel and threw it against their bedroom-window shutters. Mum’s always been a shallow sleeper. A light went on in the room straight away, spilling out through the gaps in the wooden slats. Then a window opened, and I recognized her little wedge-shaped face, her scruffy hair falling down over her eyes.

  “It’s me, Mum!”

  “God, what time do you call this?”

  That brought me back down to earth. If I told her everything she’d never let me go back to the Roolands’, and I was already starting to miss my island.

  She didn’t have a dressing gown, my mum, just one of her dad’s old postman’s capes that she’d put on when she got up at night. While she was sorting herself out, I heard Arthur’s grumpy voice asking her what was going on. In the dead silence of the night there was something terribly embarrassing about the rudely awoken couple’s squabbling being broadcast to the world.

  At last, she opened the door. I’d hardly set foot inside before she exclaimed:

  “What’s going on? You been crying?”

  “I’ll explain tomorrow.”

  “Oh, will you now? No, Missy, you’ll tell me right away!”

  Whenever she said “Missy” you knew things were hotting up. I hadn’t heard her call me that since the day she caught me bunking off school. She was a funny sight in her nightdress and old postie’s cape, like something from a comic strip.

  “Come on, I’m waiting!”

  We could hear that idiot Arthur upstairs, putting his trousers on and looking for his slippers under the bed.

  “Spit it out, quick, before Arthur comes down.”

  “There was a party… One of the guests was a bit drunk. He took me aside and tried to feel me up, so I gave him a slap.”

  “Good for you,” she said. “And then what?”

  “Well, I felt bad. Ashamed. You know how it is, don’t you? So I left.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes, just like that! You don’t stop to think in those situations.”

  Mum glared at me. She wasn’t buying it. She could smell something fishy in my story, and I could tell she wanted to grill me some more, but we could hear Arthur’s clumsy step coming down the rickety wooden staircase, so she didn’t dare.

  Even when he’s dressed up to the nines Arthur’s not much to look at, but woken in the middle of the night he’s downright terrifying. He had on a mouldy old vest, which he wore constantly because he used to have trouble with his lungs. Unshaven, puffy eyed, his toes sticking through the holes in his slippers, he looked like someone you’d see in a photo in a true-crime magazine—Psycho of the Month!

  It’d been weeks since I’d set foot at home. Seeing them both still looking the same, so scruffy and scrawny—it made me choke. I regretted it now—running off into the night like that. No, Arthur’s place would never be any kind of refuge for me.

  “What is it now?”

  That was very like him, that “now”. As if I made a habit of dragging them out of bed at two in the morning!

  I couldn’t bring myself to explain, so Mum did it for me.

  “They’ve got people round at the Yanks’ place.”

  At the Yanks’ place! Who gave her the right to call them that? And where did that snobby tone come from? Her with her harelip, she was hardly the classiest lady in town. What reason did she have to look down on the Roolands? People will never get on as long as there’s prejudice in the world, I thought to myself.

  “…they’re all sloshed round there, and one of them tried it on with Louise so she gave him a smack.”

  Arthur’s eyes twinkled with a cruel satisfaction.

  “And, of course, now they’ve shown her the door?”

  “No, she did a runner!”

  He was a bit disappointed at that, but he soon found a way back onto his high horse.

  “I knew this would happen.”

  “Why do you say that?” I protested.

  “I remember that Sunday when you were acting the tart with them in the garden… Didn’t I warn you, back when all this started? They’re nothing but a pack of animals, those American blokes.”

  I could have scratched his eyes out.

  “I’ll go and give ’em a piece of my mind tomorrow, the dirty buggers.”

  “It’s not their fault! One of their guests was drunk—so what? It could’ve happened to anyone!”

  “Listen to you sticking up for them now!” roared Arthur. “If you’re so fond of them, why have you come running back here in the middle of the night?”

  “Fine! If that’s how it is I’ll go back.”

  I was already at the door. Mum caught hold of my arm.

  “Got to your room.”

  “But—”

  “Now!”

  I felt like I was ten years old again. I did as I was told.

  I didn’t have a big bedroom, but it was so sparsely furnished, with just an iron bed, a chair and a coat stand, that it seemed huge. I was in tears as I got undressed. The room smelt of damp, and mouldy wallpaper. The sheets were cold, and every time I moved the springs would twang, sending vibrations through the whole bed. I just wanted to get to sleep. Right then, the idea of unconsciousness seemed like paradise to me. I wanted to forget Jess Rooland and his eyes so full of hurt, boring into me. I wanted to forget Thelma’s dazed features blinking up at us as the car light went on and we saw her there, half naked underneath the general… Other faces filled the darkness too, dancing a terrifying waltz around me. My chubby dance partner with his fishy eyes, the French guest playing the fool with the cork cap screwed into his eye. As we danced I heard the miserable sound of broken glasses crunching under our feet, and the screaming of the black singers’ voices coming from the record player. Everything looked different in the flickering candlelight. When I finally fell asleep I dreamt that all the guests were lying dead, their waxy faces lit up by altar candles.

  *

  “Louiiiiise!”

  It was Mum’s voice, ridiculously shrill when she shouted.

  I was wide awake instantly. My worries of the night before were all still there. The dull light of a gloomy day filled the room. From the bedroom window I could see the chimneys of the chemical plant, already spewing brown smoke into the air.

  “Louiiiiiise!”

  “Yes! What is it?”

  “Come down here.”

  What time was it? I could sense the day was already well under way. I’m not sure how I could tell. Just something in the air, I suppose—lots of tiny little clues.

  I put on my black dress again, since it was the only one I had with me. The comforting smell of coffee wafted up from the kitchen.

  That was always the one good thing at our place—the coffee. Mum’s crazy about it. She puts her heart and s
oul into making it like only a real coffee lover can. We don’t always have meat for the pot, it’s true, but our coffee’s always top quality.

  I pushed open the door. The first thing I saw, because I was looking for it, was the big kitchen clock on the sideboard. Ten o’clock. That meant Arthur would be at work, which perked me up no end.

  “Morning, Mum!”

  She smiled stiffly back at me, and it was only then that I looked around and noticed Madame Rooland. She was sitting at the table, in front of a steaming cup of coffee, all fresh-faced and smiling.

  “Hello, Louise!”

  Just like that, I swear: “Hello, Louise!” She knew I’d caught her messing around with the general last night, but here she was, bright and cheery, as if nothing had happened. Shameless, she was.

  “Good morning, Madame.”

  “Not too tired today?”

  “No, Madame.”

  She’d come to take me back. I was pleased, but I wondered what she’d told Mum. I hadn’t thought of that when I’d invented my lie the previous night. Things couldn’t have gone too badly if Mum had made her coffee, though.

  I stood there like a lemon, like in my oral at school when the examiner asked me to list all the different fossil fuels. I knew what I should say but I didn’t dare. The situation was all wrong. Mum and Madame Rooland were never supposed to meet each other. Thelma in Arthur’s kitchen, in front of a cup of coffee—like on the day of that exam, it just didn’t seem real.

  Back then, I told myself the examiner probably couldn’t care less about fossil fuels. Maybe he cared even less than I did. And what did I need to know about all that to go and work at Ridel’s anyway? It was just a game, like one of those quizzes you see on the telly.

  “You want some coffee, Louise?”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Madame Rooland” (she pronounced it “Rolon”) “has come to take you back. She was very surprised to find that you’d gone. I told her I don’t like these goings-on very much. Even in high society” (a note of bitterness crept into her voice on those words) “a guest can’t allow himself to go taking liberties with a young girl. I’ve always brought you up well; you’ve had an education and everything…”

  The proud, virtuous mother, showing this rich foreigner that her daughter wasn’t just anybody.

  While she gave her speech, Thelma was staring at the calendar hanging on the wall. She seemed fascinated. It showed a little girl with blonde plaits riding a pony, I remember. She didn’t give a damn about Mum’s sermon. She’d come to get me because she needed me. I was just a useful household appliance that allowed her to live as she pleased.

  Mum turned towards her.

  “I’m wondering if it’s wise to let her go back to you, Madame Rooland. At seventeen, a young girl…”

  Jess must have told her she had free rein. Thelma took two ten-thousand-franc notes from her pocket, folded them in four, and placed them on the tabletop, next to a sugar bowl with Bonaparte’s thin face on it. He glared sternly at Mum.

  “What’s that?” she asked softly, a note of fear in her voice.

  “My husband he is telling me that it is to compensate Louise of the good work she did at the weekend.”

  Poor Mum’s mouth was hanging open. I don’t know if twenty thousand francs seems like a lot to you, but it’s always been a fortune in our house. There are people who couldn’t make it go very far, but Mum can work miracles with bit of extra cash. You should see her when her book of coupons is full and she goes to swap it for five hundred francs’ worth of stuff from the grocer—you wouldn’t believe how much she comes back with!

  “If my girl’s happy to go back, Madame, I can’t go against her wishes. We don’t like making a fuss round here.”

  TEN

  She didn’t have the car, so we walked back to the island.

  I was surprised to see that she and her husband had cleared all the mess away. I only had to do the dishes and scrub the floor. You could still smell the piss-up, though—the living room stank of stale cigars, spilt champagne… and vomit, I’m afraid to say. Thelma stayed off the sauce that day, helping me with the housework like a good girl. She contented herself with chain-smoking Camels while she dried the dishes.

  At one point—in the afternoon, I think—she asked me:

  “Why did you leave?”

  I looked her in the face.

  “It was seeing you in the car with that white-haired bloke. It was disgusting.”

  “What is it mean, ‘disgusting’?”

  “It… it upset me. It was shameful.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Yes. Especially in front of your husband.”

  “Jess saw?”

  “Yes!”

  It didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. I still can’t believe he hadn’t told her. What a world!

  And to take the biscuit, behind the cloud of blue smoke from her cigarette, she was smiling. A little half-smile, just one eye and the corner of her mouth.

  “He must feel terrible about it, don’t you think?”

  “Jess? Oh, no!”

  “But he loves you!”

  “Certainly, very much.”

  “So…”

  I had a dish in my hands, but I felt too weak to dry it.

  “You are little girl, you are not to understand.”

  “Well, then I wonder who could understand all this?”

  She sat down at the table, pushing aside some crockery to make room for her elbows.

  “Jess wanted a child. We had one who is not come to his birth, you see? Since then, I cannot have one any more, and our… conjugal life—is that what you say?”

  “Yes, if you like!”

  “Our conjugal life is like a walk in the woods in winter. There are no leaves, no flowers, just the black branches.”

  I had tears in my eyes. I put down my plate and went to put my arms around her. We all have our sorrows, you see, even Americans.

  Everything started up again, just like before. We never mentioned that horrible evening again. The only change was that, from then on, they started to go out more in the evenings. They’d go to Paris or to see a show. It was as if they were scared to spend their evenings at home together like they had before. To begin with I’d go to bed as soon as they left, but I couldn’t sleep all alone in that big house, so I started waiting up for them with a book.

  It wasn’t a bad way to spend the evening at all. I’d sit on the sofa, in front of the fireplace, a log fire crackling in the hearth. Now and then I’d break off from my reading and prick up my ears, listening to the sounds of the night outside, waiting for the loud clunk of the car door as Monsieur Rooland got out to open the gate. A strange unease would come over me when I heard his steps crunching up the gravel of the drive. I couldn’t stop thinking of that night, that orgy, when he’d punched a man for disrespecting me, but hadn’t done a thing when he caught his wife fooling around. I didn’t understand what he could have been thinking, and the mystery gnawed away at me.

  As soon as they pulled up, I’d rush to the door to greet them. Jess would help his wife out of the car and follow her, head down, up to the porch. Thelma would come inside with a “Hello, Louise”. Monsieur Rooland wouldn’t say anything to me, but I’d get a little tap on the end of the nose and a wink—and, just like that, I was happy. I think it was for that little tap alone that I waited up for them till one or two in the morning all those nights.

  All that time, it was as if I could sense what was coming. Something was changing inside me from day to day—and I honestly think it was my whole way of looking at the world. Nothing was simple to me any more. Every second of every day brought with it a little dose of worry. Every daily occurrence, no matter how humdrum or insignificant, seemed to present a problem. I ended up wondering whether all that fossil fuels business hadn’t been a game after all, and I began to regret my panic, my stage fright, which had stopped me listing them for the stony-faced examiner.

  It was a filthy
night when it all happened. It was towards the start of March, the very beginning of spring… the time of year when winter hasn’t really gone yet. It’s still slinking away reluctantly, chased off by the fresh buds on the trees, but there’s already something in the air, a faint warmth against the skin. The Roolands were in Paris, at the ballet—something I’ve never been able to stomach, probably because of my foot phobia. It was raining and the wind was blowing a gale. The chimney was howling, and one of the shutters on the upstairs windows had come loose and was banging violently against the wall outside. I was too scared to go up there and fasten it. Lord knows I’m not usually the nervous type, but the moaning of that wind, and that rain beating against the windows in waves—it really set me on edge. It felt as if there was some dark force surrounding the house, and I was desperate for Monsieur and Madame Rooland to get home. But that bloody loose shutter was still banging away so I decided to go upstairs and sort it out. As soon as I opened the window, I realized it was even filthier outside than all the noise had suggested. The sky was terrible to look at: gigantic black clouds hanging low over the town, shot through by flashes of lightning that seemed more like great bursts of flame. The storm turned in a spiral overhead. Occasionally the ground below would be lit up—my old neighbourhood was there, glistening in the rain—and then everything would be lost in the dark again for a few seconds. I leant out to grab the shutter and right away my face was running with water. I was struggling to pull the window shut again when I heard it in the distance—a sound like an explosion, and then a series of echoes. Like a giant iron cauldron rolling down the steps in front of the Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre. I didn’t know what that noise meant, but I felt a panic rising in my throat. I quickly fastened the window and went back downstairs. It was quiet down there, apart from the moaning in the chimney. The fire was burning high. I went back to my book. It was a romance, which would normally have had me gripped, but I couldn’t follow the twists and turns of the plot. I was waiting—do you understand? Waiting for a vague something that, deep down, I knew was coming. And then it came—the harsh trill of the telephone. We barely used it at all at the Roolands’—just for placing orders with shopkeepers. I’d certainly never heard it ringing in the middle of the night. I looked at the time—twenty past midnight. I got that from Mum, that glance at the clock. We were always wary of anything out of the ordinary at home. I hesitated. There was a bleakness to the telephone’s ring. Eventually I answered it. I heard a man’s voice, a stranger’s, choked with emotion: