‘So am I!’
But he consoled himself by thinking that tomorrow was another day; cloudy or sunny, either would be good, and he would light the fire in the kitchen, grind some coffee, go out to the cowshed, where the cows would annoy him with their tails, and after that, when he was tethering them in the field, Félicie would probably be on her threshold, or watching from behind the curtains.
Since she had said goodnight, she would say good morning. She wasn’t yet completely tamed, but she was now circling him more closely.
He ate alone, sitting at one end of the table. He warmed up a little coffee for Tati. Then he lit a last cigarette and went up into his attic, where it was damper than the other days. The sheets felt limp. He curled up in bed. He kept his eyes open.
He wondered whether it was about to start up again. He didn’t want to think about it.
Every person condemned …
And down below him, she was not sleeping either. There was no one in the old man’s bedroom. Where was Couderc sleeping in his daughter’s house, where there were only two rooms?
The frogs struck up once more. If he started thinking too much, he would get up and go and walk in the garden. No, Tati would take fright, and think he was meaning to leave.
Would his father come? She had thought so. Perhaps she was not entirely mistaken. He had always known his father with the greying hair that suited him so well. His hair must be white by now. But his face had remained young, with that special expression, a kind of charm, a slightly ironic gaiety, typical of a ladies’ man. He had always been a ladies’ man, after any and every woman, and he had spent his life going from the warmth of one bed to the perfumed warmth of another, haunted with a faint scent of love.
‘Jean, are you asleep?’
She had called out quietly, but he heard it.
‘Almost!’ he replied truthfully.
‘Goodnight.’
And Félicie had said goodnight too. What could a girl like Félicie be thinking about him, knowing that he had killed a man? And where had her child come from? Who was its father? Where had that happened?
He seemed to hear the cheerful voice of his lawyer, coming straight from the barber’s, with his smooth pink skin and talc behind his ears, saying to him:
‘Well, my boy, what about it?’
Article 314 of the Penal Code.
‘No!’ he cried out, as if in a nightmare.
He realized he had spoken aloud and wondered if Tati had heard him. She probably thought he was calling out in his sleep like a child.
The frogs … Had he remembered the paraffin for the incubator? … What had she said to him? Oh yes, the butcher … in the village. It was his day. He must buy some meat.
They didn’t eat meat in Françoise’s house because …
‘Goodnight!’
But she had already turned away.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
The pale sun was shining almost white above the skylight and Tati was stirring in her bed.
8
First in the queue was the woman wearing mourning, dignified and disdainful, next the woman from the grocer’s shop, her neck swathed in a flannel bandage. That morning she had lost her voice.
Then it was Félicie’s turn. There were other women as well, coming out of houses from every direction and approaching the butcher’s van. They took their time. Many of them had a gait like geese, swinging heavy stomachs ahead of them and eating as they walked.
The back of the van lifted up to reveal a kind of shop: whole quarter-carcasses were suspended inside; there was a set of scales with its copper weights, squares of brown paper hanging on a string.
‘Who’s next?’
Between two customers, the butcher would give a little toot on a trumpet, and glance up the village street to check that everyone had heard him.
A few more drops had fallen, but it was no longer raining. Félicie had come in her clogs, with a red shawl over her blue smock, and carrying an oilcloth shopping bag.
When she saw Jean approaching the van, she had given a little smile. He was the only one not to have realized: he stood out in the crowd! By being there at all, and by the details of his appearance and behaviour.
He had come striding up. He had hurried because he had seen Félicie at the end of the towpath. As he was not wearing a hat, his hair was dishevelled. He had not shaved. He was rather thin and his face was not unlike pictures of Christ.
He didn’t walk like everyone else. He looked as if he were out for a stroll. His arms hung loose. In his espadrilles his footsteps made no sound and his gait was loose-limbed. The blue of his trousers. And the white of the shirt, which he had washed but not ironed.
And he found it quite natural to be there, waiting his turn, glancing now and then at Félicie, then turning away awkwardly.
‘Eight francs fifty, my love … And what about you, miss?’
‘I want some stewing steak. Not more than a pound. How much is it?’
‘Four francs a pound.’
Jean was staring in astonishment at the small piece of dark meat, hardly more than skin and bone.
