‘No.’
‘Or what I said about my plans for the house?’
‘No, no, I’m just tired.’
Tired, nervous, anxious, waiting for the inevitable to happen. Tati was incapable of understanding. And yet she too had sensitive antennae.
‘Are you interested in her?’
‘Who?’
‘Félicie, you know who!’
‘I’ve already told you, no!’
Why was she so determined to come back again and again to Félicie?
She would surely stop him thinking of anything else in the end.
He went downstairs to chop wood, which he did furiously. He almost wished he might cut his hand, to see what would happen. They would have to call the doctor, perhaps take him to hospital.
Who would come to his help, though, since Tati was bedridden?
He went to move the cows again. Félicie left her house on purpose to stroll around him, and he thought she was going to say something, while Tati did not take her eyes off the pair of them.
He almost hoped she would not come again in the evening. Yet at the same time he wanted her to be there. He was torturing himself, as if it gave him pleasure.
‘Jean!’
‘Yes, coming.’
‘You’ll have to think about going over to Clémence’s to pick up the baskets and the money.’
He went over there. He did all that was asked of him. He cut some grass for the rabbits, cleaned the pigeons’ cages, and spread manure around the strawberry plants.
Tati was quite capable of calling him up at exactly eight o’clock. Would he go? She did not call and he was half disappointed.
It was already five past eight when he went to the garden, where he found Félicie sitting calmly on one of the shafts of the cart.
‘She runs after men, like …’ Tati had said.
He wanted to talk to her, to sit down beside her, put his arm round her waist. What he would have liked above all was if they could both walk along the canal, arm in arm, listening to the frog chorus and breathing in the peaceful night air.
He said, without thinking:
‘You came …’
And he had scarcely touched her before she collapsed into his arms, her moist mouth clamped to his.
He felt awkward. She was inert, almost as if she had fainted. She was waiting. They were in the same place as before. He thought that her father might have followed her or that Tati was capable of coming downstairs.
She had closed her eyes. He had the taste of her saliva on his lips and he could breathe in her smell, that of a redhead.
So, resigned, he lay down on top of her. She gave a little sigh, like a child. She stiffened in advance. She gripped his wrists, trying to force her nails into his skin.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she whispered.
Yet, the day before, it had all gone so easily. Now he was clumsy, feeling no desire. He was irritated by the rabbits moving about close to their heads. He was irritated by the rustling of the hay, by the voices they could hear from a barge moored at the lock, where a family was sitting out to take the air.
‘Did my aunt say anything?’ Félicie asked, in the silence after their coupling.
‘No.’
‘She’ll be suspecting something. The way she keeps watching me all day long.’
She stood up, satisfied, though perhaps not entirely.
‘Are you going to stay with her?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ve got to go home. My father might …’
She retraced her steps to plant a kiss somewhere on his face. He heard the hinges of the gate squeak. Looking up, he was surprised to see just one star in the sky.
He was so tired that he sat down on one of the shafts of the cart, while Tati was getting up, and anxiously dragging herself around on her swollen legs, calling continuously:
‘Jean? Where are you?’
