The Catalans. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ sacred. A room that is to be kept immaculate for wakes and marriages, the polished morgue of a self-respecting house, is not suitable; and there arose a great bitterness over the drops of paint, the smell in the room, and the wrongful displacement of the central table; for now Madeleine, typing at Mme. Roig’s, could not always be there to clean and to replace before one of her aunts or her mother got in.

      Francisco took his easel to Collioure. His particular friends of the time had a very large attic where there was room for all to work, and there he took up his stand.

      This was lonely for Madeleine, and when he took to sleeping there, it was more so. She did not tell her mother or anyone else – she would never have done so at any time, but now that she was so withdrawn from them it would have been even less possible: for she was withdrawn from them, although Francisco blamed her for being entirely on their side, not with him at all: that was the root of all their quarreling.

      She said as she lay there alone, watching the light of the street lamp swinging madly on the ceiling as the gale of the equinox took it, she said that it was better to watch it and know that he was on dry land than to watch it and think of him at sea. She said this, but she was saying it against her knowledge – a knowledge that she would not formulate or allow to appear whole, but which grew so substantial and familiar in those last weeks that she was not surprised, not fundamentally surprised, however cruelly shocked she was, when she came home one day from Mme. Roig’s house and found Francisco pale and strange in the middle of his possessions, packing them – his only. He spoke as if he were drunk, but he was not drunk. He had meant to get out alone, unseen; he had not thought he would be disturbed, and when he saw her he was uncertain what attitude to take. He had not prepared one. There was a terrible embarrassment between them, as if they were naked in front of strangers.

      He saw that she did not intend to scream or fight and asked her to find his blue suit.

      She said ‘Have you got your best shirts?’

      He said ‘I took them last week,’ and after a second he flushed an ugly dark color, because he had lain with her since then.

      She said ‘Do you want this?’ It was her portrait that he had painted in the autumn. It was his best piece of work: it was framed. He said Yes, to put it by the other paintings stacked by the door; but he did not look and his voice was hardly recognizable.

      They did not say anything more, and she went out of the room: she did not watch him pick up the load of things, the too-many parcels, bundles; go awkwardly out, down the stairs, put the things down, open the door, pick them up, and bolt out. His feet went sounding up the street, for he had shoes on; and in a minute the hollow wind slammed the door after him.

      At the crossroads he jerked into the car, into the back seat, and the woman in front, after a glance at his face, started the engine and drove rapidly away on the white road of the coast.

      He sat there in the back, abandoned to the movement of the car: he had never felt anything like this in his life. It was as if his whole being, the whole of the inside of his body, were bleeding, bleeding. The pain was something utterly beyond his experience.

      It did not surprise him that his face was wet with tears: he leaned forward and let one roll on to the back of his hand.

      What, what was he? A hero? Had he done something extremely brave? How terribly he was suffering: how terribly an artist must suffer. How shockingly wide is the range of an artist’s feelings, he thought, only an artist could suffer so much: and the tears rolled on.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ‘But, my dear Alain, how very yellow your face appears,’ she said, settling down comfortably, now that she had got him alone at last.

      ‘My dear Aunt Margot,’ he replied, ‘I suppose it does.’

      ‘But, my dear Alain,’ she said in a kindly but serious tone, leaning forward and tapping him on the knee, ‘why is it so yellow?’

      A vision of the Luong river, sliding dark and smooth in the suffocating gloom; the matted forest steaming in the thunderous rain; paddy fields, lichee trees, mushroom hats, flashed across his mind; but he despaired of his ability to describe the causes and the circumstances of his face’s yellowness, and replied vaguely, ‘It is the climate, you know.’

      ‘The climate? Yes; and the food, no doubt. I cannot think that the climate has so much to do with it, or the people here would be blue, if not yellow and black as well. There never was such a disagreeable climate as this, with its unhealthy dryness and clouds of dust, and the dreadful wind that never stops except in midsummer, when you need it. This last winter … I am sure I was better off in the Pas-de-Calais, where at least it does not pretend to be warm, and where the houses are properly built for the winter. But Alain, you would be far better with a wife to look after your house and see that you are properly fed: these birds’ nests and extraordinary dishes – mice, sharks’ fins – I don’t know indeed, but they cannot be good for you in the long run, however interesting at first, as curiosities.’

      ‘You are a friend to marriage, Aunt Margot: you rarely miss an opportunity of recommending me to take some young woman or other back with me. Yet the idea of Xavier having a wife again does not seem to please you?’

      ‘Ah, that! No, indeed. And I am surprised that you should refer to it so lightly, Alain; if you knew how it grieved me, I am sure you would not do so.’

      ‘Tell me, has anything definite happened since you wrote to me last?’

      ‘I wrote to you last in –’ With her lips pursed and her eyes thrown up to the ceiling she numbered the days, weeks, months. ‘No. I cannot say that anything definite has happened, if you mean by that has he publicly announced that he is going to marry her, or has he been taken off in a strait jacket to the madhouse. That is where he would be if I had my way: I often tell him so. No: it has gone on in the same fashion, but now of course it is still more widely known. I have had letters of sympathy from Mme. Marty in Toulouse and from André at Constantine.’

      ‘I cannot see what it has to do with them. But when you say it is going on in the same fashion, what exactly do you mean? I have not gathered an exact impression: judging from Côme’s remarks I should have supposed the girl to be a flaunting Jezebel, Xavier’s acknowledged mistress – practically a common woman. But then, as I remember, she was very often with you before her marriage; and I cannot reconcile that with a very high degree of open depravity.’ He smiled tentatively, having intended to be a little facetious. However, his aunt frowned and said coldly, ‘No; I do not suppose you can.’ She paused; and then, with an air of almost masculine candor, quite characteristic of her, she said, ‘I do not know what Côme has said, but I should say that it is certainly untrue. This girl is not a bad girl at all. She sees her advantage, and she wishes to profit by it: that is all. If it were not that her gain is our loss, I should have nothing to say, nothing at all. But as it is … No. This question apart, I have nothing to say against Madeleine: indeed, I had a real affection for her. When she was a young girl I was very fond of her – too fond of her, perhaps – and when her good-for-nothing husband ran off I was exceedingly sorry for Madeleine. Even now I should be sorry if she were unhappy. No: I do not say that she is vicious or dishonest. But I do say that for us she is the enemy, and must be fought like one.’

      ‘So there is no moral issue?’

      ‘Yes, there is a moral issue. She should not take advantage of Xavier’s lunacy.’

      ‘Is she his mistress?’

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