Complete Works of Emile Zola (984 page)

Suddenly the door of the Château was thrown open, and the girl appeared and cast a glance outside, having fancied she could hear something. The old man just had time to throw himself behind the bushes; and, as he made his escape, he could see La Trouille’s green eyes glistening in the gloaming.

When Fouan gained the open plain he experienced a sort of relief in finding himself quite alone, able to die without interference and observation. For a long time he walked on at random, now going straight before him, and then turning aside, without any reason or plan whatever. The night had now fully fallen, and the icy wind scourged him bitterly. Every now and then, as some fierce gust swept past him, he was obliged to turn his back to it, his breath quite failing him, and his few white hairs bristling upright on his head. Six o’clock struck; all Rognes must now be at table. His stomach and his legs began to feel faint, and he was obliged to slacken his pace. At last he set off in the direction of La Borderie, and then, after making a sudden turn, he was surprised to find himself again on the edge of the valley of the Aigre.

Between a couple of squalls, a violent lashing shower poured down. The old man was soaked to the skin, but he still walked on, encountering two other downfalls, and at last he shivered with cold and weariness. Presently, without knowing how he got there, he found himself in the open square by the church, in front of the old family house of the Fouans, where Françoise and Jean now dwelt. But no, he could not seek a refuge there! They had driven him away! The rain now began to pour down again in such heavy torrents that he began to lose all heart. He stepped up to the Buteaus’ door and peeped into the kitchen, whence streamed the odour of cabbage soup. All his poor trembling body was longing to submit and return: a physical craving for food and warmth was urging him to enter. But amid the noise of people eating, he could distinguish some words.

“Well, what if father doesn’t come back?” Lise was asking.

“Oh, don’t bother about him,” replied Buteau; “he’s too fond of his belly not to come back when he feels hungry.”

Treading as silently as possible, Fouan now glided away, fearing lest he should be seen stealing back like a beaten dog for a bone. He was nearly choked with shame and humilia­tion, and fiercely resolved that he would go away and die in some corner. They should see if he was so fond of his belly! He made his way down the hill again, and then let himself sink upon the trunk of one of the felled elm-trees on the grass in front of Clou’s farriery. His legs could carry him no further, and he lost all hope in the black loneliness of the road. Every one was indoors, and the houses were all so closely shut­tered on account of the bad weather that it seemed as though there were not a living soul in all the neighbourhood. The heavy shower had had the effect of laying the wind, and the rain soon streamed down perpendicularly in ceaseless torrents. The old man felt too weak even to get up and look about for a shed or stack to shelter him. Utterly stupefied by misery and exhaustion he continued to sit perfectly motionless, his stick between his legs, and his bare head washed by the rain. He had resigned himself to his fate. When a man has neither children nor home nor anything, he must tighten his trouser strap and sleep out of doors. Nine o’clock struck, and then ten. The rain came down still more violently, soaking the old man’s bones through and through. Then some lanterns gleamed through the darkness, flitting hastily away; the evening gatherings were breaking up. Fouan started on re­cognising La Grande, who was probably returning from the Delhommes’, where she had been spending the evening for the sake of saving her own candle. Then he got up with a painful effort that made his limbs crack and followed her; but she had entered her house before he could overtake her. When he stood before the closed door, he hesitated and his courage fell. At last, however, he ventured to knock, impelled by his utter wretchedness.

He had come at an unfortunate time, for La Grande was in a frightfully bad temper, the result of an unfortunate affair which had upset her during the previous week. One evening, when she was alone with her grandson Hilarion, it had occurred to her that she might as well employ his strong arms in chop­ping some wood before he went off to sleep; and, as the lad set about the work somewhat languidly, she remained in the wood-house, abusing him. So far, this brutish, distorted fellow, as strong as a bull, had, in his abject fear of his grandmother, allowed her to abuse his brawny muscles without even a glance of rebellion. For some few days past, however, he had been looking rather dangerous, and had begun to quiver beneath the weight of his excessive tasks, flushing hotly with surging blood. To excite him, La Grande unwisely struck him across the back of his neck with her stick. As she did so, he let the cleaver fall, and glared at her. This seeming rebel­lion drove the old woman almost wild, and she rained a shower of blows upon the lad’s flanks and hips. Then Hilarion suddenly rushed at her, and she expected, in fear and trembling, that he was going to strangle her or kick her to death.

But this was not his intention. He had, perforce, practised too much abstinence since the death of Palmyre, and his anger turned into sexual rage. Brute-like, he recognised neither relationship nor age, nothing but her sex, in this old grand­mother of eighty-nine, whose body was as dry as a stick, and who had barely anything of the woman about her. How­ever, she was still strong and vigorous, and able to defend herself, and she scratched and fought, till at last managing to lay hold of the cleaver, she split her grandson’s skull open with a heavy blow. The neighbours ran up on hearing her cries, and she related to them all that had happened. She was all but overcome, she said; little more, and the villain would have succeeded in violating her. Hilarion did not die till the next morning. The magistrate came to make an investigation; then there was the funeral, and all sorts of other worries, from which the old woman had now outwardly recovered, though at heart the ingratitude of the world had deeply wounded her, and she had firmly resolved never to help any member of her family.

Fouan knocked at the door timorously, and it was not till he had done so a third time that La Grande heard him. Then coming to the door, she asked:

“Who’s there?”

“It’s I.”

“Who’s that?”

“I, your brother!”

She had, doubtless, recognised his voice at once, but she delayed matters, and questioned him just for the sake of making him speak. After a pause, she asked him again:

“What do you want?”

The old man trembled, but made no reply. Then La Grande roughly threw the door open; and as the old man was about to enter, she barred the way with her scrany arms, and forced him to remain outside in the pouring rain which was still relentlessly streaming down.

“I know very well what you want,” she exclaimed. “I heard all about you to-night. You have been idiot enough to let them strip you again; you haven’t even had wit enough to keep the money you had hidden away! And now you want me to take you in, eh?”

Then, seeing the old man trying to excuse himself, and stammering explanations, she burst out violently:

“Didn’t I warn you over and over again? Times and times I told you what a fool you were making of yourself by giving up your land! But now you are finding out the truth of my words, turned out of doors by those scamps your children, and wandering about in the night like a tramp, like a beggar that hasn’t even got a stone to lay his head upon!”

Stretching out his hands he burst into tears, and tried to push La Grande’s arms aside, and force his way into the house, despite her. But she firmly held her ground, and finished saying what she had upon her mind.

“No, no, indeed! Go and beg a shelter from those who have stripped you! I owe you nothing! The rest of the family would only accuse me of interfering in their affairs again. But apart from all that, you have given up your property, and I will never forgive you for it!”

Then, bracing herself up and exposing her withered neck, she glared fiercely at him with her round, hawk-like eyes, and slammed the door violently in his face.

“It serves you right — go and die on the road.”

Fouan remained standing stiffly outside the pitiless door. The rain was still streaming down with monotonous persistence. Presently he turned away and stepped once more into the inky darkness which the slow, icy downpour from the heavens was flooding.

Where did he go? He could never quite recollect. His feet stumbled in the puddles, and he groped about with his hands to avoid running against the trees and walls. He no longer reflected, he no longer recognised anything: this little village, every stone of which he knew so well, seemed like some unknown and far-off terrible spot, where he was a stranger, lost, unable to find his way. He turned to the left, but, fearing lest he should fall into some hole or other, he turned round again to the right; then he stopped alto­gether, trembling all over, finding danger at every turn. Presently he discovered a railing, and he followed it till it brought him to a little door, which opened at his touch. Then the ground seemed to slip away beneath his feet, and he rolled down into some sort of a hole. Here, at any rate, he felt more comfortable, for he was sheltered from the rain and the place was warm. A grunt soon warned him, however, that he had a pig for a neighbour, and the disturbed animal, thinking that some food had arrived, was already poking its snout into his ribs. Fouan began to struggle with it, but he felt so weak that he made all haste to escape, for fear he might be devoured. Still he could go no further, and he let himself drop down outside the door, huddling himself up closely against it so that the projecting roof might shelter him from the rain. Heavy drops, however, still continued to soak his legs, and icy gusts of wind seemed to freeze his saturated clothes to his body. He envied the pig, and would have re­turned to it, if he had not heard it gnawing at the door be­hind his back and snorting ravenously.

In the early dawn Fouan awoke from the painful somno­lence into which he had sunk. A feeling of shame again took possession of him, as he told himself that his story must be the common talk of the neighbourhood, and that every one knew he was a pauper tramping the roads. A man stripped of everything could not hope for either justice or pity. He kept himself well under the hedges as he walked along, in the constant fear of seeing some window open and being recognised by some early-rising woman in his miserable condition as a poor old outcast. The rain was still falling, and when he reached the plain he concealed himself in a rick. He spent the whole day in gliding from one place of concealment to another, in such a state of alarm, indeed, that, when he had lain in any one hiding-place for a couple of hours, he felt sure that he was about to be discovered, and crept out and concealed himself somewhere else. The one thought that now racked his brain was whether it would take him a long time to die in this way. He was now not suffering so much from cold, but he was tortured with hunger, and he said to himself that it was from hunger that he would die. He might perhaps have to live through another night and another day! Still he did not waver; he would rather stay and perish where he was than return to the Buteaus.

But as the darkness again began to close in, he was seized with an agonising terror at the thought of having to spend another night out in the ceaseless deluge of rain. His bones were be­ginning to shiver with cold again, and an intolerable aching hunger was gnawing at his stomach. When the sky grew black and dark, he felt as though he were being drowned and swept away into the streaming gloom. His mind grew confused and blank, and his feet carried him along mechanically. A purely animal instinct was shaping his course, and thus it happened that, without any conscious intention of doing so, he found himself once more in the kitchen of the Buteaus’ house, the door of which he had opened.

Buteau and Lise were just finishing the remains of the previous day’s cabbage-soup. Upon hearing the door open the husband turned his head and looked at Fouan, who stood in silence, wrapped in the steam from his saturated clothes. For a long time the son thus looked at his father without saying anything. Then he broke out into a snigger:

“Ah, I knew quite well that you’d show you’d got no spirit!”

The old man, standing bolt upright, and seeming as though rooted to the ground, answered not a word.

“Well, all the same, give him some grub, wife, since it’s hunger that has brought him back!”

Lise had already risen and brought a plateful of the soup. Fouan took it and sat down apart from the others on a stool, as though he declined to join his children at table. He began to swallow the soup ravenously, his whole body trembling with the violence of his hunger. Buteau now leisurely finished his meal, and then began to sway about on his chair, making darts with his knife at scraps of cheese, and then putting them into his mouth. He was watching the old man’s ravenous appetite with interest, and followed the movements of his spoon with a mocking leer.

“Your walk in the fresh air seems to have given you a rare appetite,” said he. “But you mustn’t take these strolls every day, you know; it would come in much too expensive!”

The old man still went on gulping down the soup, with a hoarse sound in his throat as he swallowed it; however, he did not say a word.

“A nice old gentleman you are, to stay out all night in this way,” his son continued. “You’ve been after the girls, I bet; and it’s they who’ve emptied you so, eh?”

Still there came no reply. Fouan persisted in his dogged silence, making no sound except such as resulted from his greedy gulping.

“Don’t you hear that I’m talking to you?” Buteau at last shouted in irritation. “You might at any rate have the polite­ness to answer me?” .

Fouan, however, still kept his blank gaze fixed on the soup. It seemed as though he neither heard nor saw, but was miles away in his isolation. It was as if he wished to imply that he had merely returned to eat, and that, although his belly was in the kitchen, his heart was there no longer. He now energetically began to scrape the bottom of his plate with his spoon, so as to lose nothing of the soup.