Light. Henri Barbusse
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was in the act of peeling invisible potatoes; there are potatoes scattered over the floor, everywhere. My feet kick them and send them rolling heavily among odds and ends of utensils and a soft deposit of garments that are lying about. As soon as I am there my aunt overflows with noisy tears.
Not daring to speak again, I sit down in my usual corner.
Over the bed I can make out a pointed shape, like a mounted picture, silhouetted against the curtains, which slightly blacken the window. It is as though the quilt were lifted from underneath by a stick, for my Aunt Josephine is leanness itself.
Gradually she raises her voice and begins to lament. "You've no feelings, no—you're heartless—that dreadful word you said to me—you said, 'You and your jawing!' Ah! people don't know what I have to put up with—ill-natured—cart-horse!"
In silence I hear the tear-streaming words that fall and founder in the dark room from that obscure blot on the pillow which is her face.
I stand up. I sit down again. I risk saying, "Come now, come; that's all done with."
She cries: "Done with? Ah! it will never be done with!"
With the sheet that night is begriming she muzzles herself, and hides her face. She shakes her head to left and to right, violently, so as to wipe her eyes and signify dissent at the same time.
"Never! A word like that you said to me breaks the heart forever. But I must get up and get you something to eat. You must eat. I brought you up when you were a little one,"—her voice capsizes—"I've given up all for you, and you treat me as if I were an adventuress."
I hear the sound of her skinny feet as she plants them successively on the floor, like two boxes. She is seeking her things, scattered over the bed or slipped to the floor; she is swallowing sobs. Now she is upright, shapeless in the shadow, but from time to time I see her remarkable leanness outlined. She slips on a camisole and a jacket—a spectral vision of garments which unfold themselves about her handle-like arms, and above the hollow framework of her shoulders.
She talks to herself while she dresses, and gradually all my life-history, all my past comes forth from what the poor woman says—my only near relative on earth; as it were my mother and my servant.
She strikes a match. The lamp emerges from the dark and zigzags about the room like a portable fairy. My aunt is enclosed in a strong light. Her eyes are level with her face; she has heavy and spongy eyelids and a big mouth which stirs with ruminated sorrow. Fresh tears increase the dimensions of her eyes, make them sparkle and varnish the points of her cheeks. She comes and goes with undiminished spleen. Her wrinkles form heavy moldings on her face, and the skin of chin and neck is so folded that it looks intestinal, while the crude light tinges it all with something like blood.
Now that the lamp is alight some items become visible of the dismal super-chaos in which we are walled up—the piece of bed-ticking fastened with two nails across the bottom of the window, because of draughts; the marble-topped chest of drawers, with its woolen cover; and the door-lock, stopped with a protruding plug of paper.
The lamp is flaring, and as Mame does not know where to stand it among the litter, she puts it on the floor and crouches to regulate the wick. There rises from the medley of the old lady, vividly variegated with vermilion and night, a jet of black smoke, which returns in parachute form. Mame sighs, but she cannot check her continual talk.
"You, my lad, you who are so genteel when you like, and earn a hundred and eighty francs a month—you're genteel, but you're short of good manners, it's that chiefly I find fault with you about. So you spat on the window-pane; I'm certain of it. May I drop dead if you didn't. And you're nearly twenty-four! And to revenge yourself because I'd found out that you'd spat on the window, you told me to stop my jawing, for that's what you said to me, after all. Ah, vulgar fellow that you are! The factory gentlemen are too kind to you. Your poor father was their best workman. You are more genteel than your poor father, more English; and you preferred to go into business rather than go on learning Latin, and everybody thought you quite right; but for hard work you're not much good—ah, la, la! Confess that you spat on the window.
"For your poor mother," the ghost of Mame goes on, as she crosses the room with a wooden spoon in her hand, "one must say that she had good taste in dress. That's no harm, no; but certainly they must have the wherewithal. She was always a child. I remember she was twenty-six when they carried her away. Ah, how she loved hats! But she had handsome ways, for all that, when she said, 'Come along with us, Josephine!' So I brought you up, I did, and sacrificed everything. … "
Overcome by the mention of the past, Mame's speech and action both cease. She chokes and wags her head and wipes her face with her sleeve.
I risk saying, gently, "Yes, I know it well."
A sigh is my answer. She lights the fire. The coal sends out a cushion of smoke, which expands and rolls up the stove, falls back, and piles its muslin on the floor. Mame manipulates the stove with her feet in the cloudy deposit; and the hazy white hair which escapes from her black cap is also like smoke.
Then she seeks her handkerchief and pats her pockets to get the velvet coal-dust off her fingers. Now, with her back turned, she is moving casseroles about. "Monsieur Crillon's father," she says, "old Dominic, had come from County Cher to settle down here in '66 or '67. He's a sensible man, seeing he's a town councilor. (We must tell him nicely to take his buckets away from our door.) Monsieur Bonéas is very rich, and he speaks so well, in spite of his bad neck. You must show yourself off to all these gentlemen. You're genteel, and you're already getting a hundred and eighty francs a month, and it's vexing that you haven't got some sign to show that you're on the commercial side, and not a workman, when you're going in and out of the factory."
"That can be seen easily enough."
"I'd rather you had a badge."
Breathing damply and forcefully, she sniffs harder and quicker, and looks here and there for her handkerchief; she prowls with the lamp. As my eyes follow her, the room awakens more and more. My groping gaze discovers the tiled floor, the conference of chairs backed side by side against the wall, the motionless pallor of the window in the background above the low and swollen bed, which is like a heap of earth and plaster, the clothes lying on the floor like mole-hills, the protruding edges of tables and shelves, pots, bottles, kettles and hanging clouts, and that lock with the cotton-wool in its ear.
"I like orderliness so much," says Mame as she tacks and worms her way through this accumulation of things, all covered with a downy layer of dust like the corners of pastel pictures.
According to habit, I stretch out my legs and put my feet on the stool, which long use has polished and glorified till it looks new. My face turns this way and that towards the lean phantom of my aunt, and I lull myself with the sounds of her stirring and her endless murmur.
And now, suddenly, she has come near to me. She is wearing her jacket of gray and white stripes which hangs from her acute shoulders, she puts her arm around my neck, and trembles as she says, "You can mount high, you can, with the gifts that you have. Some day, perhaps, you will go and tell men everywhere the truth of things. That has happened. There have been men who were in the right, above everybody. Why shouldn't you be one of them, my lad, you one of these great apostles!"
And with her head gently nodding, and her face still tear-stained, she looks afar, and sees the streets attentive to my eloquence!
* * * * * *
Hardly has this strange imagining in the bosom of our kitchen passed away when Mame adds, with her eyes on mine, "My lad, mind you, never look higher than yourself. You are already something of a home-bird; you have already serious and elderly habits. That's good. Never try to be different from others."
"No danger of that, Mame."
No, there is no danger of that. I should like to remain as I am. Something holds me to the surroundings of my infancy and childhood, and I should like them to be eternal. No doubt I hope for much from life. I hope, I have hopes, as every one has. I do not even know all that I hope for, but I should not like too great