At the time when I was in Claquebue, Jules Haudouin had a bull named Etendard (all the subsequent Haudouin bulls bore the same name) who won prizes at cattle shows. From my post of observation between Jules Grevy and Gambetta I often had occasion to admire him, sometimes in the performance of his duties. The sight of any moving object or bright colour so enraged him that he had to be securely tied to prevent him charging. When he was in his eighth year, old Haudouin decided to fatten him for the butcher, and Ferdinand came especially from Saint-Alargelon to geld him. A week later I watched him pass by the dining-room window. Poor Etendard! He might have been a mock bull in a carnival! The children scampered under his nose, the dog ran between his feet, and you might have flapped a red rag at him till you grew tired without causing him to pause in his placid chewing of the cud. He had lost his political opinions!
I have referred to the Durs, the Berthiers and Etendard merely in order to make myself clear on the subject of the Haudouins and the Malorets. Until 1870 no matter for dispute had ever arisen between the families. They had never had occasion to quarrel over a field or a woman. When they met they spoke to one another civilly and even amiably. The hatred between them was confined within the walls of their respective houses, where each individual felt closer to their common usage in love, the family consciousness. There were evenings, the Haudouins being gathered together in their kitchen, when the mere name of Maloret, casually spoken, gave rise to the sense of a marauding threat proceeding from the enemy’s dwelling:
the flesh was troubled as though bv the expectation of an insidious embrace, repugnant vet a little hoped-for. This feeling, brief and evanescent though it was, gave rise to confused and disturbing images. The Haudouins pictured certain attitudes, not in terms of individuals — Zephe or N oel or Ana'is — but of the Maloret familv as a whole, visions extending bevond evervdav realitv. When Honore said of the.Malorets that the\r were a queer lot he could not have given precise reasons for the mistrust which his words implied, but thev touched a chord in every member of his household.
One of the things which had caused Honore to stay away from Mass — it also disturbed his wife and children — was the presence of the Malorets in church. They made for the Communion table like people pushing their way into a circus, alwavs the first to rise from their pew, a solid block, a familv. Thev were alwavs first at the altar rails, getting ahead of evervone else, and when thev returned to their places it was with an air of having taken possession of God, of having him so to speak locked in their stomachs and committed to the condonation of their private indulgences. To the Haudouins this was very apparent, and Honore was doing no more than express the family feeling when, in terms of high-flown pleasantry, he described how Zephe had deflowered his daughter, Marguerite, first sending his wife off with a chicken for the cure, then waiting while the weeping girl finished her prayers, and finally joining her in the Lord's Prayer while he removed his breeches. The fiction exactly fitted the Haudouins’ conception of the two-faced brazenness of the Malorets. who seemingly did not indulge in even the most lamentable depravities except with God's express consent. Even Ferdinand, who was not a member of Honore’s household and could not hear the ribald tale without blushing and protesting, derived from it a certain satisfaction.
Until 1870, then, the two families had had no more than obscure, passing intimations of the particular nature of the hatred that divided them. Zephe was the first to know the truth, on that day when he encountered the German patrol. The body of men marching four-square towards him to the rhythmic tread of jack-boots had impressed him with its virile strength. His head filled with the tales of rape and pillage that were circulating in the district, he thought of the Haudouins’ house, where the two sharpshooters had just taken refuge: and it seemed to him weak and vulnerable as a woman tormented by an honourable lie, a predestined victim of the male. He was overtaken by a sudden and violent impulse to let these men loose upon the house, to delegate to them his desire to humiliate the Haudouins in their very flesh. He certainly did not desire Honore’s death, and given time for reflection would not have betrayed him. The words had escaped his lips before he could hold them back.
Honore had been deeply afflicted by his mother’s shame, and still more by the fact that he had been a witness of it. But he did not regard the event itself as a catastrophe, or consider her disgraced, even when due allowance had been made for the pleasure the encounter afforded her. He might have thrust the whole matter out of his mind, classing it among the vicissitudes of war, had not Zephe’s treachery been at the bottom of it. For in this he made no mistake. Monstrous though the idea might seem, he had never doubted that the betrayal had been prompted by the thought of sexual violence and had had no other purpose. Without being able to put it into words, he was convinced that the Maloret family had violated his mother by proxy.
The victim was the only one to carry the story to the confessional. Zephe had seen no reason to do so, observing that he had done nothing except tell the Bavarian the truth, which must be accounted to his credit, and was guiltless even of a pious lie or one of omission. The cure, sufficiently informed by old Mme. Haudouin, was not ignorant of the silent hatred existing between the families, which threatened to explode in open conflict and perhaps in scandal. Although he had given the matter much thought he had been unable, to his annoyance, to find any pretext for warning or intervention. He could only hope for the triumph of the Malorets, who belonged to the category of trouble-free Catholics, and invoke God’s blessing on their behalf.
Fourteen
By half-past twelve Anai's Maloret and her daughter were already clearing the table. Tintin was gazing enviously at his father and brother who, stripped to the waist, were shaving, one on either side of the window. Ana'is had laid out two clean shirts in the bed in a corner of the kitchen. Zephe put down his shaving-brush on the window-ledge, looked at his daughter and said:
“We ought to buy a horse.”
Marguerite was describing the Haudouins’ dining-room to her mother in a low voice. Zephe persisted:
“If I could spare the money I’d certainly buy a horse.” Marguerite pretended not to hear. Zephe developed his line of thought, introducing another matter already discussed in the family.
“It’s the same with the postman’s job. He ought to be told how things are. Deodar’s old enough to retire, and Noel could do that job as well as anyone.”
“But I’ve already told you I’m going to talk to him about it,” said Marguerite with a slight irritation.
“It’s no use just talking, the thing is to get it settled. It’s the same with the horse. .
“You don’t mean you really expect him to buy you a horse?”
Shocked by this blunt way of putting it, Zephe made no reply but stood stropping his razor on the flat of his hand. The thought that his daughter would have the Deputy at her disposal for a whole afternoon had put him in a fever of excitement. After allowing a suitable pause he went on:
“Just the same, there are things you’ve got to realise.
We’ve had extra expenses with you being here, and-”
“I’m paying you plenty.”
“I’m not saying you aren’t. But there are expenses just the same. It upsets the household, and we eat different kinds of food, and we don’t get so much work done — it all costs money. And then you’ve got to remember that you owe your upbringing to us. . These things can be settled in no time if you go about it the right way. I said a horse, and I might have said a cow or anything else — but if it’s a horse you’ll gain by it as much as we shall. . ” He drew the razor down his left cheek. Noel, on his side of the window, was at work on his right cheek. AnaTs gazed unhappily at her daughter, grieved by this rapacity. She would have liked to intervene in defence of a love-affair which she thought of as splendid and romantic, but the mere sound of the razors on male cheeks awed her into silence. Before starting on his right cheek Zephe went on: “And you might as well ask about a tobacco-stall, too, while you’re at it. I’ve as good a right to one as most people, I’ve three children and I might have more. I’ve lost my father, and I’ve one son nearly grown up. It’s all a matter of putting it in the right way. Those who don’t ask don’t get. Or there might be something better than a tobacconist’s — that’s what you’ve got to try and find out.”