The Haudouins averaged five feet eight inches, had dark chestnut hair, grey eyes, strong-featured faces, slender but muscular limbs and high insteps. Though their manner in general was inclined to melancholy, they were at times overtaken by great gusts of laughter which kept them quivering for a week on end. They liked work, stewed meat, deep draughts of wine and row'dy conversation. They yielded readily to the temptations of the flesh but their hearts were warm and generous.
The Malorets had small feet and were thick-set and sallow-faced, with black hair. They loved money but had no love of work. By nature austere, they disdained good food and wine. They had one smile for the light of every day and another for its darkness. Incapable of great outbursts of anger, they lived in a constant state of cold rage which they maintained at a useful pressure. Their hatred for the Haudouins occupied their last minutes before sleeping, causing them to lie with clenched teeth, their flesh in readiness.
In short neither of the two households, while thev possessed physical attributes, tastes and habits in sharp contrast one to the other, could be said to possess a specific sexual aspect. I finally concluded that in this sense they were sexless. It was a daring assumption, but one which explained the long accumulation of sensual desire in each house. The household hoarded its desire, having no means of consummating it. Nor had it any vital need of sex, since the family, barring accidents, was a permanent entity which did not reproduce itself, delegating this function to the individuals of which it was composed.
It was pleasing to me to reflect that in Claquebue physical love was something more than a snare set for the preservation of the race, and that it existed in its own right, without needing any pretext. It is the pride of my mare’s existence, frustrate, two-dimensional creature that I am, that I should have made this rich discovery. The village appeared to me as a sort of magnetic field in which the individual, in so far as he was susceptible to its mysterious energising forces, absorbed them at his own rate, those possessing sexual means expending them as rapidly as they were charged, while the rest accumulated reserves. When the family had reached its erotic saturation-point it made use of its individual males or females to procure a release of tension. The Haudouin family, after considerable wavering as between male and female, had at length settled this matter.
I think I have now said all I need say regarding the attitude to love of the Haudouins. Much might certainly be added, but I am restrained from entering into greater detail by my regard for decency and my desire to offend no one. For I have no purpose, in recording this modest fruit of my observations, except to serve the cause of good. Novelists are frivolous people: they tell tales and leave morals to look after themselves. I say it without undue pride: it is a fortunate circumstance that a Green Mare should have been present to point in a sturdy and straightforward fashion the moral of this tale, namely that there can be no enduring love, rooted in true happiness, except within the family.
Sixteen
After attending Mass the Durs (or the Berthiers or the Corenpots) were accustomed to visit the graves of the Durs who had passed over in order to ensure their benevolence, and to give themselves an appetite for lunch. As they left the cemetery they would wriggle their shoulders in their Sunday clothes, glad to be alive and eager for food to fill the uncomfortable void which fear had created in their bellies. And they would be a little angry with the Durs who were dead. Since they were dead, they had no need to call themselves Dur (or Berthier or Corenpot). When one went to visit them one no longer knew oneself. Durs above and Durs below, it was all one family, and at moments one was not too sure which was above. Such moments were not agreeable: one had a feeling of being more committed as to the future than even by the cure's sermons. The cure was also frightening with his warnings of lean kine and scanty fortune for the evil-doers, those guilty of too much ardour in bed with their wives, or who neglected their duty to their neighbour or to the Church. But when he spoke of death his sermons were not frightening: they were all about souls, and that was all right. Indeed, in a sense it was quite pleasant. Listening to him, one could not envisage one’s own personal end; one just kept going for ever.
But it was not like that with the Durs below the ground. There were four or five of them laid out side by side in all weathers, summer and winter, and there was always one to complain, “I have no one on my right!” or “no one on my left”; or there might be one separated from the others, alone in the middle of the cemetery or in a corner, who grumbled, “I’m all alone — all alone. . This was displeasing to the Durs above, especially the old ones. They dared not say or think anything to cross them, lest they should irritate them still more. They wagged their heads and said mildly, but without any undue display of haste:
“It comes to each of us in his turn. . We shall take our places when the time comes, with the family. . And you needn’t think it’s always fine weather with us either. . ”
But when they had left the cemetery behind they thrust their chins out of their collars saying that they were in no hurry to go and join those others, and that they felt full of life and filled with the desire to stay alive. They resolved to hang on tooth and nail to the surface of the plain, let those rotting below think what they liked of it, and above all to eat well, by God, and drink their fill. So long as they could drink the health of the Durs who had passed on, they were still Durs on the right side. Look to your appetite, and God bless the departed!
That morning after Mass, Adelaide stood by the graves of the Haudouins with her four children, her sister-in-law and her sister-in-law’s three children. Spread over the paths of the cemetery the Durs, the Berthiers, the Corenpots, the Messelons, the Rousseliers and all the Christians in the parish had come to pay their respects to their relatives down below. Bent over the graves they plucked away a blade of grass or a plantain, stirred the surface of the soil with their fingers as though to soothe the dead, like running a hand through their hair: small attentions costing nothing, and which helped them to be patient. But on this Sundav there was no doing anything with the dead. Never had they been more restless or more peevish. At first the living had put it down to the heat and had murmured to them that they must try to bear it and that soon there would be rain. But those below had merely complained more loudlv, growing increasingly agitated until they broke out into a great clamour, abusing the living, exchanging insults among themselves, swearing by the Evil
One and by the Cross, restless, dangerous, malignant as caged beasts. The husband of Leonie Bardon, buried that spring, cried out that he had had enough of lying alongside his brother, Maxime; he wanted Leonie to come and lie between them, and he tried to wish a fever on her so that she might die. There was also an old man crying for his oxen. .
“Let them come and blow a little warmth into my hands — just once!. .”
“How much longer is it going to be before you come and lie here? How many more Sundays are you going to put it off?. .”
“He’s the one who stole forty sous from me in seventy-seven!”
“In seventy-seven. .”
“My oxen!”
“Would it inconvenience you so much to come a little earlier?”
“Some fresh dead are what we want!”
“Thief!”
“We were three girls going to the woods. .”