Adelaide reminded him that wine was at seven sous the litre and that the barrel must be made to last until the harvest. She added that men were all the same. They thought of nothing but their throats.
Withdrawn in a patient silence, Honore cut a piece off the stale loaf; then he went and sat on the window-ledge and began to chew an onion. His wife asked more gently: “Is there still a lot to dor”
“Not a terrible lot. I shall be finished by seven. I must sav, I chose the right moment for cutting. The ears are full and the stalks are still tender. The corn almost cuts itself, and soft as a girl’s hair.”
Silence again fell between them, and Honore thought as he gnawed his bread, “It almost cuts itself. . and yet you wonder if it’s worth cutting, the price it fetches. . ” But then he reflected that corn was always worth the cutting, since one ate it, and that however low the price at which he sold his surplus, it still represented a profit. The long hours under the sun did not count when there was pleasure in the toil. He had only to recall the first year of his marriage, when he had worked fourteen hours a day for twenty-five sous, to feel that things now could scarcely be better. His meditations lapsed into indolence, a state of contented lethargy in the diminished life of the room sheltered from sun and labour, in which there was no sound other than that of a wasp searching for a way back into the daylight, and the soft splash of the wet cloth which Adelaide was wringing out over her bucket of dirty water.
Seated between the two wings of the open window with his back against the shutters, Honore ate slowly to postpone the moment of departure. With eyes grown accustomed to the darkness he could now distinguish the huddled form of Adelaide at the far end of the kitchen. She was kneeling on the floor with her back to him, her raised posterior hiding her head, which was bowed down between her shoulders. An ample black under-skirt, narrowing at the calves, conferred upon this rear view dimensions which rather surprised Honore, since he seemed to be discovering in his wife an abundance he had not hitherto suspected, her skinniness having often caused him regret.
The under-skirt moved slowly, its vague undulations merging into the dense shadow at that end of the kitchen, and Honore watched it with attention, seeking to define more precisely an outline withheld from him by the darkness. He was stirred as though by a strange presence, an unhoped-for substitution. Adelaide had once again taken up her scrubbing-brush, and as she reached forward with her arms her posterior sank and was diminished, to increase once more in volume as with an ample and rapid movement she drew back, rounding it over her heels. Honore could not get over it. Now leaning forward, he followed the movements of the under-skirt as it advanced and retreated into the shadows. He heard the murmurs of summer beyond the shutters, and the questing wasp filled his ears with its urgent song. The cool kitchen, in which the dim light spread its mysteries, was like an ante-room, and its least sound pricked his flesh. He felt a little as he might have done at No. 17, Rue des Oiseaux, in Saint-Margelon, where he had been in the habit of going two or three times a year in his horse-trading days, and where a bevy of scented girls with pink bosoms and lavish thighs had offered themselves for his delight. There had been a tall one, he remembered, particularly well-rounded, whose behind the hussars had been much given to slapping. Honore saw her clearly, as though her image had been projected into the kitchen; then it gave way to another picture, that of a woman of Claquebue. He left the window, guided by the swish of the hard brush whose movements synchronised with the dance of the under-skirt. An unaccustomed shyness made him awkward. At first his hands grasped nothing but cloth.
Adelaide turned in surprise to look at him, her thin, tired face brightening into a smile. And he seemed even more surprised, as though taken aback by the sight of that familiar face. He murmured a few stumbling words to which she replied with fondness. Embarrassed, he still hesitated, then clasped her with both hands, to perceive at once that the appearance had led him astray, and that beneath the folds of material was only meagreness. So he drew back, retreating towards the window; and shrugging his shoulders, he muttered under his breath, but not so low that she could not catch the words:
“One somehow gets ideas. .”
Adelaide, no less disappointed, would not at first accept defeat and sought to restore the illusion that had melted beneath her husband’s hands. The dance of the under-skirt was resumed with calculated flurries and pauses; but Honore, now merely irritated by it, turned and partly opened the shutters. A band of light sprang across the kitchen, casting a splash of gold over the folds of black material; and at the sight of it he laughed and closed the shutters again. His wife, deeply mortified, asked sharply: “What were you up to just now? What did you want?” “That’s what I’m wondering,” he said, with a slight exasperation in his voice.
“Oh, so you’re wondering!”
“No, I’m not. I don’t want anything.”
“Well, I can tell you-”
“No, don’t. I haven’t time to listen.”
“I know what you want. You want women!”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“Easy women — fat ones — that’s what you want, isn’t it?” She had taken him by the shoulders. He shook himself free and said impatiently:
“Why fat ones? One can do very well-”
“But vou’d prefer a far one! You’ve just proved it!” “Get along with you, you and your proofs! It’s just that I believe in doing tilings at the proper time. It’s only the rich who make love in the middle of the day.”
“I haven’t been as lucky as a lot of women.”
“You’re always grumbling.”
“It’s not so hard to be round and soft if your husband’s a vet earning enough money so you don’t have to work and you can haye all the clothes you want.”
“That wouldn’t make you beautiful,” said Honore.
“Even if you wore nothing but silk-”
“Silk!” exclaimed Adelaide. “There’s not much risk of that! W ith a man who couldn’t stay in business as a horse-dealer or even keep the house his father left him, there wouldn’t be much sense in me thinking about silk. If your brother turned us out of this house there’d be nothing for us to do except go and die in a ditch.”
“As good as dying in a bed, if the weather’s fine.” “Oh, I know you wouldn’t care, provided I went first!” “What!”
“You’re just waiting for it to happen!”
“I’ll black your eye if you don’t look out, and then I’ll give you a crack on the jaw that’ll stop you talking!”
“Honore, you’ve got to tell me-”
“Stop pawing me about!”
“\Tour sister-in-law — you’ve got to tell me—”
Honore wished to hear no more. Calling his wife an old cow he stamped out, slamming the door and overlooking the fact that he was bare-headed beneath the sun. Adelaide stood distractedly in the kitchen, then noticed his hat lying on the table and ran after him with it.
“Honore, you forgot your hat! Fancy going out in this heat without a hat!”
Her voice, breathless with running, had a note of anxious affection.
“It’s true,” said Honore, stopping. “I forgot my hat.” “You didn’t think of it, did you? Y'ou quite forgot.”
He looked at her face, already that of an ageing woman, bony and wrinkled, the colourless lips which emotion had caused to tremble a little, the dark eyes in which tears gleamed. Moved to tenderness and overtaken bv remorse, he looked too at the black under-skirt with its sober folds, that for a moment had caused to spring up in the darkness of the kitchen a vision for which the regret still lingered in his flesh.
“One puts one’s hat down,” he said gentlv, “and then one forgets it.”