The front door slammed. He heard Cyrille’s voice and got dressed. Claude curled up under the sheets. He went downstairs.
‘Where’s Maman?’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘We didn’t see Blaise Pascal but we saw his house. It’s not nice.’
Jean realised that Laura was in the room, dressed and with a travelling bag standing ready by the door.
‘Where are you goin’?’ Jesús said.
‘To Paris, to ask for leave to see my parents in Germany.’
Jesús looked helpless at the idea of having to live without her.
‘Will you come back?’
‘Of course. My life is here now, nowhere else.’
Jean was struck by her choice of words, at odds with her forced smile.
‘Are you going away?’ Cyrille said. ‘That’s sad. Then I’ll stay with Jesús and make him feel better.’
Laura crouched down and held out her arms. The child ran to her. She raised her eyes, filled with tears, to Jesús.
‘A little boy is so sweet!’ she said.
Jesús did not answer. He had abandoned many sententious ideas about women but he still stuck to a number of firm resolutions about fatherhood, or at least was unwilling to admit that a crack was starting to show.
‘I’m goin’ with you to Zif. I’ll walk back. I need the exercise.’
‘You’ve just had some with me,’ Cyrille observed.
‘No’ enough! Cheeky boy!’
‘No, stay!’ Laura said. ‘It’s better to say goodbye here.’
She kissed Cyrille, then Jesús, and went out, her travelling bag in her hand. They heard the car’s engine as it came out of the barn and turned down the rough track. Jesús poured himself a large glass of cognac which he drank in quick mouthfuls, facing the fire. Simply and without boasting he explained to Jean that until meeting Laura he had led a marvellous life. Nothing touched him; everything was like water off a duck’s back. But she had skinned him, and now he felt everything with an almost painful acuteness. He had learnt the anxiety of waiting, the sadness of going away, and on the nights he was alone, it grieved him not to make love. Everywhere she left signs for him, those small signs of care a woman lavishes on the man she loves. How do these things happen? he demanded. Who was trying to get at him through Laura, who wanted to destroy his artistic solitude? His voice broke.
‘Jesús,’ Jean said, ‘you’re talking nonsense. You’re drowning in words. Be careful or you’ll start to believe it … And I know you won’t believe it, but you’re going to listen to me tell you again that Laura has demolished your fixed ideas in order to uncover the artist you really are. Since she came into your life you’ve been painting for yourself, you’ve shown La Garenne the door, and you’ve started signing your pictures Jesús Infante, which is an exceptionally fine name for a painter. It makes me happy, Jesús, that you’re unhappy when Laura goes away. It’s good for you! In the past you were mostly getting away with a generous tip and a kick up the backside. You shoved all those girls unceremoniously out of the way to make space for Laura.’
‘You think so?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘An’ who decided all that?’
‘That’s the big question.’
Cyrille had gone upstairs to see his mother. He was coming back. Halfway down the stairs he called to Jean.
‘Yes.’
‘You have to come upstairs, Maman’s crying.’
Jesús looked reproachfully at Jean. Claude was crying and someone or something was behind it, even if one accepted the notion that women easily became sad. The Spaniard shrugged. Jean met Cyrille on the stairs.
‘Leave me with your maman. I can cheer her up better if I’m on my own.’
Cyrille for once obeyed without protest.
Her head buried in a pillow, Claude was sobbing. Jean covered her bare shoulders and moved his hand towards her neck, which cried out its innocence, almost a child’s neck attached to a lovely woman’s body. He told himself that a man could fall in love with Claude just by glimpsing that soft space of downy skin under her hair. A vulnerability was hidden there, but it was also the secret of her graceful way of carrying her head. For the first time he felt its tension, contracted by fear, by a quivering terror that only subsided when he placed his lips at the hairline of her ash-blond hair. She turned over and sat up in bed, her cheeks shining with tears, with such a sudden intent in her eyes that he was afraid in turn and stepped back.
‘I’m getting up,’ she said. ‘I’ll get dressed and go down. Tell them to wait!’
He held her by the shoulders and shook her.
‘No. I’m here.’
She smiled and did not stop him when he bent forward to kiss her unfeeling lips.
‘Jean, are you certain that Lieutenant Bruckett’s dead? Over there. In Russia. That he’ll never rise up from the snow and curse us with his frozen arm? You have to tell Laura it wasn’t me who killed him.’
‘No, no, it wasn’t you.’
‘The Russians kill all lieutenants. Cyrille’s never going to be a lieutenant. Promise me.’
‘I promise you.’
His heart aching with a deep and terrible anxiety, Jean released her shoulders.
‘Darling, get dressed. It’s cold.’
‘You know they held me down in a freezing bath?’
He hugged her tightly to stop her seeing his own tears and begged her, ‘Wake up!’
‘But I am awake!’
She pushed him away and made a pout of reproach as though he did not understand her.
‘Oh Jean, Jean, don’t leave me, I love you, I love you …’
She laughed through more tears, tears of happiness now, like a lover choking with joy at the beloved’s return. Night was filling the sloping-roofed room, but neither thought of lighting a lamp.
‘Where’s Cyrille?’ she asked.
‘Downstairs with Jesús. Perhaps we should join them.’
He picked up Claude’s underwear from the floor, her corduroy trousers and the sweater she had worn at lunch. She ignored her underwear.
‘Aren’t you putting anything on underneath?’ he asked.
‘No, it’s nicer being like this.’
They went downstairs. Jesús was drawing on a big piece of paper. Cyrille, sitting on the table, was watching him.
‘Maman,’ he called, ‘Jesús is doing the man in the woods for me, the way Jean saw him this morning. You’re not crying any more?’
‘No, my darling. You can see I’m not.’
‘Then why were you crying?’
‘I can’t remember.’
He lost interest in the question and leant over towards Jesús.
‘Is Laura still in her room?’ she asked.
‘Laura’s gone to see her parents.’
Claude threw two logs on the fire and slumped into an armchair. Jean opened a book he had borrowed from Nelly’s shelves. Where else? The people he spent time with didn’t read. Even Claude possessed only Russian authors she hadn’t opened for a long time. Palfy was happy with his newspapers and Madame Michette devoured spy novels. Only Madeleine was deep into Proust, but she hired her Proust from a reading room, the idea of buying a book having never occurred to her and Blanche de Rocroy not being the type to suggest it to her. He opened the book Nelly had lent him and heard her cheeky, husky voice.
‘You want a book, Jules-who? Why? You won’t read. You don’t read when you’re in love. Take this anthology. You can recite some poems to yourself and try to hear my voice. If a poet bores you, try another one, then another one, till you’ve found the one who talks to you best about yourself. Then you’ll be much happier than with a big fat novel about an illicit love affair between a man on the night shift and a woman on the day shift …’
It was a thick volume in a sandy-coloured binding that called itself an anthology of new French poetry. He opened it at random.