He and Mrs. Taneran had had another son, Henry, for whom he felt a great deal of concealed tenderness, although Taneran quickly had to get used to the idea that his feelings were not at all reciprocated. Thus, to all appearances, Taneran lived a very solitary life.
On entering the apartment, he, too, understood that something unusual was going on and approached his stepdaughter in the hope that she would fill him in. “If you want, I’ll serve you dinner right away,” was all Maud felt like saying. At that moment, Mrs. Taneran called out in a weak, husky voice, “Maud, serve dinner to your father—it’s ready.”
The young woman hurried to unroll a wax tablecloth, set a place, and enter the kitchen. Her mother had finally turned on the light and was reading the newspaper. Without raising her head, Mrs. Taneran repeated in a gloomy tone, “Everything’s ready. You can eat with your father, and if your brother Henry comes back, you can serve him, too.” Maud did not acknowledge that her brother certainly would not come home that night.
Dinner was quick. Taneran wanted nothing more than to retire to his room. Nevertheless, he asked Maud in a low voice, “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Maud nodded, and he added, “Fundamentally, you know, I don’t feel any ill will toward him. It’s very unfortunate.” He was masticating his food, and in the silence of the apartment it made a bizarre, irritating noise. Before going out he turned and said, “I don’t want to disturb your mother. Please say good night to her for me.”
His bedroom and the dining room shared an adjoining wall. Maud could hear him walking in his room for a long time. Under his feet the bare floor made a gentle creaking and cracking noise.
Maud felt at peace. For too long trouble had been brewing, that is, ever since Jacques and his wife had begun to be short of money.
As far back as she could remember, Jacques had been in financial difficulty, except for the first few months of his marriage. He was always in need of cash. This was by far the most important thing in his life. He existed in the center of a whirlwind, his head spinning over money.
Whenever he had any, he became another man. He possessed such an acute sense of his own inanity that he spent recklessly, throwing money out the window, deluding himself by using up funds in a few days that could have lasted a month. He smartened up his wardrobe, invited all his friends, and, with the magnificent disdain that his temporary opulence allowed him, didn’t appear at home for a whole week, avoiding this family who knew how to stretch out money so shamefully, so miserably, like others who hold back on using their full strength or enjoying pleasure, or like a dutiful servant who spares his masters any grief.
When he no longer had anything left but a few bills and some change in his pant pockets, he bitterly measured his slim possibilities. He would set out on the hunt, trying to pawn off a friend’s old jalopy, and, not succeeding, would turn to gambling, going flat broke right away. Finally, worn-out and unapproachable, he would put himself into the hands of the members of the gang that had followed the same leads as he had for years and knew all the rackets. (Perhaps they were the only ones who felt any sympathy for him, although he detested them because they had seen him in the most shameful moments of his life.)
His wife’s money had disappeared as fast as the profits from his shady affairs. For several months, the couple had led what one would call a futile life, because it made no sense, but which, in reality, is very difficult to live: an idle and perfectly egotistical life, even though it appears generous, which consists of an uninterrupted series of moments of pleasure and respite, a continuous exorcism of boredom.
Muriel, who had entrusted her fortune to her husband, always remained ignorant of the ways in which he used it. She “detested expense accounts and never bothered with them.” Jacques was soon rushing around like a madman, trying to cover expenses he had allowed himself to incur.
Soon he began to beg. The little his family could give him had become appreciable of late. “I know you can’t give me much, but do what you can. A hundred-franc bill will be enough. I just need to hang on.”
“I thought your wife was rich,” countered his mother. “Don’t you think I have enough expenses already?”
He didn’t answer so as not to spoil things, guessing that his difficulties were on the rise. And indeed, Mrs. Taneran had let go of less and less money, at the same time that her son’s needs continued to grow. This money, obtained through promises and pleas, represented more and more of the essentials for Murieclass="underline" stockings (“she has nothing left to wear”), the rent, or money needed to redeem a piece of jewelry, part of her “family heirlooms,” from the pawn shop. In the end, he stopped coming up with reasons to justify his demands. They had to eat. And again, he found appealing ways of making his requests. “She’s a wonderful cook, poor dear. If only you could taste her cooking. You’ll come, won’t you, Mother, when we have a bit more money?”
“What about me? Don’t I know how to cook? You’re saying you didn’t like my cooking? Go on, say so…” Mrs. Taneran detested him because love contains the dregs of hatred. In the end, she wasn’t unhappy with his romantic misfortune.
It didn’t take long for him to start playing highly emotional scenes. Stretched out as if he were sick, he would wait for someone to come and ask him what was wrong. “Nothing—it’s nothing. But I won’t go back home tonight without a thing. She’s no doubt waiting for me, but I prefer not to see her again, to disappear.” The gang he had left a few months earlier had let him down. And so, acting on a supreme sense of family solidarity, his sister, brother, and stepfather all dug down to the bottom of their purses or pockets—all of them—Maud, Henry, and even Taneran. They gave him, secretly, twenty, thirty, or fifty francs, with a feverish joy. He took pleasure, however, in vexing them. “Mother went along with it?”
“No, she doesn’t want to hear any more about it.”
Unshakeable as well as astute, Mrs. Taneran had thus guided her ship and governed her son’s destiny. Soon loathing his own home with Muriel, he had come back for dinner more and more often. His mother never gave him too much money at once, so that he didn’t have the impression he could control her, but always just enough for him to have the essentials and so that he would return.
Suddenly, however, he disappeared for a couple of weeks. They thought he had succeeded in some business deal. And it was shortly afterward that the saga of the mail with the letterhead from the Tavares Bank had begun. The letters came regularly, every four weeks. Although leaving him indifferent in the beginning, while he still had money, they soon threw him into a terrible state.
Someone who has never experienced the feeling of being at the mercy of creditors cannot imagine the deadly aversion these greedy people inspired in him. The whole family suffered with Jacques when they saw the statements arriving from the Tavares Bank. Normally Jacques received his mail at his wife’s place, but this mail he had addressed to his mother’s. “Have a look on the buffet. There’s a letter for you. I think it’s the request for payment from Tavares.”
He would bury it in his pocket, crumpling it and seemingly digesting the piece of paper for an hour, literally. He sank into sickening daydreams in which it was easy to guess that Tavares himself had become the victim of a massacre. And then, for a certain time, he stopped coming to get his letters, believing he had thus done away with their existence. But he quickly found himself so destitute that he had to accept coming back.
Right away his mother cornered him. “Can’t you tell me what you’ve done, Jacques? After your father’s death I had to borrow, and I know how tough it is.” The only thing he had deigned to reply was, “It’s a debt with short but frequent due dates; in my situation I could never have paid a big amount all at once.”