Meanwhile three times a week, on Thursdays, Saturdays, and Tuesdays, Madeleine continued her lessons with Lezo. There was such a change in Lezo since I had seen him in Pau. Either because he realized the sorrow of Madeleine, for I think he did care for her a great deal, or because Georges had given him a nice talking-to, or possibly just because he had learnt more of life — he had changed considerably!
Later I was to know that one day while I was still in London Georges did not come — he had one of his usual ‘malarial’ fevers that shook him all over and made him take to his bed, an aftermath of some infection caught during his Resistance days— well, Georges had not come, and Madeleine was taking her Pali lessons. As usual, after the work was over Madeleine went into the kitchen to make some fresh, good coffee for Lezo—’Poor man, he’s so lonely — think what it must be like to have so little money and live in a pension’—and when she came back, with a cup in each hand, and entered the drawing room, she saw no Lezo. Before she could know what had happened he had come from the back, having hidden behind the door like a schoolboy, put his hands over her eyes, and tried to bring his hands farther down, when Madeleine, with her Charentaise ire, dashed the cups against his face, and slapped him angrily and kicked him. in the belly.
‘I was a fury — a wild fury,’ she explained. ‘He fell on the floor, and begged me, begged me humbly and simply to forgive him. “Je ne suis qu’une bete sauvage,” he pleaded; “my ancestors were probably Berbers. Forgive me”.’
‘What does one do to such a fool but forgive,’ said Madeleine. ‘And after that, he’s become obedient as a dog. Sometimes I tell him: “Don’t behave like a rat,” and he smiles. Now, Rama, there’s no fear. You could go to Quimper-Corentin, and Lezo would behave like a faithful dog.’
‘What can you expect,’ said Georges one day, ‘he lives with that seamstress.’
‘Does he?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I never told you. But one day he was boasting of his bucolic adventures, bucolic I tell you, like some schoolboy’s; “You are a born puritan! and as they said about somebody: You were born middle-aged and will never grow younger. You, Georges, are made for the Inquisitor and hell-fire,” he said. “I, I am, I, of the warm country of Spain; not one of those Bogoroditza, Bogoroditza crying Slavs, weeping over the sleeves of the Virgin. You should see me with Rose. She’s a seamstress all right, but she’s warm and round and wonderful to mettre dessous”—I quote his words. Humiliation,’ continued Georges, ‘is a terrible thing. When you’ve been a professor of a university, and you have drawn a decent salary, and you are forced to emigrate for some brave speech you made, defending your language, your mother tongue, be it Catalan or Serbe or Malgache, and you have to live on giving lessons, far away from father and mother, sisters and brothers — and far away from your Church…’ said Georges. He became silent for a moment, then continued ‘… what else could happen to you? But Madeleine is having a very good influence on him. Perhaps even Buddhism is good for one!’ he declared, and laughed.
I enjoyed Georges’s new, open laughter. No, Catherine was not going to be just an appendage, she was going to bring some strain of happiness into the sad soul of this Slav. Alyosha Karamazov would still be happy…
So Madeleine continued her Pali, and her own gravity increased, partly because of her maternity, I think — for a woman feels very serious and responsible and even ponderous when she bears a baby inside her — and partly because of her natural sadness. Our lives were now grown more intimate, it seemed, for we spoke less in words and gestures than with silences. She knew something, she knew not what herself. Maybe the elephant had told her, or the bull. He often did tell something, with a peculiar telluric vibration, some sort of telegraph code, which seemed to hum on all the time inside; and the moment you touched him, caressed him and left your hand long enough to feel itself, the chthonic message came through and you knew. The bull gave Madeleine these messages too, as to when my letter would come — for I wrote so seldom — or when her Inspector General would visit her college. And sometimes the bull gave her happy news: for example, that she would have a son — and that was about Pierre — or a daughter — and that was Esclarmonde. And it gave sadder news too, sometimes. It seemed more communicative and friendly, this Nandi, to Madeleine than it ever was to me. But, after all, Nandi was Parvathi’s companion and only Shiva’s vehicle.
I remember, as though it was told me but yesterday, how the landowner of the plot opposite, who wanted to get rich and so let the plot lie there till the crise économique was over — the Korean War had brought the price of land down — one day decided to make some money. He was a retired Italian fruit merchant, without children, and he thought it better to do things while he still could, so probably Monsieur Scarlatti said to himself, ‘Let me hew some of this stone, and maybe I could sell it to that Englishwoman who’s just bought the Villa Malherbe opposite.’ Madeleine described how when he put his chisel against the stone and started hammering, two birds, two sparrows ‘with stripes as big and dark as your fingers on them’ came twittering and clamouring to the window, and would not leave till she rose, and when she went to the window there he was, one could see, Monsieur Scarlatti, and he hammering away. ‘My heart bled,’ said Madeleine, ‘as though something terrible was going to happen.’ And without a moment’s thought she ran down to Monsieur Scarlatti and said, ‘You know, we like this huge, bulging stone at our door. Couldn’t you let it stay? Look what a kind shape it has.’ ‘Madame Ramaswamy,’ he replied, ‘I am a man without work; so I thought, why not make some money selling stone to that Anglaise? But I’ll leave it, since you ask, en bon voisinage. I’m too old, in any case, to hew such stone. Look, look at what I have performed, after half an hour of sweat! And please look at these hands — ah la la!’
‘Your husband is back home, Madame Ramaswamy?’ he had asked after that.
‘No, not yet,’ Madeleine said. ‘You know his father died?’
‘Yes, that is what the postman told me. And such a nice husband you have. Always saying “Bonjour, bonjour,” to all the neighbours. You never hear him make a sound in the house.’
‘Ah,’ Madeleine protested, ‘you haven’t heard him singing! When he sings in his bath, it’s as though the roof would fly to his own country.’
‘He has every reason to be happy. My wife says, “That couple there, they’re nice people — and so learned. They have such interesting looking visitors too.” And, being Italian, she likes to hear a foreign language. It makes her feel at home when you pass our windows speaking in English.’
‘Thank you, Monsieur Scarlatti.’
‘Thank you, thank you, Madame. And if ever Madame has something to dig or carry, a bulb to be planted, the jasmines to be trimmed, “There he is,” you should say to yourself, “there’s neighbour Scarlatti”. By the way, Madame Ramaswamy, I was telling Madame Jeanne you should cut that jasmine a little now, that it may grow big by spring and make you a nice bower by summer. Anyway, it’s good to have spoken to you, Madame, and say bonjour on our behalf to Monsieur your husband when you write to him…’
Madame Scarlatti, seeing them from the window, had shouted, ‘Bonjour Madame; comme il fait beau! Les hirondelles sont déjà là…’