“You don’t understand anything,” I answered in exasperation. “Précisément rien! Absolutely nothing!”
“On the contrary, you are the one who understands nothing!” The malice with which she made this pronouncement I attributed to the inventiveness with which she kept up the subterfuge that was meant to preserve my mental security. “Absolutely nothing. Précisément rien!”
“Tell me, Mademoiselle Foucault,” I asked, imitating the guttural pronunciation of her r’s, “the French marshal, his Excellency Franchet d’Esperey, didn’t he ever fall down?”
“Monsieur Negovan,” she said authoritatively, like a teacher of military history at St. Cyr, “marshals, and especially French ones, fall down only when hit by a bullet!” And with that she withdrew, exclaiming, “Quelle insolence! Quelle insolence!”
Making use of one of the few pieces of military data at my disposal, I shouted after her: “And what about Pétain? What shall we do about Pétain? Et que ferons-nous de Pétain, du Maréchal Pétain?”
This dispute — my personal war of independence — was repeated every time the compresses were changed. Nevertheless, the raw meat was doing its job: I felt stronger hour by hour, especially in my arms, which were of importance to me, not just for the writing of my will — that was in fact almost finished — but in order to move the furniture, without which my plan couldn’t be brought to its conclusion.
Mlle. Foucault came in early each morning when I was already writing, but fortunately she fussed around in the kitchen without showing any interest in my work. Only in the afternoons did she take her knitting and sit down in the armchair opposite my desk as if she were the mistress of the house. She reassumed this touchingly familiar position after my evening meal, which by habit I took in the study, until nine o’clock, when she gave three yawns — always three but brief, one right after the other — and said: “Enfin, I think it’s time for bed.” She then rolled her knitting into a neat ball, pushed it into her nurse’s bag, took away my writing implements in the middle of a sentence, and despite all my protests led me off to the bedroom. For obvious reasons I undressed even though I’d get up again as soon as she had left. Meanwhile on the one-legged table in the study, she prepared the bottle with my drops and pills, which I would use if I became ill in her absence. Then with irritating zeal she would tuck me in on all sides, put out the light, and having wished me good night in French (always in French), she would leave. The last thing I heard before I got up and resumed my work was the sharp rattle of the key in the lock.
Today for the first time I dared to pull my pyjamas over my shirt and underclothes so that, in my struggle for time, I could reduce its waste to an absolute minimum; I could hear her clattering her heels and the bottles, but she still didn’t come into the bedroom. I was really getting angry: she exasperated me with her attention and at the same time spied on me; because of her, I hadn’t managed to take a look at the newspaper which I had bought on the way home and was keeping hidden under the carpet. If she saw me reading it, I would have to offer some awkward explanation. But I intended to glance through it rapidly, as soon as I finished my will.
This last I have to finish in the course of the night; by tomorrow morning everything must be ready and sealed. Sealed with sealing wax, stuffed inside a white envelope, and placed in the bottom of the top right-hand drawer of my desk, whose key will be hanging with the other keys at my belt.
At last Mlle. Foucault came in. “Perhaps you would like me to sleep here, Monsieur Negovan?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Vous me paraissez éreinté, un peu pâle, n’est-ce pas? You’re not feeling ill?”
She felt for my hand to take my pulse, but alas, under the blanket she touched my shirt cuffs, confirmed her suspicions, and snapped:
“Grand Dieu, Monsieur Negovan! What do these childish tricks mean? Sleeping in your underclothes, I wouldn’t have expected that from a man your age! Such vulgar behavior — honestly! Une telle conduite ne s’est même pas passée dans les tranchées de Salonique!”
“To hell with your Salonika!”
“If you please, get undressed at once. Vite! Vite! And don’t think I won’t come back to make sure!”
While she waited in the study, I got undressed. Quite honestly, I hadn’t been so furious for years. I must ask, therefore, that my rather violent vocabulary not be misconstrued.
“Such a thing,” I shouted, “Marshal Franchet d’Esperey would obviously never have done! He wouldn’t have been brave enough! Isn’t that right, Mademoiselle Foucault? Nor would my blessedly departed brother, monsieur le général, have ever so degraded himself, n’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle Foucault? But there was no mob of louts with clubs waiting at the gates of their houses! No, Mademoiselle Foucault! But Arsénie Negovan refuses to die in a nightgown simply because — without any permission from me — you take it into your head to play governess! I categorically refuse to die in my pyjamas! I won’t die like those Russian merchants who hardly had time to throw fur coats over their nightshirts! Some didn’t even have time for that, they were beaten to death in their nightshirts! Can you hear me, Mademoiselle Foucault? Est-ce que vous m’avez entendu?”
I don’t know if she heard me or not; if she had, it would have had no effect at all on her behavior. She came in with a firm, masculine step, tucked in the edges of the blankets, put out the light, and said arrogantly:
“I’m going now. We’ll keep all this from Madame Katarina, of course. Bonne nuit, monsieur.”
“Go away, mademoiselle!”
Stretched out in the warm, slack darkness, I listened to the sound of Mélanie’s heels fading away. Suddenly I was back in the children’s room of our house on Gospodska Street. George was squirming about in the next bed (Marko, the future Emilian, was already away at the seminary), and those steps dying away like the ticking of a clock were my mother’s. My mother had been there just a moment before; the sweet smell of lilies still hung in the air. Together we had said an Our Father and a Hail Mary, then she had covered us up, and kissed us on the forehead. Lying there, I listened as her steps receded, ready to jump out of bed and set off with my brother on pirate adventures over the vast and mysterious continent of our darkened room.
Then I got up, and, while dressing myself even more meticulously than usual, I thought about Mlle. Foucault. I in no way approved of Katarina’s fondness for this naturalized Serb, even though her social origins were beyond reproach, and her services to Serbia had been rewarded with military decorations. Nor was I moved by Katarina’s story about how during the Occupation Mlle. Foucault had sold her own possessions but preserved the general’s, in order to support him — most probably because I despised his games with tin soldiers from the bottom of my heart. In all fairness, though, I’ll add that the dominant trait of her personality was loyalty, the loyalty of a domestic animal, which after George’s death she had transferred to Katarina and in part to me. If that devotion hadn’t been combined with such an authoritarian will, arrogance, and insistence, I swear I’d have written of Mlle. Foucault in a far more kindly manner. And so, still retaining my hateful memory of her, but in the knowledge that Katarina will be pleased:
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