At the end of the meal, someone knocked at the door. It was Alexis, Pellegrain’s servant. He was returning from Semoic rather drunk and carrying a hurricane lamp. “It looks like Pecresse’s lovebird has done herself in. You know who I mean, the one who was a waitress at Barque’s?”
Maud didn’t flinch. When Alexis had gone, Mrs. Dedde turned toward her. “Everyone knows that you’ve discouraged the young man’s interest. Don’t worry about it, Miss Grant. Anyway, he was waiting for an excuse to leave her. She was a poor young thing. Knowing Mrs. Pecresse, she’ll be breathing more easily now!”
That evening, instead of returning to Uderan, Maud went to Barque’s, as she had planned.
CHAPTER 8
THE BARQUE INN, NAMED FOR ITS NEW OWNER, WAS LOCATED in an old mill, just at the entrance to Semoic. The tall, dilapidated building had hardly changed since the mill had closed down. It was brightened up only by a small outside café overlooking the Dior, before the dam, at the widest part of the river. People came from The Pardal, Mirasmes, and Ostel to enjoy themselves in the evening; it was a way of getting fresh air and taking a walk along the Dior.
The main room was situated above the water, accessed by means of a little wooden bridge. Barque had decorated it in a country style: tables covered with heavy cotton cloths surrounded the tiled central area, where people occasionally danced. Across from the door that opened onto the balcony, a small modern counter in aluminum, with stools, made the place resemble the outdoor dancing cafés in Paris. Behind the counter stood Barque, still young, dressed in an impeccable short-sleeved shirt. He spent the three summer months in Semoic for his health and then returned to Paris, where he had a bar.
From the road, Maud heard the cries of the rescue workers scouring the thickets and those of the rowers calling out to one another as they got closer in the fog. The scandal that kept everyone on the alert that evening seemed to her to be a good excuse for finding George again.
Behind closed doors, people were dancing at Barque’s. A thick smoke in the room created a kind of anonymity. Among the dancers, she recognized her two brothers, and at a table opposite the entrance was George Durieux.
Leaning up against the wall, he looked at her as he smoked. His nervous gestures and the expression on his face indicated that he had trouble containing a joyous impatience. He gave the impression that he, too, had waited for her, without actually trying to see her again, for reasons still unknown to Maud. She had never understood it so clearly before this night.
As everyone was watching out for newcomers, the young woman’s entrance was noticed, and Jacques cast an inquiring glance her way, which in times past would have made her shudder.
As soon as she saw Jacques, she noticed her brother’s agitation. Neither women nor dancing could give him this look of living intensely in the moment. He resembled a wild animal that stalks the forest, incessantly on the lookout for danger. Whatever he was doing, the entrance door fascinated him; he continuously looked over at Barque with the naïve confidence of a fearful child.
The gramophone played without breaks, and the dancers hardly took time to rest in between dances. However, at the first break, Jacques and Henry came toward their sister, intrigued. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, I was getting bored, that’s all.”
Her brothers were not happy with this answer. Henry shrugged his shoulders and Jacques called to the bartender, in an embarrassed voice, “Are you going to take care of my sister, Barque?” For a moment people scrutinized her with curiosity and distrust. Barque brought her a glass of alcohol and without a word took up his place behind the counter again.
The atmosphere between the dances was strangely silent and not at all reassuring, as if the music covered up a general malaise. People danced, rested, and drank, carried along by a sort of rhythm as regular as that of gymnastics. Maud noticed that her older brother and George never spoke to each other.
Although younger than Jacques, George appeared to be his age. Jacques Grant had that look of apparent youth that one sees in losers, pleasure seekers, and those who have never had any real responsibility to cause them to age, or any habit to gentrify them. His passion for women incited him to pursue one affair after another and prevented him from getting stuck in any particular relationship.
Their age difference was felt even less because Durieux had experienced much in his life. He was neither proud nor cynical of the soft life he lived, whereas Jacques showed off his idleness in front of just about anyone. He claimed that he preferred not to devote himself to any of the many possibilities he saw for himself, for fear of upsetting others or putting them down. He liked feeling at each instant of his life that childlike illusion of still being able to undertake anything.
“I should write, but you see, when you write, you are half-done. You are diminished, worn-out, it’s disgusting… and really, what for?” Perhaps it was not only laziness that put these words in Jacques Grant’s mouth. The inanity of human existence had become an article of faith for him.
No doubt nothing significant had ever crossed George Durieux’s path. He obviously suffered from that and had made a habit of entrenching himself, silently, behind his disappointment. He appeared to take so little interest in life and people that they thought him to be rich with dreams and gifted with a kind of inner contentment.
This evening, all of that revealed itself suddenly to Maud, even though she had thought for a long time that Durieux and Jacques were fundamentally similar.
Young women sat on the barstools. Henry probably knew them. He spoke to them with a great deal of familiarity, calling them by their first name and grabbing them by the waist. These were not the farm girls, but young women from Bordeaux who spent their holidays in the area. Even if Henry led a degenerate life, he inspired confidence and was likable. No constraints had built up his distrust or slowed down his winged race toward pleasure. One felt, even though he was young, that he already possessed a real experience of love; he loved chastely and with the tenderness of a child.
Jacques managed the whole scene, paying for the dances, requesting the musical numbers. At a certain point he came up to Henry and said something to him with an exasperated look, while pointing at Maud. But his younger brother shrugged his shoulders and kept on dancing.
Jacques then went up to the second floor by means of a small staircase that Maud had taken for a door hidden by the counter. It was Barque’s apartment. People got together there in more intimate circles, either because they didn’t want to dance or because the music prevented them from talking. Before going up, although he seemed to have shown no interest in Maud until then, he spoke to her sharply: “You’d better get going now, you hear? I paid for your drink…”
But she had no desire to leave or to obey him. The glass of alcohol that Barque had served her gave her a refreshing boldness. Her brother went away without insisting. People began to dance again in the smoke-filled semidarkness.
When George got up in turn, Maud thought he was getting ready to leave. Deciding to follow him and ignoring the awkwardness it could create, she made a move to get up. Perhaps he understood, but he didn’t look as if he had noticed.
She told him she had come to see him. From time to time she had moments of incredible audacity. “Why, from one day to the next, did you stop coming? People just don’t do that…”
He appeared to take her remark as one of those overblown social niceties people think it is proper to use. No, he didn’t want to sit down. “I’ll walk you home in a bit if you would like me to.”