“Mother, it’s all the same to me.”
“I know, dear. You unfortunately have other things to think about.” Her mother was so used to her worries that only the most urgent ones counted for her. The others, with more distant deadlines, allowed one to breathe a little before envisioning them.
Maud approached her mother. She hadn’t kissed her since the morning. In the train, they avoided each other because of Jacques and Henry. Mrs. Taneran began to stroke her daughter’s head. Her fingers, a little numb, sank into her hair, lifting up the smooth, shiny mass. Her hand played with her round forehead, the slightly receding chin, and the broad cheeks of her child, while her anxious mind did not settle down. “You don’t know him, Maud, but at heart he’s a good boy. With me I would even say that he’s the nicest of the three of you, the most attentive…”
The naïveté of her mother always astonished her. But her mother’s caresses felt good on Maud’s face. After being deprived of her mother’s attention for so long, she welcomed it like a spring breeze. “He may be very likable, Mother. That congeniality hides him from you. But he’s so rotten that he’s as light as a branch of deadwood…”
Mrs. Taneran’s hand stopped instantly. They separated, with each one maintaining her position. And Maud, brutally, felt that she became the prey of an unnamed despair, in which this woman forever rejected her.
Mrs. Taneran shuddered. Was it possible to pronounce such a judgment so coldly? She, the mother, could suffer. But her illusions remained, despite her grief, indefinitely. It was because she believed in her son that she lived in a dreamworld, inaccessible to any contradictions of reality.
At certain moments, she hated Maud. Brutally, this child disfigured the object of her love. And what remained for Mrs. Taneran in confronting this particular form of suffering, without the freshness of her faith? “Be quiet—aren’t you ashamed? Just think of the fact that someone could come and take him away tomorrow. That dirty Tavares, that filthy toad…”
“If Jacques left Paris for a time,” Maud shot back, “it was surely because of this business. You thought it was something else, just like us, didn’t you? That he was weeping for his wife, that he was going to mourn for her in the country?”
All perceptiveness concerning her son embarrassed Mrs. Taneran. As the mother, she saw what was true, she saw with adorable grace his times of abandonment, even his most obvious weaknesses. “What can I say! I have no idea. It’s perhaps somewhat for the Tavares affair, and a little for everything…” Only she could find reasons to keep on loving him, to prefer him to the others.
“By the way, Mother, if he wanted to marry me to Pecresse, he’ll still want to do it; don’t you think he’ll arrange it when he finds out the state I’m in, so as not to lose the benefits of your deal with the Pecresses?”
“You’d best be quiet, Maud. You’re able to say such harsh things that sometimes I doubt your goodness. When your brother hears that you’re expecting Durieux’s child, he’ll be the first to give you good advice, do you hear…?”
Maud kept quiet. George’s house passed before her eyes, sad and tranquil, open to the countryside. The yew trees swayed in front of the windows, and in the distance one could see the Uderan pine forest. Little by little the daylight disappeared. One by one the crickets sang their hearts out. Up above, at L’Oustaou, the velvety moles were adventuring toward the pine forest, full of fear. George didn’t come in. It felt as if he were prowling around the house. They had separated for reasons that were difficult for her to understand. But Maud suddenly thought it would be easier now for her to live with George.
The ceiling light brutally lit up the room, in which the luggage was still strewn on the furniture and the floor. No noise was coming from the back rooms, where Henry slept, and old Taneran snored in the adjoining room. Everything seemed calm and the same as usual.
Why then was Maud crying for once? Her child’s tears wrongly reassured Mrs. Taneran. Wasn’t she crying because of remorse? She had truly been shaken up. Her daughter’s words reminded her mother of the misery of her own life. Even if she spoke of it often, Mrs. Taneran rarely felt it in all its depth. She, too, wept, but softly, already as an old woman would.
At last she spoke to Maud. “You’ll be happy with Durieux. Why say such ridiculous things to me? You see that you regret them afterward. You know I’ll miss you… Obviously, my life is not happy. A mother’s duty is always toward the most unfortunate of her children, the one everyone else abandons…”
CHAPTER 22
MAUD WENT TO BED, BUT SHE COULDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT. Her mother had calmed down a little. She came and went, unpacking the suitcases, rummaging through them. From time to time she tiptoed into the room, opened up the closet, went through things, and put things away. Tireless, Mrs. Taneran continued to circulate mysteriously throughout the house, coming back once again. They were so used to her nighttime goings-on that they didn’t bother anybody. Maud listened to her; each of her movements in the silence of the house took on the specific merits of patience and unrelenting fervor. Maud felt alone and had nothing more to hope for than what she already knew.
Soon she would return to Uderan and would get married. Then she would leave for Bordeaux with George. She wouldn’t come back to Uderan until the holidays, and that was certainly enough, given that the Pecresses’ hatred of them and the farmers’ disdain for them would always be simmering beneath the surface. George worked with his father and led an inconsistent life, sometimes steady, sometimes debauched. She didn’t clearly see what place she would have in his existence. Her life had begun at the exact moment she had spoken to her mother and had gained the certainty that no other solution would present itself for such a clearly defined situation.
Maybe George was already waiting for her. When they had separated in the morning, he had appeared calm and almost satisfied. Probably they didn’t love each other anymore. She blushed at the idea of going back, of forcing him to take her back. How could she dare to appear before his eyes? She couldn’t stay here, though. Her mother had chosen to leave her, and the separation had already happened in her heart. She had understood this in hearing her mother’s gentle, sympathetic voice this evening.
No doubt she would leave as soon as this week—the sooner the better. At any rate, the time she spent here would be useless.
If Jacques had not existed, perhaps her mother would have kept her. In any case, she wouldn’t have abandoned her so quickly, with this sort of unconscious relief. Without realizing it, Mrs. Taneran continued to create a vacuum around her older son and would do so right up until the time when only he would remain to receive the fullness of her love, once her duty had been fulfilled toward the others.
Maud wasn’t upset with her mother; it was to her older brother that her thoughts kept returning. He was the one her hatred surrounded and whom she would have liked to be able to suffocate from a distance. She felt him pressed up against her, destiny against destiny. They were as closely linked as two victims, entangled together. Yet she couldn’t do anything. In terms of all the evil he had done, she felt it as much as if she had done it herself.
He had chased her, and misfortune had come to her. Perhaps, for his part, he had wished for it, like his mother, who for weeks hadn’t shown any sign of life and had contrived with him to leave Maud alone.
The idea of her brother created a strange hurt, not exactly painful, but intolerable—a hurt she felt beating inside of her like an abscess.