Mrs. Taneran was soon discouraged, and overnight her enthusiasm for the task vanished. She suddenly got rid of things, like people, after having fiercely loved them, unable to remain deeply attached to the same thing. Her fervor, which generally ended up overcoming all resistance, failed when she attacked Uderan. All her attempts were in vain. The farmers laughed at her desperate efforts, and she left, leaving the property to Dedde, the tenant farmer. This caretaker managed to live off the land, but Mrs. Taneran never received any ground rent and considered herself fortunate that Uderan didn’t cost her anything.
If, this May morning, she was suddenly seized by the desire to return, it was because she felt the need to get over this sad story. For the Grant-Tanerans, Uderan represented, in fact, a kind of high place whose memory haunted them. They believed they had lived and suffered there in a state of hardship but could not look back without a sense of loss at their life there, before living a sad existence in Paris, in which each one was merely the witness of the weaknesses and failures of the others.
When Mrs. Taneran suggested to her son that they leave for Uderan, he did not reply, and she understood that he approved. It was rare that she had him in the palm of her hand like this, attentive to her words, both submissive and charmed. Didn’t he usually flee the house as soon as he woke up? The only thing that brought the Grant-Tanerans together was the table they shared twice a day, around which they continued to detest one another and devour their food while keeping a close eye on one another… However, the presence of her son did not fill this mother with happiness, for she could not bring herself to forget the poor girl they had just buried. Even though Mrs. Taneran was in no way responsible for this misfortune, she couldn’t manage to remain calm.
From time to time she looked at her son, who was tall and handsome, with disconcertingly good looks for a man. What hadn’t she hoped for as a result of her son’s attractiveness? She rediscovered in him the exalted hope that had lifted her spirits when he was born. But after she’d been let down the first time, her other pregnancies, much later, had been less glorious than this one.
Jacques was now forty… She always agreed to his whims, and he always came back to her after each experience, each youthful indiscretion. Her lot in life was to receive him when he felt like running to her, and she never asked for anything but to take care of him like a rich bourgeois. If she tried to give him advice concerning his future, he shot back with his usual fierceness, threatening to leave. Now he was reaching maturity and she was witnessing his decline… And she found herself to be so much at fault when it came to her son that she, too, preferred not to think about it much. Why, for example, hadn’t she been able to warn him about the dangerous game that had brought him to this risky affair, whose outcome could have been disastrous, for she wasn’t sure, in the end, that Muriel hadn’t been killed.
Mrs. Taneran went over the tragedy in her mind, her thoughts naturally coming back to her daughter, Maud, this young woman who was still hers. Wasn’t it Maud who had given the money to her brother? She should have found out how Maud had gotten it, but every step was painful when it came to Maud, and she preferred admitting that she was incapable of being heard by any of her children. Without her, however, the family would not have existed; each one would have fled the others for good, she was sure. Mother of this grown son, of this decidedly mean and ungrateful daughter, of this perverse young man, and wife of this man who didn’t leave on account of her good cooking, she believed, and because he had succeeded in constructing a bastion of indifference on this unstable ground, she owed herself to everyone. For an instant she wished she were a peaceful old woman whose job was over and for whom it would be easy to die or live the way she wanted. She had been dreaming of a quiet life for some time. Why did she keep her children around her, especially her oldest son? Why did she keep him so closely under her supervision? Why did she accustom him to not being able to do without her presence, abnormally prolonging her maternal role? Yes, she should have separated herself from Jacques as quickly as possible. Sometimes this thought crossed her mind like lightning and filled her with fear… One should be careful of children who plunder everything one has… It seemed now that she could no longer even imagine the end of this servitude.
Weariness fell upon her, brutally. The sunny boulevard continued to invite her to taste the joy of a morning in May, yet she suddenly felt deflated. “Let’s take a taxi,” she exclaimed.
But as soon as they were settled in the car, as soon as her son looked at her with a surprised and disapproving look, she sank submissively back into her role.
CHAPTER 3
MAUD OFTEN THOUGHT ABOUT NO LONGER COMING HOME. However, each evening brought her back. Her attitude might have seemed strange, but it was also that of her brothers and stepfather, who, in spite of themselves, never failed to reappear every evening, just as they had for such a long time! Had they been transported to the ends of the earth, they would have come back one day or another, feeling the strong pull of the family circle, where nothing, not even idleness, could lessen the interest they had for one another. In reality, no matter how much they repeated that they were going to leave, none of them really thought about it seriously.
As seldom as they occurred, there were still some good times to be had at the Grant-Tanerans’. Peace settled in on its own, like a lull. The strange antagonism between them would have been more striking had it not alternated with times of respite during which they caught their breath.
Immediately after dinner, the family scattered. Taneran stayed in his room, where he savored his only moments of true happiness. Elsewhere, even in a quiet hotel room where he would have been just as alone, he would have been bored, for he needed to hear the indistinct sounds his family made: Maud giving little coughs on the other side of the wall as she waited for her brothers to leave… his wife, moving about randomly, coming and going with impulsive steps, creating an atmosphere of childish insensibility around her… Taneran had loved her for a long time and still loved her. Since the time of their stay at Uderan, he had hoped that one evening she would reappear and talk to him gently, but since they had stopped sharing a room, she no longer came. Even though she was old and worn-out, having never taken things easy, Taneran kept waiting for her and could not get rid of the hope that one day she would leave her work aside and come…
Taneran listened for the departure of the two brothers.
Jacques Grant’s voice humiliated Taneran and would have made him leap out of his room if he had had the courage. (He was lying when he said that his stepson left him indifferent.) As soon as Jacques left, Taneran asked Henry, in an overly attentive tone that should have flattered him, “Which way are you heading?” The younger son rarely agreed to leave with his older brother. It was another small satisfaction for the father, who nevertheless knew that this son would soon leave, closing the door behind him with the finesse of a cat. For two years, Henry had also gone out and run around in the evenings…
Sometimes, before going out, Henry would knock at his father’s door and Maud knew what he was up to. One had to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, after having been refused by the mother, to ask for money from Taneran. (“Go ask your father, that old cheapskate!”) Taneran, however, was glad to have someone turn to him for help. Foreseeing, though, the danger he would be in if he revealed to his son how anxious he was to help him, he showed none of his pleasure. When his son ran down the stairs four at a time, Taneran naïvely believed that it was the joy of having four hundred francs in his pocket that excited the young man.