When someone said of one of the sons, “He’s with Taneran; he’s asking something of Taneran,” everyone was aware of the fact that a silent drama was being played out, worse than a violent scene, because Taneran was in no way an opponent and nothing more could add to his denigration. The only thing that could bring the Grant-Taneran children down in their own eyes was this final step toward their victim. Only the lack of money could justify it.
Maud could hardly stand these scenes, which nevertheless repeated themselves fairly frequently. Still young, she took part in everyone’s life, suffering for Henry and unable to watch Jacques’s misfortune with passivity. Thus, when her mother worried, at dawn, at not seeing one or the other of her sons come home, the young woman got up and trembled with the same fear.
When Henry left, in turn, the second clacking of the door left the apartment in a silence that Mrs. Taneran’s noisy activity soon dissipated. Maud remained alone, lost in thought in the small sitting room.
At her age, each season brought something new. Thus, for more than a year, Henry hadn’t taken her with him when he went out, and an uneasiness reigned between them, inexplicable to her. Moreover, since the passing of her sister-in-law, they all fled one another, and she herself was not looking for company. It seemed that for a long time they had waited for an event that would put an end to the ascendancy Jacques exercised over the family. They were disappointed. Jacques began going out again and taking back the upper hand he had in the household, from which the death of his wife had momentarily exempted him. Since this event, on the other hand, he had become more and more difficult, hardly being able to stand the presence of Taneran at the table. Even if Jacques went out as much as before, he did not want it to be said that he suffered less for his loss, which is why he feigned an exasperation intended to simulate sorrow.
One would have said that he felt responsible for the family and that the charge he took on gave him exorbitant rights. Mrs. Taneran helped him maintain this belief, moreover, in order to keep him close to her. “You are the oldest one,” she would repeat to him. “If I die, you will have to marry off your sister and take care of Henry. I can’t count on Taneran. You understand the younger ones well and will know how to keep them in check, I know.” If Jacques had not felt useful to his family, perhaps he would not have stood the total inanity of the existence he had led for twenty years.
From time to time, Taneran ventured out of his room after the young men had gone out. The upcoming departure for Uderan now gave him the pretext to talk with his wife of their interests, and he found it pleasant that Mrs. Taneran came to join him every evening in the small sitting room.
The two women let Taneran talk as much as he wanted to, with a voice that ended up tiring them, precisely because it never got past its unhealthy nervousness.
Knowing the topic to be dear to his wife, he once again repeated that “Jacques should take up residence at Uderan instead of hanging around miserably in Paris.” But, unfortunately, one can dream about something for a long time and be disappointed when the opportunity arises for it to be realized, because it’s always less dazzling than one’s hopes. Mrs. Taneran hesitated to suggest that her son take on their property, because she had hoped for a long time that he would come back to it himself, at some point in his life.
But once again her adventurous spirit took over; to convince him to settle down it would be necessary to confront his horribly bad temper. Now, Mrs. Taneran both adored and feared her older son. So she preferred not to listen to her husband.
But he, counting on her silence, insisted even more! “After, it will be too late for him. And as for the others, don’t even talk about them! You realize yourself, my dear Marie, that since our son quit school, he hasn’t done anything. If we don’t stop him in time, he’ll follow the same path as his older brother. And I think that for Maud it’s just as bad, as you well know…”
Taneran believed he could soften the harshness of his words by coating his sentences with verbal varnish. For a long time, moreover, he had spoken like that to confound his step-children, who spoke with great vulgarity, precisely because they detested him. It was also, however, because Maud and Henry had gotten used to Jacques’s vocabulary, which was forever changing and picking up new expressions, depending on the people with whom he rubbed shoulders. Thus, since knowing his wife, and even though she had died, Jacques affected a form of scornful, feminine refinement in his talk.
As soon as she was brought into the conversation, Maud laughed sarcastically, partly closing her eyes and shrugging her shoulders, her head tilted back with a look of unsparing mockery, already taking unconscious womanly pleasure in confusing a man by the inconsistency of her mystery.
“You can laugh!” he retorted. “Who wouldn’t be worried at seeing you act with such freedom? Only this family could show such indifference toward a child.”
Mrs. Taneran got upset. She planned to raise her daughter the way she wanted to. Hadn’t she done that with Henry and avoided the worst with a child like Jacques? “Enough with the girl! As for Jacques, I’ll see when we get there. I won’t leave him at Uderan if he’s going to be bored. After what’s happened, let’s be careful. We have to watch out for the worst.”
The worst was sometimes insignificant, sometimes terrifying, depending on whether it was brought up in distress or in relative calm. It appeared sometimes in the everyday flow of existence, having the well-defined and always discouraging appearance of a crime, a suicide, an important theft. It existed outside the home, like an epidemic that prowls around the city but has not yet touched you. And they were glad to settle for avoiding the worst in life…
“What could happen to him at Uderan, even if he’s bored, Mother?”
The mother stared at the night, considering the omens. “You’re still too young—keep quiet.”
Mrs. Taneran preferred not to put anything into words, troubled by that superstitious fear that adds to the emotions something like a halo of darkness. Taneran, vexed, with his head as low and withered as that of a dead man propped up in a sitting position, stayed quiet in his armchair. So his wife offered him a cup of herbal tea by way of consolation. It reminded them—especially Maud—of many things. When she was little, at Uderan, her brothers took on this task when Taneran had a cold. Mrs. Taneran had to be very angry with her husband to refuse him this small token of happiness, which is something one would do for anyone, even for the first person to come along. Maud was always afraid to walk through the house. Often the cup arrived half-empty in the overflowing saucer, but Taneran would pour it back into the cup and drink it while noisily breathing in. Maud, sitting on a stool, would wait until he was done. While drinking, he would ask himself questions that made him so unhappy that his voice wept.
“I wonder what we came to do here on this woeful property. I was unhappy at that awful school when we lived in Auch, but at least there I was respected, whereas here…” At that time, his wife was no longer concerned about him, totally absorbed by the work of the farm and focused on her children.
He questioned Maud, to keep her near him, in a cutting, complicit tone of voice. “You were afraid to come to Uderan, weren’t you? Do you like it here?”
Yes, Maud liked it. The proof that Taneran wasn’t one of them was that he didn’t like it. For her, their stay at Uderan had no beginning and seemingly no end. As for Auch, she could hardly remember it.
“What are they up to in the kitchen? Tell them they disgust me, do you hear?” She refused to answer Taneran. He finally gave her his cup; she ran as fast as she could to the kitchen door, where her fear vanished. She would then sit near Henry by the fire, silently.