Andrew Miller - Pure

Jean-Baptiste takes a spoonful of the tepid soup and discovers in himself a violent hunger. Had he been alone, he might have drunk it straight from the bowl and immediately found somewhere to fall asleep. Still, he must make some effort to ingratiate himself. These people will constitute his most intimate society, at least for a while. He does not want them to think he is dull or rude, a boorish provincial. Does not want them to think he is any of the things that in moments of weakness he believes himself to be. He looks up from his bowl. What a large, red mouth that girl has! It must be the grease from the soup that makes her lips shine so. ‘Versailles,’ he says, turning to her father, ‘is the strangest place I’ve ever seen.’

‘A very good answer,’ says Madame Monnard with a decisive nod of her head. She tells Marie to pour their guest some wine. ‘And another stick on the fire, Marie. I’ve never known it this cold in October.’

He learns that the Monnards like to talk — a quite different sort of talking to the more deliberate rhythms he grew up with in Bellême. They also like to eat — soup, stew, fried dabs, beetroot salad, cheese, a little cake. Everything, as far as he can tell, properly cooked, but everything having at the back of it some odd taint, a flavour he does not think should live in food.

After dinner, they sit by the fire. In the cold seasons the room is both drawing room and dining room and serves well enough, though the presence of the pianoforte means that when crossing the room, one must always make a little detour. Monsieur Monnard relieves some tension in his face with a series of grimaces. The female Monnards pretend to sew. There’s a scratching at the door. A cat is admitted, a cat quite as big as the dog Jean-Baptiste watched piss on the floor outside the minister’s office, a black tom with a ragged half-moon missing from one of its ears. It is called Ragoût. No one can remember why or agree on who named it. It comes straight towards Jean-Baptiste, sniffs at the soles of his shoes.

‘What have you been up to, you naughty fellow?’ says Madame Monnard, scooping the animal with some effort into her lap. ‘I won’t answer for his morals,’ she says, laughing gaily, then adds, ‘Ragoût and Ziguette are inseparable.’

Jean-Baptiste glances at the girl. It seems to him she looks at the cat with some distaste.

‘The little gentlemen who like cheese,’ says Monsieur Monnard, ‘do not last long in this house.’

‘What Ragoût don’t get,’ says Madame Monnard, ‘my husband traps with his little machines.’

‘Machines?’ asks Jean-Baptiste, for whom the word has always produced a certain thrill.

‘I make ’em and sell them at the shop,’ begins Monsieur Monnard. ‘A cage, a spring, a little door. .’ He makes a movement with his hand. ‘The creature is imprisoned. Then you need only drop the trap into a pail of water.’

‘Marie cuts their throats,’ says Ziguette.

‘I’m sure she does no such thing,’ says her mother. To her guest she says, ‘My husband has an establishment on the rue des Trois Mores.’

‘Selling traps, monsieur?’ asks Jean-Baptiste.

‘Blades, monsieur, from plain to fancy. We finish and sharpen and polish. We are quite favoured by the Quality. Père Poupart of Saint-Eustache cuts his meat with one of my knives.’

‘When it gets cold,’ says Ziguette, ‘rats come inside. Into the house.’

‘It was the same at home,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘on the coldest nights.’

‘In Normandy?’ asks Madame Monnard, as though amazed to hear rats had discovered so remote a spot.

‘You must miss it,’ says Ziguette.

‘Home?’ For a moment, in his weariness, he sees crows, black rags, lifting off a field at dusk, sees the lonely spire of a country church. ‘I suppose I am content to be where my work takes me.’

‘Very manly,’ says Madame Monnard, probing the cat’s fur.

‘And what is your work here?’ asks Ziguette. She looks so pretty when she asks this, so pert in her creamy gown, he is tempted to tell her exactly what he has come to do. He wonders what Lafosse has said, what story, if any, he has told them.

‘I am here,’ he says, aware that all three are suddenly listening to him intently, ‘to make a survey of les Innocents.’

‘Les Innocents?’ repeats Madame Monnard, after a pause during which nothing could be heard except the purring of the cat, the crackle of the fire.

‘I am an engineer,’ he says. ‘You were not told?’

‘Who would tell us?’ asks Monsieur Monnard.

‘The same as made the arrangement for my lodging here.’

‘We were informed of nothing but that a gentleman from Normandy would have need of a room.’

‘With meals,’ adds his wife.

‘Indeed,’ confirms Monsieur Monnard. ‘A morning and an evening meal.’

Ziguette says, ‘We had a musician stay with us once.’

‘A rather particular gentleman,’ says Monsieur Monnard.

‘With red hair,’ says Madame.

Ziguette opens her mouth as though to add something; then, after a beat, a quarter-note of hesitation, she closes it again.

‘Yours,’ says Madame, smiling complacently, ‘is a very practical vocation. One must congratulate you.’

‘My teacher,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘at the Ecole des Ponts, was Maître Perronet. He is the greatest engineer in France.’

Above the cat’s head, Madame Monnard applauds him with her fingertips.

‘And did you ever build a bridge?’ asks Ziguette.

‘One. In Normandy.’

‘And what did it cross?’

‘The corner of a lake.’

‘One does not think of lakes having corners,’ says Ziguette.

‘You had better tell Marie, monsieur,’ says Madame Monnard, ‘if you prefer coffee in the morning or chocolate.’

‘The musician liked chocolate,’ says Ziguette.

‘Marie will bring it to your room if you wish it,’ says Madame. ‘And water for your toilette. You have only to name the hour.’

‘He has not seen his room yet,’ says Ziguette.

‘No, indeed,’ says her mother. ‘I believe he has not.’

‘Then I shall help you up the stairs with your trunk,’ says Monsieur Monnard, rising. ‘It will be too heavy, even for Marie.’

The room is at the back of the house, the floor below the attic. The two men, puffing a little, carry the trunk up the four flights of stairs from the hallway. Marie goes ahead of them with a candle.

‘I think you’ll have everything you need up here,’ says Monsieur Monnard.

‘Yes,’ says Jean-Baptiste, looking from the narrow bed to the table and chair, the tripod stand with its glazed tin bowl, the narrow fireplace, the shuttered window above the bed.

‘Ziguette has her room across the corridor. Madame Monnard and I sleep in the room below. Marie, of course, is in the attic. Your predecessor was in the habit of asking her to remove her sabots when she was above him. An acute sensitivity to noise.’

‘You wish me, monsieur, to pay the rent in advance?’

‘Very businesslike of you. I admire that in a young fellow. Now then, let us see. Six livres a week, I think. Candles and firewood not included.’

Jean-Baptiste, turning his back a little on the master of the house, shakes a few coins from the purse onto the table, picks out a half-louis. ‘For two weeks,’ he says.

Monsieur Monnard accepts the coin, pinches it and tucks it into a pocket of his waistcoat. ‘You are welcome here,’ he says, his expression that of a man who has just sold a rack of good knives to a priest. ‘Be sure to tell Marie all your needs.’

For a second or two the lodger and the servant lock eyes; then she lights the candle stub on the table with the candle she has carried upstairs.