Маргерит Дюрас - The Impudent Ones

Maud, during the afternoon, would be on the lookout for George Durieux. After a few days she realized something that didn’t surprise her at all: Jacques, who was bored, was also waiting for the young man.

As different as the Grants and Tanerans were from each other, and as different as their passions were, an identical tendency in each of their natures caused them to resemble each other: the friend of one, unless he was repelled by the role (and in that case they quickly lost interest in listening or speaking to him), became, shortly after his entrance into the clan, the confidant of the whole family. Each time a new person appeared, having been brought in by one or the other, a kind of communicative passion caused each of them to warm up to him in their own way and to try to monopolize him. But soon the newcomer, perceiving that in reality an irresolvable conflict reigned among the family members, was obliged to choose. If he took one side or the other, he would experience singular moments and the illusion of arbitrating in an exceptionally unjust and fascinating situation, filling him with enthusiasm and causing him to experience, for a time, heroic ecstasy. Then, very rapidly, he realized that nobody put forth any goodwill toward reconciliation. So while he thought he had arranged everything, those involved escaped him, and for reasons he was unable to grasp. It was then up to him to make the effort to adjust once again to the rhythm, ultimately monotonous, of this kind of perpetual movement of discord and heartrending emotion. Most of the time, he got tired of it. Thus, the Grant-Tanerans didn’t have any real friends and found themselves, at the end of the day, still alone.

Durieux ignored the fact that it was in this context that they were waiting for him at Uderan. Though he seemed to be losing interest in Maud, he quite often stopped at the domain anyway.

Sitting on a pine-tree branch that was hewn in the shape of a bench and easy to reach, Maud read absentmindedly. At the end of the yard, Jacques, in shirtsleeves, was working on a flower bed that overlooked the road. (He had decided to stay at Uderan. His friendship with Durieux no doubt counted for a lot in this unexpected decision.) Mrs. Taneran, happy to see her son working at something, if only a child’s task, concluded magnanimously that “basically, he had always had a love for the earth.”

Except for a few little clashes with Mrs. Pecresse since their arrival at Uderan, Maud noticed that things were turning out better for her family than she had expected.

Jacques didn’t seem worried, except during breakfast at the Pecresse home, when the mailman came. On leaving Paris, he had asked the concierge to send back the letters from the Tavares Bank, for fear that the family be discovered and that he be harassed once again. But after a couple of weeks, of course, the letters arrived in a pile—warning letters with bailiff fees. Mrs. Taneran lent her son a considerable sum. After that there was silence, which should have worried Jacques, but he thought he had been forgotten. Pleased with this lull and doing better, he showed a politeness toward everyone that he rarely used in Paris.

He would dig without lifting his head, while Henry was fishing with his chums on the banks of the Dior. From time to time, they would joyfully announce what they had caught. Jacques didn’t stop digging except to reply. And Mrs. Taneran, who was afraid that it looked as if she were dozing off, would call out in a voice laden with sleep, “Don’t stay in the shade! It’s chilly and unhealthy. Do you hear, Maud?”

The passing of the two trains from Bordeaux was the big event of the day. George came by after the first and, in the space of two weeks, had never come by after the second. Between the two, the time that passed was inestimable. They waited for George. In the dry air, the sounds came as far as the grounds, taking on the aura of their successive echoes in the woods and valleys, and in the humid shadow of the pine woods, it felt as if they were witnessing the magic of summer.

Sometimes the local train cruelly thwarted Maud’s expectations and reminded her of the possibility that George might not come. Before the second train passed, John Pecresse would arrive, all out of breath, coming from the Dior right up to the pine tree where Maud was sitting.

Like a good farmer, he judged the Grant-Tanerans to be weak and frivolous, but he did his best to live as they did in order to gain Maud’s confidence. Since the arrival of his neighbors, he didn’t work as hard in the fields and lamentably hung around with Henry and his bunch of friends, who were much younger than John. “Come on,” he said to Maud, “we’re all going to the mill, and then we’ll take a ride in Terry’s car—hurry up!”

“Is it Henry who sent you?” asked Maud distrustfully.

“No,” he replied, “but he won’t mind. If I’m speaking softly, it’s because of Jacques… If he comes, it’s all over. Come on, hurry up, I’m pleading with you…”

Sometimes, in his impatience, John pulled on her ankles, while in the valley Henry rallied his buddies and called the young man with a worried voice.

“I’m not interested! Let go of me or you’ll be sorry,” she warned, sending him away brutally.

Once, she had broken into an irritated laugh, so unexpected that Jacques threatened to come and get involved. John had known Maud since her childhood and still acted with her in childish ways that allowed him to approach her more easily than he otherwise should have. She jostled him in such a rough yet familiar way that he couldn’t get angry, becoming, with each passing day, more eager and more forceful toward her.

George arrived on foot or on horseback, according to his mood. As soon as he turned onto the road, Jacques would call to him, “Could you come here a moment? I’m almost done. Could we go down together?”

Before going down to Semoic with his friend, George climbed the stairs, pushed open the small gate, and walked under the pine tree. There he lifted his head, his hands in his pockets, but without ever stopping. Then he walked back up the grounds, toward the esplanade, whistling or coughing discreetly before reaching Mrs. Taneran, so that she would wake up without being embarrassed that he had found her napping.

Maud, who had been waiting for hours, forced herself to remain calm with such an effort of the will that it destroyed the pleasure she should have felt. She jumped from her bench and walked slowly toward the esplanade. A sort of inner obligation pushed her every day to make this useless move toward George.

“Can you imagine that, Mr. Durieux? My daughter always stays there under the pine tree, in the shade. As if there weren’t a thousand things to do in the country!”

Jacques shrugged his shoulders and, without meaning to, diverted the suspicions that could have been directed toward George in regard to Maud. “It’s a style she wants to give herself. She’s sentimental; she wants to be noticed.”

Maud’s eyelids fluttered very slightly, changing the immobility of her face. She sat down on the bench that ran along the kitchen wall, somewhat away from the group. George Durieux, held back by Mrs. Taneran, took a seat on the chair she now had the habit of bringing him.

He intentionally avoided addressing the young woman, and she understood that he would have liked to do so. He hesitated to look at her, as if prevented by an actual impediment, and each time his eyes met Maud’s, he turned away, disturbed. To give himself some composure, he played with the first cherries that had fallen from the tree, still green. He grouped them in twos, then threes, examining them attentively without appearing to see them, then, with his fingernails, carving them up one by one. His black, shiny hair was parted in big tufts, like heavy grass that the wind blows flat and gathers up into bunches that show, long afterward, traces of the storm. Despite the short-sleeved shirt he wore, his long body could be made out in its entirety by the color of his arms, by their lean, oblong form, and by that of his nervous ankles, where the tendons moved visibly under the skin.