Маргерит Дюрас - The Impudent Ones

The tenant farmer’s wife spotted Maud and promptly came toward her. Mrs. Dedde was dark-haired and still young, with a glowing, fine-featured face revealing minuscule veins crisscrossing her cheeks. She had aged considerably and lost weight in the last ten years, and the softened flesh around her arms looked like a piece of overripe fruit, while on her neck, small, silky creases now formed when she spoke.

She was rather surprised to see Maud at such an unusual hour but kept from showing her curiosity… “Can I offer you something, Miss Maud?”

“That would be lovely, Mrs. Dedde, whatever you have.” Maud blushed in spite of herself.

The woman served her and was happy to see her drink down a cup of café au lait with such satisfaction. While attending to her work, she kept glancing over at Maud. She had known Maud as a child and liked her well enough, although the girl probably wasn’t too much to her fancy. She preferred Henry to her, because the tenant farmer’s wife had been there when he was born and had nursed him at the same time as her daughter.

“What’s that sound?” asked Maud. “Is that the animals?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Dedde replied, “my daughter is at mass, and the animals are anxious to get outside in this beautiful weather.” Then, in the most natural way, she went on, “By the way, I think your mother was looking for you yesterday; she seemed very worried, the poor woman; she had no reason to, as I told her. How nervous she is these days!”

“It’s because my brother changed his mind,” Maud said brusquely. “He no longer intends to stay here. Hadn’t you heard? You can understand that it bothers Mother, after all the expenses we have incurred recently… As for me, I think we should sell now.”

“I don’t like to say it, miss, but your mother lacks authority. Don’t you think she should have realized it was time to sell? And those pieces of furniture waiting at Semoic? It hurts us, too, to hear what people are saying… Mrs. Pecresse came to tell Dedde that she herself had paid for them and doesn’t want anyone going after them. If she had only said it to us… But that Pecresse woman is doing everything she can to harm you. It surprises me that she does that, because she’s intelligent and it’s not in her interest to let you go.”

Maud didn’t leave, even though she had finished eating. The farmer’s wife noticed her staring at the Pecresse place. The young woman thought it useless to explain why she wasn’t at mass, that she was afraid of running into her family there.

Mrs. Dedde went out for a moment and came back with a big bucket, the contents of which she poured into a pot. “Look! My girl’s coming back already from the first mass!” She seemed to be reflecting and struck the joyful tone of someone who has found the exact words she wants to express. “I forgot to tell you, Miss Maud, that your friend Louise Rivière is on holidays here. Maybe you could go and see her.”

As Maud headed slowly toward the door, Mrs. Dedde muttered, “You know, when it comes to eating, whenever you like, miss…” Maud turned around and forced herself to smile. The farmer’s wife had guessed something, and the young woman was troubled.

She decided to go and see Louise Rivière. Since her arrival, Maud had not really visited with anyone, and for lack of anything better to do, this visit would take up her afternoon. Mrs. Dedde was right.

Maud arrived at the edge of the descent formed by the Uderan fields above the Riotor. Instinctively she began to run, but finding it useless to run like that, she slowed down to a walk. The little home of Mrs. Rivière, hanging solidly onto the other side of the valley, did not attract her very much.

Louise was the daughter of a war veteran’s widow, who, by dint of sacrifice, had brought her up very respectably. In fact, she was the only child of the village to have spent time with Maud Grant. And, although Louise had come to Uderan every Thursday, it was possible that it hadn’t interested her that much.

Maud retained a fading memory of this pallid child in her schoolgirl pinafore. Louise missed the fields and the surrounding meadows where she would have liked to play and mingle with the other village children. By means of trickery, Maud would try to detain this girl who frequented the school and amassed in her little pug-nosed head endless pieces of schoolgirl gossip. Maud, for her part, had not yet gone to school and only studied haphazardly with her mother. When she was with the young Uderan girl, Louise remained locked up and silent, her arms crossed behind her back, waiting to be amused. She barely consented, toward the end of the afternoon, to rock a doll, but nervously, as if she were just clowning about. When it came time to return home, she took off excitedly. Maud accompanied her friend to the Riotor and then climbed back up the hill, sauntering around until nightfall.

She didn’t feel any curiosity now at seeing Louise again, only some embarrassment… The two women were finishing lunch. Mrs. Rivière was busy in the dining room and Louise was humming in a rocking chair. Perfect order and simplistic taste revealed the presence of two women alone in the house. Mrs. Rivière stopped short and said with a lack of surprise in her voice, “Well! Here’s Maud.”

She offered Maud two pale and slightly greasy cheeks above the pile of dishes she was carrying. Louise gave a cry of surprise and jumped up noisily, assuming an exaggerated look of contentment. Despite the makeup, which no doubt enhanced Louise’s looks, Maud would have had no trouble anywhere recognizing this small face with its unhealthy complexion, cold eyes, and tight mouth that twisted when she spoke.

“Mrs. Dedde told me that you had come home from Bordeaux, so I came over,” said Maud. Without being invited, she fell into a chair and wiped her forehead with the back of her bare, cool arm.

“How nice of you,” exclaimed Louise. “In fact, I had promised myself to go and see you at the Pecresses’. That’s where you’re staying, isn’t it?”

They exchanged small talk. Between each topic of conversation that was quickly exhausted, the time passed stifling and heavy for Maud. Some stray flies flew around, periodically hitting the windows and falling lifeless below. The oppressiveness of summer bore down upon the house and its surroundings, motionless, almost white with intensity. She would have to wait until the most trying moment of the day had passed, the peak of the heat. Maud didn’t have the strength to leave. And this powerlessness to flee even farther away disheartened her.

Mrs. Rivière and her daughter were amazed to see Maud so silent. They exchanged surprised glances. The mother asked Maud for news of Mrs. Taneran. Maud scrutinized their faces to gauge the sincerity of their smiles, which reminded her of the fixed reading on a barometer. She replied that her mother had never been better.

She then dutifully reminded Louise of their common memories. Did she remember their Thursdays at Uderan, those sad Thursdays? Yes, she had changed, and looked prettier, certainly. The sentences and laughs of the two women flew over Maud’s head like birds you can’t identify but are part of the landscape. She had a hard time registering their words and only succeeded from time to time.

Louise stood out against the window as she continued to rock in her chair. The heat and the sun that had begun to creep underneath the blind on the door rendered her cheeks bright red. She glittered with all sorts of jewelry. She was perhaps only noticeable on account of this showy paraphernalia, and maybe also her well-proportioned body, exceptionally slender and agile, with a supple waist, which seemed to invite the touch of a hand.

Beyond the permanent characteristics of her face, Maud finally detected a change in Louise. Likable for no particular reason, Louise had increased in falseness, in flirtatiousness. She overflowed with a fawning affability, already as ingrained in her as in the manners of a grown woman. One felt she had matured through powers of reflection and calculation uncommon in a young woman. At twenty-two, she was not yet married, though two years older than Maud. In the two villages, few claimants would have suited her, on the one hand in terms of her education, which outclassed them, and on the other, in terms of her finances, which were slim, even nonexistent. Still young, she already suffered atrociously from the fear of growing old. She was torn between excessive ambition and the despair of not living up to it. Her evident nervousness made this dilemma both tragic and irritating.