• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1352 0

eyes, he could see her walking toward him. She would let the shawl slip down to show the two red stains on her bodice, and he could see her pale, waxy face with empty eyes and her mouth twisted with pain. For a long time he felt grief in not even knowing her name and having only her shadow. When the idea of her crossed his mind, it was as the one good and pure person he had encountered. Innumerable times he had found himself dreaming that she was searching for him on the boulevard where she had lain; that she could have given him a whole lifetime of happiness had he only found her a few seconds sooner. He wanted no other woman. No other woman even existed for him. There was such a tremble in his voice when he spoke of her that the Norman, with the instincts of a woman in love, was jealous.

“Well,” said the Norman mischievously, “it's better that you don't see her again. She can't be very pretty these days.”

The blood went out of Florent's face, horrified by the image the Norman had evoked. His memory of love decayed into nothing. He did not forgive her this viciousness, which from that moment filled the lovely silk bonnet with the jutting jaw and gaping eyes of a skull. When the Norman joked with him about “the woman he had lain with on the corner of rue Vivienne,” he became hostile and his language became coarse.

But what really struck the Beautiful Norman from all the revelations was that she was completely mistaken in thinking she was stealing Beautiful Lisa's lover. This so deflated her sense of triumph that for a full eight days she loved Florent less. She did find some measure of consolation in the story about the inheritance. No longer was Beautiful Lisa a perfect prude. She was a thief who had kept her brother-in-law's inheritance and put a hypocritical face on it to fool everyone. Now, every night, while Muche was copying his handwriting samples, the conversation turned to old Gradelle's fortune.

“That was a funny idea the old man had,” said the fishmonger, bursting into laughter. “I guess he wanted to ‘salt away his money’ putting it in the salting tub … Eighty-five thousand francs, that's a lot of money, especially when you take into account that Quenu probably lied. There was probably twice that much. Three times! If it were me, I would insist on my share, now!”

“I don't need anything,” was always Florent's answer. “I wouldn't even know what to do with it.”

That angered her. “Are you a man? It's pathetic. Don't you see that the Quenus are laughing at you? That fatso hands you down old linens and her husband's worn-out clothes. I'm not trying to make you mad, but the fact is, everyone notices. Those pants you are wearing are thick with grease, and the whole neighborhood has seen them on your brother's rear for the past three years. If I were in your place, I'd throw their rags in their faces and settle accounts. It's forty-two thousand five hundred francs, isn't it? I wouldn't leave without my forty-two thousand five hundred francs.”

Florent tried his best to explain to her that his sister-in-law had offered him the money and was keeping it for whenever he needed it. He just didn't want it. He explained it in minute detail, trying to show her the honesty of the Quenus.

“Wake up, wake up!” she mocked him with the words of a popular song. “I know all about them and their honesty. The fatso folds it up in the wardrobe every morning so that it won't get dirty. You make me sad, you poor thing. At least you could have the pleasure of strutting around like a rooster. But you think like a five-year-old. She'll put the money in your pocket one day and take it out the next. The trick is as easy to play as that. Do you want me to go ask for what's owed you? That would be amusing. I'd get my hands on the cash or I'd smash that place up, I promise you that.”

“No, no, it's not your place,” Florent said, not without fear, quickly adding, “I'll have to see. I may be needing some money soon.”

She doubted it but shook it off, muttering something about him being too soft. Her tireless obsession was to use Florent against