The Dogs and the Wolves (13 page)

The established Delarcher French Bank was on good terms with the international bank owned by the Sinners, but to go from there to thinking that a marriage between Laurence and the young Sinner might be desirable, even possible – no! These foreigners who came from goodness knows where were so arrogant: you offered them hospitality and they marched into your house like conquerors, thought Laurence’s father. He pretended not to notice his daughter’s red eyes. He was outraged and annoyed. In love? Nonsense! At eighteen! He could still picture her in a little dress and short socks running into the dining room, in the countryside, on summer mornings (she wore a little pinafore with flowers on it) . . . And now, love, marriage. Of course he would see her married. But later on . . . He glanced at her furtively with anger and dismay. He loved her the way a busy father does: he was brusque, masculine, undemonstrative, unemotional, and expressed any affection in an impatient voice and hurried gestures. Whenever one of his four children came to ask him for something, Delarcher would snap at them in sullen, preoccupied tones: ‘Fine! So? What of it?’ And with a quick wave of the hand, he seemed immediately to sweep away, brush aside, all their arguments and logic. Then he would continue, more loudly: ‘Well,
I’m
telling you . . .’
or ‘This is what you’re going to do.’ The three eldest children were of an age when you start to become worn down by life: the two girls were married; the boy was twenty-five; they had become more docile, more malleable than when they were very young, but what could be done with an eighteen-year-old? The age when you attack obstacles with the foolish stubbornness of a buzzing bee banging against a closed window? Was it possible that Laurence might really be in love? The very thought of her and that little Sinner loving each other made the blood rush to his enormous head and right through his grey hair. He waved his knife and fork about in rage. Laurence would tell him nothing . . . She was shy with him, secretive, and he preferred it that way. For a young girl to talk of love was . . . dangerous, pointless, in any case. He was a French father, with a great sense of propriety. A marriage arranged by him, with all the details of the contract and the dowry discussed by the family, made marriage itself less offensive. It embellished or even hid anything that had to do with the physical side of a union. But love! A young girl in love, well, really!

And yet, he was moved. He had often felt this complicated mixture of irritation and uneasiness where his children were concerned. When they were ill, or when he had to punish them, he felt a mixture of pity, anger and almost a vague disgust. He had a sharp, quick mind and he greatly valued that quality in himself, but it was to all intents and purposes worthless when it came to his relationships with women and children: those irrational creatures he couldn’t prevent himself from thinking of as inferior. They lived in a shadowy world that he approached with the greatest mistrust, the greatest fear. Approached? No! He preferred to avoid it, to look away, to remain silent, as he did now. No one knew how to hide his most secret thoughts better than this passionate, eloquent man if he believed it the wisest thing to do . . . And besides, life ends up teaching us that it is impossible to help other people, in spite of good will, in spite of love . . . No,
we can do nothing for others, not when they suffer, not when they are ill, not when they are dying. He had felt this most powerfully for the first time when his wife had suffered for forty-eight hours when bringing Laurence into the world. From that day onwards, he had worked out a specific philosophy that applied to anything that affected his family, a way of thinking comprised of authority and flexibility in equal parts. It was necessary to shape children’s lives, lead them by force, if necessary, on to the path you believed was best for them, but you could not suffer for them; you had to allow them to solve their problems by themselves. Firmly hold the hand of the child at the edge of the river when he wants to jump in to pick some beautiful flower. Respect the child’s sadness at not being able to have what he wants. Be authoritarian and even tyrannical where actions are concerned, but avoid the desire to look deep into the souls of those in your care.

No, such a marriage was not desirable. Not that Laurence’s father was a believer . . . Besides, it was not simply a question of his being Jewish; he was a foreigner. One does not marry, one does not allow a foreigner into the family. No, that was surely too quick and haughty a judgment. The truth was that, in his mind, there was a distinction between various categories of foreigners. An Anglo-Saxon or someone from the Mediterranean was still acceptable . . . One of his sisters had married a Spaniard. It was impossible to comment on the union for the poor woman had died in childbirth. Yet he couldn’t help but think that a Frenchman would have known how to give his wife children without exposing her to death. But he had remained on good terms with his brother-in-law. He wasn’t actually xenophobic, no . . . yet everything that came from the East aroused insurmountable mistrust within him. Slavonic, Levantine, Jewish – he didn’t know which of these terms disgusted him the most. There was nothing you could count on, nothing solid . . . Take the Sinners’ fortune, for example. It was a great fortune, certainly. Too great, no doubt, precarious,
unstable . . . There were those sugar refineries in the Ukraine and Poland: the original ones had been sold before the Russian Revolution, or so people said; the new ones were working at full capacity . . . Really? It was all so vague, changeable, incomprehensible . . . A fortune abroad, foreign dealings . . . Oh, it was bad, all that, bad . . . The bank itself belonged to Harry’s uncles; Harry was completing an apprenticeship until the day he would join as a partner. The bank was famous throughout the world. It irritated him because of its international connections, its reputation, its legendary secret power. A solid family business, as sound as his, linked by marriage to a bank owned by foreigners? No. His own company had grown from an established bank in the provinces, run by his family from generation to generation. As for the Sinners’ . . . establishment, that surely had its roots in some money-lender’s shop, some second-hand stall, some small-time usurer. Ah, how distasteful he would find such a marriage!

His hostility was perhaps based on physical impressions. Harry’s uncles were short men, with greasy skin, sharp features, anxious eyes. Delarcher was a giant with a very ruddy face, thick eyebrows and a booming voice. He had often dined at the Sinners’ house and he felt deeply condescending towards those miserable people who complained about their upset stomachs, kept to a diet and would only allow themselves ‘the tiniest bit of Rhine wine’ at the end of a meal. German wine? In France? The land of Burgundies and champagne! It was an insult. And the way they moved, as silently and stealthily as a cat. And they looked so alike! They were twins. You never knew if you were talking to Salomon or Isaac. They would suddenly appear at your side, with that little ironic, anguished smile so unique to their race. He disliked everything about the Sinners’ house. Luxurious, but in bad taste. Unbelievable waste! And those women . . . Oh my God, the mother, that fat Jewess covered in jewellery! And the aunts, coy, affected, reading Nietzsche . . . What a family! Slavs, Germans,
Jews, they were as bad as each other. The same guardedness, the same sense of mistrust. Ambiguous, incomprehensible . . . And he disliked the boy. That was the most serious thing. First of all, he didn’t like his looks: he was delicate, nervous, short. And his hair . . . You could tell, thought Delarcher with his thick grey hair, you could tell that the boy had to do everything in his power to straighten his hair every morning just to hide his natural curls. His eyes shone with a bright, passionate expression, as if they were burning in hot oil. And his pale, yellowish complexion . . . He was young, but his skin showed no signs of youth or freshness.

‘He looks old,’ thought Delarcher, scornfully. ‘Was it possible that Laurence really cared for him? Women are a mystery.’

Meanwhile, the Delarchers’ excellent dinner, comprised of numerous courses, was coming to an end. Laurence’s brother and her older sisters were chatting loudly, trying to cheer up their father, who was clearly in a bad mood. Only Laurence said nothing. While they were having dessert, her father suddenly turned to her and said sharply, ‘If you’re tired, go upstairs and go to bed. There’s nothing more foolish than coming down to dinner with a cold like you have. And your eyes are all swollen,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders and turning to look at the rest of the family. ‘Go on, off you go!’

It was all he could do for her: allow her to be alone, to shed some tears into her pillow. She got up and went over to him to give him a kiss.

‘You’ll feel better tomorrow, right?’ he asked quietly, with the impatient, mocking tone of voice she knew so well, and that she liked because, to her, it was the personification of masculine strength.

She leaned down so he could kiss her cheek, then looked at him and said, ‘I don’t know.’

It was only then that Delarcher began to feel afraid.

Two years later, Harry was waiting for Laurence at the corner of the street where she lived. Laurence would come out alone; no one suspected their meetings, which, although innocent, filled her with remorse. Each guilty step she took was hampered by an innate hesitation which meant she was unable to enjoy anything that was not strictly permissible. As a child, she had never taken delight in being disobedient. She could only live and breathe in a world where everything was precise, clear and well defined, with no grey areas and no guilty pleasures. In spite of that, she agreed to keep seeing Harry. She loved him.

For a long time, she had feared this love. It was not in her nature to allow her heart to be filled by an emotion that was so overwhelming and so passionate without mistrusting it. The excessive, romantic, dramatic side of such passion, which she would smile and call ‘like the Capulets and Montagues’, seemed to her, if not actually ridiculous, at least strange. And, like her father, she disliked anything that seemed, at first glance, strange, foreign. No, she didn’t welcome this love, the way Ada would have done, as the dried-up land soaks in the rain, but rather with insight, discernment and reserve: just as certain beautiful roses in the gardens of France can be drenched by a storm and still not lose
a single leaf or petal. The driving rain covers them in huge drops that only penetrate them gradually, gently, until they reach the rose’s heart. In his mind, Harry had often compared Laurence to those fresh, hardy roses, their petals tightly furled. It had not been easy working his way into her secretly rebellious heart, but he had accomplished it now, and he reigned there. It was his reward for his long fidelity, his passionate love. He loved her so much. He walked beside her down the empty street (it was barely nine o’clock in the morning, there was no danger of being seen; she was going to classes), and the expression on his face was so tortured, so strange that Laurence murmured:

‘Don’t look at me like that.’

‘Why not? There’s not a soul in sight.’

‘You sometimes look at me in a way that makes me feel ashamed.’

He knew that her modesty was not feigned. He also knew that it was not coldness, but rather the sign of a passion so burning and alive that she feared its force. He took her hand and squeezed it, sliding his fingers between her glove and bare skin.

‘Harry,’ she said, pulling away, ‘I’ve spoken to my father again.’

He stopped, turning pale. Never had she seen a human face express so many nuances of sadness, from fear to wounded pride, yet he possessed neither words nor gestures when it came to joy. She felt sorry for him; she wanted to see him radiant, childlike, if possible, but his serious, tortured face always made him look older than he was. He stood anxious and incredulous as she spoke:

‘He’s given his consent, Harry.’

A second later, flames suddenly rose to his pale cheeks, as if he finally understood, as if the words had seeped right down to his heart, extinguishing within him an unquenchable anguish.

‘This is a great victory,’ he said very quietly.

If he suffered more than others, he also knew how to enjoy his triumphs better. Only the strange joy of a conscious, fierce
exhilaration was able to wipe away all those years of unhappiness. For he had been very unhappy because of her, because of his secret, scorned love . . . Now, at last, she was accepting him, she loved him. He would have happily died for her.

‘Is it true? How did it happen? What did he say?’

She didn’t reply. She couldn’t repeat what he’d said. She and her parents had fought continuously for two years. Her father had been the first to be worn down. She had wished for that moment for so long, and now, she almost regretted it because it was poisoned by pity and remorse. She had never noticed how her father had aged in those two years, but, last night, when he had said, still shaking with anger, ‘Very well! On your head be it, but don’t come looking to me, don’t come complaining to me later on’, it was only then that she had seen his deep wrinkles, his sagging jaw, the thinness of his neck where his Adam’s apple jutted out, as if up until that moment her love had blinded her in the most literal sense of the word. And Harry, how triumphant he looked now! A victory, he’d called it. She could feel her father’s defeat right down to her very core.

But could she tell Harry what he had said? All the pointless, unfair, harsh words . . . Harry seemed to guess. The joyful expression on his face disappeared.

‘I can imagine what he must have said,’ he replied bitterly.

He fell silent, while there, in the darkness of the car they had got into, with tenderness, pity and a strange feeling of resentment, she kissed him for the very first time.

One day, a stranger was introduced to Lilla. ‘He’s a Kurd or a Hindu,’ said her colleague, one of the other women who, like her, performed naked in the Music Hall, ‘but he looks rather shabby.’

He fell in love with Lilla and began sending her chocolates and flowers. He looked poor, with threadbare clothes, which made Lilla feel sorry for him, and since she did not attach an exaggerated sense of importance to the gift of her body, one day she chided him affectionately, ‘You’re mad to make such a drama out of something so simple. Do you want to sleep with me? Just say it: “I want to sleep with you.” What’s the point of sending chocolates and flowers? Life is hard for everyone. You’ll end up with no money at all.’