of real, tangible property, the family property, funds, land, houses. This was a common stock. It was true that it was not held communally, but it was certainly considered as a family possession: everything must be kept inside the family limits, and it was intolerable to think that Xavier, marrying, might dispose of his share like an imbecile. The letters followed hot one upon the other, and Dr Roig, although he was so far removed in time and space and spirit, whistled gently over them, pulling his chin with that gesture that was habitual in him when he wished to express doubt, thoughtfulness, and the appreciation of a difficult situation.
He was far removed from the family. His interests had lain for so many years in another country that he could not be touched by the same immediacy, nor, even if he had been there in Saint-Féliu, would he ever have been infected by the same indignation: but still, no physical removal and no spiritual removal that he could conceive would ever take him so far away that he would remain indifferent to this fundamental danger to the family’s property.
They had pressed him to come home earlier than the date he had fixed, and for a time he had been half inclined to agree: if he had thought his influence as great as Aunt Margot so flatteringly described it – ‘Xavier will certainly listen to you. He has always had a great respect for you and for your opinion’ – he might have done so. But thinking of Xavier and of their cool, superficial relationship, Dr Roig had neither written to his cousin nor hurried his departure. A letter, indeed, on so intimate a subject, would have been impossible, especially the tirade that Aunt Margot had outlined for him: ‘You should say, My dear Cousin Xavier – your conduct is unworthy of you and of our family. I blush for you, and my heart bleeds for little Dédé, whom you propose to disinherit, for the memory of Georgette, and for all our poor unjustly wounded family.’ It went on to cover two sheets of note paper. He did not suppose that Aunt Margot ever really thought that he would use this outline, although she had couched it in the shabby rhetoric that she evidently felt appropriate to a man in the act of delivering a high moral rebuke. Her own style was direct, trenchant, without literary adornment; and sometimes, when he recalled the phrases she had chosen for him, he wondered uneasily whether he had ever done anything to justify her choice; whether, unknown to himself, he had shown a tendency toward righteous pomp. He hoped not. No; it was merely a release for Aunt Margot: somebody ought to thunder at Xavier in the consecrated frock-coat and shirt-front phrases, and as she dared not do it herself she had launched her bolt in an oblique direction, with a very slight hope that it might perhaps rebound and strike the intended victim. For that matter, he doubted whether Xavier had received one tenth part of the harangues that had come to him – to Alain Roig – in the form of verbatim reports, ‘pieces of their mind.’
He smiled, too, at the old lady’s heart bleeding for little Dédé. This was Xavier’s son, whom he had met but recently in Haiphong, where the young man was reluctantly performing his military service. An unlikable fellow, spineless and selfish, cold; he did not think it at all probable that Aunt Margot, a clear-sighted, unsentimental woman, liked him in the least, or deceived herself into believing that she did. And as for Georgette, Xavier’s wife, she had been dead these fifteen years and more. Dr Roig could not recall any precise impression of her now: the pale, thin little personality had faded without leaving any strong trace. He remembered, with an effort, her slight, anemic form and her rather pathetic dependence on Xavier: she was not the kind of woman Aunt Margot would have liked; and now that he thought about it he brought up a distinct image of Aunt Margot speaking impatiently to her – a controlled impatience with a fund of irritation behind. It was something very simple, the preservation of greengages in brandy, some trifling household operation with which Georgette could not succeed: nothing in itself, but symptomatic.
The train was running slower; its rhythm changed. The revolution of his mind slowed with that of the wheels, slower and slower, trying to keep the same rhythm, but then it was no longer possible, and he looked briskly out of the window. Here were the sidings of Narbonne, here the platform, and his face was gliding before a sea of other faces, the same height as his, and removed from his by a pane of glass and four feet of air.
The rush of people into the carriage, the anxious shouting, handing of baggage, the unscrupulous jockeying for seats, kept him tense and distracted until the train jerked on again.
The carriage settled down gradually; the passengers stared at one another, animosity died away, conversation started, and by the time they had reached the sea and had swung right-handed along the coast Dr Roig had made out that the man and wife opposite to him were peasants, returning from a visit to their married daughter. They were describing the illness of their grandchild to the other group. ‘They were having the doctor, three hundred francs a visit, but the fever went on. We gave the medicines, naturally – they were paid for – but in the evening we brought the healer. He did not much care to come: he does not like to trouble himself with journeys. And then, you know, there is the jealousy with the doctors. But finally he said that as it was for us he would come, and when he came he held a little ball of clay over Fifine’s body.’
‘A little ball of clay on a string.’
‘Special clay.’
‘And it showed that the blood had collected in the veins. You see? And the medicine that the doctor had been giving was to work on the nerves of the stomach. He recognized it at once by the color and the smell.’
‘He said that the blood must be drawn away, and he made a cataplasm with herbs from the mountain.’
‘Natural products. Not drugs from the pharmacy.’
‘And he said that it would draw the blood through four thicknesses of cloth.’
‘I was skeptical. But as it was only an external application – external, you understand? – I said “Let us try it, at all events.” And I saw it with my own eyes: the blood came through four thicknesses of cloth. Evidently, one must believe what one sees.’
‘Four thicknesses. He said that four was the number for that child, as she was born in July. In the morning she was perfectly well; she had a little breakfast, just a little black coffee and some pork soup. And when the doctor came he was very pleased with her – he put it all down to his aureomycin. They say that this healer could easily be a doctor if he chose. He …’ But the others cut her short with their own healer, a woman who trod the rheumatism out of her patients; and Dr Roig, now that so many were shouting all at once, moved out into the corridor and stood leaning against the window.
It was very picturesque, no doubt; it was certainly a stronger and more genuine survival of folklore than local dress, songs, dances, or anything decorative; but it depressed him. He had known it all his life, of course, and when he was a child they had hung a string of garlic round his neck under his shirt. Was it connected with the general lack of religious faith? The necessity for something magic? Some day he would ask a colleague whether these pests were as frequent in the believing parts – Brittany, for example, or in the north where the Catholic trades unions were strong.
They were passing along the edge of one of the great salt lagoons now: a flight of avocets, black and white against the pale water, distracted him from his thoughts on popular medicine, and his mind went back to Saint-Féliu and cousin Xavier.
The girl was the daughter of the grocer in the rue Joffre. Madeleine. He knew the parents, Jean Fajal and Dominique, and he knew the shop, a little cavern under the arcades with a grove of dried sausage and stockfish and candles hanging from its ceiling, and dark butts of wine disappearing into the shadows on either hand; not very prosperous, but always full of black old women gossiping, and with Fajal’s two vineyards and the market garden it would be enough to keep them comfortably. But he could not remember any daughter. Obviously, she would have been a child when last he was home; and there were so many children, all alike except to their parents.
A child of about twelve or thirteen she must have been: he tried to picture the shop with a child in it, but that brought him nothing, and he ran the closer relations of the Fajals through his mind to see if he could fix the child in another surrounding. There was Fajal’s sister almost next door, in the mercery, and lower down on the corner there was the other sister at the tobacco shop. Was it that extraordinary, ethereal child, the one he had seen at the tobacconist’s?