La Femme de Gilles E-Book

Madeleine Bourdouxhe

• Herausgeber: Daunt Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Elisa is Gilles' wife and her devotion to him is passionate and all-consuming. Her daily life is permeated by thoughts of him - thoughts of his return from the factory, thoughts of his footsteps on the path as he arrives home each evening, when, in the minutes before his return, she is overcome with paralysing anticipation. But when Gilles suddenly finds himself powerfully and helplessly attracted to Elisa's younger sister, Victorine, Elisa's world is overturned. The joys of home and family are destroyed and her desperation is so profound that it begins to threaten her every sense of reality and the core of her existence. Set among the dusty lanes and rolling valleys of rural Belgium in the 1930s, La Femme de Gilles is a sensual and shattering novel about infidelity, lust, and the loneliness of losing the one thing that matters most. 'One of the more remarkable literary discoveries of the last few years.' - Jonathan Coe, Guardian 'A marvellous, rediscovered novel about selfless love.' - Kate Kellaway, Observer 'A haunting, slim novel which has the mesmeric inevitability of classical tragedy.' - Independent on Sunday 'La Femme de Gilles is about physical passion, its etasies, aberrations and ruthlessness . . . quiet, compassionate and unsparing.' - Times Literary Supplement

Leseprobe

‘Madeleine Bourdouxhe is one of the more remarkable literary discoveries of the last few years.’ Jonathan Coe

‘A marvellous, rediscovered novel about selfless love.’ Kate Kellaway, Observer

‘A haunting, slim novel which has the mesmeric inevitability of classical tragedy.’ Independent on Sunday

‘La Femme de Gilles is about physical passion, its ecstasies, aberrations and ruthlessness … quiet, compassionate and unsparing.’ Times Literary Supplement

La Femme de Gilles

MADELEINE BOURDOUXHE

Translated and with an afterword by

FAITH EVANS

DAUNT BOOKS

Contents

Title Page123456789101112131415161718Translator’s AfterwordAbout the AuthorCopyright

1

‘Five o’clock,’ says Elisa to herself. ‘Soon he’ll be home.’ The thought paralyses her completely. She’s spent the whole day polishing, washing, scrubbing, making a thick soup for supper – most people round here don’t eat a proper meal in the evenings but Gilles works at the factory, and has only an egg sandwich for lunch. Now she finds herself transfixed, unable even to lay the table. Her arms hang helplessly, hopelessly, at her side. Giddy with tenderness, she clings to the metal rail of the stove, stock still, panting for breath.

This always happens a few minutes before Gilles gets back. Overcome by the thought of his return her body, drowning in sweetness, melting with languor, loses all its strength. She imagines rushing towards him, clasping him in her arms – but whenever she sees him actually appear in the doorway, sees the big muscular body and the corduroy work-clothes, she feels weaker still.

To Gilles, she always looks immobile, a bit distraught, and it’s he who goes up to her and kisses her lightly on the forehead.

‘Did you see the children?’ she asks him. ‘They went out to meet you …’

He pulls off his jacket and sits down, running his rough hands through his hair. His half-open shirt exposes the nakedness beneath, and Elisa watches as he gently scratches at the little tuft of hair on his chest. ‘No, they’ve gone to play in the meadow with the others,’ he replies. ‘Why is it that kids always like other people’s gardens better than their own – there’s nothing wrong with our patch.’

‘I’m not worried, just that it’s time for their Saturday bath – I’ve got the big tub all ready, the water’s warming in the sun.’

Now Elisa moves closer, inhaling from his clothes the strong mixture of sweat, iron, oil and work that clings to him and makes up his own masculine smell. Tenderly she rubs her face against his unshaven skin, caresses his ruddy cheek, his hair, his mouth, his eyes. ‘Gilles …’ she says. When she speaks his name, it comes out as brief and wet as a whisper: saliva fills her mouth, moistening her curved lips and escaping at the corners in two tiny bubbles.

She goes back to the stove and lifts the cover of the pan a fraction, to release the smell of the soup. Gilles sniffs the air with all the greed of a starving man and, thinking of the treat to come, sighs deeply and longingly. She laughs.

‘It’s not nearly suppertime yet!’ she says. ‘Still, wait a moment …’

Handing him some rice pudding, she watches as he gulps it down in three mouthfuls, then wipes his mouth in a grand gesture and pours himself a cup of coffee from the stove. His rough worker’s trousers stay up on his strong hips without a belt; he has the same tall, lean, tough body as most of the workers in the area, but his beautiful eyes make him different.

Out in the garden Elisa leans her heavy, handsome body over the tub. To test the water she plunges in her bare arms, staying still for a moment, soaking in the softness. She looks at the reflection of her face; it is blurred by the shimmering sun, but by moving her head a little further down she reaches an area of shade in which her image is clearer: the long, full face, the regular features, the dark, shining hair. For a woman of the north, she has a strangely Spanish look about her.

Standing up, she runs her wet hands round her mouth, calls to the children and smiles back at Gilles, who is watching from the window. He loves this long, narrow strip of earth. Every Sunday in spring he dug and planted it himself; he built the redbrick dovecote, set the hedge of blackcurrant bushes and constructed the border of rocks by the stream that runs through the garden.

When they first saw the house he was in two minds about renting it; but then Elisa spotted the little stream. In those days she still had the body of a young girl, and Gilles watched her running towards the water, her small firm breasts bobbing up and down beneath her blouse. The sight filled him with such a sense of happiness that he made up his mind on the spot.

Now he also liked the house, two rooms on the ground floor, two bedrooms above, and a big attic under the roof, with low windows.

Hearing the children arrive – two little blond twins, shy and well-behaved – Gilles goes back to the kitchen and takes one on each knee, breathing on their eyelids to make them laugh. He always feels moved when he sees both pairs of long eyelashes fluttering like this, and under his breath he murmurs: ‘I’m so lucky – my two little girls.’

Elisa comes to collect the children for the bath and he again breathes in the smell of the soup, even more deeply this time. Supper will soon be on the table, and tomorrow is Sunday, so he won’t have to go to work. Slowly his body begins to prepare itself for its long rest. When he wakes up, he will make love to Elisa. Sundays are best, because you have plenty of time ahead of you and you aren’t drained by a hard day’s work. There isn’t much time for love-making on weekdays; though if he does manage it, it will still be in the morning, the weeks when he’s on night shift at the factory. Walking home in the early-morning mist, Gilles will see the vigour of the day sprouting up all around him, and he will want to stake his claim on life before burying himself in the artificial night that for him follows the real one. On those mornings he hurries home, so as to find Elisa still in bed.

She is waiting for him, eyes tired from lack of sleep, because she sleeps badly when he isn’t there. Sweetly, docilely, she lets herself be taken, fascinated by the expression of joy lighting up the face on top of her. And when Gilles, seized with a primitive, masculine pride, asks her awkwardly if she’s enjoyed herself, she replies in all good faith; she cannot conceive of any greater happiness than giving him pleasure.

Afterwards she rises to prepare bread and butter and coffee so he can get to sleep as soon as possible. As she serves him she glances at him with a look of tenderness and shame: naturally modest, she is a little ashamed of making love so openly in broad daylight, in the pure, living sun of the morning, a little ashamed of feeling moved to such a pitch of tenderness.

He is leaning out of the window again, his mind at once blank and spinning with small thoughts: Sunday tomorrow … the smell of the soup … the beauty of the flowers in the garden. Life is sweet. As he watches Elisa bathing his two little naked daughters in the setting sun, he feels at peace.

2

Elisa had sat the children on the table to undress them for bed.

‘Someone’s come through the garden gate,’ she said, looking out of the window. ‘Oh, it’s Victorine.

‘You’ve turned up just in time to kiss the children good-night,’ she said to the young girl who’d come in through the door. ‘I was about to put them down. Won’t you stay a few minutes? I won’t be long.’

She took one of the little girls in her arms, pushed the other one in front of her and, breathing rather heavily, slowly climbed the spiral staircase that led up from the kitchen.

Gilles was quietly filling his big pigskin tobacco pouch.

‘Nice day!’ he said to Victorine.

‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘It’s all right here, because it’s almost the country – but it’s stifling in town, and it’s just awful being shut up in a shop all day.’

Sitting at an angle to the table, facing Gilles, Victorine picked up a sheaf of trading stamps that Elisa had left there and began mechanically sticking them into the book.

Desire takes hold suddenly, out of nowhere. Gilles saw a little red mouth opening every few seconds to let the narrow tongue pass through, saw it licking a small square of paper lightly caressed by two fingers. He was dumbfounded, unable to move. He’d often felt spontaneous desire when looking at Elisa, a desire that surged up in him gently, pleasantly. This was different. This time his whole body was seized by a great wave of panic, and he thought his head would burst with blood.

He tried to think straight. ‘She’s Elisa’s baby sister, for heaven’s sake, I’ve known her for years, I can remember her with a plait on her back, and then a chignon … It’s only little Torine, pull yourself together.’

It didn’t work. As she went on sticking her stamps it was as though he was seeing those lips opening, that tongue darting in and out, for the first time in his life. He got up, walked round the table, leaned up against the oven rail and just stood there, his eyes enormous and staring at Victorine.

Pull yourself together, Gilles, no great harm has been done yet: it’s not too serious, a great outburst of male desire, born spontaneously, thoughtlessly, deep in the flesh. The main thing is to pay it no attention – then it’ll go away of its own accord, as illogically as it came.

But just then the little bitch raised her head. She was one of those women who know instantly, who never let an opportunity pass. Some people find it’s their heart that develops immoderately as they grow up; for Victorine it was always sex that took first place. There was nothing the poor child could do about it, she was born like that – which doesn’t make it any less disgusting. She crossed her legs and, pretending to be tired, stretched luxuriously, with a funny, sweet little sigh.

Then, snatching another look at the expression on Gilles’ face to check she’d got it right, she closed the book of stamps and went up to him. She looked at him: yes, he was a good-looking fellow, with his manly legs, his manly body, his manly shoulders … Victorine pressed her whole body against his.

Five seconds too late, Gilles realised that he was possessing the small red mouth, feasting on the faint taste of adhesive still on her lips. His legs shook and he couldn’t move, even when they heard Elisa coming down the stairs.

Victorine slipped deftly back into her chair and began to hum a popular song, her fingers drumming on the table.

‘They took a long time to go down,’ Elisa said. She leaned towards the coal scuttle, intending to pull it towards her – Gilles’ feet were in the way and she waited for him to move, her hand outstretched. Taking in every inch of his big, still figure – his legs, his torso, his shoulders – she smiled affectionately when she came to his dazed face, his vacant eyes.

‘What’s the matter with you? Move out of it, you silly ass!’ Laughing, she placed a big noisy kiss on his cheek. He was her whole world.

‘Would you like to eat with us?’ she asked Victorine.

‘All right,’ the young girl replied, getting up to help her lay the table.

Gilles ate his soup in silence while Victorine told a tale about the cashier in the shop where she worked. Elisa ate well; she hadn’t a care in the world. Gilles helped himself to some potato and bacon fritters but left his plate half empty.

‘Don’t you like it? Shall I do some eggs?’ Elisa asked.

‘No, I’m not hungry, I don’t feel too good.’

She looked at him, worried.

Gilles could feel Victorine’s leg rubbing against his. There seemed to be no air at all coming through the big window, wide open to the night. He thought he would die of heat; he longed for one of the women to leave the room.

Later, when Victorine had gone, he looked around him again, at the table, the chairs, the clock, the calendar, and thought, ‘Everything is just the same as it always was.’ He could not face up to what was happening to him.

For some minutes he said nothing; it was the first time he’d ever noticed the way objects and atmospheres change according to noise or silence. He then began to find the silence intolerable, heavy as lead.

‘I’m going to take a look at the pigeons,’ he said abruptly.

‘At this hour?’ asked Elisa. It was unusual for him to go out so late. ‘All right, if you want to, but you’ll wake them up …’

Outside, he went past the dovecote, turned right at the side of the house, climbed the concrete steps to the gate and bent over it. A white blouse would stand out in the dark; but no, there was no one on the road. His eyes scanned the darkness right to the bottom of the garden. Then, slowly descending the steps, he leaned against the wall of the house and murmured: ‘What’s happening to me?’

He pushed open the door of the dovecote. He loved the smell of grain and feathers, but this evening he didn’t inhale it wholeheartedly, as he usually did. Mechanically he lit a match, looked, saw nothing.

‘Are you coming in, my beloved, shall we go to bed?’ called Elisa from the door of the house.

He went back into the house and pulled the little chain on the gaslamp, then felt his way towards Elisa, who was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. They went up as they always did, Elisa walking slightly sideways, one arm flung around his shoulders.

3

‘I’m sure there’s nothing wrong – it’s me who’s changed, not him – he does the shopping as usual, goes to union meetings, takes the coffee over to Mother – it’s me, it’s my condition.’

Elisa was on the fourth concrete step. She scraped the snow off this one just as she had the others, throwing it into a little heap on the left, and swept until the concrete was clear. Then she knelt down on the clean step ready to attack the fifth. ‘There, just a tiny bit higher …’

Straining hard she plunged her left hand into the snow and saw the imprint of Gilles’ studded shoe. The muscles of her face tensed, as if she were short of breath. ‘Dear little heart …’ She had not pronounced the words, but her lips quivered to their rhythm.

Up one more step, and there, the most satisfying task of all – a great slab of snow to push off all in one go. She brushed the step clear, moved on to another heap: ‘All these little heaps … I’ll ask Gilles to shovel them up with the spade. The trouble is, as soon as I ask him to do it I know he’ll get that new expression on his face …’