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Authors: Irène Némirovsky
Tags: Historical
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the topic of conversation she immediately stopped listening to it. Each sharp word the brothers threw at one another made her heart ache. She sympathized with each of them in turn. Poor Albert! He didn’t deserve the animosity his brothers showed him. They saw only the tactlessness of someone rich, and the selfishness. Yet he wasn’t a bad man. Only she understood his touching good nature and the excessive caution that led him into such terrible disasters; his fortune put a barrier between him and his brothers. Neither Augustin nor Alain was rich, but they did not get along either, although they had once been so close, such good friends. Ah, these children just did not like one another, although in her heart, in her memories of the past, they were linked so closely together. Each in turn had been her favorite, and she had been passionately involved in their worries and their moods. Clumsily she spent her life trying to make them closer to one another, trying to wipe out the misunderstandings and rivalries between them. “Clumsily, and in vain …” she thought sadly and bitterly.
Her daughters-in-law were irritated by her continual efforts to bring her sons together, by her never seeing them on their own, and by the way she was always pleading with them, “Alain, please don’t speak like thatto Albert, he is the eldest …” or “Albert, why don’t you ask Augustin and Claire to your house, they love you so much.” Albert would then invite Augustin, who would be horribly bored; neither dared refuse, “so as not to upset Mama,” and invariably it would end with arguments and cutting remarks. She knew that, but what else could she do? All she had at her disposal were the traditional phrases of motherhood: “Be quiet … Kiss and make up … Go and play together …”
“It’s all their wives’ fault!” she thought with veiled hostility. She cast a quick look at Claire and Alix as they sat facing her. They were both extremely pretty, with thick black hair that they had always refused to cut and pale complexions free of makeup. Even that upset her: she sensed that if Claire and Alix did not use makeup, it was less through personal taste than as a criticism of Mariette’s rouged cheeks. The mother sometimes saw arrogance in the pallor of their faces and thought their lips seemed bloodless, colorless. She usually managed to stifle her natural dislike out of a genuine effort to be kind, to love them as much as her own children, but this evening she felt tired, ill, and sad—overcome by bitterness and anger. It was all their fault: if her sons arrived late, if they were ill, if they were unhappy, she knew, she was sure, that it was all due to these outsiders.
Quietly she said, “Eat … You’re not eating!”
But her own food remained almost untouched.
“Are you ill, Mama?” asked Claire.
Her daughters-in-law took a particular, rather cruel, pleasure in seeming to defer to her and to appear loving. As young married women they had been so worried about incurring her displeasure (not that she had been tyrannical or wicked, poor woman; they had just been trying to humor the men they loved), that they still vaguely resented her for it. Now they knew, or thought they knew, that their husbands belonged to them alone; they had eroded the bond between the sons and their mother so cleverly and effectively, so worn it down, that it hardly existed any longer. Now they could afford to be generous. They could say, “Darling, think about your poor mother,” or “Alain, have you written to your mother?” But within the affectionately tolerant way they looked at her, there remained a repressed animosity and a longing for revenge.
Little Bernadette was stroking her father’s hand, as he distractedly fingered his sleeve. In a low voice, Alix said to her sister, “Poor child, it’s pathetic the way she adores Alain. And she gets nothing back,” she added, as she watched Alain pull his hand away.
“Pathetic,”
Her daughters-in-law were irritated by her continual efforts to bring her sons together, by her never seeing them on their own, and by the way she was always pleading with them, “Alain, please don’t speak like thatto Albert, he is the eldest …” or “Albert, why don’t you ask Augustin and Claire to your house, they love you so much.” Albert would then invite Augustin, who would be horribly bored; neither dared refuse, “so as not to upset Mama,” and invariably it would end with arguments and cutting remarks. She knew that, but what else could she do? All she had at her disposal were the traditional phrases of motherhood: “Be quiet … Kiss and make up … Go and play together …”
“It’s all their wives’ fault!” she thought with veiled hostility. She cast a quick look at Claire and Alix as they sat facing her. They were both extremely pretty, with thick black hair that they had always refused to cut and pale complexions free of makeup. Even that upset her: she sensed that if Claire and Alix did not use makeup, it was less through personal taste than as a criticism of Mariette’s rouged cheeks. The mother sometimes saw arrogance in the pallor of their faces and thought their lips seemed bloodless, colorless. She usually managed to stifle her natural dislike out of a genuine effort to be kind, to love them as much as her own children, but this evening she felt tired, ill, and sad—overcome by bitterness and anger. It was all their fault: if her sons arrived late, if they were ill, if they were unhappy, she knew, she was sure, that it was all due to these outsiders.
Quietly she said, “Eat … You’re not eating!”
But her own food remained almost untouched.
“Are you ill, Mama?” asked Claire.
Her daughters-in-law took a particular, rather cruel, pleasure in seeming to defer to her and to appear loving. As young married women they had been so worried about incurring her displeasure (not that she had been tyrannical or wicked, poor woman; they had just been trying to humor the men they loved), that they still vaguely resented her for it. Now they knew, or thought they knew, that their husbands belonged to them alone; they had eroded the bond between the sons and their mother so cleverly and effectively, so worn it down, that it hardly existed any longer. Now they could afford to be generous. They could say, “Darling, think about your poor mother,” or “Alain, have you written to your mother?” But within the affectionately tolerant way they looked at her, there remained a repressed animosity and a longing for revenge.
Little Bernadette was stroking her father’s hand, as he distractedly fingered his sleeve. In a low voice, Alix said to her sister, “Poor child, it’s pathetic the way she adores Alain. And she gets nothing back,” she added, as she watched Alain pull his hand away.
“Pathetic,”
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