Read Online Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky - Free Book Online

replied softly, "I don't think I'll ever be able to forget ..."
    At Maluret they were finishing their meal, their "four o'clock," as they call it here, before going back to work. Everyone was in the main room. Maluret is a chateau that used to belong to the de Coudray barons. Aunt Cecile's Coudray was also part of the estate a hundred and fifty years ago. That was when the bankrupt baron's family left the region and their land was split up. Jean Dorin's grandfather built the Moulin-Neuf and bought the chateau, but he hadn't worked out the costs properly, or perhaps, blinded by his desire to own it, hadn't seen what a sorry state the house was in. He soon realised that he wasn't rich enough to restore it and turned it into a tenanted farm, which it has remained to this day. It looks both proud and pitiful, with its great courtyard, now home to the henhouses and rabbit hutches, its terrace, cleared of chestnut trees and hung with washing, and its high gate topped by the crumbling family coat of arms, shattered during the Revolution. The people who live here (their name is Dupont, but they're called the Malurets: it's a custom in these parts to confuse the person with his land to such an extent that they become one and the same), these people are far from friendly. They have a suspicious, almost primitive nature. Maluret is surrounded by extensive woods (the former seigneurial park, which has run wild) and is far from the village. In winter the farmers can go six o r e ight months without seeing a soul. Not that they have anything in common with our rich, slick-talking landowners whose daughters wear silk stockings and put on makeup on Sundays. The Malurets have no money and are even stingier than they are poor. Their sullen nature is a perfect match for the rickety old chateau with its bare rooms. The floorboards creak beneath your feet; stones fall from the great wall and bluish slate tiles from the roof. The pigs are kept in the former library; woollen fleeces cure inside the house. The fireplaces are so enormous that fires are never lit: they would devour the entire forest. There is one exquisite little room with a painted alcove and a window at the back; the alcove contains their stock of potatoes for the winter and around the window are strung golden garlands of onions.
    Francois says it's particularly difficult to do business with the Malurets. I can't now remember exactly why he'd come to see the head of the household; in any case, they both went out to look at the roof of a barn that had caught fire. The rest of the Malurets, along with the servants, friends and neighbours who'd come to help with the threshing, continued slowly to eat their meal. The men kept their hats on, as was the custom. Colette went to sit in the arch of the large sculpted fireplace and I sat down at the big table. I knew a few of the people there, but many were unfamiliar, or perhaps they simply seemed so and, in fact, they had just grown old, like me-so old they looked like strangers. Among them were the farmers who had once been tenants of the MoulinNeuf, the ones who left after Jean died. I asked after their ol d m other, Jean's nanny: she had died. There were ten or twelve children, something like that; among them was the young lad who'd come to tell Brigitte about the accident. He was sixteen or seventeen and for the first time, no doubt, he was drinking like a man. He seemed tipsy; his eyes were red and swollen, and his cheeks burned scarlet. He was watching Colette with a strange intensity. Suddenly he called out to her from the end of the table, "So, that's it, then, you don't live up there no more?"
    "No," said Colette, "I've gone back to live with my parents."
    He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but Francois came in, so he kept quiet. He poured himself another large glass of wine.
    "You'll have a drink with us, won't you?" asked Monsieur Maluret, gesturing to his wife to get out a few more bottles. Francois accepted.
    "And