Read Online Pedigree by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online Page A

him?’
    He was astonished to discover the thought which had been occupying Élise’s mind. How ridiculous to worry about that boy!
    â€˜It’s dreadful for the parents…’
    She felt sorry for them. She fretted over everybody’s troubles, suffered for everybody.
    â€˜They had bled themselves white to have him educated …’
    And she looked at the cradle, as if there were a connection between what she was thinking and the sleeping baby, between the latter and the lanky adolescent of the Place Saint-Lambert.
    â€˜Don’t worry your head about that.’
    Besides, it was time for him to go; he could hear the door downstairs opening, Madame Smet climbing the stairs. He brushed his moustache against his wife’s forehead, then against his son’s, and frowned again.
    Why the devil was she thinking about that boy?
    As for himself, he went into life, into this fine new day, as fresh as if he were acting in a play, immaculate from head to foot, without a speck of dust on him, alert in heart and limbs.
    â€˜I wonder, Madame Smet…’
    A word was trembling on the tip of Élise’s tongue, and though she held it back now she would end up by uttering it one day, by speaking of Léopold, of the two men lurking in the dark alley-way where she had wanted to adjust her suspender.
    While Désiré, with his regular stride, was crossing the Pont des Arches, in the pink and blue light of the morning, Léopold, huddled, fully dressed, in an armchair, opened a sad pair of eyes and gazed straight in front of him at the bed on which a young man was lying curled up under a grey blanket.
    It was on the Quai de la Dérivation, in a new district full of little red-brick houses: an extraordinary building, an old farmhouse, dating from the time when the town did not extend that far. There remained a cock and a few hens, and some manure in the farmyard, for a cab-driver kept his horse and cab there. The building had been converted into a number of little warehouses and workshops and, as there was a fine square patch of turf left, it was hired out by the day to the women of the district who came and spread out their washing on it.
    To get to the flat where Léopold and Eugénie lived, you had to go up through a ceiling by means of a miller’s ladder, and there was a pulley outside the window.
    Eugénie was not there. She came and went. At the moment she was probably working as a cook in some middle-class house, but she would certainly not stay there, for she loved changing.
    â€˜Get up, my boy.’
    Léopold’s chin was covered with stubble. His whole body was redolent with the previous night, heavy with drunkenness, heavier still with the thoughts he was turning over in his big head, and he was breathing with difficulty, groaning with every movement, as clumsy and awkward as a fairground bear.
    â€˜Get dressed!’
    No affection. Not a glance for the young man who pulled his clothes on, shivering with cold and fear.
    In another part of the town, Désiré was walking along, sweeping his hat off to the people he knew.
    â€˜He has such a stylish way of raising his hat!’
    His neighbours could tell what time it was without looking at their alarm-clocks. Shopkeepers taking down their shutters knew whether they were early or late; big Désiré went by, swinging his legs along at such a regular pace that you might have thought they had been given the task of measuring the passage of time. He scarcely ever stopped on the way. People and things did not seem to interest him and yet he smiled beatifically. He was sensitive to the quality of the air, to slight changes in temperature, to distant sounds, to moving patches of sunlight. The taste of his morning cigarette varied from day to day and yet they were all cigarettes of the same brand, cork-tipped ‘Louxors’.
    He was wearing a jacket with four buttons, closed very high up and reaching a long way