The Widow Read Online Free Page B

counting on Clémence’s wheelbarrow….”
    â€œWould you like me to give you a hand?”
    She did not refuse. She had been expecting it.
    â€œDo you think you’ll be able to carry the incubator all by yourself? You’ll have to be careful: it breaks easily.”
    And all the time she was darting little glances at him, curious, but already satisfied.
    â€œIt’s a bargain. I saw it in front of the hardware store, just as I got to market. I offered him two hundred francs. It wasn’t until I was getting right into the bus that he let me have it for three hundred. It’s not too heavy?”
    It was unwieldy, but not heavy. Things shifted inside the box.
    â€œLook out—there’s a lamp….”
    She followed, carrying her baskets. They turned into a side road, edged with hazels and filled with soft shade: the ground underfoot was yielding, as in a wood.
    Drops of sweat stood out on the man’s brow.
    â€œLooking for work?” she said, hurrying to catch up with him, for he walked quickly.
    He made no answer. His shirt was beginning to stick to his body. His hands were so damp he was afraid he might lose his hold.
    â€œWait while I go and open the door….”
    The door was already open, leading to a rather large kitchen. Coming in from outside, they could not at first see anything in the dim light.
    â€œPut that down here. Soon we’ll …”
    A ginger cat rubbed against her legs. She put down her baskets on a pine table. Then she opened a second door, and the flood of sunshine from the garden invaded the room. As she passed, the man caught the whiff of her armpits.
    â€œSit down a moment. I’m going to get you a glass of wine.”
    What was wrong? She was uneasy, like an animal returning to its burrow and winding a strange scent. What made her notice some grease on the table top? It was scarcely visible. She looked up at the two hams hanging from a beam, and suddenly her eyes flared with anger.
    â€œWait! … Stay there….”
    She rushed into the garden, which looked like a farmyard, with a heap of manure, a cart propped on its shafts, chickens, geese, ducks.
    Standing at the door, he watched her as she went. She walked like a woman who knows where she is going. He noticed someone else walking ahead of her, as though trying to get away, a young, thin girl, perhaps sixteen years old, with a baby on her arm.
    The girl was making her way toward a gate beyond which was a hint of a canal and a drawbridge. She quickened her step. Widow Couderc walked faster. She caught up with the girl, and could be seen, but not heard, speaking vehemently, angrily.
    The girl held the baby with one hand. The other was hidden beneath her blue-checked smock.
    This was the hand which the widow dragged out, and from it she snatched a little package wrapped in a scrap of newspaper.
    What sort of things would she be shouting at the fleeing girl? Insults, of course! And she slammed the gate shut. She came back with the parcel in her hand. She opened a door, the door of some shed out of which she pushed an old man who walked in front of her with dragging feet and lowered head.
    â€œThe bitch!” she exclaimed, coming back into the kitchen and dumping on the table two thick slices of ham that had been in the piece of newspaper.
    â€œShe took advantage of my being away again to come and see her grandfather and pinch some of my ham! You can’t understand…. She’s a little slut, that’s what she is! Sixteen years old and got herself a baby already.”
    She glanced harshly at the old man, who was still standing there in the kitchen looking at nothing.
    â€œAnd this old fool would give her everything there is in the house.”
    The old fool didn’t move, just stared curiously at the box standing in the middle of the kitchen, part of it wrapped in brown paper.
    â€œHe’s not proud, he isn’t! He knows he’ll pay for it!