Pedigree by Georges Simenon

had simply dropped in to collect her mother.
    Ã‰lise understood that.
    Désiré did not understand.
    And he came in, triumphantly, with a bit of the evening mist clinging to the mahogany bristles of his moustache.
    â€˜Why don’t you stay and have supper with us, Valérie?’
    â€˜No, Désiré, Marie’s waiting for us.’
    â€˜Let her wait.’
    â€˜Our supper’s ready.’
    â€˜You can eat it tomorrow.’
    What was the use of insisting? Didn’t he know that it was impossible, that it just wasn’t done, that the evening Élise had had the baby, Valérie had doggedly maintained that she wasn’t hungry?
    Léopold was standing, rather unsteadily, in a square he did not know, looking for the way out, and it was a miracle that he remembered that there was a station, a train to catch.
    Where was Eugénie, his wife? She had been to their flat the week before, one day when he had not been there, and she had left some food which she had doubtless taken from her employers’ home. But where was she working?
    She would come back some day or other. He would find her there when he got home. She would say to him, in her funny accent, without losing her temper, in a matter-of-fact voice:
    â€˜You’re drunk again, Léopold!’
    She would have cleaned up the whole place, made the bed, and changed the sheets, which was something he never did. Perhaps it would be the next day, perhaps in a month’s time. Meanwhile, little Marette was in the train, squeezed up against the partition in a third-class compartment where the lamps had just been lit, and some country folk were offering him a piece of potted head.
    â€˜Good-bye, Madame Smet! Good-bye, Valérie. And thank you, you know! Thank you! I feel ashamed to …’
    They had gone. They walked very quietly across the first-floor landing, on account of the Delobels.
    Arm in arm, like a couple of little dolls with outsize heads, they walked along past the shop windows on their way back to the flat where Marie was unpicking an old dress while she waited for them.
    Désiré, with a sigh of pleasure, took off his jacket and his shoes, and put on his slippers, or rather his ecclesiastical shoes.
    Conscious of having done a good day’s work, of having accomplished all that he had to accomplish, he exclaimed happily:
    â€˜Let’s have our supper!’
    And yet he was not too proud of himself, for he had seen from Élise’s eyes that she had noticed that he had bought a quarter and a half of larded liver instead of a quarter.
    She did not dare to say anything and heaved an inward sigh.

CHAPTER FOUR
    M ILLIARDS upon milliards of creatures, over the whole surface of the world, in the air, in the water, everywhere, strive continually, second by second, with their every cell, towards an evolution they do not know, like those ants which carry across precipices burdens a hundred times bigger than themselves, trudge across mountains of sand or mud, and return a dozen times to the attack on an obstacle without ever diverging from their course.
    Ã‰lise, on this particular day, a fine September Sunday, as ripe and golden as a fruit, Élise the thirteenth, Élise the anaemic, Élise who had found no other weapon for herself than her timid smile, so humble that it aroused pity, Élise who was always apologizing for being there, for existing, who was always begging pardon for causing offence, begging pardon for everything and nothing, who was almost ashamed of being on earth, Élise was about to wage her first battle.
    Did she know this? Did she even guess, like the ant climbing an uneven slope and constantly dropping and picking up again the same grain of corn, did she guess the importance, the object of the battle she was about to wage, and did she realize that she was waging it, not only against Désiré-the-Smiler, Désiré-with-the-Fine-Walk, but against the Mamelins of the Rue