did. I’d have said though that custards and shoe-polish were more in a manservant’s line.’
Reminded, Adam now asked Tassart about these conversations, and was amused by the valet’s indignation.
‘I hate the picture,’ he told Adam, ‘that my master’s friend, Monsieur Zola, draws of domestics in his books. Perhaps you’ve read
Pot-Bouille
? It is painfully misleading, a contemptuous, mean-spirited cartoon. Gentlemen think we use bad and incorrect language but, in twenty-five years’ service, I never once heard a maid use the sort of filthy words which Monsieur Zola puts in the mouths of maids and cooks. And people reading his books believe that that’s the way we talk! “It’s not right, Monsieur,” I told my master. The real lives of girls in service are worth writing about, but not, as Monsieur Zola thinks, because they might hide lovers behind the kitchen door so as to smuggle them up to their attic. Few do that. They don’t dare. Besides, unlike the ladies who visited my master, they’re too decent. No, what’s interesting about those poor girls is how careful they have to be and what a lot they have to put up with just to earn their thirty francs a month – most of which has often to be sent home to their needy families. But the worst thing is that they have to bottle up their feelings and can never let off steam. In most households servants are expected to have no character at all. Men like my master are rare. He respects character even in a servant.’
‘Talking of letting off steam, did you hear about his throwing sticks at the vicomte?’
‘At his “billiard-ball head”? I heard. Yes. His mind is on heads, poor Monsieur! That’s because he is worried about his own. He keeps saying, “I’m going at the top!” It’s heartbreaking. He thinks I stole his brain. Why would I – even if I could?’
Again Tassart looked ready to weep. And, though Adam tried to comfort him, he wondered too whether Maupassant’s instinct wasn’t sound. It looked as though, in a way, the valet was indeed hoping to steal his master’s brain.
IV
February 1892
Reflections float; air is buoyant, and the eye ambushed by surprises. Those specks by the perron now are not snow but snowdrops, for winter is on the wane. But change can be disturbing. Some inmates grow restless, and there are scuffles in the
cour des agités
. Maupassant’s mood veers between ravings and remissions attended by attacks of keen anxiety.
‘My mind is mush. Gone soft! I
have to die
before I lose it.’ These words sound as cold as if he had been keeping them on ice.
‘You seem all right now.’
‘Oh, it stages the odd reappearance.’ His chill words pop like spat pips. ‘I
think
it sidled onstage today, and am pitifully glad. I couldn’t bear to end up like your terminal patients. They’re animated ... bags.’ He frowns, then speaks in a rush: ‘What matter, you may think, since I wouldn’t know? What matters is that my mother would.’ He nods. ‘She’d get reports. Not from poor François, mind!
He
’d spare her, but gossip wouldn’t. Its source is our very own Dr Grout, who is courting poor Flaubert’s niece, Caroline de Commanville. You’ve met her! At lunch, remember? Well, Caroline’s an indiscreet old friend whom my mother will pump for details. I know she will because
I
trained her to. For years she used to collect anecdotes for me to write up. “Get details,” I’d insist. “Details are what makes a story live!” So she developed a nose for them and will get them about me – then be devastated!’
Guy looks steadily at Adam. ‘She calls me her great man! Such a man – don’t you think? – ought to kill himself while he’s still lucid. Will you help me do it, Gould? When the time comes? I wouldn’t ask if I hadn’t made such a poor fist of it last time.’ He runs the tip of a finger along the scar in his neck where the sliver of broken glass must have slipped. Missing the artery, it left a
Reminded, Adam now asked Tassart about these conversations, and was amused by the valet’s indignation.
‘I hate the picture,’ he told Adam, ‘that my master’s friend, Monsieur Zola, draws of domestics in his books. Perhaps you’ve read
Pot-Bouille
? It is painfully misleading, a contemptuous, mean-spirited cartoon. Gentlemen think we use bad and incorrect language but, in twenty-five years’ service, I never once heard a maid use the sort of filthy words which Monsieur Zola puts in the mouths of maids and cooks. And people reading his books believe that that’s the way we talk! “It’s not right, Monsieur,” I told my master. The real lives of girls in service are worth writing about, but not, as Monsieur Zola thinks, because they might hide lovers behind the kitchen door so as to smuggle them up to their attic. Few do that. They don’t dare. Besides, unlike the ladies who visited my master, they’re too decent. No, what’s interesting about those poor girls is how careful they have to be and what a lot they have to put up with just to earn their thirty francs a month – most of which has often to be sent home to their needy families. But the worst thing is that they have to bottle up their feelings and can never let off steam. In most households servants are expected to have no character at all. Men like my master are rare. He respects character even in a servant.’
‘Talking of letting off steam, did you hear about his throwing sticks at the vicomte?’
‘At his “billiard-ball head”? I heard. Yes. His mind is on heads, poor Monsieur! That’s because he is worried about his own. He keeps saying, “I’m going at the top!” It’s heartbreaking. He thinks I stole his brain. Why would I – even if I could?’
Again Tassart looked ready to weep. And, though Adam tried to comfort him, he wondered too whether Maupassant’s instinct wasn’t sound. It looked as though, in a way, the valet was indeed hoping to steal his master’s brain.
IV
February 1892
Reflections float; air is buoyant, and the eye ambushed by surprises. Those specks by the perron now are not snow but snowdrops, for winter is on the wane. But change can be disturbing. Some inmates grow restless, and there are scuffles in the
cour des agités
. Maupassant’s mood veers between ravings and remissions attended by attacks of keen anxiety.
‘My mind is mush. Gone soft! I
have to die
before I lose it.’ These words sound as cold as if he had been keeping them on ice.
‘You seem all right now.’
‘Oh, it stages the odd reappearance.’ His chill words pop like spat pips. ‘I
think
it sidled onstage today, and am pitifully glad. I couldn’t bear to end up like your terminal patients. They’re animated ... bags.’ He frowns, then speaks in a rush: ‘What matter, you may think, since I wouldn’t know? What matters is that my mother would.’ He nods. ‘She’d get reports. Not from poor François, mind!
He
’d spare her, but gossip wouldn’t. Its source is our very own Dr Grout, who is courting poor Flaubert’s niece, Caroline de Commanville. You’ve met her! At lunch, remember? Well, Caroline’s an indiscreet old friend whom my mother will pump for details. I know she will because
I
trained her to. For years she used to collect anecdotes for me to write up. “Get details,” I’d insist. “Details are what makes a story live!” So she developed a nose for them and will get them about me – then be devastated!’
Guy looks steadily at Adam. ‘She calls me her great man! Such a man – don’t you think? – ought to kill himself while he’s still lucid. Will you help me do it, Gould? When the time comes? I wouldn’t ask if I hadn’t made such a poor fist of it last time.’ He runs the tip of a finger along the scar in his neck where the sliver of broken glass must have slipped. Missing the artery, it left a
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