Pedigree by Georges Simenon

another baby.
    The windows had little panes as iridescent as soap-bubbles, but you could not see them, hidden as they were by two or three thicknesses of muslin curtains.
    â€˜What are you doing, Désiré? Heavens, Françoise, he’s so free-and-easy…’
    â€˜I’m in my sister’s home, aren’t I?’
    He made no bones about opening drawers, about changing around objects frozen in religious immobility.
    Everybody would have liked to go and sit in the courtyard, in the sunshine, in front of the white wall, but what if one of the children started crying?
    Désiré made himself comfortable, tilting his chair back a little on account of his long legs. At the other end of the courtyard, the barrister’s windows were even more thickly lined with white curtains than Françoise’s. Didn’t a prisoner’s hand ever push them aside, didn’t an ivory-coloured face ever appear behind the window-panes?
    The Mamelins had brought along an apple tart. They had it with some coffee, before Vespers and Benediction. Charles went off first, bare-headed, for he had only to cross the street to get to the narrow door of the sacristy. Monsieur Collard followed him, in full-dress uniform, and you always had the impression that his moustache smelled of spirits. People said that he drank.
    â€˜Just imagine, Élise…’
    He did it on the sly, and never went into a café, for fear of the church council.
    Who was going to look after the children, then? It was Désiré’s turn. He could give a baby the bottle and tie its napkins better than any woman. When the children cried, he beat a drum to send them to sleep.
    The two sisters-in-law went off to Benediction. Élise felt the need for something to soothe her heart.
    â€˜If only you knew, Françoise, how nasty Madame Cession is!’
    She was frightened now at what she had done. Just as she was leaving the Daignes’, she had caught sight of Désiré smiling blissfully, crossing his legs and lighting his cigarette, and it had struck her that it was an act of treachery that she had committed.
    They said their prayers unthinkingly, in the shadow of a pillar. They saw Charles, holding a wax taper in one hand, coming and going around the altar, genuflecting every now and then.
    Coming out of the church, they were greeted by the vague smell of the cheese and the song of the fountain.
    â€˜But yes, you must stay to supper.’
    â€˜It’s so much trouble for you, Françoise!’
    Ã‰lise had a congenital fear of causing people trouble. She had never dared to occupy the whole of a chair.
    â€˜I assure you it’s no trouble at all, Élise.’
    â€˜Then let’s go and buy some meat at Tonglet’s. We’ll go shares.’
    It was only a few steps away, on the corner of an alley-way where decent people avoided going. In ten years’ time, wherever she might be living, Élise would go on maintaining that only at Tonglet’s was the pig-meat any good, especially the larded liver.
    â€˜A tenth of larded liver.’
    They had brought along a china plate. In another shop, quite close, they bought fifty centimes’ worth of chips which they covered with a napkin. The plate was hot to hold, hot and greasy. They walked fast in the fading daylight which was casting a blue glow over the streets.
    â€˜If only you knew, Françoise, how the Rue Léopold gets on my nerves…’
    No. She must not say anything … Her sister-in-law murmured:
    â€˜Hush … Careful…’
    They had come to the porch, the famous porch which had to be crossed on tip-toe and which they were defiling with the smell of chips.
    Désiré had laid the table and ground the coffee. Charles had come home, still surrounded with something of the half-light of Vespers and Benediction. They had supper. A little later, Charles would show them some of his photographs. He was incredibly patient. For a