Pure Read Online Free Page A

Baratte care for soup?
    ‘And how was Versailles today?’ asks Monsieur Monnard, as if Versailles were a place he frequented.
    Jean-Baptiste takes a spoonful of the tepid soup and discovers in himself a violent hunger. Had he been alone, he might have drunk it straight from the bowl and immediately found somewhere to fall asleep. Still, he must make some effort to ingratiate himself. These people will constitute his most intimate society, at least for a while. He does not want them to think he is dull or rude, a boorish provincial. Does not want them to think he is any of the things that in moments of weakness he believes himself to be. He looks up from his bowl. What a large, red mouth that girl has! It must be the grease from the soup that makes her lips shine so. ‘Versailles,’ he says, turning to her father, ‘is the strangest place I’ve ever seen.’
    ‘A very good answer,’ says Madame Monnard with a decisive nod of her head. She tells Marie to pour their guest some wine. ‘And another stick on the fire, Marie. I’ve never known it this cold in October.’
     
    He learns that the Monnards like to talk – a quite different sort of talking to the more deliberate rhythms he grew up with in Bellême. They also like to eat – soup, stew, fried dabs, beetroot salad, cheese, a little cake. Everything, as far as he can tell, properly cooked, but everything having at the back of it some odd taint, a flavour he does not think should live in food.
    After dinner, they sit by the fire. In the cold seasons the room is both drawing room and dining room and serves well enough, though the presence of the pianoforte means that when crossing the room, one must always make a little detour. Monsieur Monnard relieves some tension in his face with a series of grimaces. The female Monnards pretend to sew. There’s a scratching at the door. A cat is admitted, a cat quite as big as the dog Jean-Baptiste watched piss on the floor outside the minister’s office, a black tom with a ragged half-moon missing from one of its ears. It is called Ragoût. No one can remember why or agree on who named it. It comes straight towards Jean-Baptiste, sniffs at the soles of his shoes.
    ‘What have you been up to, you naughty fellow?’ says Madame Monnard, scooping the animal with some effort into her lap. ‘I won’t answer for his morals,’ she says, laughing gaily, then adds, ‘Ragoût and Ziguette are inseparable.’
    Jean-Baptiste glances at the girl. It seems to him she looks at the cat with some distaste.
    ‘The little gentlemen who like cheese,’ says Monsieur Monnard, ‘do not last long in this house.’
    ‘What Ragoût don’t get,’ says Madame Monnard, ‘my husband traps with his little machines.’
    ‘Machines?’ asks Jean-Baptiste, for whom the word has always produced a certain thrill.
    ‘I make ’em and sell them at the shop,’ begins Monsieur Monnard. ‘A cage, a spring, a little door . . .’ He makes a movement with his hand. ‘The creature is imprisoned. Then you need only drop the trap into a pail of water.’
    ‘Marie cuts their throats,’ says Ziguette.
    ‘I’m sure she does no such thing,’ says her mother. To her guest she says, ‘My husband has an establishment on the rue des Trois Mores.’
    ‘Selling traps, monsieur?’ asks Jean-Baptiste.
    ‘Blades, monsieur, from plain to fancy. We finish and sharpen and polish. We are quite favoured by the Quality. Père Poupart of Saint-Eustache cuts his meat with one of my knives.’
    ‘When it gets cold,’ says Ziguette, ‘rats come inside. Into the house.’
    ‘It was the same at home,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘on the coldest nights.’
    ‘In Normandy?’ asks Madame Monnard, as though amazed to hear rats had discovered so remote a spot.
    ‘You must miss it,’ says Ziguette.
    ‘Home?’ For a moment, in his weariness, he sees crows, black rags, lifting off a field at dusk, sees the lonely spire of a country church. ‘I suppose I am content to be