The Country of Strangers

Lucien Vautrin had been sent to clear the passage for the coffin, and with the handcart under the window and the loose boards against the wall he could already see the bearers coming straight through, spared the turn that would bring Achille close against the damp stone. The washing tub still stood in their way. He took it by both handles, surprised by its weight and by the grey water rising towards his fingers, and carried it to the locked store door, where the surface trembled for a moment after he had set it down. From there he could see the street through the entrance he had cleared.

“I left it there for a reason,” Jeanne Noiret said.

Jeanne had come without her coat, followed by the two women dressed for the cemetery who were still speaking about something in her room. Lucien held the notebook against his chest while their conversation passed him, looking towards the space where the tub had stood, which he had hoped she would find clear when she came out.

“It was in the entrance,” he said. “They'll need the whole width.”

“I know what they need. I live here.”

One of the women fitted the fingers of one glove along the other, smoothing each into place before moving to the next, and Lucien looked past her along the entrance he had cleared. Water shone on the tub's handles where he had taken hold of them, while Jeanne waited for him to move.

Jeanne came past him and took one handle. “That water was coming towards my door. Help me.”

They carried it to the side of the courtyard. Jeanne lowered her end towards the hollow in the paving, and he followed her, bent awkwardly over his own hand until the base found a level place. He had taken it for washing left to be put away, one of the things a person might forget when there was a death in the house. Now the water touched the side of the tub and divided. A thin edge went towards her door, stopped and spread along the stones. His fingers were still beneath the handle when she straightened.

“We can leave it here,” he said.

One of the women called from the doorway. Jeanne turned towards her. “It was here yesterday,” she said, and went inside.

He dried his fingers and went back through the passage. Behind him the women had resumed their conversation; at the bend it became a murmuring without words, continuous with the small sounds from the house, until a footstep approached from the street and he turned towards it with the relief of someone hearing a question he might be able to answer.

To somebody passing in the street the houses showed their front doors and the windows above them, giving no reason to suspect the rooms built behind, which remained hidden even from the passage until a person had followed the turn. Lucien knew the residents by the way they came through it, a burden shifted for the narrowing, a hand already extended to the wall, the moment at which a shoulder drew in. Sometimes he called a name before its owner was visible and heard the answer come round the corner, a voice greeting him from the little darkness ahead. He liked the few steps before the face appeared, when he could go on speaking to somebody he knew by the sound of their approach.

This morning their care in dressing had made some of the people unfamiliar. He recognised a voice before the man in the dark coat to whom it belonged. His own coat was not black. He had brushed it before leaving the office, taking pains with the collar, and in the dimness of the passage the difference was less conspicuous; he could stand there with the notebook while other men took off their hats and not have to decide at once how far he was attending the funeral.