Her Lover by Albert Cohen Read Free Book Online Page A

said she had something interesting to tell me, led me off to her room, and asked me to sit down. She cleared her throat. Then that ghastly, luminous, child-of-God smile and she started: "Dear, I must tell you something terribly naice: I'm sure you'll be perleased. You'll never guess, but just now, before he went off to the office, Adrien popped in, sat on my lap, threw his arms around my neck and said: Mummy darling, it's you I love best in the whole world! Now wasn't that naice, dear?" I stared at her and then left the room. If I'd told her she made me feel sick I know exactly what would have happened. She would have put her hand to her heart, like a martyr about to be thrown to the lions, and told me that she forgave me and would even pray for me. She's wicked, but all the same isn't she the lucky one, because she's absolutely convinced that there's an afterlife and that she'll be there fluttering round Almighty God for all eternity. She even claims that she'll be glad to die, or as she says in her way: "to get her marching orders".
    'With a view to my novel, a few more details. Old Madame Deume was born Antoinette Leerberghe in Mons, Belgium. Money troubles after the death of her father, a lawyer I think. When she was forty, short on curves and physical attractions but long on bones and warts, she succeeded in dragging nice but weak Hippolyte Deume to the altar. A former accountant in a private bank in Geneva, he was distinctly lower middle class and was originally from the Vaud. Born Belgian, she became Swiss by marriage to mild Hippolyte, who was short and wore a goatee and a moustache. Adrien is Antoinette's nephew. Her sister, that is Adrien's mother, had married a Belgian dentist called Janson. Both Adrien's parents died when he was very young, and his aunt bravely took on the job of mothering him. She had been a paid companion to a Madame Rampal who used to spend a large part of the year in the small Swiss town of Vevey, and from her she inherited a villa there. She converted it into a nursing home for religious and vegetarian convalescents. Wanting a change, Hippolyte Deume, then fifty-five and the owner of a nice little property in Geneva which earned him a pretty penny, went to stay there after the death of his wife. Antoinette made a great fuss of him and looked after him when he fell ill. When he was better, he brought her a bunch of flowers. The maid of forty summers swooned, fell into the startled arms of the diminutive accountant, and murmured that she accepted because she felt it was God's will. Through the influence of one of old Madame Deume's distant cousins named van Offel, some sort of high-up in the Belgian Foreign Office, Adrien, who was then studying for an arts degree in Brussels, was appointed to the Secretariat of the League of Nations in Geneva. I forgot to say that a couple of years before this the Deumes had adopted the little orphan who thus became Adrien Deume.
    'I also forgot to say earlier that, after moving to Geneva, old mother Deume was overcome by a spiritual need to belong to the so-called Oxford Group, a religious sect. Ever since joining (she loves it because it's Christian names straight off, and, once in, a person can be on the most intimate terms with ladies who are definitely top-drawer), she has not stopped having "direction", which, in the Oxford jargon, means getting orders direct from God. As soon as she was admitted into the group, old Madame Deume began receiving direction to invite her sister-members to tea or to lunch. (She prefers to say "luncheon", which sounds better, though she pronounces it "lunching".) Since Cologny, where the Deume residence is situated, is a select suburb, the ladies received direction to accept. But on their first visit they encountered little Monsieur Deume, and subsequently received direction to turn down all further invitations. Only one, a certain Madame Ventradour, received direction to accept two or three subsequent invitations to tea. O