Original Short Stories – Volume 10. Guy de Maupassant
wheat, and to leave her to die alone.
But the doctor got angry, and, stamping his foot, he said: “You are no better than a brute, do you hear, and I will not allow you to do it, do you understand? And if you must get in your wheat today, go and fetch Rapet’s wife and make her look after your mother; I will have it, do you understand me? And if you do not obey me, I will let you die like a dog, when you are ill in your turn; do you hear?”
The peasant, a tall, thin fellow with slow movements, who was tormented by indecision, by his fear of the doctor and his fierce love of saving, hesitated, calculated, and stammered out: “How much does La Rapet charge for attending sick people?” “How should I know?” the doctor cried. “That depends upon how long she is needed. Settle it with her, by Heaven! But I want her to be here within an hour, do you hear?”
So the man decided. “I will go for her,” he replied; “don’t get angry, doctor.” And the latter left, calling out as he went: “Be careful, be very careful, you know, for I do not joke when I am angry!” As soon as they were alone the peasant turned to his mother and said in a resigned voice: “I will go and fetch La Rapet, as the man will have it. Don’t worry till I get back.”
And he went out in his turn.
La Rapet, old was an old washerwoman, watched the dead and the dying of the neighborhood, and then, as soon as she had sewn her customers into that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more, she went and took up her iron to smooth out the linen of the living. Wrinkled like a last year’s apple, spiteful, envious, avaricious with a phenomenal avarice, bent double, as if she had been broken in half across the loins by the constant motion of passing the iron over the linen, one might have said that she had a kind of abnormal and cynical love of a death struggle. She never spoke of anything but of the people she had seen die, of the various kinds of deaths at which she had been present, and she related with the greatest minuteness details which were always similar, just as a sportsman recounts his luck.
When Honore Bontemps entered her cottage, he found her preparing the starch for the collars of the women villagers, and he said: “Good-evening; I hope you are pretty well, Mother Rapet?”
She turned her head round to look at him, and said: “As usual, as usual, and you?” “Oh! as for me, I am as well as I could wish, but my mother is not well.” “Your mother?” “Yes, my mother!” “What is the matter with her?” “She is going to turn up her toes, that’s what’s the matter with her!”
The old woman took her hands out of the water and asked with sudden sympathy: “Is she as bad as all that?” “The doctor says she will not last till morning.” “Then she certainly is very bad!” Honore hesitated, for he wanted to make a few preparatory remarks before coming to his proposition; but as he could hit upon nothing, he made up his mind suddenly.
“How much will you ask to stay with her till the end? You know that I am not rich, and I can not even afford to keep a servant girl. It is just that which has brought my poor mother to this state – too much worry and fatigue! She did the work of ten, in spite of her ninety-two years. You don’t find any made of that stuff nowadays!”
La Rapet answered gravely: “There are two prices: Forty sous by day and three francs by night for the rich, and twenty sous by day and forty by night for the others. You shall pay me the twenty and forty.” But the peasant reflected, for he knew his mother well. He knew how tenacious of life, how vigorous and unyielding she was, and she might last another week, in spite of the doctor’s opinion; and so he said resolutely: “No, I would rather you would fix a price for the whole time until the end. I will take my chance, one way or the other. The doctor says she will die very soon. If that happens, so much the better for you, and so much the worse for her, but if she holds out till to-morrow or longer, so much the better for her and so much the worse for you!”
The nurse looked at the man in astonishment, for she had never treated a death as a speculation, and she hesitated, tempted by the idea of the possible gain, but she suspected that he wanted to play her a trick. “I can say nothing until I have seen your mother,” she replied.
“Then come with me and see her.”
She washed her hands, and went with him immediately.
They did not speak on the road; she walked with short, hasty steps, while he strode on with his long legs, as if he were crossing a brook at every step.
The cows lying down in the fields, overcome by the heat, raised their heads heavily and lowed feebly at the two passers-by, as if to ask them for some green grass.
When they got near the house, Honore Bontemps murmured: “Suppose it is all over?” And his unconscious wish that it might be so showed itself in the sound of his voice.
But the old woman was not dead. She was lying on her back, on her wretched bed, her hands covered with a purple cotton counterpane, horribly thin, knotty hands, like the claws of strange animals, like crabs, half closed by rheumatism, fatigue and the work of nearly a century which she had accomplished.
La Rapet went up to the bed and looked at the dying woman, felt her pulse, tapped her on the chest, listened to her breathing, and asked her questions, so as to hear her speak; and then, having looked at her for some time, she went out of the room, followed by Honore. Her decided opinion was that the old woman would not last till night. He asked: “Well?” And the sick-nurse replied: “Well, she may last two days, perhaps three. You will have to give me six francs, everything included.”
“Six francs! six francs!” he shouted. “Are you out of your mind? I tell you she cannot last more than five or six hours!” And they disputed angrily for some time, but as the nurse said she must go home, as the time was going by, and as his wheat would not come to the farmyard of its own accord, he finally agreed to her terms.
“Very well, then, that is settled; six francs, including everything, until the corpse is taken out.”
And he went away, with long strides, to his wheat which was lying on the ground under the hot sun which ripens the grain, while the sick-nurse went in again to the house.
She had brought some work with her, for she worked without ceasing by the side of the dead and dying, sometimes for herself, sometimes for the family which employed her as seamstress and paid her rather more in that capacity. Suddenly, she asked: “Have you received the last sacraments, Mother Bontemps?”
The old peasant woman shook her head, and La Rapet, who was very devout, got up quickly:
“Good heavens, is it possible? I will go and fetch the cure”; and she rushed off to the parsonage so quickly that the urchins in the street thought some accident had happened, when they saw her running.
The priest came immediately in his surplice, preceded by a choir boy who rang a bell to announce the passage of the Host through the parched and quiet country. Some men who were working at a distance took off their large hats and remained motionless until the white vestment had disappeared behind some farm buildings; the women who were making up the sheaves stood up to make the sign of the cross; the frightened black hens ran away along the ditch until they reached a well-known hole, through which they suddenly disappeared, while a foal which was tied in a meadow took fright at the sight of the surplice and began to gallop round and round, kicking cut every now and then. The acolyte, in his red cassock, walked quickly, and the priest, with his head inclined toward one shoulder and his square biretta on his head, followed him, muttering some prayers; while last of all came La Rapet, bent almost double as if she wished to prostrate herself, as she walked with folded hands as they do in church.
Honore saw them pass in the distance, and he asked: “Where is our priest going?” His man, who was more intelligent, replied: “He is taking the sacrament to your mother, of course!”
The peasant was not surprised, and said: “That may be,” and went on with his work.
Mother Bontemps confessed, received absolution and communion, and the priest took his departure, leaving the two women alone in the suffocating room, while La Rapet began to look at the dying woman, and to ask herself whether it could last much longer.
The day was on the wane, and gusts of cooler air began to blow, causing