Ball of Suet: Selected Short Stories by Maupassant

Chapter 7 Balls of Suet (6)
Over dessert, the women also made suggestive remarks that were both discreet and witty.Everyone looked bright and drank a lot of wine.Even when he was eating, drinking and having fun, the count always maintained his dignified and dignified appearance.He drew a much-appreciated analogy: the end of the Arctic winter shutdown, the victims excited to see a sea route to the south.

Inspired, Loiseau stood up, holding a glass of champagne in his hand: "Come on, toast to our freedom!" All the people stood up and cheered.Even the two nuns, at the urging of the ladies, sipped their lips in the fizzy wine they had never tasted.They thought the wine was like lemonade and tasted pretty good.

Loiseau summed up everyone's mood in one sentence: "It's a pity that there is no piano, otherwise we can play a quadrille."

Cornid never said a word, and didn't move, as if he had fallen into extremely serious thinking.Sometimes he tugged at his beard, as if trying to make it longer.Finally, around midnight, we all parted ways.Loiseau, who was walking unsteadily, suddenly patted Cornid on the stomach, and asked vaguely: "Don't you think it's funny, you don't say anything tonight, citizen?" Cornid suddenly raised his head , looked around the group of people with piercing but vicious eyes, and said, "I tell you, all of you are doing despicable and shameless deeds!" He stood up, walked to the door, and repeated I said it again, "Despicable and shameless deed!" After finishing speaking, he left.

The sudden splash of cold water made Loiseau stand there in a daze.But soon he regained his composure, and suddenly laughed so hard that he couldn't stand up straight again, and kept saying: "I can't eat grapes, they say grapes are sour, man, they are too sour." Everyone couldn't figure it out, so he said "" The Mystery in the Corridor".Everyone understood at once, and the ladies were wild with excitement.The count and M. Carré-Lamadon laughed until they burst into tears.They could hardly believe such a thing.

"What? Are you sure? He wants to..."

"I tell you, I saw it with my own eyes."

"And she refused..."

"Yes, because the Prussian is next door."

"is that true?"

"I assure you, it's true."

The count couldn't breathe with laughter.The owner of the textile factory also kept laughing while pressing his stomach with both hands.Loiseau went on: "You see, tonight he doesn't think it's funny, not at all."

The three of them laughed again, coughing like crazy.

That's how everyone broke up.Madame Loiseau, who had the personality of a nettle (a perennial herb whose stems and leaves have fine hairs that irritate the skin.), went to bed and said to her husband, Madame Carré-Lamadon, whore, Smiled all night and said, "You know, if a woman takes a fancy to a man in military uniform, it's all the same to them whether it's a Frenchman or a Prussian. Isn't that ironic?" God!"

All night, in the darkness of the corridor, there came out, like shuddering, slight noises, barely perceptible, like breaths, bare feet touching the ground, incomprehensible noises. An inscrutable rubbing sound.Everyone went to bed very late, because there was a long light shining from under the door.Champagne has this effect, and it is said to make it difficult to fall asleep in the excitement.

The next day, the snow was glaringly bright in the bright winter sun.The carriage was finally set up and was waiting for everyone at the door.A group of white pigeons, wrapped in thick feathers, with pink eyes and black pupils, held their heads high, jumping back and forth between the legs and feet of the six horses, pecking away the steaming manure, looking for something to eat. s things.

The groom was wrapped in a sheepskin coat and smoking a pipe on the seat of the carriage.The passengers were beaming, and quickly ordered people to pack the food to be eaten during the journey.

Everyone just waited for Ball-of-Fat to appear.

She came, a little embarrassed and ashamed, and walked timidly towards her traveling companions.They turned their faces away together as if they didn't see it.The count solemnly took his wife's arm, and told her to avoid contact with unclean people.

The fat "girl" felt very bewildered and stopped, then gathered all her courage, approached the wife of the owner of the textile factory, and said in a humble voice: "Good morning, madam".The other just nodded slightly, and at the same time looked at her like an insulted chaste woman.Everyone seemed busy and kept away from her, as if she was carrying an infection up her skirts.Everyone got on the bus in a hurry, and she was the last one to get on, and silently sat in the seat she had sat on before.

Hello everyone, as if she didn't see her or know her, Mrs. Loiseau looked at her from a distance out of righteous indignation, and whispered to her husband, "It's a good thing I don't sit next to her."

The heavy carriage moved, and their journey began again.

At first, no one said a word.Ball-of-Fat dared not raise his head to look at everyone.She was both angry at what her traveling companions had done, and ashamed that she had been hypocritically pushed into the arms of the Prussian because she had made concessions.

The countess quickly broke the embarrassing silence by turning to Madame Carré-Lamadon: "I suppose you know Madame Ettelaire?"

"Yes, she is my friend."

"A very attractive woman!"

"Brilliant! What a combination of talent and beauty, and a lot of learning, a complete artist, who sings mesmerizingly and draws beautifully."

The owner of the textile mill was in constant conversation with the count, and words like this came out from the rattling of the window panes now and then: "Coupons... payment terms... processing allowances... futures."

Loiseau and his wife were playing a deck of cards that he had stolen from the hotel.The hotel tables were not very well wiped, so the five-year-old deck was covered with grime.

The two nuns took down a long string of rosary beads hanging from their belts and crossed themselves together. Suddenly, their lips moved rapidly, faster and faster, as if they were chanting a "prayer" in a competition, chanting words in their mouths.From time to time they kissed a holy tablet, made the sign of the sign of the cross, and babbled on.

Cornid had been meditating motionlessly.

About three hours later, Loiseau put away the cards and said, "I'm hungry."

His wife hastily removed a box tied with string and pulled out a piece of frozen veal.She neatly sliced ​​the beef into neat slices, and the two of them ate it.

The countess said: "Then let us eat too." Everyone agreed.So she opened the food that had been prepared earlier.It was a long basin with a pottery hare decorated on the lid. Inside was a hare coated with minced meat made of delicious pork. The brown hare meat was mixed with other minced meat. Like many criss-cross streams.A large block of Swiss cheese was wrapped in a newspaper, so oily that the words "Community News" were printed on it.

The two nuns also produced a salami.Cornid also put his hands into the large side pockets of his coat and took out four boiled eggs from one side and a piece of bread from the other.He peeled off the eggshell and threw it into the straw under his feet, and started to eat, the light-colored egg yolk powder fell on his beard, dotted with stars.

When Ball-of-Fat got up, because of his haste and panic, he didn't have time to take anything with him.Seeing these people eating as if nothing had happened, she was too angry to speak.She opened her mouth first, to scold them with a flood of words that came to her lips, but she was too angry to say a word.

No one looked at her as if she didn't exist.These people had first made her a victim and then dumped her like garbage, and she felt that her self-respect had been overwhelmed by the contempt of these decent and shameless people.Then she thought of her big basket, full of good things, which they had devoured greedily.She thought of the two chicks in the gravy, her minced meat, her pears, and the four bottles of Bordeaux.Her anger died out, like a rope that had been stretched too tightly snapped, and she felt like she was going to cry.She held back all her strength and held back her sobs like a child, but tears welled up quickly, her eye sockets became moist, and big drops of tears slowly flowed down her cheeks.The continuous teardrops were like drops of water oozing from the rocks, falling on her plump and tall breasts.She was erect, her eyes were straight, her face was pale, and she wished not to be noticed.

The Countess, however, was perceptive and gave her husband a wink.The count shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: "What can I do? It's not my fault." Madame Loiseau smiled to herself, and said softly: "She is weeping for her shame."

At this time, the two nuns wrapped the leftover sausage in paper and began to pray again.

Cornid had also finished his eggs and bread, stretched his long legs under the opposite bench, leaned back, folded his arms in front of his chest, smiled as if he had discovered something interesting, and whistled. From "Marseillaise", a song during the French Revolution, which was designated as the French national anthem in 1795. .

The rest of the group looked serious and obviously didn't like the song at all.They became irritable, terribly annoyed, and seemed on the point of barking like hounds at a hurdy-gurdy.

Cornid saw this, and kept on blowing, even humming the words:

Divine love for the motherland,

to guide and support our vengeful hand,
Liberty, precious liberty,

You bring your defenders to battle!

The snow became hard and the car went faster.Before reaching Dieppe, he blew that vengeful, monotonous whistle with a kind of brutal obstinacy, as the road jolted and bumped, whether it was nightfall or darkness inside the car, until Dieppe. Forcing tired and irritable people to listen to his tunes from beginning to end and recall the words to each beat he blows.

The whore Ball-of-Fat was whimpering all the time, and now and then a sob or two could not be restrained, which came from the dark world between two lines of lyrics.

(End of this chapter)