Claudine and Annie Page 5

  The ‘pensive one’ was myself . . . I started . . . I was already far away.

  ‘Me? Oh, I shall follow Marthe and Léon.’

  ‘And I shall follow Renaud to see he doesn’t follow other petticoats (I’m only joking, dearest!). What luck! We’ll meet again down there. I shall watch you all drinking water that tastes of rotten eggs and be able to compare your respective grimaces and know which of you has the most stoical soul. Your face should be a study taking the waters, Maugis, you bloated old wine-skin.’

  They laughed, but I had an anguished vision of how Alain’s face would look if he suddenly came in and saw me in such improper company. For after all, Marthe’s presence doesn’t justify everything and one really can’t be on intimate terms with that crazy Claudine who calls people ‘bloated old wine-skins’.

  ‘Alain, I shan’t go to Madame Lalcade’s.’

  ‘You must go, Annie.’

  ‘But I shall be so lonely, so sad with you not there.’

  ‘So sad . . . my modesty prefers not to discuss that. But not lonely. Marthe and Léon will escort you.’

  ‘I’ll go if you want me to.’

  ‘Do try and develop a little social sense, dear child, and not regard every function I consider it expedient for you to attend as some kind of dreary duty. This party of Madame Lalcade’s will be reckoned as a . . . a manifesto of art and your absence will delight certain ill-natured people . . . Don’t neglect this very agreeable house, perhaps the one only where people in society can safely rub elbows with any number of interesting artists . . . If you knew how to put yourself forward a little more, you might get yourself introduced to the Comtesse Greffulhe . . .’

  ‘Ah?’

  ‘But I haven’t much hope, that, especially without me, you’ll be able to do yourself justice . . . Ah well!’

  ‘What ought I to wear?’

  ‘Your white dress with the shirring at the waist seems to me to be indicated. Great simplicity, that night, Annie. You’ll see a slight excess of Gismonda coiffures and Laparcerie dresses at Madame Lalcade’s . . . There must be absolutely nothing about your appearance to warrant your feeling embarrassed . . . Be just as you are now, simple, reserved, unaffected; don’t add anything, don’t change anything. Isn’t that a handsome compliment I’m paying you?’

  A very handsome one, certainly, and I fully appreciated its worth. That conversation took place a fortnight ago and I can still hear every word Alain said in that firm, unhesitating voice of his.

  Tonight I shall put on my white dress and shall go to Madame Lalcade’s party and listen to Fauré’s sad and frivolous music which is to be mimed by people in fancy-dress . . . I am thinking of Marthe’s delight. She is replacing, almost at the last moment, a pretty Marquise who has a cold. In forty-eight hours, my sister-in-law has confected something out of shimmering silks, tried on a whalebone bodice, consulted engravings and hairdressers, and rehearsed a rigadoon.

  ‘What a crowd of people, Léon!’

  ‘Yes. I recognized the Voronsoffs’ carriage and the Gourkaus’ and the . . . Be so kind as to button my glove, Annie . . .’

  ‘You gloves are terribly tight!’

  ‘Not tight, Annie, only new. The woman at the glove-shop always says to me “Monsieur’s hands seem to get smaller and smaller” . . .’

  I did not even smile at his childishness. Vain of his hands and feet, my poor brother-in-law endures a thousand small tortures but will not concede even a quarter of a size to his mangled fingers. Such a flood of light wraps overflowed through the door of the conservatory being used as a cloakroom and right out into the garden, that, for a minute, I was agitated by the fear and the hope that I would not be able to get into it . . . Léon forced a slow passage for me through the crowd with an insinuating elbow. Obviously I should get in but my dress would be ruined . . . I looked frantically for a corner of a looking-glass, quite convinced that my heavy knot of hair was coming undone . . . Between two sumptuous dowdies, I caught a glimpse of a fragment of myself. Yes, that was Annie, slim and brown as a coloured girl . . . those were her blue eyes, blue as the turned-down gas-flame, so meekly submissive they seemed to be treacherous.

  ‘All’s well, all’s well. Very much in form, tonight, the whipped child!’

  Now the mirror reflected, quite close to mine, Claudine’s vigorous profile and the sharp-pointed décolletage of her yellow dress that rippled like a flame . . .

  I turned round to ask her, idiotically enough: ‘I’ve lost Léon . . . You haven’t seen him?’

  The yellow female fiend burst out laughing.

  ‘Truth and honour, I haven’t got him on me! Are you really in such a desperate state?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About mislaying your brother-in-law.’

  ‘It’s just . . . You see, Marthe’s playing in this mime and I haven’t anyone but him.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s dead,’ said Claudine with macabre solemnity. ‘It’s of no importance. I’ll chaperon you just as well. We’ll sit down, we’ll look at the greasy shoulders of old ladies, we’ll hit them over the head if they talk during the music, and I shall eat all the strawberries on the buffet!’

  This alluring programme (or was it Claudine’s irresistible authority?) decided me. With my head bent low, I made my first step into the studio where Madame Lalcade paints and gives parties. It was filled to overflowing with massed flowers and human beings.

  ‘She’s invited all her models,’ whispered my companion.

  It was glittering with women, so closely packed that, at each sensational new arrival, only their heads turned and nodded like a field of heavy poppies in the wind.

  ‘Claudine, we’ll never be able to sit down in there . . .’

  ‘Oh yes we shall. Just you wait!’

  Claudine’s smiling unceremoniousness admitted no rebuff. She conquered half a chair, agitated her hips till she had invaded the whole of it, and installed me, heaven knows how, beside her.

  ‘There! Look-see the pretty stage-curtain with the garlands. Oh, how I love everything you can’t see behind! Look-see also Valentine Chessenet in red with her rabbit’s eyes also in red . . . Honestly, has Marthe got a part? Look-see again, Annie, there’s Madame Lalcade saying how d’you do to us over fifty-three ladies. How d’you do, too, Madame? How d’you do, Madame! Yes, yes, we’re very well, thank you. Three quarters of our behinds have somewhere to lay their head.’

  ‘People will hear you, Claudine!’

  ‘Let them hear me!’ reported the redoubtable creature. ‘I’m not saying anything dirty. My heart is pure and I wash every day. So there! How d’you do, Maugis, you great tun-belly! He’s come to see Marthe décolletée to her very soul and possibly for the music as well . . . Oh, how lovely the Cabbage-Rose is tonight! I defy you, Annie, to distinguish from a yard away where her skin ends and her pink dress begins. And what healthy, abundant meat. At four sous a pound there must be a hundred thousand francs’ worth! No, don’t try and work out how many kilos that makes . . . Look, there’s Renaud over there in the doorway.’

  Without her realizing it, her voice had all at once softened.

  ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Neither can I, except the tip of a moustache, but I know it’s his.’

  Yes, she knew it was he. Passionate, instinctive animal that she is, she could pick up his scent, through all those other warm effluences, all those perfumes, all those breaths . . . Why is it that every time I am forcibly reminded of their love, I feel unbearably sad?

  The electric lights suddenly went out. There was that Ah! of vulgar surprise that bursts from the crowd when the first firework goes off on the fourteenth of July, followed by enraged chattering. Then that too was abruptly quenched . . . On the still invisible stage, harps were already pattering like raindrops; plucked mandolines were softly twanging an invocation: ‘Come, all you fair ladies . . .’ Then, slowly, the curtain rose.

  ‘Oh, this is bliss,’ Claudine whispered, enraptured. Against a g
rey-tinted backcloth of a formal park, Aminte, Tircis, and Clitandre, the Abbé, the Ingénue, and the Roué, lay about in languorous attitudes as if just returned from Cythera. The wing hardly swayed under the light weight of a panniered shepherdess at whom a shepherd in reddish-purple gazed up adoringly. An exquisite creature turned over the pages of a music-book, bent forward so low that her charms were exposed as she followed the song her lover’s languid fingers were tracing . . . Far too soon, all this enchantment – the disillusioned dreamers, the sweetly ironical music – was dispersed by the lively chords that announced the rigadoon.

  ‘What a pity!’ sighed Claudine.

  Grave couples in shimmering costumes paraded, pirouetted, curtsied and bowed. The last Marquise, all in frosty silver on the arm of a sky-blue Marquis, was Marthe, so dazzling that a murmur greeted her appearance and I could hardly believe it was she.

  The will to be beautiful had transfigured her. Here and there the fire of her hair glinted through the ash of powder that could not extinguish it. With her eyes burning paler against her make-up, her firm round breasts disclosed almost beyond the limits of decency, her face serious and concentrated, she pivoted on perilous pointed heels, plunged into curtsies, raised her little painted hand and, at each pirouette, darted her most terrible Ninon-turned-anarchist glance at the audience . . . With no real beauty and no more than superficial grace, Marthe eclipsed all the pretty women who danced alongside her.

  She willed to be the most beautiful . . . Such a thing would be impossible to a poor creature like me. The sad, pompous music mocked me, melted me, moved me to the point of tears. But my self-consciousness would not let me indulge my feelings. Everything was ruined for me by the effort to stop myself crying, by the thought of the cruel lights that would go on in a moment and of Claudine’s too-penetrating gaze.

  My very dear Annie,

  Your letter arrived just before I sailed so if this one is brief, you must blame it entirely on the hurry of departure. I am delighted to know you are showing yourself to be so courageous and so attached to everything that makes up the life of a simple woman in good society: your husband, your family, your charming well-kept and well-ordered home.

  For it seems to me that, being away from you, I may, perhaps even should, pay you the compliments I refrain from paying you when I am with you. Do not thank me for it, Annie, for, to some extent, it is my own work I am admiring; a lovable child, fashioned little by little and without great difficulty into an irreproachable young woman and an accomplished housewife.

  The weather is superb; we can count on a perfect crossing. So you can hope that everything will proceed normally till I reach Buenos Aires. You know that my health is excellent and that the sun has no terrors for me. Therefore you must not fret if the posts are rare and irregular. I shall contain myself and not await your letters too impatiently, though they will nevertheless be precious when they arrive.

  I embrace you, my very dear Annie, with all my unshakeable affection. I know you will not smile at my rather solemn form of expression; the feeling that attaches me to you has nothing frivolous about it.

  Your

  Alain Samzun

  With my forefinger pressed to one throbbing temple, it was a labour to read his letter. For once again I was in the grip of that prostrating migraine that recurs at almost regular intervals to make life a misery. With my jaws clenched and my left eyed closed, I listened to an incessant hammer in my wretched brain. Daylight hurts me: darkness stifles me.

  In the old days, at my grandmother’s, I used to inhale ether till I almost lost consciousness. But, during the first months of our marriage, Alain found me one day half-swooning on my bed, with a bottle clutched in my hand, and he forbade me ever to use it again. He spoke to me very seriously and lucidly about the dangers of ether, about his horror of these ‘hysterics’ remedies’, about the harmlessness, in short, of migraines: ‘All women have them!’ Ever since, I have endured the pain with as much patience as I could muster, limited myself, quite unsuccessfully, to hot compresses and general hydrotherapy.

  But today I was suffering so much that I wanted to cry. The sight of certain white objects, a piece of paper, an enamelled table, the sheets of the bed on which I was lying, produced that contraction of the throat and that nervous nausea I know and dread only too well. Alain’s letter . . . so longed for, none the less! . . . seemed to me cold and colourless. I realized this must be a really vicious attack . . . I would re-read the letter later.

  Léonie came in. She took great care not to make a noise: she opened the door very softly, but banged it loudly behind her. At least her intentions were good.

  ‘Is Madame’s head still bad?’

  ‘Yes, Léonie . . .’

  ‘Why doesn’t Madame take . . .?’

  ‘A glass of brandy? No, thank you.’

  ‘No, Madame, a little ether.’

  ‘Monsieur doesn’t like me to drug myself, Léonie. Ether won’t help me.’

  ‘It’s Monsieur who makes Madame believe that. Monsieur is a nice man in every way and he imagines it might do Madame harm, but, when it comes to knowing anything about women’s troubles, don’t you talk to me of men. I always take ether when I get my neuralgia.’

  ‘Ah! You . . . you’ve actually got some here?’

  ‘A brand-new bottle. I’ll go and fetch it for Madame.’

  The divine, powerful odour relaxed my nerves. I lay back full-length on my bed, the bottle under my nostrils, weeping tears of weakness and pleasure. The cruel blacksmith retreated, there was only a discreet padded finger tapping my temple now. I breathed in so hard that there was a sweet taste in my throat . . . my wrists turned heavy.

  There followed vague, fleeting dreams, all barred by a line of light – the one that filtered through my half-closed eyelids. I saw Alain in a tennis shirt he wore one summer eight years ago, a white cellular one that his flesh tinted pink . . . I myself was the very young Annie of those days, with my heavy plait that ended in a soft ringlet . . . I touched the supple flesh of the pink shirt and it excited me like living skin, warm as my own, and I told myself confusedly that Alain was a little boy and it didn’t matter, didn’t matter, didn’t matter . . . He was passive and vibrant; over his burning cheeks he drooped long black lashes that were Annie’s eyelashes . . . How velvety that skin felt to the touch! Didn’t matter . . . didn’t matter . . .

  But a tennis-ball suddenly hit me hard on the temple and I caught it in flight. It was warm and white . . . a nasal voice, quite close to me, announced: ‘It’s a cock’s egg.’ I was not in the least surprised, since Alain was now a cock, a red cock on the bottom of a plate. He scratched the china with an arrogant claw till it squeaked maddeningly and crowed ‘I always . . .’ What was he saying? I couldn’t hear. The bar of greyish-blue light cut him in half like the President of the Republic’s sash. Then came blackness, blackness, a delicious death, a slow falling sustained by wings . . .

  A wicked act, a wicked act, yes Annie, there is no other word for it! A piece of deliberate, complete disobedience to Alain’s will. He was right to forbid me this ether that makes me quite irresponsible . . . Thus I accused myself in all humility two hours later, alone with my own reflection in the glass, sitting at my dressing-table where I was brushing and re-doing my dishevelled hair. My head was free, clear and empty. Only the dark circles under my eyes, my pale lips, and my lack of appetite, though I had been fasting all day, gave evidence of my debauch with the beloved poison. Ugh! The stale, cold fumes of ether clung to the curtains. I must have air, I must forget – if I could . . .

  My window, on the second floor, has a dismal outlook. I opened it and gazed at the narrow courtyard where Alain’s horse was being rubbed down by a stout groom in a check shirt. At the sound of my window being opened, a black bull terrier sitting on the cobbles raised his square muzzle . . . It was my poor Toby, my banished, disgraced Toby! The next second, he was on his feet, a small dark figure, waving the remnant of his cropped tail at me.

/>   ‘Toby! Toby!’

  He jumped up and down, making wheezy little grunts like moans. I leant out.

  ‘Charles, send Toby up to me by the backs stairs, please.’

  Toby had understood before the man and bounded forward. Another minute and the poor black French bulldog was at my feet, in a delirious convulsion of humility and love, his eyes and his tongue nearly bursting out of his head.

  I had bought him last year from one of Jacques Delavalise’s stablemen, because he was really a beautiful little eight-month-old bull-pup with an uncropped tail, no nose, limpid slits of eyes and ears like trumpets. And I had brought him home, feeling rather proud but slightly apprehensive. Alain examined him with an expert but not unfriendly eye.

  ‘A hundred francs, you say? That’s not dear. The coachman will be pleased, the rats are destroying everything in the stable.’

  ‘In the stable! But that’s not what I bought him for. He’s pretty. I wanted to keep him for myself, Alain.’

  ‘For yourself? A stable bulldog in a Louis XV drawing-room? Or on the lace covers of your bed? If you really want a dog, my dear child, I’ll find you a little floss-silk Havanese for the drawing-room, or perhaps a big Saluki . . . Salukis go with all styles.’

  He rang the bell and, when Jules appeared, he indicated my poor black Toby who was innocently chewing the knob of a chair.

  ‘Take this dog to Charles, say he’s to buy him a collar, keep him clean and tell me if he’s a good ratter. The dog is called Toby.’

  Since then I have never seen Toby, except through the window. I had watched him suffering and thinking of me, for we had loved each other at sight. One day, I kept back some little pigeon bones and carried them out to him in the yard, taking care no one saw him. I came back indoors with a heavy heart and with an uneasy feeling I thought I could dissipate by confessing my weakness to Alain. He hardly scolded me at all.

  ‘What a child you are, Annie! If you like, I’ll tell Charles he can take the bull-terrier with him under the seat sometimes when you go out in the carriage. But don’t let me ever find Toby in the flat, will you? Never, is that understood? You’ll oblige me greatly by remembering this.’