Claudine and Annie Read online

  Today, admitting to Alain that I had let Toby into my bedroom would not be enough to relieve me of all anxiety – I may as well be frank – of all remorse. This crime, which, last week, would have made me tremble, is a trifle compared to my guilty, delicious ether-intoxication.

  Go on sleeping on the carpet patterned with grey roses, black Toby; go on sleeping with the great sighs of an animal worn out by emotion: you are not going back to the stable.

  FOUR

  ARRIÈGE.

  A smell of orange-blossom and sulphur baths comes up through an open window. ‘The local smell,’ the hotel porter who brought up our luggage obligingly explained to me. Marthe assures me one gets used to it in a couple of days. To the scent of the flowering oranges planted in a hedge in front of the hotel, granted. But the other, that sulphurous smell that clings to one’s very skin, it’s revolting!

  I leant on the sill, already discouraged, while Léonie whose felt travelling hat made her look like a policeman in mufti unpacked my great wicker trunk and disposed the silver trinkets from my dressing-case like soldiers on parade.

  What on earth was I doing here? I felt less alone in Paris, in my yellow bedroom with Alain’s portrait for company, than between these four walls distempered in pink with an undertone of grey. A brass bed whose weary mattress and bedclothes I have inspected suspiciously. A dressing-table that is too small, a writing-desk I shall use to do my hair at, a folding-table I shall use to write on, some commonplace upholstered chairs and some white-painted wooden ones. How many days had I got to live in this room? Marthe had said: ‘That all depends.’

  From the other side of the flagged corridor, I heard her piercing voice. Léon’s muffled replies, which I could not catch, made a blank between her remarks. I sank into a torpor, isolated from everything, from the place I was in, from Marthe, from Alain, from the disturbing future, from all sense of passing time . . .

  ‘Shall we go down, Annie?’

  ‘Oh, Marthe! You gave me a fright! But I’m not ready!’

  ‘Good heavens, whatever do you imagine you’re doing? Not even got washed or done your hair? For mercy’s sake, don’t start being a dead weight the moment you get here.’

  My sister-in-law was arrayed as if for the Fritz, fresh, made-up and rosy. Eleven hours of railway journey had dealt kindly with her. She declared she wanted to go and listen to the music in the park.

  ‘I’ll hurry up. What about Léon?’

  ‘He’s washing his godlike body. Come on, Annie, get on with it! What’s stopping you?’

  I hesitated, standing there in my corsets and petticoat, to undress completely in front of Marthe . . . She stared at me as if at some rare animal.

  ‘O Annie, saintly Annie, are there two mugs in the world like you? I’ll turn my back, then you can scrub your fair body in peace.’

  She went over to the window. But the room itself embarrassed me and I could see myself in the glass, long and brown like a date . . . Suddenly, Marthe shamelessly turned round. I shrieked, I plastered my arms against my dripping thighs, I contorted myself, I implored her . . . Appearing not to hear me, she put up her lorgnette and stared at me curiously.

  ‘Funny creature! It’s obvious you’re not from these parts. You look like one of those females in an Egyptian mosaic . . . or a serpent standing on its tail or a slender brownstone jar . . . Staggering! Annie, you’ll never convince me your mother didn’t have an affair with a donkey-boy in the shade of the Pyramids.’

  ‘Marthe, please! You know perfectly well how that kind of joke shocks me . . .’

  ‘I’m quite aware of it. Here, catch, your chemise, you great silly! At your age, behaving like a prudish schoolgirl! . . . I’d go stark naked in front of three thousand people, if it was the fashion. To think one always hides one’s best features!’

  ‘Does one? Madame Chessenet certainly wouldn’t agree with you.’

  ‘What perspicacity! (You don’t like her, do you? That amuses me.) She must have breasts she could wear as the very last word in fashion, as a flat stole with the end coming down to her knees.’

  Her chattering presence acted as a tonic on my laziness and ended by overcoming my childish prudery. Moreover, Marthe has the gift of making one forgive her almost anything.

  While I was arranging my white tulle jabot in front of the glass, Marthe leant out of the window and described what was going on under her eyes.

  ‘I can see Léon searching for us, looking exactly like a lost poodle . . . He thinks we’ve gone to listen to the music. Good riddance!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For fear he should bore me, of course! I can see a staggering lady, dressed from head to foot in real Valenciennes, but with a mug as wrinkled as a withered greengage . . . I can see the idiotic backs of men in dented panamas that look like squashed meringues . . . I can see . . . Aha!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hi! Hi! All right, nothing to be alarmed about! Yes, yes, it’s us, come up!’

  ‘You’re crazy, Marthe! Everyone’s staring at you. Who are you talking to?’

  ‘The little Van Langendonck.’

  ‘Calliope?’

  ‘None other!’

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘Presumably, since I’m calling out to her.’

  I frowned involuntarily; still another connection Alain would like to break off and which he keeps as distant as possible. Not that this little Cypriot, the widow of a Walloon, gets herself talked about as much as Chessenet, but my husband objects to her flamboyant, languorous beauty which offends his sense of good taste. I had not realized that there was a code of strict conventions for beauty, but Alain assures me there is.

  Calliope Van Langendonck, known as ‘the violet-eyed Goddess’, announced her arrival by an elegant rustle of silks, made an effective theatrical entrance, overwhelmed Marthe with kisses, exclamations, trailing laces, and lapislazuli glances veiled by eyelids armed with lashes that glittered like lances, then flung herself on me. I was ashamed of feeling so stiff and unresponsive, so I offered her a chair. Marthe was already bombarding her with questions:

  ‘Calliope, which is the lucky vessel you’ve got in tow here this year?’

  ‘Qu’est-ce, vessel? . . . Oh, yes . . . No vessel, I am by mine own self.’

  She frequently repeats what one has just said with a charming, puzzled air of listening to herself and mentally translating. Is it coquetry or a ruse to give herself time to choose her reply?

  I remember, last winter, she was mixing up Greek, Italian, English, and French with an ingenuousness too overdone to be sincere. Her ‘babelism’, as Claudine, who finds her wildly amusing, calls it, and her carefully cultivated gibberish, attract attention like an additional charm.

  ‘Alone? Tell that to the marines.’

  ‘But it is true. One must take care, two months each anno, to keep looks.’

  ‘It’s worked very well up to now, hasn’t it, Annie?’

  ‘Oh yes. You’ve never looked prettier, Calliope. The Arriège waters obviously do you good.’

  ‘The waters? I take jamais . . . never . . .’

  ‘Then, why . . . ?’

  ‘Because the altitude’s excellent here and I meet people I know and I can dress economically.’

  ‘Admirable woman! All the same, sulphur’s good for the skin, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s kakon . . . bad for skin. I take care skin with a special recipe – Turkish.’

  ‘Tell us quick. I’m panting with excitement and I’m sure Annie hasn’t a dry stitch on her.’

  Calliope, who has left practically all her definite and indefinite articles behind in the isle of Cyprus, spread out her glittering hands magisterially.

  ‘You take . . . old glove buttons, mother-of-pearl, you put in avothiki . . . egg-cup . . . and you squeeze lemon quite whole over . . . The next day, she’s paste . . .’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘The buttons and the lemon. And you spread on face and you are whiter than, wh
iter than . . .’

  ‘Don’t bother to find the word. Thanks immensely, Calliope.’

  ‘I can ancora give recipe for removing spots woollens . . .’

  ‘No, that’s enough, good Lord! Not all the same day! How long have you been in Arriège?’

  ‘One, due, trois . . . seven days . . . I’m so happy to see you! I want not to leave you again. When you suddenly called from the fen . . . window, I had spavento and I dropped my sunshade!’

  I was disarmed. Alain himself could not have kept a straight face under this flood of crazy polyglottism. If this frivolous creature can make the long hours of my ‘season’ seem shorter, I’ll see her as much as she likes, in Arriège.

  What need had Marthe to drag me round that bandstand? I came back with a splitting migraine and feeling as if my skin bore the almost physical imprint of all those stares directed at us. Those people, the bathers and water-drinkers of Arriège, stripped us and devoured us with their cannibal eyes. I feel sick with apprehension at the thought of all the tittle-tattle and spying and scandal-mongering going on among these people with nothing to do and riddled with boredom. Luckily, very few faces I knew except the little Van Langendonck. Renaud and Claudine arrive in three days’ time; they’ve booked their suite.

  What a dreary bedroom this is! The harsh electric light glares down from the ceiling on my dead, empty bed . . . I feel lonely, lonely to the point of weeping, so lonely that I made Léonie stay and take down my hair so as to have a familiar presence with me as long as possible . . . Come, my black Toby – warm, silent little dog who adores my very shadow – come and lie at my feet. Your sleep is feverish after the long journey, agitated by simple straightforward nightmares . . . Perhaps you’re dreaming that we’re being separated again?

  Don’t be frightened, Toby. At this moment, the severe master is asleep on the colourless ocean, for his bed-time is as carefully regulated as all the rest of his life . . . He has wound up his watch, he has laid his tall white body, cold from the icy tub, between the sheets. Is he dreaming of Annie? Will he sigh in the night, will he wake up in the blackness, the deep blackness that his dilated pupils will pattern with gold half-moons and processions of roses? Suppose, at that very minute, he were calling his docile Annie, searching for her smell of roses and white carnations with the tortured smile of an Alain I have only seen and possessed in dreams? No. I would have felt it through the air, over all those miles of distance . . .

  Let’s go to bed, my little black dog. Marthe is playing baccarat.

  My dear Alain,

  I am getting used to this hotel life. It’s an effort I hope you’ll put down to my credit, just as I give you credit for every victory gained over my apathy.

  All the same, the days are longer for me than for the people who are taking the cure. Marthe, valiant as usual, is submitting herself to a very severe régime of douches and massage. Léon only drinks the waters; I just look on.

  We’ve met Madame Van Langendonck who is here on her own. Believe me, dear Alain, I did not in any way seek this meeting. Marthe is only being affable to her and says that watering-place friendships are the easiest things in the world to break off in Paris. So I hope you are reassured that our relations are purely superficial. Besides, she is staying at the Casino and we are at the Grand-Hotel.

  I also believe the Renaud-Claudine couple will be arriving in a few days. It will be almost impossible for us to avoid seeing them; in any case I get the impression that you consider the husband acceptable socially because he knows everyone. As to his wife, we shall deal with the situation as best we can. For that I rely on Marthe, who has acquired from you some of your unerring sense of the right thing to do on any occasion.

  I am writing only about Marthe and myself, dear Alain. You have forbidden me to pester you with my solicitude, useless but so well-intentioned! So now you shall also be told that we get up at quarter-to-seven, and that on the stroke of seven we are sitting at little tables in the dairy. A glass of warm, frothy milk is put in front of us and we drink it slowly, watching the sun suck up the morning mist.

  We have to breakfast as early as seven because the medicinal baths are at ten. People arrive in dressing-gowns without even taking time to make the most cursory toilet. This early rising is not becoming to all the women and I admire Marthe for surviving the ordeal so well. She appears swathed in linens and muslins, wearing snowy frilled caps in which she looks charming.

  Your Annie does not deploy so much art. She turns up in a tailored skirt and a soft silk blouse, and the absence of corsets makes not the slightest difference to my waistline. My night plait is tied up in a ‘door-knocker’ with a white ribbon and I wear a cloche hat of woven straw. Not an outfit to cause a sensation!

  After two cups of milk and as many little croissants, a walk in the park, then back to the hotel to see if there are any letters and to get properly dressed. At ten o’clock, Marthe disappears to her douche and I am left alone till midday. I stroll, I read, I write to you. I try to imagine your life, your cabin, the smell of the sea, the throbbing of the screw . . .

  Good-bye, dear Alain, take good care of yourself and of your affection for

  Annie

  That was all I could find to write to him. I broke off a dozen times, some clumsiness on the verge of dropping from my pen. What evil spirit inhabits me, so that I am already writing ‘clumsiness’ where the word ought to be ‘frankness’?

  But could I write everything? I dread my husband’s anger, even at a distance, if I had told him that I live in the constant company of Calliope, and of Maugis who arrived three days ago and never leaves us . . . The ten-five train tomorrow brings Claudine and her husband . . . Like a coward, I tell myself that a complete confession when Alain returns will earn me no more than a serious sermon. He won’t have seen Calliope in the dairy in the morning in ‘wanton disarray’ – so disarrayed and so wanton that I turn my eyes away when I talk to her. Clouds of tulle that keep slipping down, flounced négligés yawning wide open over the golden skin and extraordinary lace mantillas to veil her dishevelled hair. Yesterday morning, however, she turned up in a vast dustcoat of silvery glacé silk, so hermetic and so decent that I was amazed. All round us, the panamas and the check caps were regretfully searching for glimpses of amber skin.

  I complimented her on her correct attire. She burst into her ear-splitting laugh and shrieked: ‘Oh this thing! I had to wear it! I haven’t a stitch on underneath!’

  I didn’t know where to look. All the caps and panamas had bent towards her, with an automatic jerk, like puppets bowing . . .

  Luckily, Calliope is alone. Alone? Hmm! Sometimes, when we are walking together, we run into extremely presentable gentlemen who swerve aside with rather too much affected discretion, rather too much sublime indifference. She sweeps past them, her small figure stiffly upright, with a fan-like flutter of her eyelids which she has tried unsuccessfully to teach me.

  The hour of the sulphur bath draws us together by creating a desert all round us. Léon, extremely depressed these days, often comes and sits at our table and risks startling ties and vivid waistcoats that suit his ivory complexion. He goes off every quarter of an hour to drink one of the four glasses of the water. He is trying hard to make an impression on Calliope and keeps paying her literary compliments.

  To my great astonishment she receives his advances with barely-concealed disdain and a cold, lofty blue stare which implies:

  ‘What does this slave want?’

  There is also . . . Marthe. Yes, Marthe. I hesitate even to write it . . . That Maugis dogs her heels far too closely and she endures his presence as if she were unaware of it. I cannot believe it. Marthe’s glittering eyes see everything, hear everything, pounce on the thought behind the eyes they look into. How is it she doesn’t tear that delicate, dimpled little hand of hers away from the lips of that creature that say a prolonged good morning and good night to it twice a day? Maugis reeks of alcohol. He is intelligent, yes, and extremely well-informed und
er all his half-drivelling banter; Alain tells me he is a redoubtable swordsman and that absinthe has not yet made his wrist tremble. But . . . ugh!

  She’s just amusing herself – that’s what I’d like to hope. She’s flirting for the pleasure of seeing her adorer’s glorious eyes become bloodshot and yearning when they look at her. She’s just amusing herself . . .

  I’ve just come back from accompanying Marthe to her douche. I am still shaken by the experience.

  In a hideous rough pine cabin, dripping on every wall and impregnated with sulphur and steam, I assisted, behind a wooden screen, at the nameless torture this douche-massage is. In a flash, Marthe was naked. I blinked at so much shamelessness and so much whiteness. Marthe is white, like Alain, with more pink underneath. Without a flicker of embarrassment she turned a pair of impudent, deeply dimpled buttocks towards me while she strapped a rubber cap round her temples, a revolting head-dress that made her look like a fishwife.

  Then she swung round . . . and I was struck dumb by the character this pretty woman’s face assumed, deprived of its wavy hair: eyes so piercing they looked almost maniacal, a short, solid jaw, a coarsely modelled ruthless brow. I searched in vain for the Marthe I knew in this one who frightened me. This disturbing face was laughing above a plump, dainty, almost too feminine body, all exaggerated taperings and exaggerated curves . . .

  ‘Hi, Annie, are you falling asleep on your feet?’

  ‘No. But I’ve had quite enough already. This cabin, that rubber cap . . .’

  ‘I say, Catherine, shall we see if she’s a brave girl, this little sister-in-law of mine? What about the two of us giving her a good douche, with the full jet on?’

  I looked apprehensively at the sexless creature in an oilcloth apron, perched on a pair of wooden clogs. She laughed, displaying red gums.

  ‘If Madame will kindly lie down . . . we’ve lost quite a bit of your fifteen minutes . . .’