Claudine Married Page 6

  I am avoiding the thing that is painful to me to write. Perhaps it isn’t in the least serious? If only it weren’t in the least serious! Here it is:

  Since yesterday, everything has been in place in Ren . . . in our flat. We shall see no more of the fussy niggling of the carpet-layer nor of the incurable absentmindedness of the curtain-hanger, who, every five minutes, kept mislaying his little brass gadgets for a quarter of an hour. Renaud feels at ease, and wanders about smiling approval at a clock that is right, bullying a picture that is not hanging straight. He tucked me under his arm to take me round on our proprietorial tour, then left me (no doubt to go off and do his work on the Diplomatic Review, to settle the fate of Europe with Jacobsen and treat Abdul Hamid as he deserved), alone in the drawing-room. He left me, after a satisfying kiss, saying: ‘My little despot, your kingdom is yours to rule.’

  Sitting there, with nothing to do, I drifted off into a long day-dream. Then an hour struck – I have no idea which – and brought me to my feet, quite unaware that I was living in the present. The next thing I knew, I was standing in front of the glass over the chimneypiece, hurriedly pinning on my hat . . . to go home.

  That was all. But it was a shattering experience. It conveys nothing to you? You’re lucky.

  To go home! But where? Isn’t this my own home, then? No, no, it isn’t, and that’s the whole source of my trouble. To go home? Where? Definitely not to the rue Jacob, where Papa has piled up mountains of papers on my bed. Not to Montigny, because neither the beloved house . . . nor the School . . .

  To go home! Have I no real dwelling then? No! I live here with a man, admittedly a man I love, but I am living with a man! Alas, Claudine, plant torn up from its soil, did your roots go as deep as all that? What will Renaud say? Nothing. He can do nothing.

  Where would I find a burrow? Within myself. I must dig into my misery, into my irrational, indescribable misery, and curl myself up in that hole.

  I sat down again and, with my hat still on my head and my hands clenched tight together, I burrowed.

  My diary has no future. It is five months now since I abandoned it on an unhappy note, and I feel resentful towards it. In any case, I haven’t time to keep it up to date. Renaud is taking me about and exhibiting me in the social world – almost every variety of it – far more than I like. But since he’s proud of me, I can’t hurt him by refusing to accompany him . . .

  His marriage – I hadn’t realized this – has made a great stir among the variegated (I nearly wrote ‘motley’) crowd of people he knows. No, he doesn’t know them. He himself is tremendously well known. But he’s incapable of putting a name to half the individuals with whom he exchanges cordial handshakes and whom he introduces to me. Frittering himself away, incorrigibly frivolous, he is not seriously attached to anything – except to me. ‘Who’s that man, Renaud?’ ‘It’s . . . Bother, I can’t remember his name.’ Well! Apparently, his profession demands this sort of thing; apparently the fact of writing profound articles for serious diplomatic journals infallibly necessitates your shaking hands with a horde of affected people, including painted women (of the world and the half-world), clinging and pushing ‘actresses’, painters and models . . .

  But Renaud puts so much husbandly and fatherly pride (the ingenuous tenderness of it touches me, coming from this blasé Parisian) into those three words, ‘My wife, Claudine’, that I draw in my claws and smooth out the angry creases between my eyebrows. And, besides, I have other compensations: a revengeful pleasure in answering, when Renaud vaguely points out to me a ‘Monsieur . . . Durande’:

  ‘You told me the day before yesterday that his name was Dupont!’

  ‘Did I tell you that? Are you sure? I’ve mixed them both up with . . . well, the other one. That moron who calls me “Old Boy” because we were in the Sixth together.’

  All the same, I find it hard to get used to such nebulous intimacies.

  Here and there, in the lobbies of the Opéra-Comique, at Chevillard and Colonne concerts, at soirées, particularly at soirées – at the moment when the fear of music casts a gloom over faces – I have overheard remarks about myself that were not entirely benevolent. So people are gossiping about me? Ah! of course, here I am Renaud’s wife, just as, in Montigny, he is Claudine’s husband. These Parisians speak low, but people who come from Fresnois can hear the grass grow.

  They say: ‘She’s very young.’ They say: ‘Too dark . . . she looks bad-tempered . . .’ ‘What, too dark? she’s got chestnut curls—’ ‘That short hair, it’s to attract attention! All the same, Renaud has taste.’ They say: ‘Where on earth does she come from? . . . She’s from Montmartre . . . It’s Slavonic, that small chin and broad temples. She’s straight out of one of Pierre Loüys’s homosexual novels.’ . . . ‘Surely it’s a bit early to have got to the stage of only liking little girls. How old is Renaud?’

  Renaud, always Renaud . . . Here is something characteristic: No one ever refers to him except by his first name.

  Four

  Yesterday my husband asked me:

  ‘Claudine, will you have an at-home day?’

  ‘Heavens above, whatever for?’

  ‘To gossip, to “argle-bargle” as you say.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘With women of the world.’

  ‘I don’t much like women of the world.’

  ‘With men too.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me! . . . No, I won’t have an at-home day. Do you imagine I know how to be a society hostess?’

  ‘I have one, you know!’

  ‘You do? . . . All right, keep it: I’ll come and visit you on your at-home day. Honestly, it’s much less risky. Otherwise, after an hour I’m quite likely to say to your gorgeous lady friends: “Get out. I’m fed up with you. You make me sick.”’

  He did not insist (he never insists); he kissed me (he always kisses me) and went out of the room, laughing.

  My stepson, Marcel, overwhelms me with polite contempt for this misanthropy and this frightened dislike of the ‘world’ I am always proclaiming. That little boy, so completely unsusceptible to women, assiduously seeks their company; he gossips, fingers materials, pours out tea without staining delicate dresses, and adores talking scandal. I am wrong in calling him ‘that little boy’. At twenty, one is no longer a little boy and he will remain a little girl for a long time. On my return to Paris, I found him still charming, but all the same a little worm. He is excessively thin now, his eyes are bigger and have a wild, strained look and there are three premature fine wrinkles at the corner of the lids . . . Is Charlie the only one responsible for them?

  Renaud’s anger against this two-faced little cheat did not last very long. ‘I can’t forget that he’s my child, Claudine. And perhaps, if I’d brought him up better . . .’ I myself forgave Marcel out of indifference. (Indifference, pride, and an unadmitted – and rather low-down – interest in the aberrations of his love-life.) And I feel a keen pleasure that never loses its edge every time I look under the left eye of that boy who ought to have been a girl and see the white line left by my scratch!

  But that Marcel amazes me! I had been expecting implacable resentment and open hostility. Not a trace of anything of the kind! Irony frequently, disdain too, curiosity – and that’s all.

  His one and only preoccupation is himself! He is constantly gazing into mirrors, putting his two forefingers on his eyebrows and pushing up the skin of his forehead as high as it will go. Surprised by this gesture, which is becoming a morbid habit, I asked him the meaning of it. ‘It’s to rest the skin under the eyes,’ he replied with the utmost seriousness. He lengthens the curve of his eyelids with a blue pencil; he risks wearing over-ornamental turquoise cuff-links. Ugh! At forty, he will be sinister . . .

  In spite of what happened between us, he feels no embarrassment at making me partial confidences, either out of unconscious bravado or as a result of his increasing moral perversion. He was here yesterday, languishing the tired charm of his too-slender body and h
is brilliant, fevered eyes.

  ‘You look utterly exhausted, Marcel!’

  ‘I am utterly exhausted.’

  We always adopt an aggressive tone with each other. It’s a kind of game and means very little.

  ‘Charlie again?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! . . . A young woman oughtn’t to know about certain disorders of the mind. Or, if she does, she ought to have the decency to forget them. ‘Disorders” is what you call them, isn’t it?’

  ‘“Disorders” is certainly what they’re called . . . But I would hardly say “of the mind”.’

  ‘Thanks for the body. But, between you and me, my tiredness has nothing whatever to do with Charlie, so he needn’t flatter himself it has. Charlie! A waverer, neither one thing nor the other . . .’

  ‘I say, come now!’

  ‘Believe me. I know him better than you do . . .’

  ‘So I should hope! Thanks for the compliment.’

  ‘Yes, at bottom he’s a coward.’

  ‘When you really get to the bottom . . .’

  ‘It’s ancient history, our friendship. I’m not repudiating it; I’m breaking it. And because of some not very savoury incidents . . .’

  ‘What, the beautiful Charlie? Has he been twisting you over money?’

  ‘Worse than that. He accidentally left a wallet behind at my place – full of women’s letters!’

  With what hatred and disgust he spat out his accusation! I stared at him, profoundly thoughtful. He was a pervert, an unfortunate – almost irresponsible – child, but his fury was justified. One had only to put oneself in his place in imagination. Yes, I should have felt the same.

  It is laid down that everything – joys, sorrows, trivial events – should come upon me suddenly. Not, goodness knows, that I go in for the extraordinary . . . apart from one exception – my marriage. But time goes by for me like the big hand of certain public clocks; it stays perfectly still where it is for fifty-nine seconds, then all at once, with no transition, it jumps to the next minute with a spasmodic jerk. The minutes grab it roughly as they do me . . . I am not saying that is entirely and invariably unpleasant, but . . .

  My last jump was this: I went to see Papa, Mélie, Fanchette, and Limaçon. This last, striped and splendid, fornicates with his mother and takes us back to the worst days of the House of Atreus. The rest of the time, he prowls about the flat, arrogant, leonine, and fierce. Not one of the virtues of his lovable white mother has been passed down to him.

  Mélie rushed to meet me, holding the globe of her left breast in her hand, like Charlemagne holding the terrestrial orb.

  ‘My darling, precious lamb . . . I was just going to drop you a line! If you knew the state we’re in here. All upside-down, you’d think the end of the world was come. I say, aren’t you fetching in that hat? . . .’

  ‘Pipe down, pipe down! So the end of the world’s come! Why? Has Limaçon overturned his . . . spittoon?’

  Wounded by my sarcasm, Mélie withdrew.

  ‘You think I’m joking? All right, go and ask Monsieur – you’ll see with your very own eyes.’

  Intrigued, I walked into Papa’s study without knocking. He turned round when he heard me, unmasking an enormous packing case that he was filling with books. His handsome, hirsute face wore an entirely new expression; harmless rage, embarrassment, childish confusion.

  ‘Is that you, little donkey?’

  ‘It would seem so. What on earth are you doing, Papa?’

  ‘I . . . I’m putting some papers in order.’

  ‘Funny kind of file you’ve got there! But – I know that packing case . . . That comes from Montigny, that does!’

  Papa resigned himself to the inevitable. He buttoned up his tight-waisted frock-coat, sat down, taking his time about it, and crossed his arms over his heard.

  ‘That comes from Montigny and that is going back there! Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘No, not in the least.’

  He stared at me under his bushy, beetling eyebrows, lowered his voice and risked coming right out with it:

  ‘I’m buggering off!’

  I had understood perfectly well. I had felt that this irrational flight was coming. Why had he come? Why was he going away? Idle to ask. Papa is a force of Nature; he serves the obscure designs of Fate. Without knowing it, he came here in order that I might meet Renaud; he is going away, having fulfilled his mission of irresponsible father.

  As I had made no answer, that terrible man recovered his self-confidence.

  ‘You realize, I’ve had enough of it! I’m ruining my eyes in this pitch-dark hole. I’m surrounded by rogues and scoundrels and bunglers. I can’t stir a finger without banging against a wall, the wings of my spirit are broken with beating against universal ignorance. A thousand herds of abysmal, mangy swine! I’m going back to my old hovel. Will you come and see me there with that highwayman you married?’

  That Renaud! He has captivated even Papa, who rarely sees him, but never speaks of him except in a special tone of gruff affection.

  ‘You bet I’ll come.’

  ‘But . . . I’ve got all sorts of important things to say to you. What’s to be done with the cat? She’s used to me, that animal . . .’

  ‘The cat?’

  The cat! It’s true . . . he’s very fond of her. Besides, Mélie would be there, and I feel apprehensive for Fanchette when I think of Renaud’s manservant and Renaud’s cook . . . My darling, my sweet girl, nowadays I sleep beside a warm body that is not yours . . . I made up my mind.

  ‘Take her with you. Later on, I’ll see; perhaps I’ll have her back with me.’

  But what I was most conscious of was that, on the pretext of filial duty, I would be able to see the house of enchanted memories again, just as I had left it, revisit the dear and dubious School . . . In my heart, I blessed my father’s exodus.

  ‘Take my bedroom with you too, Papa. I’ll sleep in it when we come to see you.’

  With one gesture, the bulwark of Malacology crushed me to powder with his contempt.

  ‘Ugh! You wouldn’t blush to cohabit with your husband under my unpolluted roof, impure animals as all you females are! What does it mean to you, the regenerating power of chastity?’

  How I love him when he’s like that! I kissed him and went away, leaving him burying his treasures in the vast packing-case and gaily humming a folk-song he adores:

  There was a young maiden as I have heard tell,

  And the language of flowers she knew passing well;

  She would finger and fondle her sweet Shepherd’s Purse:

  You can all take my meaning for better or worse.

  A hymn, presumably, to regenerating Chastity!

  ‘Definitely, darling, I’m going to start having my day again.’

  Renaud broke this grave news to me in our dressing-room where I was taking off my clothes. We had spent the evening at old Madame Barmann’s and assisted, by way of a change, at a good old squabble between that fat female screech-owl and the noisy boor who shares her destiny. She said to him: ‘You’re common!’ He retorted: ‘You bore everyone to tears with your literary pretensions!’ He bellowed; she screeched. The altercation continued. Running out of invectives, he flung down his napkin, left the table and stormed upstairs to his room. Everybody sighed and relaxed and we went on with our dinner in peace. When we reached the sweet course, our amiable hostess dispatched her personal maid, Eugénie, to soothe the fat man down (by what mysterious process?) and he finally came downstairs again, calmed, but offering not the slightest apology. However, Gréveuille, the exquisite member of the Academy, who is terrified of rows, laid the blame on his venerable mistress, flattered the husband, and helped himself to some more cheese.

  My own personal contribution to this charming milieu consists of my curly head, my soft, suspicious eyes, the discrepancy between my full, firm neck and my thin shoulders revealed by my décolletage, and a mutism that embarrasses my neighbours at dinner.

  The men do
not make up to me. My recent marriage still keeps them at a distance and I am not the kind of female who tries to attract flirtatious admirers.

  One Wednesday, at that old Barmann woman’s, I was politely pursued by a young and attractive literary man. (Beautiful eyes that boy, a faint touch of blepharitis, but no matter . . .) He compared me – my short hair as usual! – to Myrtocleia, to a young Hermes, to an Eros by Prud’hon – he raked his memories of private art collections for me and cited so many hermaphroditic masterpieces that I began to think of Luce and Marcel and he nearly ruined a marvellous dish for me. It was a heavenly cassoulet, a speciality of the Barmann’s cook, served in little silver-handled cocottes. ‘Such an advantage having one’s own cocotte, isn’t it? Cher Maître? One can be sure of getting enough to eat,’ whispered Maugis in Gréveuille’s ear, and the sixty-year-old sponger, who was the hostess’s lover, agreed with a one-sided smile.

  After dinner, the little flatterer, excited by his own evocations, would not leave me alone. Huddled up in a Louis XV armchair, I could hear him, though I was hardly listening, going on with his endless literary comparisons. He gazed at me with his caressing, long-lashed eyes, and murmured so that the others could not hear: