A Life (12 page)

And all at once Julien placed both hands on his wife's shoulders and planted a full, deep kiss on her mouth such as she had never before experienced. Down the kiss went, down into her veins and into her very marrow; and she felt such a strong, mysterious jolt that she pushed Julien blindly away with both arms and almost fell backwards.

'Let's go, let's go,' she stammered.

He said nothing, but took hold of her hands and held them in his.

They said nothing on their way back to the house. The remainder of the afternoon seemed long.

They all sat down to table at dusk.

The meal was simple and quite short, contrary to Norman custom. A kind of embarrassment inhibited the guests. Only the two priests, the mayor, and the four farmers who had been invited displayed some of the coarse merriment that is traditional at wedding feasts.

If the laughter seemed to be fading, a quip from the mayor was enough to set it off again. It was getting on for nine; they would soon be having coffee. Outside, beneath the apple-trees in the front courtyard, the country dancing was beginning. Through the open window one could see the whole festive scene. Candle-lanterns hanging from the branches turned the leaves the colour of verdigris. Young rustics and their wenches cavorted in a circle singing a dancing song at the tops of their voices, thinly accompanied by two violins and a clarinet perched on a large kitchen-table which had been set out by way of a stage. At times the noisy singing of the farmworkers would blot out the sound of the instruments; and their frail harmonies seemed to be torn into  shreds by the wild, unruly voices, falling from the air in tatters, in tiny fragments of a few scattered notes.

Refreshments were being served to the crowd from two large barrels surrounded by blazing torches. Two serving-girls were kept constantly busy rinsing the glasses and bowls in a tub and then holding them still dripping beneath the taps from which flowed either a red stream of wine or a golden stream of clear cider. And men thirsty from dancing, or placid old men, or young girls wet with perspiration all pressed forward, reaching out their arms to grab in their turn whatever receptacle came to hand before tilting their head back and downing great quantities of their chosen liquid.

Bread, butter, cheese, and sausage had been laid out on a table. People would come and grab a mouthful from time to time, and this wholesome and exuberant celebration under the canopy of candlelit branches made the dreary guests indoors feel like joining in the dancing and long to drink from the belly of these fat casks and eat bread and butter and raw onion.

The mayor, who was keeping time to the music with his knife, cried out:

'Bless my soul but this is good. It's like being at the Marriage at Cannes.'
*

There was a ripple of stifled laughter at this. But the Abbé Picot, being a born enemy of secular authority, retorted:

'At Cana, you mean.'

The gentleman would not be told:

'No, monsieur le curé, I know what I meant. When I say Cannes, I mean Cannes.'

They rose from the table and proceeded into the drawingroom. Then they went outside to mingle with the country folk in their merrymaking. After which the guests left.

The Baron and Baroness were having some sort of whispered quarrel. Madame Adélaïde, more out of breath than ever, seemed to be refusing to do as her husband asked. Eventually she said, almost out loud:

'No, dearest, I just can't, I simply wouldn't know how to go about it.'

Then Papa abruptly left her side and walked over to Jeanne.

'Shall we take a stroll, my child?'

Thoroughly agitated, she replied:

'Just as you wish, Papa.'

They went out.

The moment they stepped beyond the door, on the side of the house that faced towards the sea, they were met by a sharp gust of windone of those chilly summer breezes that already bear the scent of autumn.

Clouds were racing across the sky, now obscuring, now once more revealing the stars.

The Baron pressed his daughter's arm to his as he tenderly squeezed her hand. They walked along for a few minutes. He seemed hesitant, troubled. Finally he made up his mind.

'My darling child, I am about to fulfil a rather difficult role which really ought to fall to your mother; but as she refused to do it, there is nothing for it but for me to take her place. I'm not sure how much you know about the facts of life. There are mysteries which one carefully conceals from children, and from girls especially, girls whose thoughts must remain pure, irreproachably pure, until we entrust them to the arms of the man who will see to their happiness. It falls to him to remove the veil from the sweet secret of existence. But if they have not hitherto had the slightest suspicion of it, then often they take exception to the somewhat brutal reality that underlies their dreams. Wounded in their soul, and even in their bodies, they refuse to grant their husband that which the law, the law of humans and the law of nature, accords him as an absolute right. I cannot say more, my darling; but remember this, and only this, that you belong totally to your husband.'

What in fact did she know? What did she surmise? She had begun to tremble now, her heart cast down, as if in premonition, by a painful and overwhelming melancholy.

They returned indoors. A surprising spectacle brought them up short at the door to the drawing-room: Madame Adélaïde was sobbing on Julien's chest. Her tears, great noisy tears which sounded as though they were coming from the bellows in a forge,  seemed to issue simultaneously from her nose, her mouth, and her eyes; while the young man stood there in embarrassed silence endeavouring to hold up this large woman who had collapsed into his arms as she sought to commend her sweet, beloved, darling daughter to his care.

The Baron rushed forward.

'Come, come, no tearful scenes, please, I beg you'; and taking hold of his wife, he sat her down in a chair while she wiped the tears from her face. Then he turned towards Jeanne:

'Quickly now, my child, kiss your mother goodnight and off to bed.'

On the verge of tears herself also, she quickly embraced her parents and fled from the room.

Aunt Lison had already retired to her bedroom. The Baron and his wife remained alone with Julien. And the three of them felt so awkward that no one could think what to say, with the two men just standing there, in evening dress, gazing into space, and Madame Adélaïde slumped in her chair and still emitting the occasional sob. Their embarrassment was becoming intolerable, so the Baron began to talk of the journey upon which the young couple were to embark in a few days' time.

Up in her bedroom Jeanne was being helped out of her clothes by Rosalie, who was in floods of tears. All fingers and thumbs, she could find neither pin nor ribbon, and appeared decidedly more upset than her mistress. But Jeanne paid little heed to her maid's tears: it seemed to her as though she had entered another world, or departed for another planet, leaving behind all she had ever known, all she had ever held dear. Everything in her life and her way of looking at things seemed to have been turned upside-down; it even occurred to her to wonder, bizarrely, 'did she love her husband?' Suddenly he now seemed like a stranger whom she hardly knew. Three months earlier she hadn't even known of his existence, and now she was his wife. Why was it so? Why fall into marriage so quickly, as though into a gaping pit that opens in your path?

When she had put on her nightclothes, she slipped into bed; and the cool sheets made her shiver, adding to the feeling of  coldness and sad loneliness which had made her heart heavy for the last two hours.

Rosalie fled from the room, still sobbing; and Jeanne waited. She waited, tense with anxiety, for this dimly perceived something which had been obscurely announced by her father's words, this mysterious revelation of the great secret of love.

Without her having heard anyone climb the stairs, there came three gentle knocks on the door. She trembled horribly and made no reply. Again there was a knock, and the door-handle grated. She hid her head beneath the bedclothes, as if a burglar had entered the room. Boots creaked faintly on the parquet floor; and suddenly someone touched her bed.

She started nervously and gave a little cry; and taking her head out from under the covers, she saw Julien standing in front of her, gazing at her with a smile.

'Oh, you did give me a fright!' she said.

'Weren't you expecting me?' he rejoined.

She did not reply. He was still in full evening dress, wearing the serious expression of the handsome young man; and she felt dreadfully ashamed to be lying in bed like this in front of one so proper and correct.

They were both at a loss as to what to say or do next, not even daring to look at each other at this solemn and decisive moment upon which the intimate happiness of their whole lives depended.

He had a vague sense perhaps of the dangers attendant upon this encounter, of the ready self-control and artful tenderness that is required if no offence is to be given to the subtle reticence and infinite delicacy of feeling of a virginal soul raised on dream and fantasy.

So, gently, he took her hand and kissed it, and then, kneeling by the bed as though at an altar, he murmured in a voice as soft as a gentle breeze:

'Will you love me?'

At once reassured, she raised her head from the pillow in a cloud of lace and smiled:

'I already do, my dearest.'

He placed his wife's small, slender fingers in his mouth and, in a voice muffled by this fleshy obstruction, said:

'Will you show me that you love me?'

She replied, troubled once more and not quite understanding what she was saying, acting on the memory of what her father had said:

'I am yours, my dearest.'

He covered her wrist with moist kisses and, rising slowly from the floor, began to bring his face close to hers even as she began once more to hide it.

Suddenly, throwing one arm across the bed, he took hold of his wife through the sheets while slipping his other arm beneath the pillow and raising her head upon it: and in a soft, soft whisper he asked:

'So, then, will you make a little space for me, beside you?'

She took fright, instinctively, and stammered:

'Oh, please, not yet.'

He seemed disappointed, a little piqued, and he continued in a tone of voice that was still cajoling but now a little more brusque.

'Why not yet, since we shall eventually?'

She resented this remark; but, submissive and resigned, she said for the second time:

'I am yours, my dearest.'

Then he disappeared very rapidly into the dressing-room; and she could hear his movements quite clearly, the rustle of clothing as he undressed, the clink of money in his pocket, the successive clatter of boots being removed.

And all at once, dressed only in underwear and socks, he darted across the room to place his watch on the mantelpiece. Then he hurried back into the little room that adjoined her bedroom, where he busied himself a while longer, and quickly Jeanne turned over on her side and shut her eyes as she sensed his approach.

She almost jumped out of bed when she felt a cold, hairy leg slide in roughly beside her; and, burying her face in her hands, distraught, on the point of crying out in fear and alarm, she huddled at the far edge of the bed.

At once he took her in his arms, though she still had her back to him, and he kissed her voraciously, on the neck, on the errant lace of her nightcap, on the embroidered collar of her nightdress.

She lay quite still, stiff with dreadful anxiety as she felt a strong hand seeking out her breasts which she had sought to conceal between her elbows. The shock of this brutal contact left her gasping for breath; and more than anything she wanted to escape, to run to the other end of the house and lock herself away, far from this man.

He had stopped. She could feel the warmth of him on her back. Then her terror began to abate, and suddenly it occurred to her that she had only to turn over and kiss him.

In the end he seemed to lose patience and said in an unhappy voice:

'So you don't want to be my little wife, then?'

She muttered through her fingers:

'Am I not that already?'

He replied with a touch of ill humour:

'No, my dear, you are not. Come now, stop making fun of me.'

His cross tone affected her deeply, and all of a sudden she turned towards him to say she was sorry.

He grabbed her in his arms, rabidly, as though filled with a ravenous hunger for her; and he covered her face and neck with rapid kisses, biting kisses, frenzied kisses, dazing her with his caresses. She had parted her hands and lay motionless beneath his striving, no longer conscious of what she was doing, of what he was doing, lost in a mental confusion which prevented her from understanding what was happening. But suddenly she was torn by a sharp pain; and she began to groan, writhing in his arms as he possessed her violently.

What happened next? She could scarcely remember, for she had lost all power of thought; she had the impression somehow that he was showering her lips with a hail of tiny, grateful kisses.

Then he must have said something, and she must have replied. Thereupon he made further advances, which she rejected with horror; and as she fought him off, she felt the same thick hair on  his chest as she had previously felt on his leg, and she recoiled in shock.

Eventually tiring of his fruitless solicitations, he lay back on the bed and was still.

Then she began to reflect; and, filled with despair to the depths of her soul, disillusioned in her dreams of a quite different kind of intoxication, in cherished expectations which had now been destroyed, in a dream of happiness which had burst like a bubble, she said to herself:

'So that's what he calls being his wife! That! That!'

And she lay thus for a long while, desolated, her eyes wandering over the tapestries on the walls, along the ancient love story that ran round her room.

But since Julien was now silent and lying still, she slowly turned her head to look at him, and she saw that he was asleep! Asleep, with his mouth open and an untroubled expression on his face! He was asleep!