A Life (13 page)

She could not believe it, and was filled with indignation, feeling more outraged by his sleep than by his brutality, as though she had been treated as a mere convenience. How could he sleep on such a night as this? Did what had happened between them seem perfectly normal to him? Oh! She would rather have been beaten, violated again, and bruised with odious caresses till she had lost all consciousness.

She lay there without moving, propped on one elbow and leaning towards him, listening to the gentle sound of breathing coming from his lips, which at times was almost a snore.

Day broke, faintly at first, then lighter, then pink, then dazzling bright. Julien opened his eyes, yawned, stretched, looked at his wife, smiled, and enquired:

'Did you sleep well, my darling?'

She noticed that he now said 'tu' to her,
*
and she replied in astonishment:

'Of course. And you?'

'Oh, me, yes, very well.'

And turning on his side, he kissed her and began calmly to converse. He told her of his plans for the future, and how they  might make savings; and this word, which featured on several occasions, surprised Jeanne. She listened to him without really taking in what he was saying, and gazed at him as meanwhile all manner of thoughts flitted through her mind, barely leaving an impression.

Eight o'clock struck.

'Come, it's time we were up,' he said. 'We shall look ridiculous if we lie in.' And he got out of bed first. When he had finished getting ready, he was kindness itself as he assisted his wife in all the intricate details of her toilette, refusing to allow Rosalie to be summoned.

Just before he left the room, he stopped her:

'By the way, it's all right to call each other ''tu" now when we're on our own, but in front of your parents it might be better to wait a little. It will seem perfectly normal once we are back from our honeymoon.'

She did not make an appearance until lunchtime. And the day passed in its usual manner, just as if nothing had happened. It was simply that there was another man in the house.

V

Four days later the coach arrived to take them to Marseilles.

After the anguish of the first night, Jeanne had already grown used to contact with Julien, to his kisses and loving caresses, although, her repugnance at their more intimate relations had not diminished.

She found him handsome, she loved him; and she felt once more happy and light of heart.

The farewells were brief and without sadness. Only the Baroness seemed upset; and just as the coach was leaving, she placed a large purse, as heavy as lead, in her daughter's hand:

'This is for your minor expenses, for the things a young wife needs,' she said.

Jeanne quickly put it in her pocket; and away the horses went.

Towards evening Julien asked her:

'How much money did your mother give you in the purse?' She had forgotten all about it, and emptied the purse out onto her lap. A stream of gold poured forth: two thousand francs. She clapped her hands.

'Oh, I
shall
be able to spoil myself,' she said, gathering the money up again.

After a week's travelling, in stifling heat, they reached, Marseilles.

And the next day the
Roi-Louis
, a small steamer bound for Naples via Ajaccio, bore them off to Corsica.

Corsica! The maquis! Bandits! Mountains! Napoleon's birthplace! Jeanne felt as though she were leaving reality behind and entering into a waking dream.

Standing side by side on the deck, they watched as the cliffs of Provence slipped past. The sea, calm and intensely blue, as though it had congealed, solidified, under the fierce glare of the sun, stretched away beneath a boundless sky, itself almost excessively blue.

'Do you remember our boat trip with Père Lastique?' she said.

By way of reply he gave her a darting kiss on the ear.

The steamer's paddle-wheels slapped the sea, disturbing its deep slumber; and behind them, in one long trail of spume, in a broad, pale streak of churning water, foaming like champagne, the wake of the boat stretched away, undeviating, as far as the eye could see.

Suddenly, no more than a few yards ahead of them, an enormous fish, a dolphin, leapt out of the water, then dived back in again head-first and disappeared. Startled and afraid, Jeanne shrieked and threw herself against Julien's chest. Then she began to laugh at her fright and watched anxiously to see if the creature would reappear. A few moments later it rose up again like a large mechanical toy. Presently it fell back, only to reappear once more; and then there were two of them, then three, then six, frolicking, it seemed, around the ponderous ship, escorting this monstrous brother of theirs, this wooden fish with fins of iron. They would pass to port only to return again on the starboard side, and then, as though they were playing a game, or taking part in some mad chase, they would leap up into the air in one great curve, first one at a time, then all together, before plunging back into the sea in single file.

Jeanne clapped her hands, quivering with delight each time these enormous, effortless swimmers rose into view. Her heart leapt like them in wild, innocent joy.

Suddenly they were gone. They surfaced one more time, far across the sea; then they vanished from sight, and for a few moments Jeanne felt a pang of sadness at their departure.

Evening came, a calm, gentle, radiant evening, full of light and peace and contentment. Not a breath of air, not a ripple on the water; and this limitless repose of the sea and the sky merged with the smooth tranquillity of their slumbrous souls.

The great disc of the sun was gently sinking in the sky, far away in the distance towards invisible AfricaAfrica, that blazing land whose scorching heat seemed almost to have reached them already; but a kind of cool caress, quite unlike a breeze, played across their faces as soon as the sun went down.

They did not want to return to their cabin which reeked of all  the dreadful smells of steamships; and they both stretched out on the deck, side by side, wrapped in their coats. Julien fell asleep at once; but Jeanne lay there with her eyes open, stirred by the newness of it all. The steady thrash of the paddles soothed her; and she gazed above her at the legions of stars, so piercingly bright, that twinkled as though at anchor in this limpid, southern sky.

Towards morning, however, she dozed off. Sounds, voices, woke her. The sailors were singing as they cleaned the ship. She shook her husband, who lay fast asleep, and they got to their feet.

She took deep, exhilarating draughts of the salty mist, and it coursed through her to the very tips of her fingers. Everywhere, nothing but sea. Ahead of them, however, something grey and as yet blurred in the nascent dawn, a kind of piled mass of strange, pointed, indented clouds seemed to have been laid upon the waves.

Then it appeared more distinctly: the shapes etched themselves more sharply on the lightening sky, and a long line of strange-looking, horn-tipped mountains emerged into view. It was Corsica, swathed in a kind of delicate veil.

The sun rose behind it, bringing the definition of dark shadows to the mountain-ridges and their jagged outcrops; and then each peak caught the light while the rest of the island remained bathed in mist.

The captain of the ship appeared on the deck, a short, elderly man, who had been simultaneously tanned, dried, stunted, wizened, and shrunk by the harsh, salty winds; and in a voice grown hoarse from thirty years of giving orders and worn out by shouting above all the gales, he said to Jeanne:

'Ah, the hussy! Can't you just smell her?'

And indeed she could smell a strong and singular scent of plants, of wild aromas.

The captain went on:

'That's the smell of Corsica, Madame, her special perfume, like a pretty woman's. Even if I'd been away twenty years, I would recognize it five miles out to sea. I come from here. And apparently the great man, away over there on Saint Helena,
*
is always  talking about the smell of home. We're from the same family.'

And, removing his hat, the captain saluted Corsica and bowed to the distance, to the great Emperor imprisoned far across the ocean, who was one of his family.

Jeanne was so moved that she nearly wept.

Then the mariner pointed to the horizon:

'The Sanguinaires.'

Julien was standing beside his wife, with his arm round her waist, and they both peered into the distance trying to make out the place he had indicated.

Eventually they noticed a number of rocks shaped like pyramids. Presently the ship rounded them and entered a huge, sheltered bay girded by an array of tall mountains, the lower slopes of which seemed to be all covered in moss.

The captain drew their attention to this vegetation:

'The maquis.'

The circle of mountains seemed to close behind the ship as it moved slowly forward across an expanse of blue water which was so clear that in places it was possible to see right to the bottom.

And suddenly the town appeared, at the far end of the inlet, all white, nestling by the water's edge at the foot of the mountains.

There were some small Italian boats lying at anchor in the harbour. Four or five rowing-boats came out to hover round the
Roi-Louis
, ready to take off its passengers.

Julien, who was collecting together their luggage, whispered to his wife:

'If I give the cabin steward twenty sous, that should be enough, shouldn't it?'

For a week now he had been continually asking the same question, and each time it pained her. She replied, with slight impatience:

'When one's not sure how much to give, one always ends up giving too much.'

He was for ever haggling with waiters and maîtres d'hôtel, with coach-drivers and hawkers of every kind, and when, after much discussion, he had finally succeeded in beating them down, he would rub his hands and say to Jeanne:

'I just don't like being robbed.'

She would be filled with trepidation whenever a bill arrived, already knowing full well what remarks he would make about every item, humiliated by his bartering, blushing to the roots of her hair at the look of disdain on the face of the servants whose eyes followed him as they clutched his inadequate tip in their hand.

He had another such exchange with the boatman who set them ashore.

The first tree she saw was a palm!

They registered at a large, deserted hotel in the corner of a huge square and ordered lunch.

When they had finished dessert, and just as Jeanne was rising from table ready to stroll round the town, Julien took her in his arms and murmured lovingly in her ear:

'Perhaps, my sweet, we might go and lie down for a little while.'

She was taken aback.

'Lie down? But I'm not tired.'

He clasped her to him.

'I want you. You know . . . It's been two days now! . . .'

She turned crimson, deeply embarrassed, and stammered:

'What, now? But what would people say? What would people think? How could you possibly dare ask for a room in the middle of the day? Oh, Julien, please, I beg you, no.'

But he cut her short:

'I really don't care a fig what hotel staff may say or think. Just see if I do.'

And he rang the bell.

She said nothing more, her eyes fixed on the floor, rebelling in her flesh and soul against this incessant desire of her husband's, obeying only with disgust, resigned yet humiliated, seeing in this wanting something bestial, degrading, in a word, something dirty.

Her senses had not yet been awakened, and her husband was treating her now as if she shared his burning need.

When the porter arrived, Julien asked him to show them to their room. The manthe true Corsican type covered in hair  almost to his eyeballsdid not understand and assured them that their accommodation would be got ready by the evening.

Julien explained impatiently:

'No, now. We are tired after the journey, and we would like to rest.'

Then a smile crept through the servant's beard, and Jeanne felt like running away.

When they came down an hour later, she dared not walk past the people they encountered, persuaded that they were going to laugh and whisper behind her back. In her heart she felt resentful towards Julien for not understanding as much, for lacking this finer sense of modesty, this instinctive delicacy of feeling; and she felt as though there were a veil between them, a barrier, and realized for the first time that two people are never completely one in their heart of hearts, in their deepest thoughts, that they walk side by side, entwined sometimes but never completely united, and that in our moral being we each of us remain forever alone throughout our lives.

They spent three days in this little town hidden away at the end of its blue gulf, as hot as a furnace behind the wall of mountains that prevented the wind from reaching it.

Then an itinerary was fixed upon for their onward journey, and so that they should find no route barred, they decided to hire horses. Accordingly they chose two little, wild-eyed Corsican stallions, scrawny-looking but full of stamina, and set out one morning at daybreak. A guide accompanied them on a mule and carried provisions, for inns are unknown in this wild place.

At first the road ran along the edge of the gulf before leading off quite soon into a shallow valley that ran in the direction of the great peaks. Often they would cross watercourses that were almost dry, but where the last vestige of a mountain torrent still trickled beneath the stones, like an animal in hiding, gurgling warily.

The wild terrain seemed thoroughly bare. The hillsides were covered in tall grass, parched yellow by the burning heat of the season. Sometimes they would pass mountain-dwellers, either on foot, or riding a small horse, or sitting astride a donkey no bigger  than a dog. And all of them had a loaded rifle slung over their shoulders, ancient rusty weapons that were fearsome instruments in their hands.

The pungent scent of the aromatic plants which cover the island seemed to clog the air; and on the track climbed, gently upwards through the long folds of the mountains.