Belle De Jour (11 page)

Soon Séverine hardly realized she was leading a double life. Her existence seemed to have been planned like this long before she was born.

She placed the seal on her new life by once more
becoming physically Pierre’s wife. She no longer had any qualms about bringing him a soiled body, because she felt that on the way back from the rue Virène she was completely renewed, even to the substance of her flesh. And in her love-making with Pierre she was now more maternal than ever, for without realizing it, she was afraid that some too passionate or skillful movement might reveal the illicit knowledge of Belle de Jour.

The first time she saw Marcel Séverine hardly noticed him. He came in with Hippolyte, who attracted her attention immediately: even before she met him Séverine had been intrigued by the sense of evil which surrounded him.

“Now be nice to Hippolyte,” Mme Anaïs instructed, without looking them in the face.

“Don’t worry, we will,” Charlotte answered uneasily, “but I thought we’d got rid of him for good.”

With a sigh Mme Anaïs shrugged her shoulders.

“You never know with him. Maybe we’ll never see
him again. Or maybe he’ll be here for a week on end. Anyhow, be nice to him, you won’t be sorry.”

In the hall Séverine asked, “Who is he?”

“She won’t tell us,” Mathilde murmured.

“Rich?”

“You kidding!” cried Charlotte. “He never pays a red cent.”

“Why not?”

“Mme Anaïs says so. At first we thought he was her lover, but he isn’t. My guess is he used to be and he still has a hold over her. Thank God he doesn’t come in much. Twice in eighteen months is plenty for me. Otherwise I’d get out of here.”

“Me too,” put in Mathilde.

They hesitated a moment when they reached the door to the big room. Séverine pressed them:

“Is he very passionate then? Brutal?”

“Not really—is he, Mathilde? He’s pretty quiet, not even dirty. But he scares the shit out of you, I can’t explain it.”

A few seconds later and Séverine understood. Hippolyte was a barbaric hulk of a man, bigger and taller than anyone she’d ever seen. True, there was nothing particularly cruel about his face, which was fat and very large. But there was something else, perhaps the contrast between his majestic, almost deadly immobility and the savage animal life that darkened his lips, closed his jaws like a trap, and turned his fists into hammers of flesh and bone. Perhaps it was the way he rolled his cigarettes and licked them together. Or perhaps it was the tiny gold ring he wore in his right ear. Like
Charlotte, Séverine couldn’t say what it was; but fear slid slowly up her veins. Fascinated, she couldn’t take her eyes off this man with the color and size of some bronze idol.

Though Hippolyte continued to stare at some secret spot beyond the room, he noticed the three girls’ uneasy fear. He didn’t bother to comment on it, but said in a lazy voice loaded with scorn:

“Everything O.K., kids?”

Then he was silent. It was clear he didn’t like talking; silence—that dead water intolerable to most—didn’t worry him in the least. But Charlotte had to break it.

“And how are you, Monsieur Hippolyte?” she asked with false gaiety. “It’s been months since we’ve seen you.”

He didn’t answer, but took a drag at his cigarette.

“Why don’t you take off your clothes, it’s hot in here,” suggested Mathilde, who was also bothered by his silence.

Hippolyte made a short sign and she went and helped him off with his jacket. His shirt was of heavy silk; the muscles of his arms, shoulders and chest showed under it. They might have been of cast iron, designed for some immense labor.

“I brought someone with me,” said Hippolyte. “My friend.”

The tone in which he spoke the last word was noticeably at variance with the man’s superb nonchalance. Solemn and sonorous, that word seemed to be the only
one that mattered, for Hippolyte, in the whole human vocabulary.

Séverine turned to look at the young man, who stood a little behind Hippolyte, as if shrunk into his shadow. She saw a pair of deep-set, glowing eyes fixed on her; but her attention was once more magnetized by the colossus, who was saying:

“We don’t have much time. I’ll pay for drinks some other day. Come here, you—the new one.”

Séverine started toward him but was stopped short by a hot drawl. “Let me have her,” said the younger man.

Charlotte and Mathilde stirred uneasily—it seemed to them so completely forbidden to try to oppose Hippolyte’s desires. But Hippolyte gave a massive, gentle smile, put his enormous hand on his companion’s shoulder—which, for all its seeming fragility, bore the burden lightly—and said:

“O.K., kid—have a ball. She’s your age.”

Séverine was attracted to Hippolyte; so she was surprised to realize that this cynical exchange didn’t relieve her excitement. For, in fact, the thin young man attracted her even more.

“I must like you pretty well to take you off my friend,” he said when she’d taken him to her room.

Ordinarily, a remark like that would have been enough to deaden Séverine’s senses: what they required was silence, haste, and rage. But she was amazed to find that this man’s patient desire disturbed her. She took a second look at the person to whom the immovable
Hippolyte had surrendered her. His hair shone with thick pomade. His tie was expensive but very loud, his clothes were much too tightly cut, and a large diamond sparkled on his ring finger. There was something suspect about the whole ensemble, just as there was in the tough, tight skin of the man’s face, and in the eyes, at once anxious and inflexible. Séverine remembered how those narrow shoulders had remained unflinching under Hippolyte’s hand. A keen emotion took her in its grip.

“I’m telling you I like you,” the youth repeated without opening his mouth.

Séverine realized that what he said wasn’t simply a compliment; it was a kind of gift, and he was annoyed that she was not more grateful for it. She moved toward him, her lips half-parted. He pressed his mouth against hers with calculated intensity. Then he carried Séverine to the bed. She felt herself so light in those undeveloped arms! Hippolyte’s friend had only the appearance of weakness. She moaned with pain when he gripped her between his thin legs, and already an ecstasy more violent than she had ever known was invading her.

The young man took out an expensive cigarette-case, lit a cigarette, and inquired:

“What’s your name?”

“Belle de Jour.”

“What’s the rest?”

“That’s all.”

His lips creased with ironic indifference.

“Think I’m a cop or something?”

“And what’s your name, honey?” Séverine asked him, feeling a sensual pleasure at using the intimacy for the first time.

“I don’t have any secrets. They call me Marcel. Also the Angel.”

Séverine felt a slight thrill; the dubious nickname was just right for the cynical face sunk in the pillow beside her.

“And sometimes,” Marcel continued hesitantly, “well, they call me … let’s not be formal … they call me Gold Mouth.”

“Why?”

“Look.”

Only then did Séverine realize that he’d managed to keep his lower lip held close to the gum. He pulled it forward now, and she saw that all his front teeth were made of gold.

“All at one blow,” snickered Marcel, “and then, too.…”

He didn’t finish, for which Séverine was grateful. The sudden glimpse of that mouth had frightened her. Marcel dressed hastily.

“You’re going already?” she asked despite herself.

“Sure, I have to. I’ve got a friend.…”

He cut himself short with a sudden surprised irritation, and added, “Get that! I was going to make excuses to you.”

He left without bothering to look at her, but he returned alone the following day. Séverine was busy. Charlotte and Mathilde offered themselves.

“Get lost,” Marcel said. “I want Belle de Jour.”

He waited patiently. Time wasn’t measured in the ordinary way for him, or for Hippolyte. Marcel had an animal’s ability to relax and think with his body. What went on inside his head couldn’t be dignified by the name of thought.

Séverine’s footsteps banished this watchful torpor in an instant. She went to him radiantly, but he stopped her with a harsh gesture.

“Well, finally.”

“It was hardly my fault if you had to wait.”

He just managed not to shrug his shoulders. Had to wait! But how could he explain to this woman the cause of an anger he refused to admit to himself in the first place.

“O.K.,” he said roughly. “I’m not asking any questions.”

He kissed her lips. Since he didn’t bother to cover his gold jaw, Séverine felt both the heat of his mouth and the cold of the metal. She was never to forget the taste of that contrast.

Marcel stayed with Belle de Jour quite a while. He seemed to want to slake at a draught a disturbing thirst. And Séverine felt a sickening fear at the center of her soul: she enjoyed his embraces altogether too much, she felt much too contented beside him. More than once she had to resist the desire to stroke Marcel’s body, invisible in the twilight. Finally she could repress herself no longer, and brushed his shoulder. She withdrew her hand at once: she’d touched what seemed to be a sort of gap in his skin. Marcel gave a hiss of scorn.

“Not used to buttonholes? You’ll have to be soon.”

Taking Séverine’s wrist he led her fingers along his body. He was covered with scars: on the arms, thighs, back, belly.

Séverine exclaimed, “But how …?”

“You want to see my police record? Don’t ask questions.”

The sententious severity of his own voice acted on him like a signal.

“With which, good-night,” he said.

She didn’t watch him dress. She didn’t want to reckon up his scars in a look; it was as if she were afraid that the sight of all those virile and mysterious wounds might further tighten a knot she felt was already only too well tied.

She learned just how strong the bond was in the next few days; Marcel didn’t appear. She could measure how much she missed him by her constant anxiety and the strange, starved languor that spread through her. She was terrified of his not wanting her any more, and she worried that he hadn’t enough to pay Mme Anaïs and was staying away for that reason.

So when after a week she finally saw his welcome face, tautened in an evil grimace, she suggested, “Look, if you don’t have enough money, I could.…”

“Shut up,” he told her.

His breath came quicker, then with insulting conceit he said, “I know if I wanted to … any time … I’ve already got three of them supporting me, see … but you, that’s different. And that’s how it is … money, money, money here!”

He tossed a rumpled packet on the table. Hundred franc notes were mixed with smaller bills.

“I don’t even know how much there is,” he muttered scornfully. “And when that lot’s gone there’ll always be more somewhere.”

“So?” Séverine whispered.

“So what?”

“What’s kept you away?”

Once again, he had the sharp reaction which any question from Séverine seemed to cause him; he retorted, “That’s enough. I didn’t come here to talk.”

But there was a faint tremor in his voice.

From then on Marcel never missed a day. Fidgety at first, and taciturn, he gradually relaxed, as if no longer trying to fight a seduction stronger than himself. Each day he sank deeper into Séverine’s senses, each day she found it harder to shake off his image. So much so that the rampart which had till then so rigorously separated her two lives crumbled bit by bit. No doubt this breach had begun some time before she noticed it, but the following circumstances made Séverine realize what had happened to her:

Marcel had just left, and in her infatuation for him, she had lost all sense of time. Suddenly she remembered that she had to dine out with Pierre and friends, and realized that Pierre had undoubtedly got home by now and was probably worrying about her. But still broken and burning from Marcel’s kisses, she felt too indolent to accept the idea of going home. She dressed very slowly in order to turn her lateness into a definite obstacle, then telephoned Pierre to say she’d been kept
longer than expected by a fitting and that she’d meet him at the restaurant. It would tire her less than rushing home, and in any case it was to be an informal evening and an afternoon dress would do.

So for the first time Séverine went without transition from the world of Mme Anaïs, of her girls and their customers, into her own respectable society. She felt a little inner shock when the waiting men rose as they saw her; in her mind’s eye she had a fleeting but intense vision of Mathilde taking off Hippolyte’s jacket.

The Sérizys had been asked out by two young surgeons. The darker of the two had the reputation of being quite a Don Juan. He moved with controlled sensuality, and the expression on his face was alternately tender and tough, which women found extremely attractive. Séverine was aware of this; the thought only made her feel ironically safe when he asked her for a tango. This friend of Pierre’s had always treated her respectfully, but this evening he must have sensed some strange aura about her, for throughout the dance he held her boldly close. Far from disturbing her, this audacity produced only an involuntary disdain on Séverine’s features. How polite seemed the desire of this individual celebrated for his bluntness! How pathetically bloodless he appeared beside the man to whom Belle de Jour now submitted daily! There was more despotic suggestiveness in a single one of Marcel’s spontaneous gestures, in one squeeze of those steel-hard hands, then in all the efforts of this rich-woman’s Casanova put together. No matter how he tried, he’d never attain the ingenuous savagery of a Marcel, laced with scars and
with the price of love haughtily folded in his pocket.

At that moment Séverine was closer to the impure angel with the golden mouth than to the people around her. On her lips, intended for her dance-partner, lay the words she had one evening of obscure prescience hurled at Husson—“I’m afraid you weren’t cut out for rape.”

All that evening Marcel’s image refused to leave her. She was still bound to him by the dress she was wearing, and which he’d taken off; by the skin he’d caressed and which she’d had no time to purify. Séverine felt very beautiful that night, and she experienced a perverse intoxication at mixing the two women she now was. As they left the restaurant she kissed Pierre with a warmth not wholly meant for him.