Belle De Jour (3 page)

She was slow to answer, and he said thoughtfully, “True, you wouldn’t really know.…”

During their last days in Switzerland Séverine felt feverish and depressed. They had scarcely reached Paris when she came down with pneumonia.

It was a severe case. For an entire week, at the mercy of surgical cupping-glasses, sucked at by leeches, she was on the verge of death. When she was conscious, she saw her mother’s bony silhouette at her bedside and heard some vaguely reassuring, but unrecognizable, step in her room. Then she would plunge back into the hot deaf stupor of a greenhouse plant.

One morning, as dawn crept up to her bed like a hesitant animal, she awoke from this vegetable condition.
Her back hurt frightfully but she could breathe without much difficulty. A shape was sitting at her bedside. It must be Pierre, she thought. The name, which came back to her automatically, recalled only a vague feeling of security. Her husband’s hand touched her forehead, stroking it softly; Séverine turned her head aside. Pierre thought she had moved unconsciously —but Séverine wanted to avoid his touch. She felt so whole, so momentarily self-sufficient, that she wished to forget everything outside herself.

A desire for isolation, an exclusive egoism, left her only gradually. She spent hours watching her wasted wrists with their soft blue veins, looking at her nails, still deathly pale. When Pierre spoke to her she didn’t answer. How small her husband’s love seemed, compared to what she felt for her own body. Her body was so precious to her, so great and abundant! Séverine even imagined she could feel the gentle stream of blood nourishing it. Daily, with a profound sensuality, she measured the revival of her strength.

At times her face closed as if over some secret; she seemed to follow odd images. And when Pierre talked to her then she looked at him with a mixture of impatience, weakness and confusion.

But when she thought she discovered in her husband’s expression a wave of desire, she felt a wave of revulsion and weariness pass through her.

Pierre loved the look that appeared on Séverine’s face at those moments. The sickness seemed to have stripped her face, reducing it to a state of tender adolescence. It seemed to express nothing but youth and chastity.

Séverine’s strength returned quickly, but without giving her much joy. As the fever left her, so did her indefinable voluptuousness. She recovered dispossessed. She walked from room to room, as if to learn how to live again.

Séverine was resonsible for everything in the apartment except Pierre’s desk. Until her illness she had enjoyed establishing order, because by doing so she created comfort and space and left her own stamp on things. Now, though she still felt a certain pride in this, it was abstract and colorless. Her whole life appeared before her in the same monotone—well-to-do, measured, assured. Parents seen always through a shield of governesses, years at that English school where she’d been taught fair-play and discipline … Oh well, now she had Pierre; he was, in fact, all she had in the world … Thinking of his beloved face, Séverine smiled softly and pushed her reveries no further. But something within her, something dim, tenacious and demanding, was silently waiting to evade Pierre’s image and to reach beyond its intangible shape to an unknown horizon. That something troubled her, though she refused to acknowledge its existence.

“I’ll feel better once I’ve played a few sets of tennis,” she told herself, as if answering some vague reproach. Pierre thought the same, when he caught sight of her, pensive, or asleep.

One day in this queer convalescence was vivid for Séverine—the day when she received flowers from Husson for the first time. She was startled when she read the card. She’d forgotten the man’s existence, and
now here she was with this feeling of having been expecting him to come into her life again. She thought of him all day long with a discomfort that amounted to hostility. But such irritable tension suited her state of mind so well that it positively pleased her.

More gifts came.

“He knows perfectly well I can’t bear him,” she thought. “I’m not thanking him, I’ve forbidden Pierre to thank him. And he still goes on.…”

She pictured Husson’s motionless eyes, his cold lips; and she shuddered with a dull repulsion.

Renée Févret, meanwhile, visited daily. She would arrive in a rush, refuse to take off her hat, announce she could only stay a second, and remain for hours. Her chatter chained her there. Her frivolity dizzied Séverine but it did her good. It put her back in that easy world where all that mattered was make-up, clothes, love-affairs and divorces.… Still, it seemed to Séverine that there were moments when a bitter weariness ravaged her friend’s face, when her vivacity was merely mechanical.

One afternoon while they were together a card was brought in for Séverine. She twisted it in her fingers for a moment, then told Renée, “Henri Husson.”

There was a pause.

“You’re not going to receive him, are you?” Renée cried out suddenly.

Her tense sharpness contrasted so strongly with her ordinary tone that Séverine almost acquiesced automatically. Once over her surprise, however, she asked, “Why not”?

“I don’t know … I remember you didn’t like him … and then there’s still so much I have to tell you.”

If it hadn’t been for her friend’s peculiar attitude Séverine would probably have avoided seeing Husson; but Renée’s desire to prevent the meeting piqued Séverine’s curiosity, and her pride.

“Maybe I’ve changed my opinion of him,” she said. “And also … look at all these flowers he’s been sending me.”

“Ah … he sent you them, did he?”

Renée had risen to take flight but had barely put on her gloves when Séverine, moved by Renée’s agitation, said, “Darling, what’s wrong? You can speak freely to me. Surely you’re not jealous?”

“It’s not that. I should have explained right away, you’re so uncomplicated you’d have understood. No, I’m scared. He plays with me. I know this man well by now; he’s utterly perverse. He gets his fun out of weird psychological manipulations. He’s nicely managed to make me despise myself … only too easily. With you it’s the opposite: he wants to cultivate the loathing you feel for him. For him that would be just wonderful. Watch out, Séverine, this one’s dangerous.”

These words, more than any others, decided Séverine.

“You must stay and see him,” she said.

“No, really. I can’t.”

Left alone, Séverine got out of bed and had Husson shown in. He found her seated behind a table, and defended by a vase of irises that made it difficult to see her. He smiled. This steady smile, accentuated by a
determined silence, broke Séverine’s poise. And she was even less at ease after Husson, sitting opposite her, shifted the flowers to one side.

“Sérizy’s not in?” he asked.

“Obviously not, or you’d have seen him.”

“Yes, I imagine he seldom leaves you alone when he’s at home. And—you miss him?”

“Very much.”

“I can understand that. As a matter of fact I myself enjoy seeing him very much. He’s handsome, happy, considerate, loyal: an invaluable companion, I’m sure.”

Séverine abruptly changed the subject. Each word of praise uttered by this man diminished and cloyed Pierre’s image.

“Thanks to a friend who comes to see me every day,” Séverine said, “I don’t get too bored.”

“Mme. Févret?”

“You saw her go out?”

“No. I can smell her perfume. It’s rather like her, a little whining.”

He gave a laugh which Séverine found odious.

“For a second there,” he said, “you were exactly as you used to be.”

“Have I changed so much?” she asked with a start. Instantly she regretted the irrational anxiety which, she felt sure, had shown through her question.

Husson said: “It seems to me you’ve lost something of your girlishness.”

“Thank you.”

“Usually you’re more honest with yourself.…”

Séverine waited for an explanation. It didn’t come. To show her irritation she rose and pretended to arrange the flowers beside her.

“Sitting up tires you,” Husson said. “You don’t have to stand on ceremony with me. Go lie down.”

“I assure you, I’m quite used.…”

“No, no, Sérizy would be angry with me. Lie down.”

He rose and pushed his chair aside so she could get by. Séverine sought for some neat, tart retort, the kind she could so easily have found before her illness; but nothing came. In order to keep the battle between them from becoming ridiculous, she went and lay down, highly annoyed and embarrassed.

“If you only knew how much better you look like that,” Husson remarked softly. “I’m sure you’ve often been told you were made for movement. Well, let me tell you that’s a superficial judgment. From the moment I first set eyes on you I’ve always thought of you lying down. And how right I was! Look how you’ve softened … what relaxed grace …”

While speaking, he moved his chair back a bit so that Séverine could no longer see him. Only his voice now acted on her, that voice of whose power he usually seemed unaware, but which he now handled like a lethal instrument. And this voice was directed not only at her hearing, but, in a secret and destructive way, at every cell in her body. Tensed to the breaking point, Séverine had no strength to stop him. Sapped by her illness, prisoner of those insinuating waves of language, she seemed to be plunged back into the limbo of her
convalescence, into the strange voluptuousness that had bathed her then.

Suddenly two hands were on her shoulders, a hungry breath burnt her lips. For a brief fraction of a second she was amazed by the sharp pleasure that seized her; in a moment, this changed into absolute disgust. Without quite knowing how, she stood up. In a driven sensual whisper she heard herself saying, “No, you weren’t cut out for rape.”

They stared at each other for a long time. In those seconds there were no barriers between them. They discovered in each other’s eyes feelings, instincts, of which each had probably been unaware. In Husson’s eyes, Séverine saw an admiration that frightened her.

“You’re right,” he said finally. “You deserve much better than me.”

Such soft respect, reserved for those the gods have chosen as their victims!

When Husson had gone, Séverine felt neutral and colorless. She no longer felt any resentment or even repugnance toward him; and this didn’t surprise her. She knew that she would never yield to him, and that he’d never try anything with her again. Nevertheless, she thought of him as an accomplice.

Suddenly it occurred to her that she ought to tell Pierre. She was so used to telling him everything, and she had no desire to hide anything. Still, the idea of telling him filled her with a sort of anticipatory boredom. Pierre seemed such a stranger to the world she’d just been part of.

“Pierre … Pierre.…”

Séverine caught herself repeating his name, as if to charge it with reality. But it didn’t relieve her odd anesthesia. But as soon as she heard her husband’s step, she stopped worrying about how she was going to tell him. He’d notice after one look at her face that something unusual had happened, he’d ask her, she’d tell him … it was that unimportant.

But Pierre didn’t give her his usual look of searching adoration. He kissed her briefly, which, actually, brought Séverine to her senses more quickly than any number of urgent questions. She felt that a support she’d taken for granted had given way—and she stumbled. Then she caught sight of his face. Lifeless and drawn, it seemed no longer his at all. Though he was obviously trying to keep it from her, a haggard anguish appeared in his eyes.

“Darling, what’s wrong?”

He started, and took his chin in his hand as though to keep his jaw from quivering.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Something at work …”

He tried to smile but knew the attempt pitiful and gave up. Pierre never spoke to her about his work, desiring to spare her details of its pain. So Séverine thought it would be difficult to get him to unburden himself now. But his load was apparently too heavy to bear, for he continued.

“It was horrible. I never thought … there was no way of knowing … a happy little Italian.…”

When he didn’t go on Séverine asked in a low tone, “You mean, he died … during the operation?”

Pierre tried to answer, but his lips trembled too much. Every idea of estrangement or anger was suddenly swept out of Séverine’s soul. She could feel only an infinite tenderness toward her husband, a great maternal force that seemed to melt her heart. She took his head in her arms, murmuring softly her immediate response:

“Poor sweet, it wasn’t your fault. You mustn’t be sad about it. Oh, when you’re unhappy like this, then I realize that you’re my whole life.”

Séverine woke early. In spite of her short sleep, she felt fresh and lively, and her first thought was to get up. But she was stopped by a body which lay beside her, blocking her way. Pierre. For the first time since her illness they’d spent the night together. And how well she’d slept—no dreams, not a single confused night-mare.

Was it he who’d protected her? Had she freed herself by giving herself to him?

Still, she had been urged toward Pierre only by a desire to make him forget his unhappiness. Her own
enjoyment, as usual, had been simply the pleasure of making him happy. When he’d taken her in his arms, she had wondered if those dark and delicious workings of convalescence would be resolved in some rapture she’d never known. But when his arms released her, Pierre saw his wife’s still virgin eyes. And if Séverine felt a faint brush of disappointment, she forgot it immediately when she saw his haggard features recovering their vigor and tenderness.

Now, in the early light, she was unable to distinguish his face clearly; but to reconstruct its noble lines all she needed was the mass of the head. Pierre was sleeping confidently, like a boy. Séverine was deeply moved. The two years they’d lived together passed through her mind like a rich and cherished flame. How easy Pierre had made them! Always considerate. And how humbly, too, this man, whose pride she knew, had worked to make her happy.

The silence pervaded everything, leaving room only for gratitude and concern.