Blow-Up (19 page)

“I am madame Francinet, at your service,” I said greeting her.

“Fido is very delicate. Take him. Yes, in your arms. He’s not going to dirty you. I bathe him myself every morning.
As I told you, very delicate. Don’t let him mix with
them
. Give him water once in a while.”

The dog stayed quiet in my lap, but at the same time, I was a bit disgusted. A great Dane with black spots came over and began to smell him, as dogs do, and Miss Lucienne let out a screech and gave him a kick with the point of her shoe. Mr. Rodolos never moved from the doorway, he looked used to the whole thing.

“You see, you see,” Miss Lucienne screeched. “That’s what I don’t want to happen, and you must not permit it. Mama has explained that already, isn’t that right? You will not move from here until the party’s over. And if Fido feels badly or begins to cry, knock on the door and
that
will let me know.”

She went out without looking at me again, after taking the Pekingese up in her arms again and kissing him until the dog began to whine. Mr. Rodolos stayed around for a moment.

“The dogs are not ill-behaved, madame Francinet,” he said. “In any case, if there is any problem, knock on the door and I’ll come. Take it easy,” he added, as though it had occurred to him at the last moment, and he closed the door very carefully. I wondered if he’d locked it from the outside, but I resisted the temptation to get up and go see; I think I would have felt much worse if I found out he had.

As a matter of fact, it wasn’t difficult taking care of the dogs. They didn’t fight, and it was far from sure that what madame Rosay had said about Tiny was true, at least it didn’t seem to have started yet. Naturally, as soon as the door was shut, I let the nasty little Pekingese loose and let him jump around peacefully with the others. He was the worst, asking for a quarrel the whole time, but they didn’t do anything to him, they even seemed to be inviting him
to play. They drank a little once in a while, or ate the rich meat in the bowls. God help me for saying it, but it almost made me hungry to see what good meat there was in the bowls.

At times, from far away, you could hear somebody laughing and I don’t know whether it was because I was informed that they were going to have music (Alice had said so in the kitchen), but I seemed to hear a piano, although perhaps it was in another apartment. Time dragged and it seemed very long, especially on account of the single light hanging from the ceiling, so yellow it was. Four of the dogs fell asleep right away, and Fido and Fifine (I’m not sure it was Fifine but it seemed to me it must have been she) played on for a while biting each other’s ears, and ended up lapping a lot of water and lying down one against the other on a mattress. Sometimes I thought I heard steps outside, and ran to take up Fido in my arms, so that if Miss Lucienne should walk in … But no one came and much time passed, until I began to fall asleep in the chair, and almost would have liked to put out the light and really fall asleep on one of the empty mattresses.

I shan’t say I wasn’t happy when Alice came to get me. Alice’s face had a very high color and one could see that she was still excited by the party and all they’d said in the kitchen among all the other maids and Mr. Rodolos.

“You’re a marvel, madame Francinet,” she said. “The missus is sure to be delighted and’ll call you every time there’s a party. The last one who came couldn’t manage to keep them quiet, until Miss Lucienne had to stop dancing and come tend to them. Look at how they’re sleeping!”

“The guests’ve gone already?” I asked, a little embarrassed at her praise.

“The guests, yes, but there are others’re more at home, more like family here, and they always stay on a little
while. Everybody’s drunk a lot, you can be sure. Even the master, who never drinks at home, came into the kitchen very cheerful and joked with Ginette and me over how well the meal had been served, and gave us a hundred francs each. They’ll give you a tip too, I think. They’re still dancing, Miss Lucienne with her boyfriend, and monsieur Bébé and his friends are playing masquerade.”

“Then will I have to stay?”

“No, the missus said that when the deputy and the others had left, the dogs should be let out. They love to play with them in the salon. I’ll carry Fido and all you have to do is come with me to the kitchen.”

I followed her, extremely tired and groggy with sleep, but very curious to see something of the party, if it were only the glasses and plates in the kitchen. And I saw them, for there were mountains of them piled everywhere, and bottles of champagne and whiskey, some still had a whisker to drink in them. In the kitchen they had tubes with a blue light and I was almost blinded by so many white cabinets, so many shelves, the plates and casseroles shining off them. Ginette was a tiny redhead who was also very excited and greeted Alice with little laughs and making faces. She seemed shameless enough, as so many of them are these days.

“Still going on?” Alice asked her, looking toward the door.

“Oh, yes,” Ginette said, wiggling her hips. “Is that the lady who was taking care of the dogs?”

I was sleepy and thirsty, but they didn’t offer me anything, not even a place to sit down. They were too enthused by the party, by everything they’d seen while they were serving table or taking coats in the entryway. A bell rang and Alice, who still had the Pekingese in her arms, went out on the run. Mr. Rodolos came in and past without seeing me, and was surrounded immediately by the
five dogs leaping about and playing. I saw that he had a handful of lumps of sugar and that he was parceling them out so that the dogs would follow him to the salon. I leaned up against the large central table trying not to look much at Ginette, and hardly had Alice returned when she continued gabbling about monsieur Bébé and the disguises, about monsieur Fréjus, of the pianist who seemed to be tubercular, and how Miss Lucienne had had a dispute with her father. Alice seized one of the half-empty bottles and brought it to her lips with such vulgarity that it left me very upset, so much I didn’t know where to look; but even worse was that then she passed it to the little redhead, who finished it off. The two of them laughed as if they also had had a lot to drink during the party. That was perhaps the reason that they didn’t think of me, that I was hungry and above all else, thirsty. Surely, if they’d been in their right minds, they would have noticed. People are not bad, and they are discourteous often because they really don’t know what they’re doing; the same thing happens on the bus, or in stores, or in offices.

The bell rang again, and the two girls hurried out. You could hear great peals of laughter, and once in a while the piano. I didn’t understand why they were making me wait; all they had to do was pay me and let me go. I sat down in a chair and put my elbows on the table. My eyes were dropping with sleep and I guess I didn’t notice that someone had just entered the kitchen. First I heard a noise of glasses clinking together and a very soft whistle. I thought that it was Ginette and turned around to ask her what they were going to do with me.

“Oh, excuse me, sir!” I said getting up. “I didn’t know it was you here.”

“Not here, I’m not here,” said the gentleman, who was very young. “Loulou, come see!”

He was staggering slightly, holding on to one of the
shelves. He’d filled one glass with a whitish drink, and was looking at its transparency as if mistrusting it. Loulou, who’d been called, did not show up, so the young man came over toward me and said I should sit down. He was blond, very pale, and had on a white suit. When I noticed that he was dressed in white in the middle of winter, I wondered if I was dreaming. This is not a way of speaking, when I see something strange I always ask myself if I am dreaming, in capital letters. It’s not impossible, because sometimes I dream some strange things. But the gentleman was there, smiling away with an air of fatigue, almost of boredom. I felt bad to see how pale he was.

“You must be the one who takes care of the dogs,” he said, and set right away to drinking.

“I am madame Francinet, at your service,” I said. He was so pleasant and didn’t make me feel afraid at all. Rather, he made me want to be useful to him in some way, to have some sort of courtesy in dealing with him. Now again he was looking at the half-open door.

“Loulou! Are you coming? There’s vodka out here. Why, have you been crying, madame Francinet?”

“Oh, no, sir. I must have been yawning a little just before you came out. I’m a little tired and the light in the room up … in the other room, was not very good. When one yawns …”

“…  the eyes water,” he said. He had perfect teeth, and the whitest hands I’ve ever seen on a man. He stood up all at once, he went to meet the young man who was staggering in.

“This lady,” he explained to him, “is the one who has liberated us all evening from those nasty animals. Loulou, say good evening.”

I stood up and gave another greeting. But the gentleman called Loulou did not even look at me. He’d found a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator and was trying to
uncork it. The young man in white went over to help him, and the two of them fell to laughing and struggling with the bottle. When you laugh you lose your strength, so neither of them could manage the uncorking. Then they wanted to do it together and threw themselves into line on either side and ended up leaning against one another, getting happier all the time, but without being able to open the bottle. Monsieur Loulou was saying, “Bébé, Bébé, please, let’s go home now …” and monsieur Bébé was laughing harder all the time and pushed him away playfully until at last he uncorked it and let a great jet of foam spurt all over monsieur Loulou’s face, who let out a string of swear-words and rubbed his eyes, running back and forth from one side of the room to the other.

“The poor dear, he’s too drunk,” monsieur Bébé said, putting his hands on his back and trying to push him out of the kitchen. “Go keep poor Nina company, she’s very unhappy …” and he laughed, but without meaning it.

Then he came back in, and I found him nicer than ever. He had a nervous tic that made him raise one eyebrow. He repeated it three or four times, looking at me.

“Poor madame Francinet,” he said, touching my head very softly. “They’ve left her all alone, and for sure they haven’t given her anything to drink.”

“They’ll come soon to tell me that I can go home, sir,” I answered. It didn’t annoy me that he’d have taken the liberty of touching me on the head.

“That you can go, that you can go … Why does anyone have to give you permission to do anything?” monsieur Bébé asked, sitting down opposite me. He’d picked up his glass again, but set it down on the table and went to get a clean one and filled it with a tea-colored drink.

“Madame Francinet, we are going to drink together,” he said, handing me the glass. “You like whiskey, of course.”

“Heavens, sir,” I said, frightened. “Outside of wine, and
a little pernod at Gustave’s place on Saturdays, I don’t know anything about drinking.”

“You’ve never tasted whiskey, really?” he asked in astonishment. “One swallow, not more, try, you’ll see how good it is. Come, madame Francinet, cheer up. The first swallow is the one that counts …” And he began to recite a poem, what, I don’t remember, where it says something about seafarers from some strange place. I took a swallow of the whiskey and found it so aromatic that I took another, and then another. Monsieur Bébé was sipping his vodka and watching me fascinated.

“It’s a pleasure to be with you, madame Francinet,” he said. “Luckily you are not young, with you one can be a friend … One has only to look at you to see how goodhearted you are, like an aunt from the provinces, one whom one can cater to, but without risk, without risk … Look, for example, Nina has an aunt in Poitou who sends him chickens, baskets of vegetables, even honey … isn’t that wonderful?”

“It certainly is, sir,” I said, letting him pour me another little glass since it gave him so much pleasure. “It’s always nice to have someone to look after you, especially when you’re so young. When you get old there’s nothing else to do but to think of oneself, because the rest … Here I take care of myself, for example. When my George died …”

“Have another small one, madame Francinet. Nina’s aunt lives way down there, and she does nothing, she has nothing else to do besides send chickens … There’s no risk in telling family stories …”

I was so dizzy already I didn’t even care what might happen if Mr. Rodolos came in and surprised me sitting in the kitchen talking with one of the guests. It was a tremendous pleasure for me to look at monsieur Bébé, to hear his laugh, it was so sharp, probably because of the
drinking. And it pleased him that I was watching him, although he seemed a little uncomfortable at first but then he only smiled and drank, looking back at me all the time. I know that he was terribly drunk because Alice had told me that they’d drunk an awful lot, and besides, the way monsieur Bébé’s eyes shone so. If he hadn’t been drunk, what would he have been doing in the kitchen with an old woman like me? But the others were drunk too, and yet monsieur Bébé was the only one who was keeping me company, the only one who’d given me a drink and patted me on the head, though maybe he shouldn’t have done that. But because of that I felt very pleased with monsieur Bébé, and looked at him more and more, and he liked it, people looking at him, because once or twice he turned his profile and he had a very handsome nose, like a statue’s. He was, all of him, like a statue, especially with his white suit. Even what he was drinking was white, and he was so pale that I was a little afraid for him. You could see he lived a shut-in life, like so many young men these days. I would have liked to tell him so, but who was I to give advice to a gentleman like him, and furthermore I had no time to then because there was a knock on the door and monsieur Loulou came in dragging the great Dane along behind him with a sort of curtain that’d been twisted to make a kind of rope. He’d drunk a good deal more than monsieur Bébé and nearly fell when the great Dane ran around him and tangled the curtain around his legs. There were voices in the hallway and a gentleman with grey hair appeared, he must have been monsieur Rosay, and right after him madame Rosay all flushed and excited and a thin young man with such black hair, blacker than I’d ever seen before. All of them were trying to help monsieur Loulou, who was getting more and more tangled up with the great Dane and the curtain, all the while laughing and joking at the top of his lungs. No one paid any attention
to me, until madame Rosay saw me finally and became serious. I couldn’t hear what she said to the grey-haired gentleman, who then looked at my glass (it was empty, but there was the bottle next to it), and monsieur Rosay looked at monsieur Bébé and made an indignant face while monsieur Bébé winked at him and threw himself back in his chair laughing to beat the band. I was very mixed up, it seemed to me that I ought to stand up, that would be better, and greet everyone with a curtsy, and then go to one side and wait. Madame Rosay had left the kitchen and an instant later Alice and Mr. Rodolos came in, they came over and indicated that I should follow them. I curtsied to everyone there, but I don’t think anyone saw me because they were all trying to quiet monsieur Loulou down, he’d suddenly burst into tears and was saying incomprehensible things waving his hands at monsieur Bébé. The last thing I remember was monsieur Bébé’s laugh, throwing his chair back and laughing.