Four Novels (16 page)

“The other little boy’s arrived.”

In the moment following his departure, Chauvin’s hands moved closer to hers. All four lay flat on the table.

“As I told you, sometimes I have trouble sleeping. I go into his room and stand there looking at him.”

“And other times?”

“And other times it’s summer, and there are people strolling along the boulevard. Especially on Saturday evening, no doubt because people don’t know what to do with themselves in this town.”

“No doubt,” Chauvin said. “Especially the men. You often watch them from that hallway, or from your garden, or from your room.”

Anne Desbaresdes leaned forward and finally said to him:

“Yes, I think I often must have watched them, either from the hallway or from my room, on nights when I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

Chauvin murmured something to her. Her expression slowly dissolved at the insult, and softened.

“Go on.”

“Apart from these walks, the day has a fixed routine. I can’t go on.”

“There’s very little time left. Go on.”

“There’s the endless round of meals. And the evenings. One day I got the idea of these piano lessons.”

They finished their wine. Chauvin ordered another. There were even fewer men at the bar now. Anne Desbaresdes drank again as if she were terribly thirsty.

“It’s already seven o’clock,” the patronne warned.

They didn’t hear her. It was dark out. Four men, obviously there to kill time, came to the back room. The radio was announcing the weather for the following day.

“I was saying that I had the idea of these piano lessons for my darling—at the other end of town—and now I can’t do without them. It’s seven o’clock, you know.”

“You’re going to arrive home later than usual, maybe too late, you can’t avoid it. You’d better resign yourself to the idea.”

“How can you avoid a fixed routine? I could tell you that I’m already late for dinner, counting the time it will take me to walk home. And besides, I forgot that I’m supposed to be home for a party tonight.”

“You know that there’s no way you can avoid arriving home late. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know it.”

He waited. She spoke to him in a quiet, offhand manner.

“I could tell you that I told my child about all those women who lived behind that beech tree, and are dead now, and he wanted to know if he could see them, the darling. See, I’ve just told you all I can tell you.”

“As soon as you’d told him about the women you were sorry you had, and you told him about the vacation he’s going to spend this year—a few days from now—at another seashore?”

“I promised him a vacation at the seashore, somewhere where it’s hot. In two weeks time. He was terribly upset about the death of those women.”

Anne Desbaresdes drank some more wine, and found it strong. She smiled, but her eyes were glassy.

“It’s getting late. And you’re making yourself later and later,” Chauvin said.

“When being late becomes as serious a matter as it is now for me,” Anne Desbaresdes said, “I think that a little while longer isn’t going to make it any more serious.”

There was only one customer left at the bar. The four others in the room were talking intermittently. A couple came in. The patronne served them, and resumed knitting her red sweater, which she had put aside as long as the bar was crowded. She turned down the radio. The tide was running high that night, breaking loudly against the docks, rising above the songs.

“Once he had realized how much she wanted him to do it, I’d like you to tell me why he didn’t do it, say, a little later or . . .a little sooner.”

“Really, I know very little about it. But I think that he couldn’t make up his mind, couldn’t decide whether he wanted her alive or dead. He must have decided very late in the game that he preferred her dead. But that’s all pure conjecture.”

Anne Desbaresdes was lost in thought, her pale face lowered hypocritically.

“She hoped very much that he would do it.”

“It seems to me that he must have hoped so just as much as she did. I don’t know really.”

“As much as she did?”

“Yes. Don’t talk any more.”

The four men left. The couple was still sitting there in silence. The woman yawned. Chauvin ordered another bottle of wine.

“Would it be impossible if we didn’t drink so much?”

“I don’t think it would be possible,” Anne Desbaresdes murmured.

She gulped down her glass of wine. He let her go on killing herself. Night had completely occupied the town. The lampposts along the docks were lighted. The child was still playing. The last trace of pink had faded from the sky.

“Before I leave,” Anne Desbaresdes begged, “if you could tell me I’d like to know a little more. Even if you’re not very sure of your facts.”

Chauvin went on, in a flat, expressionless voice that she had not heard from him before.

“They lived in an isolated house, I think it was by the sea. It was hot. Before they went there they didn’t realize how quickly things would evolve, that after a few days he would keep having to throw her out. It wasn’t long before he was forced to drive her away, away from him, from the house. Over and over again.”

“It wasn’t worth the trouble.”

“It must have been difficult to keep from having such thoughts, you get into the habit, like you get into the habit of living. But it’s only a habit.”

“And she left?”

“She left when and how he wanted her to, although she wanted to stay.”

Anne Desbaresdes stared at that unknown man without recognizing him, like a trapped animal.

“Please,” she begged.

“Then the time came when he sometimes looked at her and no longer saw her as he had seen her before. She ceased to be beautiful or ugly, young or old, similar to anyone else, even to herself. He was afraid. It was the last vacation. Winter came. You’re going back by the Boulevard de la Mer. It will be the eighth night.”

The child came in and snuggled for a moment against his mother. He was still humming the Diabelli sonatina. She stroked his hair, which
was very close to her face. The man avoided looking at them. Then the child left.

“So the house was isolated,” Anne Desbaresdes said slowly. “It was hot, you said. When he told her to leave she always obeyed. She slept under the trees, or in the fields, like . . .”

“Yes,” Chauvin said.

“When he called her she came back. And when he told her to go, she left. To obey him like that was her way of hoping. And even when she reached the threshold she waited for him to tell her to come in.”

“Yes.”

In a daze, Anne Desbaresdes brought her face close to Chauvin’s, but he moved back out of reach.

“And it was there, in that house, that she learned what you said she was, perhaps even . . .”

“Yes, a bitch,” Chauvin interrupted her again.

Now it was her turn to draw back. He filled her glass and offered it to her.

“I was lying,” he said.

She arranged her hair, which was completely disheveled, and wearily trying to restrain her compassion, got hold of herself.

“No,” she said.

Chauvin’s face looked inhumanly harsh under the neon light, but she could not take her eyes off him. Again the child ran in from the sidewalk.

“It’s dark out now,” he announced.

He looked out the door and yawned, then turned back to her and stood beside her, humming.

“See how late it is. Quckly, tell me the rest.”

“Then the time came when he thought he could no longer touch her , except to . . .”

Anne Desbaresdes raised her hands to her bare neck in the opening of her summer dress.

“Except to . . . this. Am I right?”

“Yes. That.”

Her hands let go and slipped from her neck.

“I’d like you to leave,” Chauvin murmured.

Anne Desbaresdes got up from her chair and stood motionless in the middle of the room. Chauvin remained seated, overwhelmed, no longer aware of her. Unable to resist, the patronne put her knitting aside, and
openly watched them both, but they were oblivious of her stare. It was the child who came to the door and took his mother’s hand.

“Come on, let’s go.”

The lights were already on along the Boulevard de la Mer. It was much later than usual, an hour later at least. The child sang the sonatina one last time, then grew tired of it. The streets were almost deserted. People were already eating supper. After they had passed the first breakwater, the Boulevard de la Mer stretched endlessly before them. Anne Desbaresdes stopped.

“I’m too tired,” she said.

“But I’m hungry,” the child whined.

He saw that his mother’s eyes were filled with tears. His whimpering ceased.

“Why are you crying?”

“For no reason. Sometimes people just cry.”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s all over, darling. I think it’s all over.”

He forgot and ran on ahead, then retraced his steps, revelling in this unaccustomed freedom after dark.

“At night,” he said, “the houses are far away.”

Seven

T
HE SALMON, CHILLED IN
its original form, is served on a silver platter that the wealth of three generations has helped to buy. Dressed in black, and with white gloves, a man carries it like a royal child, and offers it to each guest in the silence of the nascent dinner. It is proper not to talk about it.

At the northern end of the garden the scent of magnolias arises, drifting from dune to dune till it disappears. Tonight the wind is from the south. A man prowls along the Boulevard de la Mer. A woman knows he is there.

The salmon passes from guest to guest, following a ritual that nothing can disturb, except everyone’s hidden fear that such perfection may suddenly be marred or sullied by some excessively obvious absurdity. Outside, in the garden, the magnolias’ funereal flowering continues in the dark night of early spring.

The wind ebbs and flows like the surf, striking the urban obstacles, then moving on, wafting the scent to the man, then whisking it away again.

In the kitchen the women, their honor at stake, sweat to put the finishing touches to the next course, smothering a duck in its orange-shrouded coffin. Meanwhile the pink, succulent, deep-sea salmon, already disfigured by the brief moments just past, continues its ineluctable advance towards total annihilation, slowly dispelling the fear of an unsuccessful evening.

A man, facing a woman, looks at her as though he does not recognize her. Her breasts are again half exposed. She hastily adjusts her dress. A drooping flower lies between them. There are still flashes of lucidity in her wildly protruding eyes, enough for her to succeed in helping herself to some of their salmon when it comes her turn.

In the kitchen, now that the duck is ready and put into the oven to
keep warm, they finally find a moment of peace to put their thoughts to words, saying that she is really going a bit too far. Tonight she arrived later than the night before, well after her guests had arrived.

Fifteen people had waited for her in the main living room on the ground floor. She had entered that glittering assembly without so much as the slightest apology. Someone apologized for her.

“Anne is late. Please forgive Anne.”

For ten years she has never been the subject of any gossip. If she is bothered by her incongruity, she is unaware of it. A fixed smile makes her face acceptable.

“Anne didn’t hear what you said.”

She puts her fork down, looks around, tries to grasp the thread of conversation, fails.

“That’s true,” she says.

They ask again. Her blond hair is mussed, and she runs her fingers listlessly through it, as she had done a little while before in a different setting. Her lips are pale. Tonight she forgot to make herself up.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “right now a sonatina by Diabelli.”

“A sonatina? Already?”

“That’s right.”

Silence moves in again around the question, and the fixed smile returns to her face. She is a wild animal.

“He didn’t know what moderato cantabile meant?”

“No, he didn’t.”

Tonight the magnolias will be in full bloom. Except for the one she is wearing, the
one she picked tonight on her way home from the port. Time moves monotonously past this forgotten flowering.

“Darling, how could he have guessed?”

“He couldn’t.”

“He’s sleeping, I suppose.”

“Yes, he’s sleeping.”

Slowly the digestion of what was a salmon begins. The osmosis of the species that ate it was carried out like a perfect ritual. Nothing upset the solemnity of the process. The other waits, snug and warm, in its orange shroud. And now the moon rises on the sea, and on the man lying on the ground. Through the white curtains you now could barely distinguish the shapes and forms of night. Madame Desbaresdes contributes nothing to the conversation.

“Mademoiselle Giraud told me that story yesterday. She gives my little boy lessons also, you know.”

“Is that so?”

People laugh. A woman somewhere around the table. Little by little the chorus of conversation grows louder and, with considerable effort and ingenuity, some sort of society emerges. Landmarks are discovered, cracks open, allowing familiarities to slip in. And little by little a generally biased and individually noncommittal conversation builds up. It will be a successful party. The women bask in their own brilliance. The men have covered them with jewels according to their bankrolls. Tonight one of them suspects he may have made a mistake.

In the sequestered garden the birds sleep peacefully, for the weather is still fine. The same son of sleep as the child’s. The remains of the salmon are offered around again. The women will devour it to the last mouthful. Their bare shoulders have the gloss and solidity of a society founded and built on the certainty of its rights, and they were chosen to fit this society. Their strict education has taught them that they must temper their excesses in the interest of their position. They stuff themselves with mayonnaise, specially prepared for this dish, forget themselves, and lap it up. The men look at them and remember that therein lies their happiness.