Her Lover (127 page)

'Nearly finished,' she said with a voice like that of the model pupil who is always good and invariably gets top marks for conduct.

'Thank you,' he said. 'All nice and tidy now. It's one in the morning. Go to your room, get some rest.'

She got to her feet: 'In that case I'll say good-night,' she said. 'Good-night,' she repeated, begging for a crumb of kindness.

'Wait. Wouldn't you like to take something to eat with you?' he asked, watching the smoke spiralling up from his cigarette.

'I don't think so,' she said.

He sensed that she felt awkward about taking food away with her, that she did not want to be thought in any way shallow or unfeeling. But she must be absolutely starving. To save her face and preserve her dignity as a woman in torment, to make it crystal clear that it was not she who wanted to eat but he who was forcing her to, he said in his most categorical manner:

'I want you to eat something.'

'All right,' she said obediently.

Choosing what seemed to him the most wholesome, he held out the plate of cold meats, the tomato salad and two rolls.

'That's plenty, thank you,' she said sheepishly, and closed the door behind her.

He stared at the hole in the mirror and the pile of broken shards she had left in one corner. Passion, alias love, was a complete and utter shambles too. If unaccompanied by jealousy, it meant boredom. If attended by jealousy, then it was sheer, animal hell. She was a slave, and he was a brute. Novelists were a disgrace: a gang of liars who dressed up passion and made brainless males and females chase after it. Novelists were a disgrace: they were the suppliers and flatterers of the owning classes. And stupid women revelled in their filthy lies and double-dealing and lapped it all up. And worst of all was the real reason why she had brought the Dietsch business into the open, why she had felt a sudden rush of honesty. He knew exactly why she had wanted, in all self-deceiving good faith, to be unburdened of the famous secret she simply could not keep to herself any longer. When they'd been out for walks these last few days, he hadn't been able to think of anything to say and had hardly spoken. Add to which they'd shared a bed only once since he'd got back, the first night, and since then nothing. And on top of that, last night at Agay, he'd said goodnight to her far too early, a mistake which had given her unconscious time to work, assert itself, whip up a storm of jealousy, not the real thing of course, more a fit of pique really, at an acceptable, controllable level. Just enough to make her seem interesting again. When she'd come to his room, she had been ready to tell all, but in a nonspecific, noble sort of way, with no physical details, along the lines of there'd-been-another-man-in-her-life. Poor girl. She had meant well.

Two knocks, ladylike and polite, at the door. She came in. In a pathetic little voice which made her sound like a half-drowned kitten, she said she'd forgotten a knife and fork, took what she needed, then went away again, head bowed. She did not dare go back to ask for a napkin, which she had also forgotten. Instead, she made do with a
face-towel from the bathroom. She attacked the food ravenously, and as she ate she read the woman's page of an old newspaper which she had found in a drawer. Oh what a pitiable thing is a human, dear brothers in man.

A little while later he asked her through the door if there was anything else she wanted. She wiped her mouth with the face-towel, patted her hair, and said no thank you. But shortly after this the door opened a little way and a plate was pushed along the carpet bearing petits fours arranged in a circle on a paper doily. 'No chocolate mousse, it's all gone,' murmured the invisible victualler for his own benefit. Whereupon he closed the door, sat down, crossed his legs, and, removing the damascene blade from its sheath, slowly began making incisions in the sole of his right foot.

CHAPTER 102

A little before three in the morning he went to her, fully dressed, apologized for waking her, said that he felt uncomfortable in his room, jittery, on account of the wrecked curtains and all that broken glass lying around and the cracked mirror. The room was, frankly, off-putting. The obvious solution was to move to another hotel. There was one fairly near, the Splendide. But what story could they spin the people in the Noailles to explain the mess? She sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes, and paused for a moment without speaking. If she said: 'No, not the Splendide', he would guess why and there'd be another scene. Whey-faced, her eyes ringed with blue, she stared at him for a moment, then said she'd take care of everything, that all he need do was to go on ahead to the Splendide and she would join him there as soon as she could. She smiled weakly, and asked him to remember to take his overcoat. It would be quite cold outside at this time of night.

He did as he was bid with alacrity, only too happy to obey, cleared his throat to say well in that case he'd be off, that he'd left his wallet with enough to cover the hotel bill, so toodle-oo for now, thanks, see you shortly, and he went, feeling none too proud of himself, eyes on the ground and hat pulled well down, limping a little, for his gashed foot was hurting. 'So sweet-natured, so willing, and ready to take care of everything,' he murmured in the fourth-floor corridor.

He had been a brute, he had behaved disgracefully, quite disgracefully, he told himself firmly as he went down the stairs. On reaching the third floor, he slapped his face twice, hard, and then gave himself an upper-cut under the chin which proved so hefty that he had to sit down for a moment on a stair. When his head cleared, he stood up and continued his cautious way down. When he got to the first floor, he paused, for it dawned on him that leaving her to sort out everything with the hotel management all by herself was an absolutely vile thing to have done. Hating himself, he punched himself very hard in the right eye, which swelled up immediately. On the ground floor, where the night man was snoring, he made a furtive exit on tiptoe, crossed the now almost deserted Canebière, waving his arms as though addressing a public meeting and still limping. 'My poor boy, my poor mad boy,' she murmured, leaning over the narrow balcony, from which vantage point she followed his progress. What was wrong? Why was he limping? 'Be nice to me, don't be nasty any more,' she murmured.

She shut the window and phoned down to the desk, said that they'd been called away to an illness and were leaving immediately, so could their bill be made up? After shutting the cases, she drafted several versions of a letter, made a clean copy, and read it over in a whisper: 'Dear Sir, Please find enclosed reimbursement together with our sincere apologies for the damage occasioned by circumstances beyond our control.' Should she finish with a thank-you? Certainly not. Several thousand francs said it all. She put the letter and the banknotes into an envelope on which she wrote: 'Personal. For the attention of the Manager of the Hotel Noailles. Urgent.'

She dared not call the lift but walked down the four flights of stairs carrying both the cases. On reaching the ground floor, she smiled at the night man, gave him a large tip to get on the right side of him, and found an opportunity while he was busy receipting the bill to slip the envelope furtively under a newspaper spread out on the counter.

Taxi. An elderly driver, with a white Pomeranian on the seat beside him. 'Station, please,' she said for the benefit of the night man, who was putting the cases into the boot. That way the hotel people wouldn't know where to start looking for them when they discovered the mess in their room. Two minutes later, she leaned forward, tapped the glass, told the driver she'd changed her mind, and asked him to take her to the 'Sordide, sorry, Splendide. Thank you so much.'

She felt a sudden stabbing pain in her chest and had the odd feeling that something very similar had already happened to her before, in another life, something very dreadful, with the police on her tail, with her switching hotels and covering her tracks like a hunted criminal. They were alone in the great wide world. He a dot some place in the great city, and she another dot at a different place. Two dots joined by a very thin thread. Two destinies which would fuse. If he hadn't gone to the other hotel, how would she ever find him again? Why didn't he go back to his job at the League of Nations? Why had he asked to have his leave extended? What was he hiding? Ah, here's the Splendide. What else could she have done? She could hardly have refused out of hand: he would have guessed. She got out of the taxi, paid, stroked the white pom, and asked if it had had distemper. 'Yes, lady, had it twelve years ago,' answered the old man in a voice which sounded as though it had not yet broken.

At five in the morning, remembering she had told him in Geneva that she knew Marseilles, he slipped quietly into her room and leaned over her sleeping form, which exuded a smell of warm biscuits. No, let her be, leave the questions till later, when she was awake.

'Who were you with that time you came to Marseilles?'

She opened one eye then the other, her mouth gaped, stupid with sleep.

'Oh there you are. What's the matter?'

'Who did you come with that time you were here in Marseilles?'

She raised herself, sat up, and drew her hand clumsily across her forehead: it was the same harrowing gesture that he'd seen from the sick chimpanzee at Basle Zoo the day he'd taken Saltiel and Solomon there, the same gesture that Rachel made too.

'No,' she murmured foolishly.

'Was it Dietsch?' he asked, and she looked away, no longer having the strength to deny it. 'When your husband was away on an official visit?'

'Yes,' she breathed.

'Why Marseilles?'

'A concert, he was conducting here. I didn't know you then.'

'He was conducting here! How splendid! How very splendid that he was able to read a musical score written by someone else! And how did he conduct, with a baton or without a button? Unbuttoned was he? No flies on him, eh? And which hotel did you stay at? Answer me!' he ordered, and once more she raised her hand to her brow and made the face which was a sign of tears to come. 'Here? Was it this hotel? Get dressed.'

She threw back the bedcovers, stepped barefoot on to the carpet, and then proceeded as though sleepwalking to put on a slip and her stockings, took some time to fasten her suspenders, failed to shut her case by the lock and did up the straps instead. O God! She was with a madman, a raving lunatic who had beat himself up and was proud of his swollen, black eye. He glared at her with his good eye. So she had been in this hotel with Dietsch, perhaps in this very bed, two noble-souled fish twisting and squirming, and the bed had groaned, and the manager had come and put his hands together and pleaded with them not to wreck his furniture! But they had gone on broncoing, and the manager had turned them out! Bed-smashers and mattress-wreckers, known to all the taverns of Marseilles, blacklisted by all the hotels in Marseilles! Just then she sneezed twice, and he felt a surge of pity, searing pity, pity for a frail human creature doomed to sickness and death. He took her by the hand.

'Come, my sweet.'

They went down by the stairs, hand in hand, each carrying a suitcase, he with a coat over his pyjamas and she wearing only a slip under her mackintosh. On the ground floor she put down her case and mechanically hitched up her drooping, wrinkled stockings, while the deskman was hard put to understand why this client. with higgledy-piggledy hair and a tie in one hand should be telling him that the Splendide was too old for his taste, that he wanted a young hotel, as young as possible. A banknote was instrumental in persuading him to mention the Bristol, which hadn't been up long.

'Built when?'

'Last year, sir.'

'Perfect,' said Solal, and he gave him another note.

The cases were stowed into a taxi. It was the same driver with the white pom. From Ariane's case strayed half of one stocking and a strong fragrance of eau-de-Cologne. He watched her once more out of the corner of his left eye. Should he leave.her, so that she was rid of him? But what would she do then? Their love was all the poor girl had left. Besides, he loved her. Oh, that wonderful first evening together! 'Spare me,' she'd said on that first night. But had Dietsch spared her only hours before? He would never know.
'Tvoya zhenaj
she had whispered that night,
'tvoya zhena\
while only hours before her mouth had been pressed to the mouth of a man with white hair. And wavy white hair, at that! Yes, her mouth, the same mouth that was now next to him in this taxi, exactly the same identical mouth. His angel was trembling. She was afraid of him. What could he do to stop making her suffer? How could he fight the pair of them, loins joined, groins grinding? Try and make her repulsive? Imagine her thirty feet of intestines? Imagine her skeleton? Imagine the food passing through her oesophagus and entering her stomach and its progress thence through to the end of the process? Imagine her lungs, soft and red, like offal in a butcher's shop? It was no good. She was his beautiful, his pure, his saintly love. But his saindy love had reached out her hand and touched a man's abomination, felt the bestial desire of a man, and had done so without revulsion. What could he do about it if his mind was filled with a constant picture of her with her male, an ineradicable image of his saindy love with a male ape who was not loathsome in her sight, a male ape who did not disgust her: that was what amazed him, shocked him. Yes, she was good to him, of course, kind and loving, walking miles to bring him halva, yet all the same she'd scrubbed herself clean before going to see her male ape, scrubadubdub and soapysudsud, to be a tasty dish for Dietsch, to get herself thoroughly dietsched, but there it was, that was the size of it, so don't think about it any more. I promise. You have my word on it.

'So now it's the Hotel Bristol,' she murmured, sitting on the edge of the bath, still wearing her mackintosh, not having the strength to get undressed. The bathroom was hideous. They'd been much better off at the Noailles. The stupid porter had dumped their bags in the bathroom. Serge had been weak, a bit spineless really, but at least he was gentle and attentive. A fly landed on her and made her flinch. She sniffed, rummaged through her handbag, but found only a small, torn handkerchief which was quite useless. She bent down and opened her case. No handkerchiefs. Left them all behind at the Noailles. Never mind. She blew her nose on a stiff, shiny face-towel then tossed it under the bath. The door opened. Enter, limping, a lord with a black eye which was swollen and half closed. She shivered. Why was he limping? Oh, never mind, it didn't matter.