Our Lady of the Flowers (29 page)

“You coming to bed, Danie?”

“I am, just wait till I finish this.”

As always, he answered as one answers from the depths of thought. Our Lady never thought of anything, and that was what gave him the air of knowing everything straight away, as by a kind of grace. Was he the favorite of the Creator? Perhaps God had let him in on things. His gaze was purer (emptier) than du Barry's after an explanation by her lover the King. (Like du Barry, at that moment he did not realize that he was moving in a straight line toward the scaffold; but, since men of letters explain that the eyes of little Jesuses are sad unto death at the anticipation of Christ's Passion, I have every right to request you to see, in the depths of Our Lady's pupils, the microscopic image, invisible to your naked eye, of a guillotine.) He seemed numbed. Divine ran her hand through the blond hair of Our Lady of the Flowers.

“You want me to help you?”

She meant: help him undo his dress and take it off.

“O.K., grab hold, go on.”

Our Lady dropped his butt and crushed it on the rug; standing on the toes of one foot, be took off one shoe, then the other. Divine unlaced the back of the dress. She stripped Our Lady of the Flowers of one part, the prettiest part, of his name. Our Lady was a little tight. The last cigarette had made him woozy. His read rolled and suddenly fell on his chest, like those of the plaster shepherds kneeling on the tree trunks in the Christmas mangers when you put a coin into the slot. He hiccupped with sleep and ill-digested wine. He let his dress be taken off without the slightest movement to help himself, and, when he was naked, Divine lifted up his feet and toppled him on the bed, where he rolled against Seck. Usually Divine slept between them. She saw that today she would have to content herself with remaining on the outer edge, and the jealousy which had gripped her at
The Tabernacle
revived her bitterness. She turned off the lamp. The ill-drawn curtains admitted a very thin ray of light which was diluted into blond dust. The room was filled with the chiaroscuro of poetic mornings. Divine lay down. At once she drew Our Lady to her; his body seemed boneless, nerveless, with milk-fed muscles. He was smiling vacantly. He smiled in this complacent way when he was mildly amused, but Divine did not see the smile until she took his head in her hands and turned toward herself the face that at first had been turned toward Gorgui. Gorgui was lying on his back. The wine and liquor had dulled him, as they had dulled Our Lady. He was not sleeping. Divine took Our Lady's closed lips into her mouth. We know that his breath was fetid. Divine therefore wanted to shorten her kiss on the mouth. She slid down to the foot of the bed, licking as she went the downy body of Our Lady, who awoke to desire. Divine buried her head in the hollow of the murderer's legs and belly, and waited. Every morning it was
the same scene, once with Our Lady and the next time with Gorgui. She did not wait long. Our Lady suddenly turned over on his belly and, holding his still supple tool, roughly thrust it with his hand into Divine's open mouth. She drew back her head and pursed her lips. The violent member turned to stone (go to it, condottieri, knights, pages, ruffians, gangsters, under your satins go stiff against Divine's cheek) and tried to force open the closed mouth, but it knocked against the eyes, the nose, the chin, slid along the cheek. That was their game. Finally, it found the lips. Gorgui wasn't sleeping. He sensed the movements by their echo on Our Lady's naked rump.

“What a fine pair! You're getting me all hot. I want to get in on this!”

He stirred. Divine was playing at offering herself and withdrawing. Our Lady was panting. Divine's arms encircled his solemn flanks, her hands caressed them, smoothed them, though lightly, so as to feel them quiver, with her finger tips, as when one tries to feel the eyeball rolling under the lids. She ran her hands over Our Lady's buttocks, and behold! Divine understood. Gorgui mounted the blond murderer and tried to penetrate him. Despair–terrible, profound, unparalleled–detached her from the game of the two men. Our Lady was still seeking Divine's mouth and found the eyelids, the hair, and in a voice broken with panting, but moist with smiling, he said:

“Ready, Seck?”

“Right,” said the Negro.

His breath must have been blowing through Our Lady's blond hair. A furious movement started above Divine.

“That's life,” Divine had time to think. There was a pause, a kind of oscillation. The scaffolding of bodies collapsed into regret. Divine's head climbed back to the
pillow. She had remained alone, abandoned. She was no longer excited, and for the first time she did not feel the need to go to the toilet to finish off with her hand.

Divine might have got over Seck's and Our Lady's offense had it not been committed in her home. She would have forgotten it. But the insult was likely to become chronic, since all three seemed to be settled in the garret permanently. She hated Seck and Our Lady equally, and she felt quite clearly that this hatred would have blown over had they left each other. She would keep them in the garret no longer. “I'm not going to fatten up those two sloths.” Our Lady was becoming hateful to her, like a rival. In the evening, when they had all got up, Gorgui grabbed Our Lady by the shoulders and, with a laugh, kissed him on the back of the neck. Divine, who was preparing tea, acted as if her thoughts were elsewhere, but she could not refrain from glancing at Our Lady's fly. A new fit of rage seized her: he had a hard-on. She thought she had stolen this glance without being seen, but she lifted up her head and eyes just in time to catch the quizzical glance of Our Lady who was pointing at her for the Negro's benefit.

“You might at least be decent,” she said.

“We're not doing any harm,” said Our Lady.

“Ah! you think so!”

But she did not want to seem to be expressing disapproval of an amorous understanding, nor even to seem to have discovered it. She added:

“You can't stay a minute without roughhousing.”

“We're not roughhousing, eh, baby? Here, take a look.”

He was showing, clutching it in his fist, the bump under the throbbing cloth.

“That's a serious matter,” he said with a laugh.

Gorgui had let go of Our Lady. He was brushing his shoes. They drank their tea. Never had Divine had the occasion–never had she dreamed of being jealous of the
physique of Our Lady of the Flowers. There is every reason to believe, however, that this jealousy existed, that it was veiled, hidden. Let us recall a few small facts that we have merely noted in passing: Divine once refusing Our Lady her mascara; her joy (quickly concealed) at discovering the horror of his foul breath; and, without realizing it herself, she pinned to the wall Our Lady's ugliest photo. This time, the physical jealousy (we know how bitter it is) was obvious to her. She planned and carried out in thought acts of frightful revenge. She scratched, slashed, amputated, lacerated, flayed, vitriolized. “May he be
odiously
mutilated,” she thought. As she wiped the tea cups, she carried out appalling executions. After laying aside the dish cloth, she was pure again, but, however, returned among humans only by a skillful gradation. Her acts bore the marks of it. Had she taken vengeance upon a faggot, Divine would doubtless have achieved a miracle of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. She would have shot a few arrows–but with the grace she had while saying: “I toss you an eyelash,” or “I toss you a bus.” A few scattered shafts. Then a salvo. Would have defined the faggot's contours with arrows. Would have imprisoned her in a cage of arrows and finally nailed her outright. She wanted to make use of that method against Our Lady. But this method has to be carried out in public. Though he allowed anything in the garret, Our Lady would not tolerate being kidded in front of the gang. He was ticklish. Divine's arrows hit against granite. She looked for arguments and, naturally, she found them. One day she caught him red-handed in an act worse than selfish. They were in the garret. Divine was still in bed. The evening before, Our Lady had bought a pack of Cravens. When he awoke he looked for the pack: there were only two cigarettes left. He handed one to Gorgui, took the other and lit them. Divine was not sleeping, but she kept her
eyes closed and tried to look as if she were still asleep. “It's to see what they're going to do,” she said to herself. The liar knew perfectly well that it was a pretext to keep herself from seeming annoyed if they forgot her in the distribution, and to enable her to retain her dignity. Now that she was nearing thirty, Divine began to feel the need of dignity. Trifles shocked her; she who, when young, had been of a boldness that had made barmen blush, herself blushed and felt herself blushing at the least little thing which, by the very subtlety of that symbol, recalled states in which she had really been able to feel herself humiliated. A slight shock–and terrible because the slighter–brought her back to her periods of wretchedness. You will be surprised to see Divine growing in age and sensitivity, whereas the common notion is that the older one gets, the thicker one's skin becomes. She was no longer ashamed, obviously, of being a queen for hire. If need be, she would have boasted of being one who lets jissom flow through her nine holes. It was all the same to her if men and women insulted her. (Until when?) But she lost control of herself, became crimson, and almost failed to pull herself together without a scandal. She clung to dignity. With her eyes closed, she imagined Seck and Our Lady scowling in order to excuse each other for having reckoned without her, when Our Lady made the blunder of uttering aloud the following remark (which grieved Divine, entrenched in her night of closed eyes), a remark that emphasized, indeed proved the fact that a long and complicated exchange of signs concerning her had just taken place: “There're only two cigarettes left.” She herself knew that. She heard the match being struck. “After all, they're not going to cut one of them in half.” She answered herself: “Well, he should have cut it (the
he
was Our Lady), or even have done without it and left it for me.” So, from this scene dated the period when she refused what Seck and Our
Lady offered her. One day Our Lady came home with a box of candy. The scene was as follows. Our Lady to Divine:

“You want a candy?” (But, Divine noticed, he was already closing the box.)

She said:

“No, thanks.”

A few seconds later, Divine added:

“You never give me anything in a generous way.”

“I
am
generous. If I didn't feel like giving it to you, I wouldn't offer it to you. I never ask you twice when I don't feel like giving.”

Divine thought with additional shame: “Never has he offered me anything twice.” Now when she went out, she always wanted to be alone. This practice had only one effect: of drawing the Negro and the murderer closer together. The phase that followed was One of violent reproaches. Divine could no longer contain herself. Fury, like speed, sharpened her insight. She exposed intentions everywhere. Or was Our Lady obeying, without realizing it, the game she was directing, and which she was directing to lead her toward solitude and, still more, toward despair? She overwhelmed Our Lady with invective. Like fools who do not know how to lie, he was a dissembler. Caught in the trap, he sometimes blushed; his face lengthened, literally, for the two wrinkles along his mouth strained it, drew it downward. He was pitiable. He did not know what to answer and could only smile. This smile, constipated though it was, relaxed his features, unwrinkled his morale. In a way, like a sunbeam traversing a thorn bush, he had gone through a thicket of invective, and yet he knew how to seem to emerge unscathed, with no blood on his fingers. Then Divine, in a rage, tore into him. She became pitiless, as she could be when she went after someone. But Our Lady hardly felt her arrows (we have told why), and if at times, finding a
tenderer spot, the point entered, Divine buried the shaft up to the feathers, which she had smeared with a healing balm. She feared at the same time that if Our Lady were wounded he would get violent, and she was angry with herself for having shown too much bitterness, for she thought, quite wrongly, that Our Lady would be quite happy about that. To each of her poisoned remarks she added a touching restorative. As Our Lady never noticed anything except the good that one seemed to wish him (that's why he was said to be trusting and without guile), or perhaps also because he caught only the ends of her sentences, it was only these ends that struck him and he thought that she was finishing a long compliment. Our Lady cast a spell on the pains Divine took to wound him, but, without his knowing it, he was shot through with evil arrows. Our Lady was happy in spite of Divine and thanks to her. When Our Lady one day admitted to the thing that humiliated him (having been robbed and abandoned by Marchetti), Divine held Our Lady's hands. Though she was overwhelmed and her throat grew tense, she smiled gently so that both of them would not be moved to the point of despair, which would probably have lasted only a few minutes but would have marked them for life, and so that Our Lady would not dissolve in that humiliation. This was exquisitely sweet to her, like the feeling that melted me to tears when:

“What's your name?” the butler asked me.

“Jean.”

and when he called me to the servants’ hall for the first time, he cried: “Jean.” It was so good to hear my first name. I thought I had found a family through the tenderness of the servants and masters. I now confess to you: that I have never felt anything but the appearance of warm caresses, something like a look full of a deep tenderness which, directed to some handsome young
creature standing behind me, passed through me and overwhelmed me. Gorgui hardly ever thought, or did not show that he might be thinking. He walked about through Divine's tirades, concerned only with his linens. One day, however, this intimacy with Our Lady, which Divine's jealousy had begotten, caused the Negro to say:

“We're going to the movies, I've got tickets.”

Then he caught himself: “Am I an ass! I always think there're only two of us.”

This was too much for Divine; she resolved to put an end to it. With whom? She knew that Seck enjoyed that happy life; it gave him shelter, food, and friendship, and the timorous Divine feared his anger: he would surely not have abandoned the garret without a Negro's revenge. Finally, she again found herself–after a period of pause–preferring exaggerated virility, and in this respect Seck more than satisfied her. Should she sacrifice Our Lady? What would Gorgui say? She was helped by Mimosa, whom she met in the street. Mimosa, old lady: