“I’ve never been to a popular ballroom,” she said.

“But they’re only tiresome,” protested Simon, feeling as he spoke that Rose had put her hand on his arm. The hand made its own plea and Simon had to force his muscles not to tense. Just the same a pulse beat in his cheek.

“There’s a good one in Montmartre,” she continued. “At least a friend of mine said there was.” Simon, who was staring at her, saw that the mention of this friend had made her blush, but she went on hastily, “It’s called the O.K.”

“Really? The O.K. How New World and up to date!” he said sarcastically. “I didn’t realize, Rose, that you had pretensions of being one of the people. It’s the most revolting snobbism.” Rose was silent at this, merely taking her hand off his sleeve. “Well if we must—” he said. “Come along, Heidi—and why don’t you change that sickening name—free drinks elsewhere.”

When they stepped out of the taxi at the Place Pigalle they found it ablaze with lights. It might have belonged to a different city altogether than Saint-Germain des Prés. Both were centers of activity and both teemed with life. The crowd sought pleasure in each, sought entertainment, drink, women, drugs and perversion. Perhaps the difference was simply that where Saint-Germain was amateur, Pigalle was professional. If Heidi would go to bed for a drink, her sister in Pigalle had her price in cash, had her beat and her protector.

Simon and his two charges stood for a few moments bewildered and disoriented. The journey had drained them of spirit and what they had come to do seemed worse than futile. Heidi’s small mouth drooped. She had not had enough to drink and now wished herself back in her own quarter. People looked at her tight jeans and laughed, remarking “Zazoo! Art bum!” and shrugging contemptuous shoulders. And they did look absurd here, emphasizing the pear-shaped bottom from which her thighs turned rapidly into a child’s thin shanks.

They found the bal with the aid of a policeman and climbed toward it in the twisting stairs and streets of the hill. The door of it was open to the warm air and in front of them a group of girls flocked in together like stocky little birds. These were not the professional beauties of the Place Pigalle below, but servants and workmen’s daughters who were set to enjoy a night out. Their faces were lit with enthusiasm. An innocent gaiety rendered them almost pretty despite their ugly clothes, their short, red, bare legs and clumsy shoes. But it struck the eye that the men were better looking than their partners on the whole, clearer featured and more finely made. Perhaps an absence of badly permanented curls helped, or perhaps it was only the physical drudgery which thickens women’s limbs but leaves a man’s slim loins intact.

They were shown to a table, however, by a man whose hips were enormous and who had the disturbing aura of one with a secret deformity.

“It’s going to be horrible,” said Simon, who now wished he had not given in to Rose’s whim. He noticed, however, that everybody was laughing at Heidi, and the quality of their laughter, filled with obscure jealousy and coarse intentions, put him back into humor. He watched Rose who was looking down at the table as though she were afraid to meet the eyes, curious or admiring, that were examining her. A musette waltz was making the dancers spin on the crowded floor. The uneasy motifs of the accordion were threading the music through, like a brook running over a troubled bed or like the voices of those animals who sound almost like men. Plaintive and hurried, it was the expression of the dancers themselves; their brief youth, the smallness of their desires and their taut nerves forever on the stretch.

A youth in a checked shirt came up and bent over Rose. At the same time he threw out a perfunctory, “May I?” at Simon. But before the latter could consent or refuse he saw Rose get up and move off in the stiff embrace of her partner. He watched ironically as they circled the room and saw them pause beneath the bandstand where the accordionist sat. Rose, with a gesture startling in its suddenness and grace, looked up at the player. Simon noticed the arch of her back, the swan curve of her throat from which the hair had fallen free. Then, above the music, her laugh rang out clear and fresh. Its mocking undertone made that curved throat palpitate. It transformed her entirely from the woman Simon knew.

“Your friend has met a friend,” said Heidi.

“Shut your mouth or I’ll throw this glass in your face.” Simon had a nasty expression in his eyes. His jaws felt knotted in his cheeks. He was furious with himself, with Heidi, with Rose and with Jason, whom he had recognized.

TWELVE

Journal:

You know how I said there was a thread, or that I thought there was a thread, for me to follow in all this? I only hoped for it then. It’s come out since, hasn’t it?

Now I’m going to tell about my evening with Simon because so many things happened that night which fitted, which spun out the thread. To begin with, I didn’t much want to go out with Simon. Pierre goes away on short trips fairly often and I’m not a bit lonely or afraid here by myself. But that time Mark was in town and he upsets me. We upset each other really because of Mother—the way she died. It seems so shameful—like a vice in us almost, although I don’t know if you’ll understand that. I get dizzy when I even think of torture, but she had to feel it and to live it and in the end it was all her life.

Well, as I was saying, she is always between Mark and myself and although at first it’s wonderful to see him, after a bit a shadow grows in his eyes and he casts it into mine. So I was glad to go out with Simon and I guess Mark was just as glad to go home to bed.

I swear I never thought of the O.K. ballroom before the juggler came into the bar. In fact I was planning to go home myself soon, especially as a young girl had joined us and I’m not very good with strangers. She made me feel funny, the young girl, I mean. She was so much younger than me and yet so much more used and there didn’t seem to be any meeting ground because being used was life to her and she neither knew nor cared about anything else. To her there was nothing else so that I didn’t even exist in her eyes. I could tell by the way she looked at me, just once briefly, and then wearily away.

How refreshing it was to see that child in the doorway! There I sat with those two exhausted creatures and then he appeared with his cherry earrings and his clean shirt. He smiled directly into my eyes and it was as though he said, “I’m glad you’re here.” His smile at the bartender who tried to stop him was something else; polite and tough and devil-may-care and all the time he was juggling away, never missing a catch. Everybody gave him money and I had some ready in my hand. But he didn’t pass the plate to me. He just smiled with his twinkling, manly eyes and I smiled back at him. Then I asked Simon to take me to Montmartre.

I suppose you want to know why. Do you? Well, I don’t know why. It was something to do with the child coming in but I can explain no further. Perhaps you can figure it out for yourself. Would you tell me if you did? Me, Rose. Rose with the blackening leaves, Rose blasted beneath a black sun, rooted in the waterless sand?

HERE, as though to belie the words she write, a drop fell on the page. Rose looked at it astonished. Was it a tear? A drop of sweat from her bent brow? She did not know. Yet surely its source was somewhere in her head behind her heavy and her constant frown. Bright, winking, it lay upon the glazed surface of the paper. One would not expect such clarity. With her hand she smeared it across her last words. She looked up to listen. It was dark outside and Rose was alone in the flat. The room was brightly lit and she was expecting guests for dinner. Simon, perhaps for the last time, was to be among them. Rose, recalling this fact, started writing again.

Journal:

I’ll tell you a disturbing thing that Pierre doesn’t know: Simon has asked me if he might dedicate his present book to me. Why? The idea frightens me, like the feeling one gets when a policeman looks at one. I asked him the title and he said it was to be called La Vie en Rose. How absurd! Is it a joke? And if so what’s the point? I almost know but not quite. In any case I have started reading his other books (relegated now to the top shelf in Pierre’s study) and I don’t care for them. They are like his eyes and his jaws and we women certainly don’t get much of a chance. But he told me this was to be different.

“You are making it, not me,” he said.

Simon wasn’t very happy about going up to Montmartre that night. He considered it a bore and personally I agree. One has to have a reason for doing things like that and then they become the most exciting places in the world. Any place, I mean; even a street corner, or a bare little cafe without any atmosphere—I know what I’m talking about!

Anyway so far I didn’t have a reason. I knew that our neighbor Jason played his accordion up at the O.K., that was all. I thought it would be interesting to go and see what kind of a place it would be. I regretted asking to go the minute I’d done so although I was relieved when he invited the girl, Heidi, to come along too.

In the taxi, as we were crossing the Seine, I thought of Pierre. “That good Pierre,” Simon called him apropos of some remark I made. Simon, whom I thought so far beneath my husband. It made me angry to have him spoken of like some shaggy dog who lifts his head for a pat. And then a habit of Pierre’s came into my mind; that when he was—is—very tired, he winds a cowlick on the crown of his head, winds and rewinds it around his finger and at the same time purses up his mouth. It’s an infantile remainder, I suppose. But when men like Pierre have such habits, normal, everyday type of men, it makes them touching. One fears for them despite their solidity, as if they had exposed something of themselves to peril; laid visible, perhaps, the secret and childish goodness of their hearts.

Yes, I recall thinking such thoughts of Pierre that night as the taxi rolled over the bridge, and something hurt me inside like the first twinges of an illness.

I spoke quite vehemently. “Pierre’s book will be finished soon,” I said.

“Oh books!” cried Simon, moving his head on the back of the seat. “If you only knew how I despised them.”

“Except your own I suppose,” I said (and it wasn’t worthy of me). To my surprise he put his hand over mine. I could feel those rigid fingers, icy cold.

“I am diseased, my dear,” he said. “I spit my germs up on the page.”

Heidi said “Oo-la-la,” in world-weary, sarcastic tones and after that they left me alone and bickered together.

Later we were walking around the Place Pigalle in silence. Men ran after us and touted erotic exhibitions of various sorts. One of these men was very insistent. He took me by the arm—really—almost as though he wanted to drag me into his den. I was startled and looked up into his face. Gold teeth flashed in its swarthy oval and I could almost imagine myself lured by him, by the perfidy of his smile and the stale ugliness of his wares. Or perhaps by something else entirely, by the idea of other lives which he was offering and which might after all turn out to be one’s own.

Then Simon tapped him on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “Go easy my friend,” he said. I must admit Simon did and said this very well.

There was another flash of gold and, above, a reptile’s glance examined Simon. He dropped behind us with a bow.

Now this is the second thing that happened in the evening. I know so I’m telling you. That’s why I think it’s helping me to write this. At the beginning I don’t think I’d have known and of course I still don’t know why and maybe I never will. But in the end, after I’ve told you everything, then, after you have listened—and even judged, who knows?—then at last you might render me the answer.

Anyway we got to the bal, which was crowded with small-looking dancers taking small steps. A strange creature showed us a table and served us drinks. He put one off until one understood that he was a giant midget. He was that same shape and his face, full of wrinkles, had absolutely no trace of a beard. But it had its interest; each of its many seams was dredged with sweat. They glistened like those threads of water which shine on the steeps of rocky mountains. I’ve seen them in Switzerland. Was this man the third thing that happened this evening? I hope not. In any case once I had placed him as a midget I felt better about him. He could have been terrifying otherwise. Why is it so comforting to place people, to classify them and, snipping off an edge or two if necessary, put them away in files? I despise that habit really.

My eyes are very farsighted and keen. They say blue eyes often are. So the minute I came in I saw not only Jason on the bandstand, but La Cigale at a table in the corner across the way. I wished I were a thousand miles off. I looked at Heidi who was facing me. She resembled a vicious schoolboy, an English one, with her blond hair brushed forward as though the curls had recently been cut off, and her soft little mouth so used by lies.

Our drinks came—fine à l’eau—and I gulped some of mine. The brandy was terrible but it must have had an effect because when a man came and asked me to dance I accepted. I guess you know it’s done at such places, but I don’t think I would have consented unless—well I’ll be honest, I have to be: I was pleased that I had been asked first rather than Heidi. Pleased because I knew Simon and other people in the room would note it.

That’s base, but I can’t bother about it. I must go and dress and comb my hair and look like Pierre’s well-behaved (if unfashionable) wife. It’s a pity I feel so sleepy. I feel like yawning and yawning and stretching the aching muscles of my head. Only the yawn never gets far enough. It always stops at my ears.

THIRTEEN

Journal:

We had guests last night as you know and Simon’s successor was there as well as Simon. The successor is younger than I thought despite the beard; a sulky, pouty little man. One can easily picture him having tantrums. But I don’t recall much about the evening except that I laughed. Someone asked me if I ever tried composition and Simon said in a loud, spiteful voice, “No, only transpositions for the accordion.”

That’s why I laughed, only all at once it wasn’t laughing any more. I thought Pierre noticed something from across the room where he was sitting with his editor’s wife. He tensed. He was like those people who, sleepless, listen to the slow voice of a tower clock striking the hour. They have heard one chime and await another with uncertainty. They fear perhaps that the insomniac beating of their hearts will break the sound in their ears.

And while I remember I must write down how it hurt me to laugh last night—not at first but later—and other people felt it too as I could tell by their expressions.

Once when I was quite young father drove me to the vet’s with a sick puppy. It was in the country and the vet lived in a shabby-looking house whose yard was filled with chickens and cats. As we were driving away again I suddenly saw a kitten playing in the dust of the yard—playing, playing so hard, twisting and leaping and rolling over. I laughed with pleasure at the sight. It was such a sweet little thing twirling around in the sunshine. Then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t sweet any more. It wasn’t a kitten playing, but an animal in its death throes. Mark had hit it, you see, while backing up the car. I had thought it was having fun when it was writhing on the dusty ground.

That’s the end of that story and I think you’ll know how to take it.

But then in those days, and until last night, it didn’t hurt me to laugh at all and I loved doing it and I insist on that because the way people react is important.

Afterward, when the evening was over, Simon didn’t even say good night to me. It’s funny how he once used to look down on me for being a good, quiet, ordinary wife. He scorned me to the point of rudeness. But he’s not at all pleased now. He suffers, in fact. But why? What is it to him? And how furious he was that night in the O.K. ballroom when I saw Jason on the bandstand. I laughed that night too and Jason grinned back. He showed his teeth, pointed and foxy as his eyes. They looked as though they might wound the pulp of his lip. He sprang to his feet, still playing, and beckoned to a man standing nearby.