Bernice was a dutiful pupil but the dull plod of learning did not suit her Celtic nature. She could only recall those things that stirred her and they were few in the school she went to. Later she stayed with a relative near Paris and had been in service ever since. She usually liked her employers and would not remain unless she did. She had numerous boyfriends although she was not in the least pretty and her weather-spoiled skin soon began to look old. But she was so gay and expressive that no one could resist her. They called her “Blondie” up and down the street. Bernice, however, did not really care for men except to laugh with and have a good time. She could do without the rest and only consented now and then so as to be a good sport.

She disliked Jason from the start and was horrified at what her mistress was doing. She knew because of La Cigale’s hints but she would have known anyway. Rose had been her favorite of all her employers and Rose’s calm relationship with her husband had pleased Bernice. She herself would have preferred something a little livelier but Rose was different. She wished they would have children.

She also knew around the first week in July that Rose was pregnant. After all they were constantly together. Bernice entered into many intimate details of Rose’s life. And then right away there was a subtle change in Rose’s appearance. No one but herself perhaps would notice it, certainly not Pierre who was working to get everything in order before he went on vacation. Bernice thought at once that it was Jason’s fault and one day, shortly before Bastille Day on the fourteenth of July, she quarreled with him.

It was an afternoon when both the Flamands were out to lunch, a rare enough occasion. Bernice saw Jason sitting out on the stretch of roof beyond his room. He was sewing up a rip in the lining of his jacket and doing it (as he did all physical things) with grace and dexterity. Looking up he nodded to her and called out, “Hey, La Bernice, this is woman’s work. You should come and give me a hand.”

Bernice, usually so friendly, drew herself up and tightened the muscles around her mouth. She could not tighten the mouth itself because her lips were too thin by nature. They were like the indicative thread sewn across the face of a rag doll, a cheerful red thread as a rule, but they took on grimness now from the surrounding rigidity. “You permit yourself too many liberties,” she said and her voice was trembling. Bernice was so seldom angry or haughty to anyone that she did not convince at all.

Jason burst out laughing. “And with better women than you, n’est-ce pas?” he asked sweetly.

“Don’t you dare say things like that!” Bernice meant to shout but it was more of a squeak. Her breath was a ribbon in her tight throat.

“Like what, Bernice? Do you think yourself the best woman in the world then?” His pointed teeth showed against his lips.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” she retorted.

“What do you mean?” he demanded softly so that his words floated across the space between them.

“You know,” she insisted, confused now and dismayed by her own indignation. She was ready to turn and flee, but before she could do so he gave a quick jerk of his head downward at the Flamand windows.

“Oh, you mean that!” he said. The suggestive vulgarity of his voice and movement sent the blood up into Bernice’s face. She hurled open the door of his room, went through it, through the other door to the roof, and confronted him. Stooping she dealt him a ringing blow on the side of his head.

“I’ll give you the hand you asked for!” she cried.

Jason sprang up still grinning and took her hands. He was not in the least annoyed although he shook his head a little. “Aha Bernice, so you are a woman of temperament after all!” he exclaimed. “And if you’re not pretty you might be a good girl for all that.”

Bernice tried to free herself so as to punish him again, but although she was strong and taller than he, she could not do so. And then something in those young tough, smooth hands on her own rough ones came into her consciousness. She had a feeling of regret as for something lost long ago. She looked into his clear russet eyes and into the pointed face with its wide cheekbones. So this is what she feels, she thought; what she feels and what she looks at. Who is to blame her? And without concrete words she reflected that life might have no better to offer than these smooth hands to hold and to caress, than that fresh mouth to kiss. A shining current reached up her arms and hardened the nipples of her breast. They stood out sharply against her work smock. Jason noticed them at once. He laughed.

“You’re not so bad you know,” he said. “Tu n’est pas si mal!”

But Bernice wrenched her hands away and rushed off back onto the neutral balcony. At a safe distance she turned and raged back at him defiantly, “Conceited little fool!”

His laugh followed her down the stairs and across the terrace to her kitchen. There was something strangely familiar about it that caught her attention, a sort of echo. She closed the window with a bang and commenced cleaning out the stove. This finished, she went into the studio room and to her surprise saw Rose sitting idly on the piano stool. Bernice started.

“I didn’t hear you come in, Madame Flamand,” she said.

“You were up on the balcony,” said Rose.

“I was talking to that worthless Jason,” said Bernice.

“Is he worthless?” asked Rose with a faint smile.

Bernice felt relief at being able to express her opinion of Jason, especially to Rose. “Oh he’s not worthless in his own opinion,” she cried. “Oh no, in his own eyes he’s a real Don Juan.” Protected by the comfortable wall of her indignation, she looked without embarrassment at Rose’s smile and at her eyes whose stormy blue merged into the pupil.

“Does he try and make love to you, Bernice?” asked Rose touching a key on the piano.

“I’d like to see him!” scoffed Bernice, yet her voice did not sound quite right to her own ears. Against the clear lingering of the note Rose had played, its tone was rough and uncertain. Now she saw her mistress rise and, coming up to her, take her hands. As in a trance she looked down at the fingers whose cushioned ends were sanguine and which closed feverishly around her fists.

And Bernice never quite forgave Rose for the shudder that went up her arms and hardened her breast or for the laugh Rose gave as she released her. She felt the outrage of her violated nerves where, without her consent, those two had met and stamped their one desire.

EIGHTEEN

Journal:

Before, long ago as it seems to me now, I used to bother no one. I was simply Rose whose life could be read at a glance (and who wanted to read it?) but whose secret thoughts weren’t worth fathoming. I dare say there are other married women who can say the same. I myself wonder now what hopes the old Rose had. Children? But children are not an aim in life. One cannot anchor one’s existence to theirs. Or one should not anyway, since they pass through us only and have their own destiny. They are people just as we are, and what we owe them, surely we owe ourselves.

Did I hope anything from my music? Of course I did in a way. I hoped that it would fill my soul and be enough. But most important, what did that old Rose expect from Pierre? Had she a right to expect it whatever it was?

No, that’s all wrong—I mean the things I’ve been writing—because I think the old Rose was asleep: the slumber from which one afternoon she wakened and stood up. Do you know that when a woman awakes like that everybody gets into a panic? Yes, a real panic. Ah they hear that trumpet sound! They feel the trembling in their walls! Simon is listening with locked jaws. Pierre too looks from time to time at the doll who is near him with a strange expression in his eyes. I am not used to a look of interest in Pierre’s eyes.

I want to tell you about how I was having a baby, but first I must explain something else. You know the way I keep going back to the bugler and say the road divides from him on? Well, really it is my head dividing, as I think you’ve gathered or I’ve told you. But from that day when I went up to Jason’s a new thing began to happen. You see, although I had this cleft in my thoughts even then, both sides could still communicate. After that day they couldn’t any more—or if they try, it gives me headaches. It’s as if suddenly their languages had grown too different. And besides, everything got hazy. I began to forget. Sometimes when I was sitting with Pierre of an evening I would think about Jason, but he was like an uneasy dream to me. It was almost a story in my thoughts:

‘Once upon a time there was a young woman called Rose. She had a lover whose name was Jason. He might have been a handsome man and it’s possible he lived on a roof, but it’s an old story and parts of it are lost.’

On the other hand, when I was with him, Jason, I could hardly remember Pierre at all—just as a sort of numbness somewhere, something that would hurt later, like a toothache with Novocain.

And why am I putting all this in the past? You know it’s the same now, even worse. It’s only when I’m writing this journal that things get straighter, that I can hold onto the thread and be a little sure.

Simon knew how it was from the beginning. He knew (or at least I think he did) that nothing confused me more than his constant references which only I understood. He should remain in one life with Pierre and with that good, quiet, well-mannered Rose whose only fault is that she laughs a little too hard. But he won’t and in a way I was the instrument since I took La Cigale’s article to give to Pierre. Simon got to know her that way. He likes her and it’s with her help that he crosses from one road to another, my roads you know, striding with his bony knees over the wasteland between. It makes my head ache and he rejoices. Simon is my enemy.

I told you I wanted children, but when I found I was pregnant in July I didn’t want that. People always have the idea that one could have children with several men and the husband wouldn’t know the difference. How can they think such absurdities? Already, formless inside of me, Jason’s child cried out its father’s name.

I was supposed to “come around” on the twenty-fifth or so of June and I’ve always been regular, early in fact. So by July I knew. I felt different too; my breasts burned and grew tight inside the skin. I’ve never been the voluptuous type and it makes a change. Also, right away I felt fat in the waist; as though I’d eaten too big a meal.

I was afraid. Whenever I thought about it I grew hot with fear. Have you ever felt that particular fever? It’s like the first time one really understands that one must die. I remember it well in my case. I was fifteen years old. It was at sunset and I was just coming home from the beach. Looking up at the house, I saw a face in one of the windows. It wasn’t the face of my father or mother, and aside from me they were the only people who lived there. It was just an unknown face, pale, blank and terrible. The face of death! I felt sick and in that moment I realized that I must die, that it was all a cruel joke; the olive trees, the blue, stretching sea, the familiar dwelling, all, all, since in the end was only death.

The fever mounted then, the blush of fear. I wondered how anyone could stand the terror of a death agony and yet everyone must—the coward and the hero both. There’s no getting out of it.

When I looked up again the face was gone.

It was rather the same way when I felt afraid in July. Here was something quick yet fatal growing inside of me, a fact, and there was no getting out of it or pretending it wasn’t there. I tried to think of all the things women do in such cases, but even if I knew what I didn’t know how. There was no question of asking a doctor. I was certain no doctor would know. None that I knew anyway. They’d just say to go ahead and have it and that Pierre wouldn’t know the difference. I’ve already explained about that. Besides, the Rose that lives with Pierre could never stand to bear Jason’s child. It would tear her limb from limb. It would break her flanks like glass. So I was afraid and felt sick with fear and thought about nothing else.

It was approaching the fourteenth of July. Pierre and I always go to a party the night before, a literary affair given by an American woman who is a friend of Mark’s and who lives on the quai. It’s a good place to see the fireworks from and one drinks whisky. Afterward many of us went and danced in the streets. Pierre does this religiously once a year.

Paris was very pretty with the lights strung across the streets, and each little café had its music and its decorations. We went for several blocks dancing here and there and sometimes I would have as my partner someone vaguely familiar who would turn out to be the local butcher or the baker. I saw Heidi walking through the crowds of the Carrefour de l’Odéon. She was hand in hand with a curly-haired consumptive boy. They looked like two children who haven’t long to live and must take their pleasures young. Once I saw them jitterbug languidly, fixing their eyes on nothing and with blank faces. They were dressed exactly alike in black sweaters and blue jeans and one could not really say who was the more masculine or feminine.

Near Saint-Germain des Prés we saw Simon who was alone. He was standing beneath the arching lights and staring around him eagerly and with venom. When he saw us he came up and asked me to dance.

“It’s not the same, is it?” he remarked when we had moved two or three steps in the crowd.

“The same as what?” I asked.

“As dancing in the O.K. ballroom—as dancing with your friend there.”

I didn’t say anything but I could feel my heart begin to race. Simon may have felt it too. He stopped dancing. “Is there anything more sickening than women?” he cried loudly. “They are nausea itself!”

Something very like triumph welled up in me. I don’t know why. I gave him a sideways look.