Now the girl lowered her head and, stooping, folded up the sheet. Something humble in the curve of her back made Rose say sarcastically, “Will he beat you?” From her crouched position the girl glanced up, her eyes secret between the escaped spirals of her hair, but she made no answer. A religious medal on her breast swung free and glittered in the sun. Then she was gone and could be heard going down the stairway on whose threadbare carpet all steps sounded.
So she wasn’t going up to report her failure! She did not need to, since beyond doubt Jason had heard everything from his room. Rose felt her heart beat stiflingly high up in her bosom. She leaned back against the terrace railing and slowly lifted her face. Jason had come out on the balcony and was looking back at her. His expression was hard and unchanging. Before its immobility Rose trembled. She clenched her fists impotently behind her back like a punished child. Then, turning, she ran quickly indoors.
EIGHT
Journal:
I wasn’t able to write yesterday. I had a headache—no, that’s not true—the doll Rose had a headache and her eyes were swollen too; dark underneath as though she’d been crying or as though—but it wasn’t that. I’d have known. I have to know those things because she is my effigy. She has everything of me: my blood, my bones, my breath in her lungs. Does she have my soul? Of course you have no answer to that, and in fact so far you haven’t answered any question of mine. I suppose you think I should find the answers by myself and that’s just what I’m trying to do. Another thing: I still haven’t decided who you are. Never mind. Perhaps when I come to the end of everything that too will be made clear to me.
As I said, the doll Rose had a headache and when she has one I have one too; a duller, more faraway one deep, deep down inside my head where dreams come from, if you know what I mean. And on the subject of heads: they seem fairly small. I look at mine in the mirror, for instance. It’s a neat, round, black ball with a mask on one side of it. And there are passages behind the mask and teeth and strings to tie in the eyes. It’s only what’s behind all those things that counts. How minute a space for what goes on there; for the miles and miles of thinking and fancying that I’ve done since I was born. Yet there seems room for lots more. I often have the impression that there are dark caves there, caverns which echo dimly to my conscious self and whose imprisoned voices I can never quite catch.
There is a song which everybody sang in Paris last year about a diver; the lover asks the diver to sound the depths, first of his mistress’s eyes, then of her heart and lastly of her brain. From the first two trips the diver returns and tells of the marvels he has seen, but from the last he does not rise. He is lost in the “profound abyss.” I guess the song writer knew how it was although what the diver actually sees in heart and eyes is disappointing, not to say banal. Still, of the “profound abyss” he had nothing to tell. It was too mysterious even for a popular song.
Today I have to tell you about a trip I made to Montmartre. I wanted to buy some material for a summer suit and there are very good places there, one in particular. It’s called the Marché St. Pierre and they have cuts and remnants from all the fabric makers of Europe. I found what I wanted easily. You know I like simple clothes; pleated skirts, blouses, and so forth. That’s the way I dress. Simon thinks it’s awfully dowdy, “the nostalgia of school days” as he calls it. Well, but I love good material and pretty colors and I do choose them with care.
Anyway I came out of the store with my package under my arm and stood for a moment outside the door to get my bearings. There was a soft, clear, gray light over Montmartre, whose summit, tipped by the Sacré Coeur, rose just above me. As you know there is a park running steeply down from the church and the Marché St. Pierre is just across from its base. As I stood there I noticed a couple coming down the last steps of this park and the man seemed familiar. When you’ve been in a crowded store your eyes get out of focus and it takes a while for anything to register. It wasn’t until they had almost reached me that I knew the man was Jason.
I must explain that since the cold spell I’d not spoken more than a dozen words with my neighbors. We never met on the stairs, or if we did it was only a brief “Bonjour” on my part because neither of them had any definite word to say, only a sort of grunt. And now it was April and Jason was walking with his girl in Montmartre—very appropriate—and then, well, somehow she got lost or he left her and I found myself having a drink with him and we talked about nothing. I don’t think we even talked at all and there was nothing of interest, nothing, nothing, nothing.
It’s afternoon now. I wrote that last paragraph this morning, or someone wrote it. Shall I cross it out? No, I’ll leave it because it’s in my hand. But it’s silly, just silly; even the writing slants a different way. No wonder I felt funny during lunch. More of the doll’s tricks no doubt. Because that afternoon exists. It’s in the world forever.
I’ll start where I left off, at the material bazaar, outside it where I saw Jason and his girl. She came down the steps so awkwardly; Jason’s sweetheart, as I called her to myself. Her cheeks shook at every step and her hair too, which was bleached brittle. Even her dress was shaken by the body fitted too tightly inside it. Jason, beside her, appeared very sure of himself. He walked lithely, holding her arm. He carried his accordion on his shoulder and was dressed in a coarse roll-neck sweater with a tight jacket over it. I was sure he’d seen me but he made no sign and, passing quite close, went on toward the boulevard.
I too walked in that direction, intending to catch a bus home from the Place Pigalle. The air was damp and beneath my feet the sidewalk sweated a dark oil. On the boulevard a drab crowd jostled one another and the strain of winter set a seal of anonymity on their faces. They walked clumsily as if the cold had cramped and paralyzed their limbs. No one seemed to notice me. They could have been a crowd of phantoms shuffling along and only the tapping of my own heels was sharp. I like high heels and the cobbler puts metal on them so I won’t wear them down too fast. Listening to the sound of that clear tapping I wondered vaguely if I favored my left foot. They say most people do. It was some time before I became aware of the soft tread behind me. But after a while I realized that I was being followed and I glanced sideways into a shop window to see. It’s an almost irresistible impulse. My follower turned out to be Jason and at that moment he touched me on the arm.
“You’re far away from home,” he observed in a cocky way.
“So are you,” I retorted good-humoredly, although I did not care for the meeting.
“I’d like to offer you a drink,” he went on. “Or at least a coffee.”
The polite turn of his phrase surprised me as coming from a man who had always been surly to the point of rudeness. So he did appreciate my kindness after all, I thought, and I felt bound to accept his offer and show thus that I understood its meaning.
We turned into a café and sat down in the glassed-in terrace where we could still watch the passersby.
“What did you do with your girl?” I asked.
“Oh, she had to leave—and she’s not my girl, as you put it.”
“Why isn’t she?” I asked teasingly. “I thought she looked nice.”
He glanced at me quickly and for some reason that glance showed me his looks as though I were seeing them for the first time. He had the heart-shaped face that is unusual for a man: wide at the cheekbones and with a pointed chin. His mouth was fresh and boyish with a little cleft in the center of the lower lip. His brown hair was very bright and of the kind that would be curly when wet. Perhaps the most striking of his features was his reddish eyes, which hid their depths inside a small, black pupil as hard as stone. Now these reddish, foxy eyes looked into mine.
“Girls like that are a dime a dozen,” he said. “They come easy and I make them go the same way.”
So he thinks himself a killer, I thought, but in my heart I knew he was not boasting at all. It just was like that for him. Aloud I only said, “What are you doing way up here?”
“I came up about work,” he answered.
“Work?” I was surprised.
He tapped his accordion, now on a chair beside him. “I’m to play in a ballroom, a bal near here called the O.K.”
“I’m glad for you,” I said. I had ordered Campari, a slightly bitter apéritif of which I am fond, and Jason had followed my example. He lifted his untouched glass.
“Here’s to your health,” he said with a smile. I too raised mine, but as I did so, I saw his smile fade and his usual surly look take its place. He drank and an awkward silence descended on us both. I began to feel foolish sitting with him like this; a man whom I neither liked nor admired and who in turn thought of me surely as a boring, middle-class housewife. Turning toward the window I was further dismayed to see the blond girl with whom Jason had been walking. The girl’s face, which had seemed amiable before, was now contorted by jealousy and suffering. Her sharp nose was red and her mouth compressed. A deep line between her eyes showed the effort she was making to control her tears, and she was standing quite still with her purse clutched against her.
“Why there’s your friend!” I exclaimed.
“I know,” he said coldly.
“Why doesn’t she come in?” I asked.
“I’d like to see her try,” he said. “She’d soon find out!”
“Well, I must go in any case,” I said and heard a quiver of anger in my voice. I buttoned my coat hurriedly and, with an effort, thanked him for the drink. I held out my hand and felt for a moment the surprising warmth of his palm.
“How small your hand is,” he said. “I could crush it easily.” And those boyish lips parted over pointed teeth. “I dream of you at night,” he said.
Of course I made no reply, but just the same and as though hypnotized into doing so, I gave him a provocative look. I was furious afterward, and as I hurried out into the street I was blushing with irritation. I suppose women just can’t help reacting to a compliment, even a doubtful one. What made it worse was that I now had to pass within two feet of the girl. I felt a burning look sweep me from top to toe. I even fancied I could hear a harsh, despairing breath. The girl was standing with her feet apart and her neck stretched forward. It was as though she were trying to divine the quality of my body through my clothes. And I think it was those very clothes that baffled her the most. “What kind of woman,” she seemed to be wondering, “would wear a loose skirt when she could wear a tight one?”
I was miserable as I walked to the bus stop. “That girl thought I was a rival!” I said to myself furiously. “How shameful!” And then I thought further that they were probably fighting over me together right now, or even laughing. I was no longer in a daze. On the contrary, each former phantom in the crowd had been resurrected into flesh. I was painfully aware of each face and was dismayed by their expressions of anxiety and hate. The women seemed especially bitter since their beardless skins were less protected against the grinding monotony of life. How rarely one saw a smile or heard a laugh! And why should they laugh? Were they not mortal? Who knew what diseases lay inside them, body and soul?—inside them or inside me.
Once on the bus I sat near the window and, leaning against the glass, looked out at the street. This street would last longer than I, Rose, who had been a child yesterday—or it probably would, though a bomb, a rising sea, or another planet could destroy it in an instant. There was an old man opposite me. I could see his reflection in the window: bearded, with dark, hollow eyes. “He’s like a prophet,” I thought, and I had the impression that he would suddenly rise and, with uplifted finger, tell of dreadful things to come. At the same time I could see through his reflection, through his eyes and his white beard to the twilight street beyond. And when, turning away from the window, I looked at him directly, I saw that his eyes that had seemed so deep were merely closed in senile slumber, while around his mouth the stained beard was wet.
NINE
Journal:
