What did I feel like before I went up to his room and did I know in the morning what I would do in the afternoon? I recall going out on the terrace and hearing his accordion. How hot it was! And the notes stifled me. Then those two women looking down on me from above! I suffered because everything, the red sun, the music, those two suspended faces, was waiting for me to act. And I think, I really think, that in that instant I was lost.
I’ve heard it’s always so; that there is a deciding moment, an instant when one can still go back on one’s steps, can still look with confidence, not on the future, or even the present, but on the past. The past that changes with the recollecting heart, grows sweet or harsh, or else, as I, Rose, know, fills up with such regret. Heavens how it hurts! One can’t bear it. It becomes taboo. A thrilling and a shameful night envelops it.
The morning I’m writing about was the last in which I could awake calmly, could look around my room and note the trophies of my life; of the serious and happy child, the intent young girl, the tranquil wife. What did I think on that last morning? I remember the shower water was lukewarm when I wanted it cold and Bernice’s coffee wasn’t very good. It never is. What foolish things, yet they hurt me now, trivial as they were. They are fast receding into the night of which I spoke. There is one more: as Pierre was leaving I put my arms around him and he brushed me off impatiently. It was too hot or he wanted to get to work, was already thinking of Jouvence. It’s like when, without realizing it, one bids a last farewell. Everyone in the world I guess has known or will know that. One thinks to see the person soon again, in an hour, a week, a month; and yet that ignorant and trivial word must last forever.
ROSE threw down her pen and got up hastily. Her throat was constricted so that she had to swallow painfully. Her feet were cold. It was getting dark already and she had an appointment. She put on her coat and went into the kitchen.
“Bernice, I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be back in time for supper.”
Bernice put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth as though to say something important. “Will you bring home the bread?” she asked.
Before Rose left the flat she combed her hair in front of the bedroom mirror. Something in her appearance struck her but she could not decide what it was. Perhaps the flush across her cheeks which mounted onto her temples and which gave to her eyes a feverish and theatrical cast. It was not ugly and in fact suited the strong, slightly tragic stamp of her face. Leaning close she stared at her own forehead. It was as though she were trying to read the lines there as one reads a palm. For destiny was surely set upon that frown, the shadowed cleft which smote between her brows. She fancied the skin alone was hiding some mysterious opening in the rock of her skull. Within the cavern yawned perhaps the labyrinth of which she spoke.
Drawing away with a grimace, Rose went out of the flat and started to descend the dusty stair. Light fell eerily into the well of it and she was afraid of falling. Behind her, from the very top landing, she heard steps coming down. It was a man, for he was whistling and she recognized the tune. Had she not heard it often enough on his accordion?
Rose’s body became rigid and she tried to hasten her own steps. Despite the damp chill of the building her face burned and she felt her legs tremble. He would be later than she at the rendezvous. He often was. But he would come. He too was on his way.
How dark the street was! How swiftly the long night descended! He could not see her now, she decided, hurrying in front of him with her nervous heels. She put up her collar and for an instant icy fingers touched her cheek. Are they my fingers? she wondered. And are they really that cold? Were they not rather fingers of flame? She rounded a corner and soon went into a small bar which advertised wine and coal. The warm interior was smoky and there were only two tables. Several coal vendors were standing at the bar drinking wine. Their mouths and eyelids were red and moist in their smeared faces. They greeted Rose politely and in the manner of acquaintances. They were used to her.
Jason should be here by now, she thought, recalling the step behind her on the stair. Then the idea struck her that he had not been coming to meet her at all, but had been bound for a completely different place. At this notion the blood surged up into her head. It stung her veins. An agitation took hold of her which only women in the grip of physical passion know at its flood. She did not care if the men saw it and her lips quivered. But at that moment, still whistling, Jason entered. Immediately Rose’s uncertainty turned to anger. As he came over and with a casual caress sat down, she pushed his hand away roughly.
“I suppose you think I’ll wait all night for you,” she cried furiously. “Well, I was about to go. In fact I’m going!” She got up, overturning her chair.
The childishness of her outbreak made him laugh, showing his pointed teeth. “Sit down and behave,” he said.
“I’m going!” she repeated defiantly and desperately. “I’m going.”
“If you were mine,” he remarked, “I’d teach you a lesson.”
Then Rose did sit down again slowly and with dark eyes half closed. “If I were yours,” she repeated vaguely and her lips stirred as though on the point of saying something further, asking, perhaps, identification from this stranger beside her.
But he gave her no help. “Will you drink something?” he offered.
She nodded. “A red wine.” They drank quickly. Rose had grown very quiet. She was trying to control the turmoil inside her body which was like a bucking and half-broken horse. She shuddered as the cheap wine filled her throat.
“Let’s go,” he said. They rose and with a nod to the patron behind the bar, Jason held open the back door which led into a coal-and-wood-filled alley. Here they entered the side door of a small hotel. The peculiar smell of it, of damp, of latrines and Javelle water and furtive cooking and more furtive love, washed over this amorous pair.
SIXTEEN
Journal:
As I was crossing the Pont Neuf today I saw a newspaper blowing across the street. It moved a little, fluttered, quivered, paused and slid on again a few feet. It arrested me. I got the feeling it lived—it knew. I tried not to go quicker as I didn’t want to seem to be escaping. But I couldn’t help jumping when that malignant thing fetched up against my feet. I felt it on my instep and my ankle, dry, living, néfaste. It wanted me to look at it and at first I wouldn’t. I just walked on, but it clung to me. I couldn’t kick it loose and had to drag it along haltingly step by step. So I looked.
That’s all. I couldn’t really have seen what I thought I did. And newspaper photographs are notoriously bad. You know they are. Besides, it was dirty. No, I just saw a photo of someone who, at a distance, resembled me and in my imagination I read my own name in the caption. It’s like when in a film a movie actress puts on perfume. You smell it before you realize it’s only on the screen. Anyway that’s how it must have been when I looked down and fancied I saw a photograph of me, a sensational-type photograph.
I’m not ever in the papers. They aren’t interested in me.
I haven’t written for several days. I’ve been waiting. The bugler seems like a signpost now with the road splitting into two as it hits him and those two roads spinning away farther and farther from each other into the distance. I like to think of him. I get a feeling of peace. Possibly I thought I’d never get as far as this, that before I reached this point all would have been resolved. But now I must go on.
After leaving Jason, that other, that first and summer afternoon, I went back to the flat. I lay down on the sofa and fell into sleep as if it were an abyss, struggling at first and then suddenly giving in. Falling head downward and dizzy. When I woke up I was drenched and my skin was cold. Then I tried to reflect on what had happened. I hoped perhaps (but I’m not sure) that it would turn into an incident such as many women experience. Why should it have been important after all? I was perfectly happy before—please believe me—in that long blood sleep from which I was aroused that day.
I was strangely concerned too with what Jason could have thought of me. Did girls in his experience always act like that? Kneel, shudder, groan and sigh? He was nonchalant enough, serenely awakening the sleeper from beneath her caul.
You see Pierre and the d— and I have a very modest relationship. We don’t exactly hide from each other, but we turn our backs, close the washroom door and so forth. We turn the lights out too. I took Pierre’s lead and it’s always been that way. And the doll is modest too now, more than I ever was, furtive and sly. I hate that doll and sometimes I wish I could make an end of it. But then at other times its doll body slides into mine, its doll thoughts are mixed into my brain and we are one. That’s what gives me these terrible headaches.
Anyway, as I say, I was much occupied as to what Jason thought and also as to whether or not he found me pretty; the whole of me, that is. I didn’t ask him then or later, but I found out just the same, or rather I saw my rivals and I think that tells one as much as anything. I guess you know that I saw one just the other day, that freckled and consumptive girl with the sheets. And then there’s the baker’s daughter up the street, a fat girl in transparent layers of nylon, and I told you about the one I met him with in Montmartre. So judge for yourself. I had to.
No, there’s not much hope along those lines of reflection, but then I may not be quite fair either. Jason might have other standards of which I am ignorant. All this might be nonsense from his point of view. Is he not the center, the pivot, a man? That’s enough.
Oh you should see—or have you seen it?—the naked breast of Jason, the high ribs of Jason and his round limbs! And have you watched when he’s asleep, how his eyes roll in the warm lids and how his mouth is pushed out by his breath?
It was several days before we met again after that afternoon and when we did it was in the hall.
“You’re not very nice to me,” he remarked with a grin.
“Why?” I asked. I was blushing for the stupid reason that I had not expected to meet him and did not remember how I was looking. But it was evening and the light was poor.
“You might have come again if only to thank me,” he said.
“Thank you!” I exclaimed.
“I made you happy, didn’t I?” he asked by way of answer.
And then I said “Yes.” But of course “happy” wasn’t the right word for it.
“Well then?” he insisted, and at that moment Pierre and Simon came in sight around the bend of the stair. I hadn’t heard them and I don’t know why but I think it was at that moment that the doll came. As though my shadow stood up beside me.
In any case I ran back up the stairs, trying as I ran to concentrate on all the facts of my path; the worn steps, the mildewed walls, anything to take my mind off the meeting I had had. When Pierre and Simon arrived at the apartment I was helping lay the table and for once Simon’s sarcastic look did me good.
