After that the sordid days came for me, the sordid and the thrilling hours. I never went up to Jason’s room again though; only that one time. Guilty, I dared not return. I try however to recall exactly how it was, how the second door opened out onto the roof-top and from the bed one could see nothing there but the sky; a sky in whose blaze the pale moon wandered. And the bed was very large—or has grown so since—and besides this there was nothing in the room, or that’s what I like to think; only the bed and the doorway and the moon-ridden sky.
How I’d love to go up there now and lie, just lie, quietly beside Jason on that big bed and look out at the moon, or perhaps I’d not look at the moon at all, but rest my head between his arms, rock myself to sleep against his lungs.
Sometimes I think it was being tired started the whole thing. I was exhausted with carrying that load inside me. When I cast it down at his feet I had to cast myself with it. Since the body goes with the desire.
ROSE, hugging her chest, went to the window. Looking up she saw the three rooms, and on the sunny balcony in front of them stood Simon leaning on the rail and facing down. She was not sure he could see her but, conscious or not, his eyes met hers in their tight depths and there was an expression on his thin mouth that might have been a smile. How like a dream things are getting, though Rose. Everything—the roof-top, the balcony and Simon leaning over it—seemed slightly out of focus. That is, they were clear enough, but in an unreal way as though floating in a finer, lighter ether.
Simon was wearing a dark, threadbare suit and his collar was open. He carried a folder in one hand and was once again the writer rather than a star journalist on Jouvence. He belonged up there on that top balcony in one of those tiny rooms with the cold winter coming on, each meal a struggle and a chalking up of debt. Yet his eyes, looking down at Rose, had an expression of reproach and of menace.
SEVENTEEN
Bernice was one of those people whom others envy for their happiness. If her face in repose was melancholy, nobody saw it in that state and if her underlying thoughts were touched with gloom, nobody was aware of them, she herself least of all. A mirror had been held up to her by the world and she had seen her image and believed in it. Born off the Brittany coast, the storms, the endless winds, the rain, had mixed a darkness in her blood, but it never showed and her visible heritage was the cheerful and weathered red of her cheeks. As a child, the youngest in the family, her life had seemed a constant round of errands: “Get the milk, run to the thread shop or to the grocer’s or to fetch your father home.” This last was the only errand she enjoyed. Then she would sidle shyly into the café and slip between the drinking men. The warm smoky air filled her with pleasure. She basked in it, especially in winter when, for the first time that day, the goose flesh would be smoothed on her chapped legs.
Bernice’s father, with his flaming hair on end, would be holding forth to everybody—most of the time, that is. On a few occasions he would be staring belligerently at someone with raised fists, or even fighting. On even rarer evenings he was weeping, sitting at a table with the tears pouring down his face and his many friends gathered sympathetically around. Bernice did not care what mood he was in. He was always good to her in an offhand fashion and had hit her only once and that by mistake when he thought she was one of her brothers.
Sometimes he walked home all the way on his hands and then she was terribly proud and ashamed at the same time.
She was ashamed because the teachers at school pinched their lips whenever her father came in sight. He was oblivious of their disapproval however, and when he saw them he acted in a condescendingly gallant way as some men do to old maids.
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?
