“I suppose it’s all right for small beaches like this where nobody comes,” he said. Rose smiled and touched his hand. Then, with a little sigh, she stretched herself on the warm sand and turned her face into her arms.
Pierre walked slowly along the tidemark looking down but not seeing anything; a heavy-set young man with the skin already scorched on his shoulders. Now and then he had to circle a group of bathers or ballplayers. Rose would never play with a ball on the beach and the very idea of such a thing sent her off into peals of laughter.
“Why not just run around in circles giving each other hearty slaps?” she would say. And of course it was true that people did get hearty on a beach. But Pierre rather sympathized. In any case Jouvence took these vacation games quite seriously and always ran a few pages on them. Before leaving Paris he had just seen the ones of this year; five girls in shorts illustrating healthy outdoor hours in front of a tent. One of them had been almost like Gloria, except that her thighs weren’t right, and when one knew the model in question, so Simon assured him, one found her strangely uninterested in men.
Pierre was almost knocked off his feet by a child who was running into the sea. The child, a girl, was about twelve years old and of that extreme, wild beauty which reaches its peak at that age. Her wet hair, reddened and streaked by the sun, fell over her brows in straight locks, but as she collided with Pierre she threw back her head and exposed the pointed face that had been hidden. For a moment her eyes looked into his with the most savage abandon and then she was off again leaping and bounding as though her body were broken to the rhythm of her panting breath.
Pierre watched her throw herself at the water. She shrieked as the first wave struck her legs. Her piercing cry made him smile and yet something sad was at the back of his mind. Turning, he saw what must have been her family on the beach; an elder sister and a mother, an attractive group. The sister was sitting in the midst of small bottles and was giving herself a manicure. She might have been sixteen or so and resembled quite distinctly the child who had run into him. When she looked up, however, he saw that her eyes were quite different; the golden and birdlike freedom was absent, just as the tangle was absent from her short, waved hair. Beauty was gone and only decent prettiness remained to take its place. Pierre could see quite plainly that there was a copy of Jouvence open beside the girl’s knee and the sight of it gave him an unpleasant reaction.
“Why I’m ashamed of Jouvence!” he exclaimed to himself. “I’m ashamed because it will turn that child into a replica of her sister, that child with all her promise!” Yes, that promise which seemed as boundless as the ocean in which she sported, would be cut down to size. Worse, she would cut it down herself and willingly. Soon, next year perhaps, she would leave her play and plunge without regret into the murky waters of adolescence. Self-consciousness would replace the abandon of today. Fear would steady her wild pace. Jouvence would wave her hair and paint her nails, would tell her what to think and what to hope for.
Yet if that’s true, what am I doing? he wondered. Am I not a writer with a book to finish and bring out? He recalled that once Rose had told him he should quit the magazine and concentrate on his book alone. And how unreasonably angry he had been! It was as though she had urged him to jump off a cliff with a few feathers in his hands. But perhaps a few feathers were enough, or even the short, thrilling fall through the air. Enough, better, than the endless plod across the plain.
Such thoughts made Pierre’s head spin and his rather puffy eyes opened in dismay.
The young girl thought he was looking at her and smiled at him invitingly. This was vacation and after all Mamma did the same. Her white-red smile changed Pierre’s mood in a flash. Whatever had he been thinking? He could not remember. And how charming and fresh she looked with her neat, new figure, her high-lighted hair. How right that she should be gently waving her hand to dry her nails. How more than right that she should smile at him.
A breeze fluttered the pages of her magazine and then lifted it a few inches away from her. Pierre in two strides was over and had restored it. “I wouldn’t like you to lose such a valuable possession,” he said. Remarks of this kind are permissible on the beach and both she and her mother thanked him.
“But I’ve read it anyway,” she said. “It isn’t very good this time.”
“Ah, that’s because I’m on vacation,” said Pierre.
“Do you work on Jouvence?” At his answering nod both women looked up at him with respect and he saw that the mother too took good care of herself. She hardly appeared older than her daughter, only a little brighter and a little harder.
“Mamma and I always fight over it,” said the girl. The mother slanted her dark glasses at Pierre’s face and gave a sophisticated twist of her lips.
“You’ll have to allow that a woman my age needs it most,” she said. She had to say it with that big girl by her side. There was nothing else to do.
“Why should one sister need it more than the other?” asked Pierre gallantly.
At this point the little girl came running back covered with goose flesh and with hair plastered down on her cheeks. The other two looked at her aghast and moved instinctively together. Who was this skinny, shivering child and what possibly could she have to do with lovely them?
“Don’t drip on me!” cried one.
“Yes, do go away,” agreed the other. “Really, my child, if you could see how you look with your hair like a wet dog’s.”
They shuddered and Pierre completely agreed with them. How could I ever have thought her beautiful? he wondered, looking at her sharp, child’s face in which the lips were blue with cold.
After a few moments more of conversation and a tentative date for apéritifs that evening, Pierre walked back along the beach. It was getting late and bathers were preparing to go home. Some who lived near put on beach coats, others dressed nimbly and in such a clever way that one saw nothing. They wrung the sea out of their bathing suits and grimaced at the sand still sticking to their backs. Then, turning to give last looks at the beach where they had lain, they strolled slowly toward the sea wall.
Rose was lying on her back. She had been swimming and drops of water still pearled her skin. Her face was exposed and would have been serene were it not for the heavy frown between her closed eyes. It sprang from the meeting of her brows like a living thing, like a branch or like a cry for help.
But Pierre had grown used to this frown as husbands will and what he noticed was something else entirely: a dark shadow that ran along the insides of her thighs. Had it always been there? He did not know. A sort of soreness between the blades of his shoulders made him recall the portrait incident once again. He stood there for a few minutes more, looking down at his wife, and the confusion of his feelings was not unlike that of a man who is falling in love.
TWENTY-ONE
Journal:
After I had been with Jason, I used to feel empty. I couldn’t care about anything and especially about seeing him again. Yet in a day or two, sometimes even sooner, a restlessness would come over me which has grown familiar since. I’d know that only Jason could cure it.
“One more time,” I’d say to myself. “Just let me see him one more time.” Who was going to let me, I wonder? Was it you?
I think that the fourteenth of July did more than anything to bind me to him although you might think it would be the other way around. It was as though every single thing that day was pointing in his direction. Did you notice that, when I was telling you about it? I mean that other population coming from a land that might have been my own dreams, that other market superimposed on the everyday one. Even my delirium later—yes, especially that—was a part of it. Oh, the fourteenth was thick with clues. It led on into the darkness. It darkened my brain.
Sometimes in those days, as I was lying in bed at night, the moon would rise over the terrace and a sliver of white would point into the open door of our bedroom. When it’s hot like that we have to keep everything open; otherwise it’s unbearable, even Pierre agrees. Occasionally, along with the moonlight, a tomcat would creep into the house. There are several of them on the roof, a tribe by themselves. God knows how they exist. I suppose they find birds. They can rove the whole block from roof to roof and they look quite different from the alley cats one sees down in the streets. They are paler, as though a hundred moons had bleached their fur, and they slink less. Perhaps that’s because they haven’t man to fear, or his civilization. Out on the peaked and barren ranges of the roofs they are alone with their desires, their hunger and their hatred of each other.
And when I saw those fiery eyes against the thread of the moon I started up. Oh the doll’s heart ached then as human blood beat into it and the doll’s eyes were burned in the glare. And I remembered Jason and I thought that if I didn’t see him within the day I’d die.
We had a system which seemed to have developed by itself; at least I for one don’t know how it started. It was a tune, “La Vie en Rose.” Appropriate, not to say banal, and when one of us played it, it meant that in half an hour we would be at the rendezvous. At first of course we didn’t have a rendezvous. Jason simply went downstairs and waited until he knew I was behind him. Then he walked off. He didn’t need to turn around for he knew I was following. I recall that he was always smoking a cigarette at such moments, but smoking in a special way like in a spy movie. Sometimes it felt like an absurd game, not real at all.
Later, it was understood that we would meet at the coal vendor’s. The coal vendor’s is also a small bar. It always is in Paris although I’ve never discovered why. They have a sign up over the front of the door advertising wine and coal. Both warming products and I daresay theirs is thirsty work. The coal bar in our quarter is next door to a hotel and one can go from one to the other by side doors. It’s very safe really, even though it’s so near home. I’d always have the excuse, in case anyone saw me, of ordering wood or coal or else paying my bill. Even in summer it would work. And what more natural for Jason if he happened to be there than to offer me a drink, after my kindness of last winter?
The coal men know of course. There are several of them besides the patron. They take it in the nicest and most ordinary way and are very polite to me; much more so than before, in fact. Then too, they are all great admirers of Jason and of his accordion.
Nonetheless the first time was horrible. I’d never done a thing like that although lots of people must, judging from the hotel’s attitude. Jason asked for soap and a towel. When we got into the room he pulled back the blankets immediately. I said and did nothing. I felt paralyzed. But I was happy to have come because it all seemed so crushingly sordid that I knew I’d never do such a thing again.
I knew it for three days and then I didn’t know it any more.
But we didn’t always go to the hotel, you know. Sometimes we walked along the lower embankment of the Seine or simply had a drink. Once we went to the Musée Gavin and stood in a room with mirrors all around and changing lights. The room was packed and we stood up close to one another. I felt Jason’s heart beating against mine and I might have fallen down, I felt so weak, if the room hadn’t been too crowded even to bend one’s knees.
At other times, when Pierre was working late I used to go to the O.K. Ballroom and I’d see Jason there. I put it in the past. I put all these things in the past and in a way they are and in a way they’re not.
I liked going to the ballroom at first because everybody knew I was Jason’s girl and all the men asked me to dance. The regular girls were jealous and there were two of them there in love with Jason. One of them was the girl I told you about before and the other was a robust-looking creature who thought of herself as the belle of the O.K. She wanted to make me a scene, but it was difficult because I was so quiet. Besides, I think she was a little afraid of Jason. I used to be friendly and polite to all my partners and I got so that I even enjoyed dancing musette. I don’t know why I was so happy there, or rather of course I do. It was because Jason was the star and I was the one. I was new and I had nothing to fear. It gave me the most marvelous feeling of happy ease. I’ve never had that feeling before.
La Cigale was there often but we never spoke. She just sat and nursed her beer and even if all the tables were packed nobody ever sat at hers. Her recollections are being printed in Jouvence, by the way. It seems she really was quite a well-known music-hall artiste and knew other important celebrities of her day. She had photographs they hadn’t yet seen of herself and others. Of course they wanted to change what she wrote and Simon fought with her all summer. After we got back from vacation Pierre tried to join in the battle but he’s just not made to cope with somebody like that. You see, they wanted to hear about the celebrities she had known, little stories about them and so forth. But La Cigale (quite naturally) wanted to tell only about herself. She wanted to be the central figure and no mistake. They must have straightened it out somehow because the article’s appearing shortly.
Anyway I was explaining how I felt there in the O.K. ballroom. Jason would notice me come in at once and the other musicians would nudge him and wink admiringly. His other girls would rove around the room like unhappy tigers. And Jason would be sitting there playing, with his hair still curled from the dampness of the comb and his knees spread in a powerful, graceful, manly way. Just as he’s sitting at this moment—just as I’ll soon see him.
