IT was getting late and Rose was overtaken by the peculiar chill and pallor which comes at that hour to people who are alone indoors. It is a sort of shriveling, as though all life’s juices were retreating to the core, leaving desolate the outer covering. She hunched her shoulders and then, rising, went slowly to her room. Pierre was away in Belgium for the night, supervising an article on Flemish culture, and he would not be back until the following day. His presence left no trace now in these dark rooms which were chilly with the first autumn fogs.
On her way out, Rose stood for a moment: on the terrace and looked up at the sky. The wind above the roofs made a pure sound that spoke out of the mouths of the stars. And the night took possession of Rose: the ritual, the quickening of night which pours its antique streams into the soul.
It was after midnight by the time she reached the bal and once inside she was halted by a feeling of panic. How near things have gotten! she thought, looking around her. She had an impression that her eyes were showing their whites as they rolled uneasily in their sockets. Perhaps it was because she had been writing about the O.K. that the feeling struck her with such force. A quivering in her nerves made her features stiffen in the effort of control and this lent a harshness to her face, forbidding and almost repellent. She felt her whole neck rigid and turned it with difficulty toward the bandstand. Jason was sitting there playing just as she had depicted. He had not seen her come in and was grinning at someone in the crowd. Then, noticing her at last, he made a friendly gesture with his head.
Over in the corner sat La Cigale alone as usual. It was as though the currents of her thoughts made dark, deep waters flow around her which no one dared brook. Only the waiter with his monstrous shape came near her and that was enough. They hated each other so much now that there was very little lacking in their lives—as good as love, really, for the woman who had had too much experience and the man whose deformity had left him chaste.
Rose tried to dance but the stiff movements of her partners aggravated her own condition so she sat down at a table and waited for Jason to be free. Other women passing on the arms of their men gave her hard stares. They were not taken in by this stranger in their midst and had always resented her. There was one girl in particular here tonight whom Rose had seen one day on the stairs of her house; a bold-looking red-head, almost handsome, with heavy lips and round, not very clear eyes.
When closing time was called this girl went up to Jason and took him by the arm. Rose, who had not left her seat, saw that the girl was angry. Jason merely shrugged. The hall was emptying fast. Even La Cigale was walking toward the door with halting steps while the waiter watched furtively. He kept pace with her on the other side of the room, doubtless to show that he did not trust her to be gone, and in this way they danced on slowly after the music had ceased. Rose was suddenly terrified lest Jason go out with the red-headed girl and abandon her to her fate. She felt herself incapable of movement and would stay forever in this dirty hall alone with the echoes, the darkness and the trap of her own skin.
At that moment however Jason came up and caught hold of her roughly. “Come along!” he said. “What’s the matter with you? I can’t stand around waiting all night.”
“I didn’t want to disturb anything,” she said, at once mortified and relieved by the sarcasm in her voice.
He frowned. “I don’t know why I put up with you,” he muttered moodily. “I don’t know what you want with me.”
Rose made no reply. She did not know either answer.
TWENTY-TWO
Simon and La Cigale could not exactly be called friends, but by the end of the summer they knew each other quite well. It was rather like the relationship of jailer to prisoner, only in their case no one could have said who was guarding whom.
Simon, fastidious as he appeared, was not put off by La Cigale’s room or by her looks on close inspection. It was young women who had the power to disgust him or make him angry. This anger, which might have been a reaction to fear, absorbed him as far as Rose was concerned and he sometimes confided in La Cigale about it.
“What can she be doing?” he would cry. “And with a dirty little runt like that!”
“Ha, ha, you’re just mad you didn’t get there first,” La Cigale would cackle in a truly witchlike way, looking maliciously into his face.
Being misunderstood in this preposterous manner should have irritated Simon, but instead it soothed him. La Cigale saw things simply between men and women although she might have experienced them otherwise. Had he protested that he himself had never desired Rose in the least, she would not have believed him. But Simon did not protest and, instead, continued as though she had hit it right. “I shall find a way to punish her,” he said.
“What are you waiting for, my little one?” La Cigale would ask. “You have her in your hand.” She put her chin on her fist and after a few moments’ reflection continued, “Why not try and make a few remarks to her in front of her husband?—just enough to scare her.”
“Oh but I do!” he cried. “She’s cleverer than you think. She looks really as though she didn’t know what I was talking about. Lately she’s even seemed to want to know, like a child from whom one withholds a mystery.”
“Perhaps it’s not cleverness,” said La Cigale, veiling her eyes so as to look deeper into her own meaning.
“What else then? Just the natural ability of your kind for deceit?” He spoke with a mordant bitterness that in another nature would have been replaced by tears.
La Cigale did not notice his tone. She continued sitting with her fist holding up her chin and her old eyes veiled. “Women deceive men, yes that’s true,” she said at length in her hoarse, conspirator’s voice. “But they deceive themselves much more. They must if they are to keep on living. Oh I should know if anyone does.” She gave him a glance. “If I’d had a man like you for instance, Monsieur Simon—because you were a powerful journalist or some such reason—I would have pretended in your arms that you were the boy I liked and you would have taken my ardor for granted and been happy.”
“Thank you,” he said dryly, his thin lips smiling in their shadow.
“Your Madame Flamand is doing something like that I think,” said the old woman.
Simon was so horrified by this idea that his voice rose. “You mean that when she’s with Flamand—”
“Calm yourself,” said La Cigale with delight. “I only said ‘something like that.’ ”
“Then what?” he asked. His jawbones worked at the edge of his face as though with all his teeth he were chewing the narrow, bitter rind of his own flesh.
La Cigale lifted up her head. “Listen,” she said holding up her hand. “He’s stopped playing.” All this time while they had been talking and as on most occasions when Simon came to see La Cigale, the accordion had been sounding from next door. It was now abruptly silent. “He played their song just before you arrived,” continued La Cigale; “ ‘La Vie en Rose.’ No doubt they think it witty to pun before they perform.”
Simon sprang up from where he was sitting on La Cigale’s bed and went out on the balcony. The old woman’s words propelled him as when a string is pulled on an outboard motor. Below him as he leaned against the rail he could see the big studio window of the Flamand living room. But as it was at right angles, the light hit the glass in such a way that he could not look in. Nonetheless he thought he glimpsed a face, Rose’s face surely.
At that moment, with a muttered apology, Jason brushed passed him and went off toward the stairs. Simon on that narrow balcony could feel the other’s body against his. It pressed against him for an instant; round, arched, muscular. It spoke a message to his rack of bones. A muffled shock somewhere inside him made Simon’s legs tremble. He sniffed, moving the end of his long nose.
“That fellow must wash his hair with cologne,” he said to La Cigale who had now come out to join him.
“He’s a dandy,” she said sarcastically. “After all, one owes something to one’s public when one’s an artiste.”
“So that’s what he is!” cried Simon. “Thank you for telling me.” His sarcasm, which matched hers in childishness, pleased the old woman. She looked up at the pale blue afternoon sky and squinted. Soon (but never soon enough) night would fall. The long, weary day would be over.
“In my time,” she said, “a woman of the world never appeared until dusk.”
“Ah, but then they had candles and gas lamps. Fluorescent lighting is crueler than the sun.”
She observed him with surprise. “You sometimes astound me,” she exclaimed. “You are not a stupid man as far as women are concerned.”
“Did you expect me to be?” he asked. He was aware however, despite this banter, of the repercussions of that shock inside him.
“Yes, or to be more—lucky.”
“Can’t you understand that some people don’t want to be ‘lucky’ as you put it?” And now it was as though little waves were being thrown up against the walls of Simon’s veins.
“Sour grapes!” she scoffed. Simon hardly heard her.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s take a walk.”
