Women

by Mihail Sebastian

  —What book?

  —The one you lent me…

  Stefan goes upstairs, to the Reys’ bedroom this time. She is waiting for him behind the door, trembling and pale, in her nightgown. Evidently, she’s only just risen: the bed is unmade. Stefan carries her to the bed and throws her among the pillows.

  —Monsieur Rey?

  —Away.

  —Nicole?

  —Her too.

  —How so?

  —I love you. If you only knew…if you only knew…

  As it turns out, Renée doesn’t know how to love. Her first embrace is strikingly awkward: there is no reticence or delay in yielding, only a series of hesitations, more likely from awkwardness than from modesty. But the abruptness of the occurrence, the voices in the garden below, the crumpled bedclothes, the open window—all add up to make their amorous interlude something strange and incongruous.

  * * *

  Renée has an ugly body. Very delicate hands with weak wrists, thin legs, tanned cheeks, lips burning from a perpetual fever, and rings under her eyes. She has an awkward way of wearing her well-cut dresses that make them look like they don’t fit her properly. Only in the cool of evening, when she throws her embroidered silk shawl over her shoulders, enveloping her body in it, does she recover her natural grace. The grace Stefan had noted, with detachment, the first time he saw her. Naked, she becomes younger than she is, and her hips seem all the more blatant because of her long, adolescent thighs.

  —Renée, you’re the most naked woman in the world.

  —You talk nonsense. How can one naked woman be more naked than another naked woman?

  —She can. You don’t understand. Being naked doesn’t mean being undressed. There are naked women and undressed women. You’re a naked woman.

  Unable to make such a distinction, Renée frowns, only accentuating her sharp, girlish features.

  —Do you have any Tunisians in your family, way back?

  —A real Tunisian?

  —Yes.

  —None. Why do you ask?

  —I don’t know. There’s something un-European about you. I’m not sure what it is: the wiry hair, the thin body, your dark skin—and those burning lips.

  —No. No Tunisians. We’re all like that over there! Maybe it’s the sun…

  Stefan likes to press his cheek against her skin and to rub it against her body. Her body burns in moments of passion, at other times it is cool and smooth like the leaves of a potted palm. In peaceful moments, released from his arms, Renée lies beside him, tired, her eyes closed, surrounded by an aura of elemental peace. Then, later, she is suddenly, inexplicably seized by shyness at his presence. She covers her face with her hands, squeezes her dark thighs together desperately, retreats into herself, and denies access, absurdly, violently. Until, from exhaustion or a whim, she lets herself go with childish abandon.

  After their first hour of love, up in her conjugal bedroom, on a morning nothing had prepared her for, Renée Rey had taken refuge, without explanations, by playing impeccably the role of perfect wife.

  Madame Rey, Stefan had whispered at dinner, in passing, I’ve found a room in the city, in the old town. Tomorrow afternoon at three, we’ll have a little walk around the lake and just lose the group. We’ll go see the room. Yes?

  —No.

  He had no time to ask why not, as Monsieur Rey was approaching. Later, when he’d inquired, she spoke stupidly about feeling guilty, about her duties…Which hadn’t prevented her, the following afternoon, when everybody else was having coffee in the garden, from coming to his room, falling into his arms and removing her dress with panicked movements and kissing him haphazardly, murmuring from time to time, “if Marcel comes,” in a passionate voice, as though it were an exclamation of love rather than of fear, and losing herself in his arms with small, ragged cries while the steps of those passing in the corridor could be heard through the door, which they have left ajar.

  Now they are in their room in the old town, where Renée hadn’t wanted to come but has come, a white-walled room with metal-frame furniture, open windows, and banal decor amongst which the image of “the outraged husband” would be ridiculous, almost impossible to entertain. Only sometimes, when the subject arises, does Renée cover her face and say with an intonation that is not hers:

  —Oh, I’m not deserving of such a husband.

  Which is an expression adopted recently, probably from a show at the Comédie-Française, one of the several she saw in Paris, when passing through that city.

  * * *

  Have they been observed? Maybe yes, maybe no. While Renée has been imprudent and emotional, Stefan has been measured and lazy. Is it possible for a young man and a young woman to sleep together in a house full of people with nothing to do, without its being noticed? So far, there’s no way to know. Madame Bonneau is sometimes still mentioned, which distracts from other notions. Monsieur Rey plays chess just as well as before and his handshake betrays no suspicion. But on one occasion Nicole has burst into tears, out of the blue, when Stefan asked her something ordinary.

  —Why, Nicole? Why?

  Monsieur Rey punished her immediately, because “nobody should do things in life for no reason, not even crying.”

  He’s a strange one, thinks Stefan, watching how he takes his time planning his chess moves. Much stranger, in any case, than tiring, scattered, passionate Renée. What plowman’s hands! An expression like a lumberjack’s! What a stubborn, dull, unworried silence.

  There was a light opera performance in town one evening and they’d all attended. They had agreed that morning that it would be formal attire: long dresses and black suits. Meeting at the jetty, awaiting the boat, Marcel Rey had cut a ridiculous figure among all those satin dresses and dinner jackets. He was squeezed into a tight frock coat more suited to a young man’s figure, and his felt hat was oversized, as though borrowed. Renée had a little fit of hysteria that she had difficulty suppressing, and Stefan too felt embarrassed by his own elegance, so easily attained and triumphant. Monsieur Rey’s right shoulder was higher than the other.

  —Impossible to get him to unlearn this bad habit, complained Renée.

  —Why should I unlearn it? It’s what I’m used to: I carry my gun on that shoulder.

  —Gun! exclaims Monsieur Vincent, alarmed.

  —Yes, at dawn and dusk, when I inspect the plantations in Djedaida.

  Djedaida! How often Stefan has tried to imagine the rough life there of an old colonial family; the grandparents who knew the first colonial war, young cousins who made the journey to Paris long ago and have been melancholy ever since; the festive evenings with everybody gathered at the home of the elder Reys, listening to gramophone recordings, and sleepless nights, awaiting the burning winds blowing in from the desert, a fine dust whitening the tops of the palm trees, silver beneath the moon…

  —Oh, why doesn’t Marcel want to move to Paris? Imagine how good it would be. I could visit you, we could go out together, drink tea at Berry, on the Champs-Élysées…

  —You’re right Renée, you don’t have any Tunisian blood.

  —Why do you say that?

  —No reason.

  FIVE

  Odette Mignon is eighteen. She wears a blue beret, set low on the back of her head, a sports dress with a leather belt, and white sandals with no socks.

  Stefan met her one evening on the guesthouse terrace while his friends were playing with a ring and a string and she was looking out at the night falling over the lake.

  —Won’t you play with us?

  —Certainly.

  She joined the group and played spiritedly, and sang along with everybody when the time came:

  Il court, il court le furet,

  Le furet du bois joli…

  The ring was slipped secretly from hand to hand and the player in the middle had to guess who had it, requiring the others to pass it quickly on, or
to feign doing so. Renée Rey, beside Stefan, had license to squeeze his hand hard, which caused him to let himself be caught several times so that he could leave the group and, later, sit beside Odette, who was playing seriously, in good faith, sportingly, with no more hand-squeezing than the game required.

  * * *

  It rained all day and it was evening, at dinnertime, at seven, before it brightened a little on the right side of the lake. From the dining room windows the distant mountains were violently illuminated by the setting sun.

  —A rainbow! somebody cried and everybody jumped up from the table, Monsieur Vincent with his napkin tucked into his collar, Renée noisy, the children amazed, all running out to the terrace, where the wonder could be better observed: an immense rainbow, spanning the valley and coloring the lake an otherworldly blue. Only Stefan Valeriu remained in his place, eating calmly, and in another corner of the dining room sat Odette Mignon, equally unmoved.

  —Aren’t you curious to see the rainbow? he asked.

  —No.

  —But it must be beautiful.

  —Very. But rather trivial.

  She’s in form, thinks Stefan, giving her a nod of approval, with the professional admiration with which a soccer forward would salute a team member who had scored a nice goal.

  * * *

  If he could have managed it without it seeming obvious, Stefan would not have sat beside Renée Rey on the bus. But it was unavoidable. It’s a tour bus, with rows of benches, each seating three people. Renée is on Stefan’s right and Odette is on his left. Monsieur Rey rides right up in front, beside the driver, with a guidebook in his hand, imparting geographical-historical information.

  —Attention, Le Col de la Caussade! Attention, Pont du Query! Altitude, 1,816 meters. No, beg your pardon, 1,716…

  The driver sometimes stops and turns off the motor so that he can take a photograph or shoot a few meters of film. As the sun has not yet risen and it’s very cold, they’ve pulled blankets over themselves, which allows Renée to take Stefan’s hand and grip it with feeling, while to his left Odette gesticulates in the cold air of five a.m., pointing toward the distance at a poplar or a peak or a fishing net in a lake.

  Stefan is deeply, inordinately depressed at having his hand imprisoned and thinks he would be instantly happy had he the courage to tear it free. He feels the woman’s heavy, soft, still-sleepy arm, and this feeling of being tucked away cozily somewhere strikes him as obscene on this pure new morning, vibrating with light and sound.

  —You don’t love me anymore.

  —Oh, I do, I do. (And if he didn’t know it was useless, he’d tell her that now that’s not the issue, and that she’s stupidly confusing things; things which bear no relation one to the other.)

  They stopped, toward lunch, at a Carthusian monastery very near to Grenoble and made the obligatory visit through the cells, library, and chapel, led by a guide who made perfunctory announcements. Here Saint Bruno maintained his vow of silence for three years, here’s a stained glass window from the thirteenth century, here the pope slept one night when he was crossing the mountains toward Avignon…

  Renée acted very interested in this information and tarried behind the group, hanging on Stefan’s arm, asking him for further explanations, in order to steal a kiss from him behind a door or around a corner in a hallway. In a cell, Stefan caught her caressing the bed boards and thought, unkindly, that she was thinking how uncomfortable it would have been to make love there.

  Only on arriving in Grenoble was he able to shake off the group. He enjoyed the unexpected freedom of exploring the streets of an unfamiliar city, where nobody knew him and he knew nobody. He turned his head to look at his reflection in the windows of the shops he passed and the tall figure he saw there was like that of an old friend.

  In a bookshop he browsed through new books and magazines that had all appeared in the previous two months, before his disappearance from the world. Greedy for information, he plied the salesman with questions. The salesman was taken aback by this client, who bought nothing and wanted to know everything.

  He almost didn’t notice Odette Mignon, who had also come into the shop and was surprised to see him there.

  —If you’ll allow me the pleasure, let me choose a book for you. As a gift. Look, this one, for example!

  Handing her the book, he felt how the gesture of giving something had the effect of immediately erasing the memory of that awful morning and redeeming it.

  * * *

  Monsieur Rey has pinned up a notice in the dining room, in handwritten capital letters:

  THIS EVENING

  a unique, great cinematographic event

  on the guesthouse terrace

  In tonight’s program

  some very special short films

  Indeed, all the films sent to be developed in Paris have come back—all the excursions, the long walks around the lake, several afternoons on the terrace…So many scenes they had forgotten and believed lost, and yet they continue to exist in that wooden box, delivered by post. They all feel a kind of stage fright, as before a premiere, and pass the time before evening in nervous, impatient discussion.

  —It’s going to be wonderful! As long as it’s in focus. You remember that picnic tea we had, when we did the walk around the lake? I’d love to see how it turned out. It’ll be wonderful, wonderful…

  The newer guests, who were not part of the earlier group, also get caught up in the general excitement, as everyone is invited to the showing—a kind of regional gala premiere. As it gets dark, Monsieur Rey sets up a screen and the projector, and Renée, acting as hostess, shows people to their seats, keeping Stefan beside her and placing Odette, as it happens, at the far corner, beside Monsieur Vincent and Nicole.

  The first meters of film are greeted noisily, with each person recognizing themselves on the screen with an exclamation—the ladies with short enthusiastic cries (Oh! Goodness! Look! No! Not that!), the men with the hint of a vain smile or—in the case of Monsieur Vincent—with explosive laughter, as though to say, each time he reappeared on-screen, “Oh, that’s a good one.”

  Stefan finds it hard to identify with his unreal, somehow impossible, image on the screen. He finds it unnatural that while sitting still, there in the garden, on a white wicker chair, somebody else, who also happens to be he, is walking about, free—freer, it would seem, than his true self—as though having escaped from under his control forever.

  Look, Marthe Bonneau, in a boat, and there goes Marc, running along a pathway after who knows whom, and there’s Marthe again, regal, cinematic, and eternally beautiful.

  The scene changes again: the walk at Lovagny. (“Remember, Stefan? It was the day after we met.”) But why is the Renée on the screen always holding his arm? Why is she now leaning on his shoulder? Wherefore that tender air, which he does not recall? No. It’s impossible. It wasn’t like that. It couldn’t have been. They were strangers. He addressed her respectfully. She responded coldly. Everything on the screen is unrecognizable; everything is altered to become livelier, warmer, and more intimate.

  The longer the film goes on—more scenes, more walks—the more daring the gestures of the woman on the screen become. An air of complicity gathers around the pair of them and though the jerky images show nothing flagrant, there are relentless hints of intimacy. There is something adulterous in all these pictures, though it would be hard to say exactly what. Perhaps something distracted in Renée’s eyes, perhaps the constant absence of her husband, who never appears in frame, being busy behind the camera. Stefan feels that the people around him are laughing less, or perhaps louder. In any case, differently, in embarrassment, as though everybody has figured it out.

  —Marcel, that’s enough. We can continue tomorrow evening. It’s late.

  —But why, Renée, my dear? It’s only eleven, and everyone’s having fun. Isn’t that right, ladies and gentlemen? Anyway, I haven’t even shown ha
lf of it. Look, this scene for example. Remember? In the old town, when I stayed behind to buy stamps…

  —Marcel, please…

  —…and you’d gone ahead with Monsieur Valeriu. Look, I keep filming until you’re both around the corner.

  Does he know? If so, why is he so at ease? If not, why does he insist on explaining every scene and providing pathetic explanations that nobody needs? Stefan Valeriu no longer understands anything. He’s afraid to look up, and sometimes, feeling a pair of eyes on him, twitches uncomfortably. Only Odette Mignon meets his eyes clearly and guilelessly, as always. She at least will not suspect anything.

  * * *

  How much simpler things are the next morning on the lake, when Stefan stretches out on the bottom of the boat, drifting, oars floating. How the troubles above, in the pension, its little dramas and tiresome heroines, fade into the distance and vanish! Then Odette Mignon, his swimming and rowing partner, appears at the bow, bare-limbed, tanned, and comradely, like a new Marc Bonneau, interrupting the blue expanse between the mountains that Stefan has been studying.

  —Has Madame Rey been your lover for long?

  —My lover?

  —Yes. I’m asking if you’ve been sleeping together for long now.

  The bluntness of the question does not permit a response. In any case, Odette doesn’t seem to expect one.

  —Oh, in that respect Monsieur Rey’s documentaries certainly do some documenting. They were wonderful. If you hadn’t been so grumpy yesterday we could have got together and have talked all about it.

  —They were truly uncomfortable moments, I can assure you.

  —I know. But I suspected something was up because, personally, I had nothing else to do to amuse myself. But I think you took it far too seriously, and still do. Nobody noticed.