Jezebel

by Irene Nemirovsky

  She smoked one cigarette after the other, watching the ash burn down, then throwing them into the fireplace. She shivered and crossed her arms inside her wide sleeves.

  ‘I never used to feel the cold. Now I’m frozen to the bone whenever a breeze comes in through an open window.’

  She couldn’t get to sleep. She could hear her heart beating. She wanted to remember the balls, her conquests, the parties. Ah, was there anything more wonderful in the world …?

  She would make her entrance and everything around her became … not exactly silent … but attentive. Everyone who looked at her confirmed her beauty, her power. So many men had been in love with her …

  ‘That was all I ever cared about,’ she thought. ‘All I ever really loved was their desire, their submission, their madness, my power and pleasure. But so many women are like me. Do they all suffer the way I do, women who aren’t stoic mothers or from the boring middle classes? Yes, of course, of course. It’s horrible to have equated pleasure with the meaning of life only to see pleasure flee beyond your grasp, but what else is there in this world? I’m just a helpless woman …’

  She stretched out her hands towards the fire, then stood up. The piano lid was open. She played a few notes. Yes, there was music, poetry, books … but she knew very well that those things were only useful to be more seductive, because even the most beautiful face can look tired, unattractive in a moment of boredom or fatigue; but to her, as for most women, such things meant nothing, they didn’t really affect her. A few passionate, melancholy lines of poetry, some beautiful lyrical words: they were just offerings to a man, for him alone, and when the man was gone, nothing remained.

  ‘At least I’m honest,’ she murmured with a little laugh; she was surprised to hear the sound echo in the silent room and it made her shiver.

  She walked slowly towards the bed, got in and fell asleep.

  She dreamed that Marie-Thérèse was dead. She dreamed she was locked in a dark, shadowy room and that Marie-Thérèse was stretched out on the bed, dead. She knew she was dead. Yet the pale young woman in the bed was speaking, seeing and could hear; she looked like a fading picture of the real Marie-Thérèse, like her reflection. Marie-Thérèse was lying on her side and she was smiling sweetly, affectionately. Gladys could see the pure outline of her pale, hollow cheeks. Marie-Thérèse raised her hands. She heard Marie-Thérèse’s voice saying, ‘How I love you, my darling Mama. I’ve never loved anyone but you.’ She pointed to a small child’s bed: it was empty. And in her dream, Gladys leaned forward in anguish and, seeing that the child wasn’t there, she thought, ‘I knew very well that it wasn’t true, that it was impossible, that there was no child.’ She felt extraordinary relief rush through her, a kind of heavenly joy that made her whole being glow. ‘Where is the child?’ she asked. But Marie-Thérèse smiled sweetly and replied, ‘There is no child. Whom do you mean? You are my child.’ She touched Marie-Thérèse’s forehead and asked, ‘Are you going to get better, my darling? I love you so much …’ How she loved her at that moment. ‘No,’ replied Marie-Thérèse. ‘Can’t you see that I’m dead? But it’s better this way. Everything is better this way.’

  She woke up to the sound of Jeanne’s voice near her bed. ‘Madame, come quickly! You must come quickly! It’s Mademoiselle …’

  ‘Has she had the child? Is he alive?’

  She felt fierce anguish, fierce hope.

  ‘Oh, Madame, you must come right now, right now!’ Marie-Thérèse was in her room, stretched out on the blood-soaked sheets. She was holding her child tightly against her lifeless breast.

  ‘She didn’t call, Madame,’ said Jeanne. ‘She had her child all alone, the poor thing. She must have died of a haemorrhage. I heard a cry and I came in. But she wasn’t crying, it was the child. She died without calling for help, alone, all alone.’

  Slowly Gladys walked towards the motionless face. How different it was from her dream. It had an expression of hatred, fear and terrifying courage. Marie-Thérèse clutched her miserable child in her stiff arms with all her strength; he was covered with blood and panting, but life coursed through his entire body.

  12

  Gladys went back into her room an hour later. It was finally dawn. She paced back and forth through the room for a long time, then threw herself on to the bed and closed her eyes. But she immediately heard the sharp, weak little whine of the child, whom Jeanne had put to bed in the next room.

  ‘Marie-Thérèse is dead!’ she groaned out loud.

  And it was only when she actually said the words that the tears welled up in her eyes.

  She went back to see Marie-Thérèse. Jeanne had cleaned everything up. Marie-Thérèse was stretched out on the bed; her little face looked like wax and her head was thrown back, deep into a pillow; her hands were crossed at her waist. Gladys was shaking; she put a fur blanket over her daughter’s cold feet: she couldn’t bear the idea of those frozen feet. For a second she forgot that the child existed; he had stopped crying. Marie-Thérèse’s features had lost their weary, tragic expression; she now looked grim and cold. Gladys slowly stroked her hair.

  ‘My little one,’ she said, sobbing deeply.

  Every now and again her sadness would subside; all she felt was a kind of stupor; she wanted to make herself suffer; she forced herself to conjure up certain images, memories, but they made her feel such sharp despair that she grew afraid.

  When Carmen Gonzales arrived, she rushed towards her and grabbed her hands. ‘She’s dead, did you see her?’ she murmured, ‘She’s dead …’

  ‘Did she kill herself?’ Carmen asked in her dry voice.

  ‘Kill herself? Oh, my God, no. My poor little girl. Why would she kill herself? No, it was an accident, it was surely a haemorrhage. She didn’t call for anyone. Why, why didn’t she call for anyone?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Carmen, ‘there’s no point in crying now. The real bad luck was when the poor girl … But now, perhaps everything has happened for the best.’

  Gladys started. ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘You have to face the facts. What would have happened to her? Who would have ever married her? Someone after her dowry, some crook. And as for you, if people had found out …’

  Gladys wasn’t listening. ‘It’s not my fault,’ she thought in despair. ‘She never heard a single word of reproach from me. I would have done anything for her.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Carmen. ‘You look like death. Go to bed and let us take care of everything,’ she added, looking at Jeanne.

  ‘What do you have to do, my God?’ murmured Gladys, hiding her face in her hands. ‘I’ve already told you, she’s dead … dead … There’s nothing to be done.’

  Carmen shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, if you really want the whole world to know … Come on, now, go to bed, don’t worry about anything.’

  She forced her to get into bed and rubbed Gladys’s cold feet to warm them. ‘You’re frozen …’

  That word, that gesture, reminded Gladys of her dead daughter.

  ‘Oh, Marie-Thérèse, my little Marie-Thérèse,’ she groaned and her sobbing was so loud, so violent, that its suddenness and intensity surprised Carmen.

  ‘Marie-Thérèse … Marie-Thérèse … Her poor little cold feet, her frozen hands …’

  She cried for a long time, then lay motionless, her eyes staring and sad.

  Carmen sat down next to her and patted her hands. ‘There, there, try to think straight. What can you do? None of this will bring her back, will it? It can’t be undone, of course, but … Tell me, what about the child? The baby?’

  ‘The baby?’ Gladys repeated quietly.

  ‘Yes. You don’t want to keep it, do you?’

  ‘No, no,’ murmured Gladys, speaking with difficulty. ‘I couldn’t. Don’t ask me to do that. It’s impossible …’

  ‘Listen to me. Let me tell you what I honestly think. It will be your decision, naturally. Believe me, you mustn’t do things by halves. Keep him with you, raise him, if yo
u like. But if you don’t want to keep this child and give him your name, it would be better for both of you if you gave him up right away. It would be best to hand him over to an orphanage and be done with it. And of course, you could always get him back later on, if you change your mind. But if you think you can have someone raise him far away from you, hide from him, and count on the fact that no one will know anything about it, that you might go and see him from time to time without anyone being the wiser, well, that’s nonsense. That would be leaving yourself open to blackmail. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ said Gladys, ‘no, not that, not an orphanage … Have him raised far away … Make sure no one knows … I’ll pay whatever it costs.’

  ‘With money, anything is possible,’ said Carmen, sighing. ‘If you wish, we can find someone to raise him far from here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll arrange everything. Don’t worry. Fortunately, she died a natural death. I know someone in the Mayor’s office,’ she said, leaning down to whisper in Gladys’s ear, ‘someone who sometimes does me favours. I’ll have the official papers say that the child was born in Beix, at my clinic, and that the mother and father are unknown. The document will go through with the others. That should keep any indiscretions to a minimum. As for your daughter, perhaps you could say she died of a chest complaint, what do you think? That would explain why she hasn’t been out for some time. In any case, there isn’t a soul in Nice, and there’s the war. No one cares about what’s happening at his neighbour’s place. That’s one lucky thing in all this mess. Can Jeanne be trusted?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Gladys.

  ‘Call her.’

  Jeanne came in. Her face was red and her hands were shaking. She held the newborn baby close to her breast.

  ‘No one, apart from you, knows anything, is that right?’ asked Carmen. ‘If you hold your tongue, Madame will make it worth your while.’

  ‘What are you going to do with the baby?’ asked Jeanne.

  ‘I’m going to find someone to raise him. What do you want us to do with him?’

  ‘Would you like to see him?’ asked Jeanne, without answering Carmen.

  She held the baby out to Gladys.

  ‘No,’ Gladys said with difficulty, gritting her teeth, ‘I don’t want to see him.’

  ‘It’s not the child’s fault, Madame,’ murmured Jeanne.

  Suddenly, Gladys felt terribly weary. She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘All right then, give him to me.’

  ‘After all, Madame is his grandmother,’ said Jeanne, shaking with anger.

  Gladys’s pale face turned bright red. A wild, almost mad expression shot across her face.

  ‘Take him away! Take him away! Don’t show him to me, I never want to see him, never! I hate him! I’ll give him money; I’ll give him everything I have, but I never want to see him again!’

  ‘I’ll keep him, Madame,’ cried Jeanne.

  Gladys fell back on to the bed, sobbing, clutching on to Carmen’s arms. ‘Do whatever it takes. Leave me alone! Won’t you take pity on me? Do you want me to die? Well, I’d gladly die if that would bring back Marie-Thérèse! Go away and leave me alone! I can’t look at him. He means nothing to me! I refuse to accept he shares my blood. He doesn’t exist! I don’t want to know that he’s alive. Take him away.’

  As soon as Jeanne and the child had left the house, the savage fury that had grabbed hold of Gladys subsided. She pushed Carmen away, went into her daughter’s room and collapsed, sobbing, at the foot of the bed. Her heart was breaking.

  ‘Why did you do it, Marie-Thérèse?’ she groaned. ‘Why did you leave me? I’m alone, all alone now. Dick is gone, and now you, my little girl, and there’s not a soul in the world who loves me any more.’

  Carmen brought her some mourning clothes and helped her dress. Gladys was silent and trembling, more beautiful than ever, her eyes burning and dry. Every so often she pressed her hands to her heavy chest and thought, ‘If I could cry, it might hurt less …’

  But not a single tear fell from her eyes; only a harsh, hoarse little sob escaped her lips every now and again.

  ‘It will pass,’ said Carmen, staring at Gladys with her piercing, scornful expression. ‘Come on, now, it will pass. You’re too much of a woman to be a mother for very long. Too young to suffer for long …’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Gladys softly.

  ‘Listen, can you give me your documents for the official paperwork?’

  ‘I don’t have any of them here.’

  ‘Never mind; it doesn’t matter, we’ll sort it out. But tell me, how old was the poor girl? Fifteen, am I right?’

  ‘No,’ murmured Gladys, ‘that’s not right. You know very well, Carmen, that she was nineteen.’

  ‘If you take my advice, you’ll say she was the age everyone thought she was: fifteen. She looks like a child, stretched out like that with her hair down. No one will think to suspect the truth. It would be better that way for her memory and for you.’

  ‘For me …’ said Gladys, then said no more.

  What difference would it make to Marie-Thérèse?

  She handed Carmen a cheque. ‘This is for Jeanne, for the child. And she can come and see me later on. The child must want for nothing; I want him to be happy. And later on, who knows? I have no one left in the world …’

  ‘Yes, who knows,’ said Carmen again and a shrewd, intelligent look flashed across her heavy face. ‘You could adopt him one day. You might love him, one day, like a mother. Who knows?’

  13

  Gladys left for Madrid, where she lived until the end of the war; afterwards she travelled some more; in 1925 she was back in Paris. On New Year’s Eve she was dancing in a fashionable nightclub in Montmartre; it was a narrow cellar with red walls. It was nearly dawn; the dancers’ faces were taut with fatigue: they danced as if they were very drunk. The music was no more than a muted drum that beat out the rhythm to keep the crowd in time. Some couples weren’t dancing any more, just walking slowly, swaying in each other’s arms, without thinking, without any desire, their minds a blank.

  Gladys was dancing among the others. The first year after her daughter died she had worn white mourning clothes, and she continued wearing them: she looked good in white. She hadn’t changed. Her hair was just as blonde, her face as delicate as in the past. Only her cheeks looked more taut and, when she was tired, you could see the outline of her fine bones and deep-set eyes; the shadow of a skeleton appeared beneath the youthful skin. For her skin remained remarkably young and she still had the figure of a young girl, soft and supple.

  That morning, under the early morning light that filtered through the folds of the curtains, her fine, pale blonde hair framed her forehead like a halo of luminous smoke, and the only sign of age was the hollow in her cheeks that nothing could hide. Her long white back was bare; as she danced, she tilted her head slightly, lowered her wide eyes and smiled with weary, ravishing elegance at the men who surrounded her.

  Sometimes, when by some miracle she saw a young face, a young body among the painted mummies in the nightclub, Marie-Thérèse’s face would rise up in her mind. As she danced in the arms of a man, her lover who held her close, she’d think of Marie-Thérèse with tenderness and despair. But Marie-Thérèse was dead. ‘She’s happier than I am,’ she thought. She had blocked out the circumstances of that death the way that women can: by forgetting, innocently and completely. When she pictured Marie-Thérèse in her mind, she saw her as a child, as the child who had loved her. She sighed and looked sadly around her, but the people dancing, the smoke, the empty bottles were the setting of her normal life, and it didn’t seem any more inappropriate to think of Marie-Thérèse in such a place as she did when in her bedroom. Yet she pushed away the thought. What was the point, what was the use in regretting the past? She had so little time left to live. She had to push away such black thoughts. She looked up at the man who held her in his arms.

  Her obsession had become fierce and desperate: h
er lovers lasted only a day now, sometimes only an hour. She had to be sure of her power, sure she could drive a man wild, as in the past, sure she could make him suffer. When she could see them suffering her heart would feel appeased, but not for long. It wasn’t easy. Since the war, it was rare to find a man who was prepared to suffer over a woman. And she was no longer the most sought-after woman, the one who is noticed first among the herd of other women, the one whose brilliance overshadows all her rivals. She was no longer the woman men looked at immediately. Of course, she still easily aroused love and desire, but men grew tired of her. With each passing year they got bored with her more quickly. She gave in to them easily, for she knew very well that men were now eager for love, but she was too used to being adored to yield to such silent, brutal desire. She needed reassurance that she was loved, needed to hear tender words, needed time and the knowledge that a man was jealous, but every now and again a kind of desperate tempestuousness would evoke a secret distrust of her in the young man with whom she was in love.

  ‘I’m not getting tied down,’ they all thought. ‘She’s beautiful, desirable, but there are so many other women …’

  Sometimes she would find a man who was young, more naïve than the others, who loved her the way she wanted to be loved, but she would immediately get tired of him. ‘No,’ she would think, ‘he’s too easy. But that other man, his friend, who hasn’t even given me a second look … Oh, my God! Let me have that once more. Once, just once, to be attractive, as I used to be, incredibly and utterly attractive, and then that will be the end; I’ll be an old woman, my heart will be dead.’

  But she loved the fierce, capricious excitement, the passion that burned through her body and the wild, bitter, tragic existence of the years that followed the war.

  ‘Ah,’ she mused, ‘now is the time to be young …’

  The memory of her youth filled her with envious suffering. She grabbed the hand of the man sitting beside her; she looked into his eyes; she leaned her anxious, trembling face towards him. How men had changed. Richard, Mark, George Canning, Beauchamp … and now these bored faces, cold eyes, weary voices and such brief, brutal desire …