Jezebel

by Irene Nemirovsky

  She went home at dawn. Outside her car the city was coming to life; it was covered in a bluish light; a breeze blew across the Seine; her heart ached; she remembered moments from her youth, the open carriage, her long white gloves, courtly love …

  ‘Men have changed? You poor fool. I’m the one who’s changed, me … Everything disappears? No, but we, we disappear.’

  She sighed with ironic sadness. Then she looked into the little dusty mirror and saw a miraculous picture of youth.

  ‘I must be dreaming,’ she thought. ‘I’m still beautiful and as young as before! Who would ever believe I’m past thirty?’

  Of course, in 1925 a woman’s age scarcely mattered. Forty was still young.

  ‘How could I have been afraid to turn forty? Ah, I wish I were forty again. At forty, you’re at your best, in your prime, still young. Yes, but … fifty … fifty. That’s harder!’

  She allowed the man beside her to touch her breasts, but secretly despaired.

  ‘Yes, go on, you can look for more beautiful ones, but you won’t find them!’

  Of course … But if he knew … If he realised ‘Gladys Eysenach is fifty’, what would he think then? What would he say if they quarrelled? If any man ever said ‘At your age’, she was sure she would die of shame.

  ‘If he loved me,’ she thought, ‘it would be different. But there’s not a soul in the world who loves me.’

  She so wished she might hear words of love as in the past. Was that gone for ever? Or rather (and this is what made her despair), were men saying those words to someone else?

  She tried to reassure herself: it was the fault of the time she was living in, such brutal casualness, such eager, hurried lovemaking, and immediately afterwards such cold boorishness: ‘dropping a woman’, turning up at assignations looking bored and tired, setting a heavy price for favours, as women did. And when she asked; ‘Do you love me?’ the reply: ‘How very 1900 of you, my dear …’

  That generation, however, was getting older. Others replaced them, young boys who were the opposite of their elders: passionate, emotional, bitter. But they seemed to care for her less and less, for it isn’t enough to keep your face and body young; you have to speak, feel and think exactly like the twenty-year-old children, but without overdoing it, without appearing old-fashioned, without flattery …

  She was the mistress of a young Englishman; he was as lovely and youthful as a girl.

  ‘Are you fond of me?’ she asked shyly, forgetting that she had already asked him the same question as he held her in his arms.

  ‘Oh, hang it all, Gladys, a fellow can’t jabber all night about love.’

  Little by little the depressing anxiety that grew within her led her to frequent brothels. There, at least, desire was genuine. Every time she waited in the Madame’s little sitting room, her heart beat rapidly, echoing in her chest, she recalled the intoxication of the past: she was still under its poisonous spell, as if venom flowed through her blood.

  Like all obsessions, this one did not give her soul a moment’s peace. Just as a miser thinks only of his gold or an ambitious person of attaining honours, so Gladys was in love with the desire to be attractive and with her fear of growing old. ‘Nothing would be easier,’ she thought, ‘than to hide my real age.’

  The war had scattered everyone who had known her in the past. And even they … Time goes by so quickly … Everyone forgets so completely … And, for women, contrary to what is believed, there exists a kind of secret pact where age is concerned. ‘I won’t make fun of you, if, in exchange, you will spare me. I’ll flatter you, I’ll say I think you’re beautiful, but when the occasion presents itself, you’ll put in a good word for me, some little compliment that will allow me to feel my proud youth and smile at my lover with less fear and humility. I’ll pretend to forget how old you are and you won’t remind your circle of friends that I too am past fifty. Have pity on me and I will not be cruel or betray you, my poor sister, my comrade. I’ll say, “How ridiculous, you’re only as old as you look” and “Have you heard about that famous actress? Her lover is cheating on her? She’s keeping him? How do you know? And how many young women are deceived the same way?’ Never will I shout, “Let’s mock that old woman!” And you, you will do the same …’

  Gladys would be the first to speak: ‘Why talk about how old a woman is?’ she’d ask, smiling. ‘In this day and age, no one’s interested. If a woman is beautiful and seductive, what else matters?’

  Before, she used to say nonchalantly, with ease, ‘Life is too long. What are we meant to do with so many years?’

  Now, a sort of superstitious fear prevented such words from leaving her lips. She never spoke of the past, not about Richard or Marie-Thérèse. She had put away all the photos of Marie-Thérèse that used to hang on the walls of her house, for the style of the dresses that the little girl wore were all too revealing of their time. She had kept only one photo of Marie-Thérèse, when she was seven, half-naked, with her hair falling down over her eyes. ‘A little girl whom I lost,’ she would say, sighing.

  Everyone thought that Marie-Thérèse had died as a child. Even Gladys had ended up believing it.

  She travelled constantly. She never expressed concern about burning her bridges behind her, which sometimes made her seem like an adventuress. ‘I’m bored of this place,’ she would think, but in reality she would leave because she’d seen someone she’d known in the past, or had gone to someone’s house that brought back too many painful memories. It was no longer the light-hearted passion that used to drive her from one place to another, but a kind of tragic fleeing from the past.

  On the day of her fiftieth birthday she couldn’t stop thinking ‘You’re fifty. You, Gladys, who only yesterday … You’re fifty, fifty, and you’ll never be young again.’ It was on that day that she went to a brothel for the first time and ever since then, every time her depression became too bitter to bear, every time she was tortured by doubting herself, she would go and spend an hour there.

  Whenever some man she’d never met before was more eager, more generous than usual, a sort of heavenly satisfaction filled her heart.

  ‘But what if someone recognised me?’ she thought. ‘I’m free. And besides, what would they say? That I’m depraved? Ah, they can say I’m depraved, or mad, or a criminal, as long as they don’t say I’m old, that I can no longer inspire love, anything but that abomination, that horror!’

  When she was sure that she was attractive, that the man was looking at her with admiration, even after lovemaking, she felt a shiver of joy that was almost physical, a thousand times sweeter than the other kind. Here was a man: a businessman with a clean-shaven, cold face. Ten years ago she wouldn’t have looked at him twice. Now he was asking, ‘Could we meet again somewhere else?’

  And she felt overwhelming satisfaction rise up in her heart.

  She had reached that age when women no longer change: they simply decompose, but in a way that is hardly noticeable, beneath a mask of powder and make-up. Paris was indulgent, spared her, along with the others. She was graceful and elegant. If someone said, ‘Gladys Eysenach? But she’s an old woman …’ another voice would immediately reply, ‘She still looks so attractive. It’s so natural, so like a woman to wish to remain young. It does no harm to anyone.’

  She kept her delicate bare neck uncovered in the cold wind; in the street, her body was so svelte that she looked like a young woman and her face looked thirty, perhaps forty, though only early in the morning or late at night. But she wasn’t satisfied with that: she wanted to be twenty again, to dance until dawn, then to look as smooth and fresh as a flower, without powder or lipstick, as she had in the past.

  In the street, a man turns round and smiles at her. She looks at him calmly, indifferently, like a woman who isn’t interested. The passer-by is in a hurry; he walks away. And she, who at first had shivered in delight, now anxiously tries to remember: ‘Would that have happened with a man in the past? Wouldn’t he have kept trying? Wouldn
’t he have followed me anyway, just for the pleasure of watching my beautiful body from behind, trying to imagine the curve of my hips under my clothing? But what was the point of thinking of the past? The past doesn’t exist. These are just dreams, memories of a time gone that weigh down on me and obsess me. Lucky Marie-Thérèse,’ she sometimes thought, ‘to be taken by death while still so young. Youth … The passion of youth … All passion is tragic, in the end; every cursed desire is tragic, for you never really get what you dreamed of.’

  Depressing thoughts at early daybreak after staying up and drinking all night, thoughts that taste of ashes, bitterness and absinthe: New Year’s Eve always made her feel like this.

  At the next table a woman smiled at Gladys. She had dyed hair and her pendant fell between her hideous, grotesque, sagging breasts. Though her eyes – her old, sunken eyes did try to smile, the rest of her face was so scarred, plastered over, stitched together, that a smile couldn’t easily spread across its painted surface.

  ‘Gladys …’

  Drunk, stiff, carefully holding a glass of champagne in her hand – it was covered with rings and deformed by gout – the spectre walked towards Gladys. ‘You don’t recognise me. Oh, my darling, what a joy it is to see you again, truly a joy! And still so beautiful! You haven’t changed at all, really. It’s Lily Ferrer. Ah, how I resented you. Do you remember George Canning? He was so handsome! He was killed in the war. So many dead,’ she cawed, ‘so many dead.’

  She sat down next to Gladys. She looked at her affectionately: it did her good to see a woman, barely ten years younger than herself, who retained such miraculous youthfulness. A wonderful gift, even if granted to someone else, raises hope within the heart. ‘It could happen to me. Why not? Yes, in spite of the reflection I see in the mirror, in spite of the young lover I pay, why not?’

  ‘And who’s the lucky man, Gladys? I’ve had terrible disappointments, great sadness, yes, I have. A young man in whom I had placed all my trust betrayed me horribly. But that’s always the way it’s been. I’ve never had any luck,’ she said, sighing. ‘Are you happy?’

  Gladys said nothing.

  ‘No? Ah, men have changed. Do you remember? In our day,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘such manners, such devotion. Men would love a woman for years without even a word of encouragement. They would give up everything for her. Lose everything for her. And now? Why is it different? Why? Is it because of the war?’

  Gladys stood up and held out her hand. ‘Forgive me, darling. My friend is calling to me. Goodbye. It was nice to see you again. But I’m leaving tomorrow, leaving Paris …’

  Suddenly Lily remembered something. ‘Your daughter must be grown up by now. Is she married?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Gladys hastily, for her lover was coming towards her. ‘No. Didn’t you know? She died …’

  ‘How terrible for you,’ murmured the old woman compassionately.

  She kissed Gladys on the cheek with her painted lips; it left a smudge of lipstick that Gladys tried secretly to wipe away from her trembling face.

  ‘You poor, poor darling. You loved her so much …’ Gladys walked over to join her lover who was standing at the door. He had heard Lily’s last few words.

  ‘You had a daughter?’ he asked as he followed her through the crushed streamers and confetti that slid away beneath her high heels. ‘You never told me. Was she still a child when it happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gladys in hushed tones, ‘a very young child.’

  It was raining. The street sloped down towards the place Blanche, shimmering and flickering in the early dawn light.

  14

  In the spring of 1930 Gladys met Aldo Monti. He was handsome. He had a square, hard, clean-shaven face, a heavy, masculine head and piercing eyes. His features bore an almost inhuman expression of determination and self-control, the kind you no longer find on English faces, but only on foreigners who are trying to copy them. All his life, Monti had forced himself to appear English in his speech and mannerisms. He was even careful of his thoughts, out of fear that they might not be pure enough, English enough. He did not possess a great fortune. He skilfully managed his money, but life was starting to become difficult.

  Very quickly, he pictured Gladys as a possible wife. She was beautiful. She was extremely rich, and her money was from honourable sources. He found her attractive. Certainly, she had had other lovers, he knew that, but her affairs had never been sordid or self-seeking. He courted her for several months, cunningly and cautiously, then asked her to marry him.

  They were visiting some Italian friends of Monti who lived in Paris. It was a beautiful autumn day and the garden was still full of sunlight. At the entrance of the house, you could see a shaft of light, as soft and golden as honey, through which shone the women’s light dresses.

  Gladys wore a muslin dress and a light, almost transparent straw hat that half covered her lovely hair. Beneath the short white little veil, her wide, anxious eyes rarely looked directly at anyone, and even then she would quickly lower her eyelids. She walked slowly next to Monti until they reached a bronze fountain whose edges were carved with a cluster of naked children. She leaned against it and, without thinking, began stroking the beautiful, cold, polished little bodies.

  ‘Gladys, my darling, please be my wife. I don’t have much to offer you, I know. I’m poor, but I have one of the oldest, most respected names in Italy and I would be so proud to make it yours. You love me, don’t you, Gladys?’

  She sighed. Yes, she did love him. For the first time in many, many years, she saw in a man something more than an affair with no future. Here finally was someone who was offering to be with her for eternity, to reassure her, to protect her from herself. She was deeply weary of the pursuit of love that had become her life. Anxiously counting her conquests that became more precarious and difficult, seeing lonely old age edging closer and closer with each passing day. What a nightmare! Finally, she would be sheltered away from life on a warm, strong man’s shoulder, not someone passing through her life for a moment, but another Richard; she’d found another Richard. She lowered her eyes. He looked at her fine lips; she was wearing lipstick; her mouth looked anxious, tense at the corners. She didn’t reply.

  ‘We’d be so happy together. Please marry me,’ he said again.

  ‘It would be foolish,’ she said weakly.

  ‘But why?’

  She said nothing. Marriage … Her date of birth … He was thirty-five and she … She couldn’t admit her exact age even to herself. Mad, painful shame swept through her. No, never, never! Even if he married her in spite of that, how would she rid herself of the idea that he only wanted her money, that he would leave her one day, perhaps not soon, or in a year, but in ten years. Ten years would go by so quickly. And then … He’d still be young, but she … ‘But actually, God is granting me a reprieve,’ she thought desperately. ‘One day, if I’m ill or have a fever or am tired, I’ll wake up and I’ll be old, old, old … And he’ll know …’

  ‘No, no,’ she said sweetly, ‘not marriage. Can’t we go on loving each other with no obligations, no ties of any kind?’

  ‘If you loved me,’ he said coldly, ‘you would find such ties pleasant and easy. If I mean anything to you, Gladys, you must marry me.’

  Then she thought it might be possible: with money, and running the risk of a scandal and blackmail, she could change her identity documents to hide the date that haunted her thoughts, her sleep, her dreams. She was a woman; she had never looked further than tomorrow.

  ‘You mean more to me than you could ever imagine, my darling,’ she said to Monti, with her dazzling, weary smile.

  Their engagement was made official and a little while afterwards Gladys left to go back to the country where she’d been born. There, she got a copy of her birth certificate, scratched out a number from the date and, with this fake document, she saw to it that all the other documents she’d ever been given throughout her life were corrected. When she got all the revised pa
pers back, she returned to the little village where she’d been born and found some official pen-pusher who was willing to change her birth certificate to the same date as the other documents. It cost her a fortune, but in the spring of 1931 she finally managed officially to take ten years off her age. Just ten years, because far away there was a child’s marble tombstone with a false date, and that date was impossible to change.

  Ten years. She could admit to being forty-six, ten years older than Monti. Her age, her sin, her crime still haunted her. To this man whom she loved, she wanted to be a child, weak and delicate once more, held tightly in his strong arms. She had to be understanding, maternal, but she wanted to be loved and admired, the favourite among all women, not as a friend, not as a wife, but as a mistress, as the radiant young woman she once had been in the past.

  She never found the courage to marry Monti.

  15

  One autumn day five years later, Gladys was on her way home; she was walking down an empty road that ran alongside a wood. It was getting dark, even though it was barely four o’clock. Dusk in Paris had the scent of a damp forest. Gladys had sent the car and driver away; she walked quickly, enjoying the smell of the fresh, humid air. There was not a soul in sight. Only a dog ran on ahead of her, sniffing the ground. The houses were dark behind their closed shutters; the empty little gardens glistened, moist from the rain.

  Suddenly she saw a young man standing beneath a lamppost; he was wearing a grey raincoat but no hat and he seemed to be waiting for her. She looked at him in surprise and automatically reached up to touch her pearls beneath her fur jacket. He let her pass, but when she was a few steps ahead of him he began to follow her. She walked more quickly, but he soon caught up with her; she could hear him breathing behind her. She walked faster. Then he stopped, seemed to disappear into the fog, but a moment later, after she’d forgotten about him, she could hear his footsteps behind her once more. He followed her in silence until they reached a lamppost and then called out to her quietly, ‘Madame …’