“Please yourself.”
Footsteps; a door closing. It was not the door into the hallway but probably the bathroom door. The sound of water pouring into a glass.
“What’re you doing?”
She did not answer. He was panting, presumably as he tried to shut a suitcase that was too full. Then he walked around the room to make sure he had forgotten nothing.
“Good-by!” he shouted at last.
Immediately the door opened again and a terrified voice exclaimed:
“Jean … Jean … !”
“To hell with you!”
“One second, Jean … You can’t refuse me that now.… Listen.…”
He was walking toward the door.
“Listen.… I’m going to die.…”
He went on walking. She was crawling on the floor. One could guess that she was crawling on the floor, on the grubby red carpet of the hotel bedroom; one could imagine her clinging to the man’s trouser leg, and being kicked away.
“I swear … I swear … I swear …”
She was gasping, and only blurred syllables rose to her lips.
“… that I’ve taken poison.…”
The door opened and slammed shut. Footsteps sounded along the corridor and then moved away down the stairs. From below there could be heard the faint sound of a conversation between the departing guest and the black-clad clerk at the reception desk.
Monsieur Monde was standing in the middle of his room, in the dark. He groped along the unfamiliar walls to find the switch, and was surprised to see himself in his shirt, barefooted. He moved close to the communicating door to listen, and heard nothing, not a sob, not a breath.
Then, resignedly, he picked up his trousers from the foot of the bed, trousers that did not seem to be his own. Having no bedroom slippers, he put on his shoes, leaving them unlaced.
He went out of his room noiselessly, hesitated in front of the neighboring door, and then knocked timidly. No voice answered. His hand turned the doorknob, but he still dared not push it open.
At last he heard a barely perceptible sound, as though someone were choking and trying to inhale a little air.
He went in. The room was just like his own, just a little larger. The wardrobe was wide open, as was the bathroom door, and a woman was sitting on the floor, curiously hunched up, somewhat like a Chinese mandarin. Her bleached hair hung over her face. Her eyes were red, but dry. She was clasping both hands over her breast and staring blankly in front of her.
She did not seem surprised to see him. Yet she watched him come close without making a single movement or saying a word.
“What have you done?” he asked.
He didn’t know what he must look like, with his trousers unfastened, his sparse hair ruffled on his head, as it was when he got up in the mornings, and his gaping shoes.
She gasped: “Close the door.”
Then: “He’s gone, hasn’t he?”
And after a silence: “I know him; he won’t come back.… How stupid it all is!”
She screamed out these last words with the frenzy she had shown earlier, raising her arms to heaven as though reproaching it for the idiocy of men.
“How stupid it all is!”
And she got up, leaning on her hands so that at one point he saw her on all fours on the carpet. She was wearing a very short, tight-fitting dress of black silk from which emerged long legs clad in flesh-colored stockings. Her lipstick and mascara had run a little, making her look like a washed-out doll.
“What are you doing here?”
She could scarcely stand upright. She was weary. She was about to lie down on the bed, the coverlet of which had been turned down, but before doing so she looked suspiciously at the man who had come into her room.
“I heard …”he stammered. “I was afraid … Have you …”
She made a grimace, as a spasm of nausea seized her. And she whispered to herself: “I must try to be sick.”
“You’ve taken something, haven’t you?”
“Barbiturates …” She was walking to and fro, concerned with what was happening inside her, an anxious frown on her forehead. “I always kept some in my bag, because he slept badly.… Oh God!”
She clasped her hands, as though to wring them in renewed frenzy.
“I never can be sick! … Perhaps it’s better so.… I thought when he knew I’d …”
She was frightened. Panic was visibly overwhelming her. And her terrified eyes eventually settled on the stranger, while she implored him:
“What am I to do? Tell me what I must do!”
“I’ll send for a doctor.…”
“No, not that! … You don’t know … That would be the worst thing.… It would be enough to get him arrested, and he’d blame me again.…”
She could not keep still, she was walking ceaselessly to and fro in the confined space of the bedroom.
“What do you feel?”
“I don’t know.… I’m frightened.… If only I could be sick.…”
He didn’t know, either. The idea of leaving her and rushing off to a pharmacy to get an emetic did not occur to him, or rather it seemed too complicated.
“How many tablets have you taken?”
She flared up, infuriated by his uselessness and perhaps by the absurdity of his appearance.
“How should I know? What was left in the bottle … six or seven.… I’m cold.…”
She flung her coat over her shoulders and glanced at the door, as though tempted to go and seek help elsewhere.
“To think he left me …”
“Listen. I’m willing to try.… I did it once before, when my daughter had swallowed a …”
They were both equally incoherent, and to top it all, the people on the third floor, assuming that the original scene was still going on, banged on the floor to demand silence.
“Come here.… Open your mouth.… Let me …”
“You’re hurting me.”
“That’s nothing.… Wait a minute.…”
He was looking for something with which to tickle the back of her throat, and his inexperience was such that he almost used his own handkerchief. She had one in her hand, a tiny one screwed up into a tight ball, which he unfolded and rolled into a tapered twist.
“Oh, you’re choking me.… Oh!”
He was obliged to hold her head in a firm grip, and was surprised at the slightness of her skull.
“Relax.… My daughter was just the same.… There! Just another minute … D’you feel it coming?”
Spasms shook her chest, and suddenly she vomited, without noticing that part of her vomit hit the stranger. Tears filled her eyes and prevented her from seeing. She was vomiting reddish stuff, and he held her by the shoulders, encouraging her like a child:
“There! … There! … You see you’ll feel better.… Go on.… Don’t hold it back. On the contrary, let yourself go.…”
She was looking at him through blurred eyes, like an animal that has had a bone removed from its throat.
“Does your stomach feel empty yet? … Let me try once more.… It’d be wiser …”
She shook her head. She went limp. He had to help her to the edge of the bed, where she lay down, her legs dangling, and now she was uttering little regular moans.
“If you promise not to move, to be very good, I’ll go down to the office. They must have a gas ring or something or other to heat water.… You’ve got to drink something hot to wash out your stomach.…”
She nodded her willingness, but before leaving the room he went into the bathroom to make sure there were no pills left. She followed him with her gaze, anxiously wondering what he was doing. She was even more surprised when he rummaged in her handbag, which contained crumpled notes, powder and rouge.
He wasn’t a thief, though. He put the bag down on the bedside table.
“Don’t move.… I’ll be back immediately.”
And on the staircase, where he endeavored to make as little noise as possible, he smiled r
ather bitterly. Nobody had ever done as much as this for him! All his life, as far back as he could remember, it was he who’d had to help other people. He had often dreamed, in vain, of being ill so that somebody might bend over him with a gentle smile and relieve him, for a brief while, of the burden of his existence.
“Forgive me for bothering you”—he had always been exaggeratedly polite, through fear of giving offense— “my neighbor isn’t feeling very well. Would you be kind enough to boil a little water for her? If you have any sort of tisane …”
“Come this way.”
It was night. The whole hotel was asleep. Somewhere in the darkened city could be heard the heavy rumble of a passing cart, and from time to time the carter cracked his whip to waken the drowsy horse.
“Did you know them?” asked the clerk, who had promptly realized that the people in Room 28 were involved.
“No.”
“Wait a sec.… I’m looking for matches.…”
There was a percolator in a dingy, crowded closet that served as pantry, but the clerk lit a tiny gas ring, with that calm, rather mournful air common to those who live by night, always alone, while others are asleep.
“I was surprised to see him go.… He’s been ill for the last few days.… She used to spend all day up in the bedroom with him.… She took his meals up herself.…”
Monsieur Monde found himself asking, to his own surprise: “Is he young?”
“Twenty-two, maybe … I’d have to look at his form.… This evening they went out one after the other, and she went first.… When they came in again an hour later, I could see there was going to be some nasty …” He ended with a coarse word.
“He’s ditched her, hasn’t he?”
The water was simmering already. The man looked through his tins, and eventually found some lime flowers for a tisane.
“If you’d like I’ll take it up to her.”
“I’ll do it myself.…”
“Some sugar?”
“Perhaps … yes … Thank you.”
“Nothing very high-class there, you know …”
He meant the girl, obviously. Why did he say that? Did he suspect Monsieur Monde of some ulterior motive?
“If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to ask. I’m here until six in the morning.”
And he went back to lean on his elbows on the mahogany counter, pulled out an open book from under it, and started reading again.
When Monsieur Monde returned to the bedroom with a teapot in his hand, the woman had fallen asleep, or was pretending to sleep. He felt embarrassed, because her dress was hitched up very high, showing part of her thigh above her stocking. He felt no desire, he had no secret thoughts.
“Mademoiselle …”
She barely raised her listless lids.
“You’ve got to drink this.… I’d even advise you, if you feel up to it, to bring some of it up again, for safety’s sake, so as to clear out your stomach.…”
It worried him to see the misty, faraway look in her eyes. She did not stir. He raised her body and held the cup to her lips.
“Drink …”
“It’s hot.…”
The syllables were blurred and indistinct, as if her tongue were too thick.
“Drink it anyway.…”
He forced her to, made her vomit once more, but this time she shook with painful hiccups for a long time and seemed to bear him a grudge for this additional suffering.
“We’ll feel safer now.…”
Probably because she was choking, she passed one hand over her shoulder, slipped it under her dress, unfastened her brassière, and, in a gesture that was unfamiliar to him and that shocked him, managed to pull it off and throw it onto the floor.
“Lie down.… If you want to undress I’ll go out for a moment.”
She did not give him the chance, but with an air of complete indifference pulled her dress over her head, peeling it off her body like some superfluous skin. He had turned his face to the wall, but he caught sight of her nonetheless in the wardrobe mirror. Under her dress she wore nothing but narrow pink briefs and an even narrower garter belt. When she bent forward to remove her stockings, her little pointed breasts seemed to hang in space.
Next she removed the briefs; the elastic band had left a reddish mark on her skin. When she stood there naked (only a faint shadow darkened her belly between the thighs) she tiptoed, after a moment’s hesitation, into the bathroom, where she behaved as if there had not been a man in the next room.
She came back wrapped in a faded blue dressing gown, and her eyes were still misty, her lips pursed with nausea.
“I feel ill …” she sighed as she lay down.
Then, as he tucked the bedclothes around her: “I’m fagged.”
She fell asleep directly, curled up in a ball, her head right at the bottom of the pillow so that only her bleached hair could be seen. A few minutes later she was snoring, and Monsieur Monde crept noiselessly back to his room to put on his jacket and overcoat, for he had felt cold.
Not long after he had settled down in the armchair beside the bed he noticed light shining through the cracks in the Venetian blinds. Noises began, some in the hotel, others outside. Particularly outside, the sound of engines trying to start up, motorboat engines as he realized, for he heard the splash of oars in the water, and the boats in the Old Port knocking together; a factory whistle blew; sirens, in the distance, in the harbor where steamships and cargo boats lay, were moaning interminably.
He switched off the electric lamp that he had left burning, and the bright streaks of the Venetian blinds patterned the floor.
The sun was shining. He wanted to look. Standing at the window, he tried to peer between the slats of the shutters, but could make out only thin slivers of things, part of the trolley pole of a passing streetcar for instance, some pink and purple shells on a little cart.
The girl had stopped snoring. She had flung off the covers and now her cheeks were crimson, her lips puffed, her whole face distorted with suffering. The gleam of her skin counteracted the effect of her makeup, so that she no longer seemed the same woman; this was a far more human face, very youthful, very poor, and rather common. She must have been born in some shanty in the outskirts of the city; as a small child she probably sat, with bare bottom and running nose, on some stone doorstep, and later ran about the streets on her way back from the elementary school.
One after the other, the guests were leaving the hotel; cars were passing in the street, and all the bars must be open by now, while in the still-empty brasseries the waiters were sprinkling sawdust on the gray floors and polishing the windows.
He had time to wash and dress. He went into his own room, after making sure that his companion was still asleep. He drew up the blinds and flung the windows wide open, in spite of the tingling cold of the morning air, and he felt life come pouring in; he could see the blue water, white rocks in the distance, a boat with a red-ringed funnel putting out to sea, leaving a wake of incredible whiteness.
He had forgotten the immense sea, and the sand, and the sun, and the secrets he had whispered to them, and if a faint aftertaste of tears still lingered, he was ashamed of it.
Why had they given him a room without a bathroom, when he longed for clean water to stream over his body and purify it? Probably because of his clothes, those drab, badly cut clothes in which he now felt so ill at ease.
He had brought no razor, no soap, no toothbrush. He rang. A page knocked at his door. He felt reluctant to entrust this errand to him, to give up the imminent realization of his dream.
“Will you go and buy me …” And while he waited for the return of the uniformed messenger, whom he could see hopping along the sidewalk, he looked at the sea, which was no longer last night’s sea, which had become a harbor furrowed by motorboats and where fishermen were sinking their nets.
For a long time, dazzled by the morning light, he stared at the drawbridge, whose gigantic metal carcass blocked out the horizon and on whi
ch, from a distance, he could just make out minute human figures.
4
Monsieur Monde had waited, because it seemed to him impossible to do otherwise. From time to time he put his ear against the communicating door and then went back to his place beside the window; because of the biting cold, he had put on his overcoat and thrust his hands deep into the pockets.
At about ten o’clock it struck him that the noise from the town and the harbor would prevent him from hearing a call from the next room, and he regretfully closed the window. His heart was heavy then; he ruefully smiled as he looked at himself in the glass, wearing his overcoat, beside an unmade bed in a hotel bedroom where he didn’t know what to do.
He ended by sitting on a chair as though in a waiting room, beside the communicating door, and (again as though in a waiting room) he indulged in speculations and forebodings, he counted to a hundred, then to a thousand, tossed coins to decide whether to stay there or not, until at last he gave a start, like a man suddenly awakened, for he must have dozed off. Somebody was walking, not with soft barefoot steps, but on high heels that made a sharp tapping sound.
He hurried around and knocked.
“Come in!”
She was fully dressed already, with a little red hat on her head, her handbag in her hands, and she was just about to go out. A few minutes later and he’d have missed her. She had spruced herself up as if nothing had happened, her make-up was spick and span with a strange mouth painted on, smaller than the real one, so that the pale pink of her own lips showed below it like an undergarment.
He stood awkwardly in the doorway, while after glancing sharply at him—as though to make sure he really was last night’s visitor, whose face she could hardly remember—she hunted for her gloves.
“Are you feeling better?”
“I’m hungry,” she said.
She found her gloves at last—they were red, like her hat—left the room, and showed no surprise at his following her down the stairs.
The hotel looked quite different. By daylight the lobby, which was also the entrance hall, seemed more luxurious. The reception clerk behind the mahogany counter was wearing a morning coat, the walls were covered with laminated wood paneling, there were green plants in the corners and a green-uniformed doorman outside the door.
Monsieur Monde Vanishes Page 5
