Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  Maxim’s was a kind of headquarters for her set. There were sure to be at least two or three of her friends here at teatime. He lowered his Figaro cautiously and looked around the room. He caught sight of only one of them, a middle-aged woman named Madame de Bruyvres. She was with a colonel of cavalry in red breeches who had set his practically solid gold képi on the table in front of him. Fred was planning out the whole thing in his mind. The danger was in getting involved with a group of people and not being able to extricate Lucienne from them so he could talk to her alone. Madame de Bruyvres turned in his direction and he ducked back behind his Figaro. Apparently she had not noticed him. Fred sipped his tea and glanced at his watch. It was a quarter after five.

  “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  It was Lucienne, exactly on schedule. She was in furs with a diamond bracelet glittering inside the right sleeve.

  “It doesn’t matter.” He got up quickly, came around the table, and helped her into her chair.

  “So solicitous today.”

  “It’s because you’re so charming.”

  She was. Once she was seated and had thrown back her fur over the chair he could scarcely take his eyes from her. She was wearing a satin frock with darts—he thought they were called—at the waist so that it fitted her snugly, like a blouse. The twin moonlike swellings in the front of it were perfect geometric hemispheres, except that when she turned to one side or the other—as she did just then—a very faint shadow the size of a grape would appear in the center of one but not the other.

  “Don’t stare, chéri, it’s not polite. Ah, there’s Ary.” She waved across the room to Madame de Bruyvres. “She’s with Colonel Mangepré.

  He’s in Intelligence, but if there’s no one more intelligent than him in the Army I’m afraid the Boches may win. Shall we go and join them? No, I can see you don’t want to.”

  “Tea?”

  “Oh, I’m a bundle of nerves. I haven’t had a minute to stop all day. A fine à l’eau.”

  All the better. Fred sipped his own tea and admired the finely boned line of her cheek, the queenly way she held her head, the coiled coronet of hair. Unfortunately she was still looking around the room to see if there was anyone else she knew. When her brandy came she sipped only a little of it.

  “Shall we dance?”

  They tangoed around the floor a half-dozen times to the strain of some Argentine confection. Only their fingertips touched, with now and then a discreet bump of the hips. When the music stopped she started to go back to the table, but he held her hand. The next set was a waltz; he slipped his arm behind her back, took her right hand in his left, and started off in a skillful half turn. His arm pressed her back, and her breasts touched lightly against his chest.

  “Wicked.”

  “You waltz divinely.”

  “Look, there’s Ary dancing with the Colonel. He doesn’t waltz very well.”

  “He thinks he’s riding his horse.”

  “Why is he wearing spurs if he works in an office?”

  “Perhaps to spur on his subordinates.”

  The waltz ended. In the final dip backward, which lifted one of her slippers from the floor, he managed to insert his leg between her knees.

  “You waltz even too well, Frédéric,” she said with a somewhat sibylline smile.

  At the table she sipped a little more of her brandy. She looked around the room. Another of her friends had come in, a well-known society butterfly named Coco de Levy-Souza. If you didn’t have a de in your name you just put one in. No one seemed to care. When the music recommenced they got up and danced again, with some further touches of Fred’s celebrated skill. Lucienne’s face was slightly flushed. Everything was going splendidly. Still, when they came back to the table again he saw that the thing was wavering on a razor edge. It was six o’clock now and too many of her friends were arriving. First Ary, now Coco, and next it would be somebody else.

  “Do you want another drink?”

  “Not really.”

  “Shall we go somewhere else?”

  “All right. Where?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “Évry,” she said distantly, “is working this evening. He won’t be home until midnight.”

  “Shall we go to your apartment?”

  “Oh no. There are the servants.”

  Better and better. He helped her into her furs and paid the check. Outside he helped her into a taxi.

  “You are the perfect gentleman this afternoon.”

  She said it in English, with exactly the same intonation that Liane de Pougy had; lightly ironic, perhaps.

  “Seventy-eight avenue Kléber.”

  The taxi went off. Lucienne said nothing. It was dark now and only a few pedestrians hurried along huddled in the light rain. When the car stopped in front of the building the driver unfurled an enormous black umbrella and escorted them both to the door.

  “And what is this?”

  “This is 78 avenue Kléber.”

  In the apartment she allowed him to remove the furs once more, and looked about her curiously.

  “But this is Herma’s place.”

  It was uncertain how she knew this, or what she meant by it. Perhaps because the decorations seemed to have been chosen by a woman. And because of the piano.

  “Yes.”

  “But she’s not here now?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure she won’t come?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “It’s a charming little place.” She went to the window and looked out over the dark city. “The view.”

  “Yes, the Eiffel Tower.”

  She swung around to face him, her hips twisting sensuously.

  “Ah, but you are subtle. One would never think that a child like you, an American …”

  “All Americans are children. That’s why you like us.”

  “Although you are a perverse child.”

  More than she knew. He went to the mantlepiece and removed the single long-stemmed rosebud from the crystal vase. The cursed thing was dripping wet. He managed inconspicuously to dry it on his coat sleeve. She sat down on the divan, and he slipped down beside her, half sideways, sitting on one hip.

  “Would you care for something?”

  “Something?”

  “Another fine à l’eau?”

  “Oh, no.”

  He touched the rosebud lightly to her lips. Then, as she smiled in slight bafflement, he bent forward and kissed her. She was one of those who closed her eyes when kissed, he noticed. The side of the rosebud in his careful fingers slipped down her cheek, across her jaw, and along her throat to the place where the neckline of her frock began. In order to have it go any farther it was going to be necessary to make a change in the arrangements. He imagined the rosebud touching lightly at the tip of her breast and then proceeding on down along her magnificently modeled flank to that pink secret, its concave other self.

  “Wouldn’t we …”

  “Chéri?”

  “Be more …”

  “Comfortable in the bedroom,” she finished for him.

  Here she emitted a peal of laughter, quite unexpected. He had never heard her laugh before. “Oh, you are all alike. I think you learn these phrases from some book.” Extricating herself from his embrace, she sat up on the divan and began repairing the damage to her coiffure.

  “But what’s the matter?”

  “The matter?”

  “I thought you … cared something for me, Lucienne.”

  “But I do,” she said lightly. “I just don’t think that such things are important, or that—one should surrender herself to every passing impulse in this way.”

  Fred slid toward her again on the divan, the rosebud still in his left hand. She took the flower from him and stood up.

  Fred stood up too and faced her whitely.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, you poor thing. Now I’ve hurt your feelings. You’re all so vain. It’s like Don Giovanni
and his catalogue. How many is it? I always forget. Six hundred and forty in Italy, a hundred in France, and in Spain, one thousand and three.”

  She seemed playful now, not hostile at all. She gave the impression that she was enjoying herself.

  “It’s not a question of a thousand and three in Spain. It’s a question of you and me.”

  “That’s just what Don Giovanni told them, each and every one.”

  “Lucienne …”

  “And besides,” she said, turning away across the room, “I am a married woman. I have made vows to my husband. Did you ever think of that?”

  He stared at her. “Tu blagues.”

  “No, I am not joking. Why should I joke about a thing like that? And when you make a vow to a person,” she went on, “and then you break it, you are telling that person a lie.”

  “But Évry …”

  Here she stopped and faced him. She was still smiling, but it was a serious and earnest smile now, a smile as if she wanted to tell him something.

  “You see, Frédéric, it is all very well for Évry to allow me my flirt of the week. That’s what is done in our circle. But it’s only a game. And the game has its little rules. One of the rules is that I tell Évry everything. So I imagine I’ll have to hand you back your little flower, and say au revoir.”

  “Lucienne.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s talk seriously.”

  “All right.” She waited expectantly, still facing him from across the room.

  “Let’s sit down first.”

  “Will you be a good boy?”

  “Yes. And will you stop referring to me as a child. I’m getting tired of it.”

  “Very well.” She was quite serious herself now.

  They sat down on opposite ends of the divan, facing each other. She waited for him to speak.

  “I want to join the aviation. I’m a flyer and I want to get into the war.”

  “Bravo.”

  “But I want you to help me. Evry is in the War Ministry, isn’t he?”

  “Ahah. Now I see the whole thing.” She still showed no sign of resentment; she was only amused.

  He went on staring at her stonily. “Well?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact he’s the Underminister for Aviation.”

  “I want to join the Lafayette Escadrille.”

  “The Escadrille Américaine?”

  “Yes.”

  “But cheri, Evry has nothing to do with Americans.”

  “But they wear French uniforms. They’re in the French service. I think it’s technically a part of the Foreign Legion.”

  “I’m not sure that’s in Evry’s department.”

  “If it’s aviation it is.”

  “But not if it’s Foreign Legion.” She got up and drifted away across the room. “I think,” she said, “that the Americans who are in charge of it are the ones who decide who can join.”

  “Still, will you speak to Evry about it?”

  She smiled faintly, still twirling the rose. “But you see, chéri, that is exactly what I cannot do. Because, if I asked Evry to do a favor for you, that would make it clear to everyone that … don’t you see? And of course we haven’t.”

  “No, we haven’t,” said Fred, staring at her steadily and not smiling. It was the first time in his life, he realized, that he had ever failed to succeed with a woman when he had really tried. He analyzed his emotions. She was right. It was just vanity. He felt anger and damaged self-esteem, but no desire.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said curtly.

  “It isn’t necessary. I’m quite capable of taking a taxi by myself.”

  “But it’s raining.”

  “Your concièrge will phone for the taxi, and the driver will be sure to have one of those enormous black umbrellas.”

  He came forward to kiss her again, but instead she applied her lips delicately to the tip of the rosebud. Then she handed it to him, and he put it back into the crystal vase.

  “Au revoir, chéri,” She glanced at the print on the wall. “That Beardsley is wicked.”

  “You should see the Khnopff in the bedroom.”

  “You’d like me to.” She was gone.

  In the end it was Herma who had to explain it to Lloiseaux, over lunch at LaRue’s. Lloiseaux was exactly as he had always been—sly, spry, and not quite vertical—seeming to float through rooms without moving his feet. He was ageless; he gave the impression that he had been born a wily old man with a shock of electric hair. If anything he grew thinner and more immaterial as he grew older. From behind, now, he looked like an empty overcoat; from the front he looked like one of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s more improbable inventions, perhaps Dr. Spalanzani. He left his overcoat on during lunch, since the heating in LaRue’s was inadequate.

  “You see, Fred isn’t happy,” she explained to him. “He’s restless. The war is going on and he doesn’t have any part in it. He wants to join the aviation.”

  He scarcely seemed to follow what she was saying. He was preoccupied with shelling a bowl of tiny crayfish one by one and dipping them in sauce.

  “The aviation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the aviation?”

  “Because he’s a flyer.”

  “But he’s American.”

  “He wants to join the Lafayette Escadrille.”

  “Ah,” said Lloiseaux. He thought for a moment. “I think that’s a splendid idea,” he concluded.

  He was very slow in responding. It was impossible to tell whether he was senile or only wily.

  “But they want to send him to a stupid training school first for five weeks, to learn how to fly. But he already knows how to fly. He doesn’t want to wait for five weeks.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed he’s very impatient, parbleu.”

  Did he grasp anything at all of what she was trying to say? “I thought that you …”

  But he seemed to be following her all right, in his way. “I don’t know what to advise you. I don’t know very much about aeroplanes,” he said vaguely.

  “Perhaps you know somebody in the Ministry.”

  “The Ministry?”

  “Yes, you have so many friends.”

  “I do?”

  “Or you could simply write a letter, as Artistic Director of the Opéra, explaining that you know Fred and …”

  “I don’t think that would do any good.”

  He searched around on the table for his glass of white wine, took a sip, and went back to shelling écrivisses.

  “I do know a young American music lover. A splendid young fellow, a graduate of Harvard University. He has a rich father too. Perhaps he could help.”

  “A music lover?”

  “Yes. His name is Mr. Norman Prince.”

  “But he’s the one who is organizing the Lafayette Escadrille!”

  “Of course he is, my dear,” said Lloiseaux.

  Herma went to see Marcel in boulevard Haussmann one last time. She hadn’t intended to tell him it was the last time; but in his sorcerer’s way, studying her with his dark eyes, he seemed to seek out and find everything.

  “I came to tell you …”

  “That you’re going away.”

  “Fred is joining the aviation. He’s leaving in a week.”

  “And you?”

  “I …”

  Here she stopped. She didn’t know what to say.

  Marcel had not been well; he had had spasms, Céleste said, and he seemed to have lost weight. The room was shut up tightly, with the close and fuggy atmosphere of a sickroom, and the aromatic powders were smoldering in a saucer by the bedside. Marcel was propped on the pillow in his usual pyjamas with several sweaters over them, a shawl around his shoulders. He reached for a camphor cigarette, lit it, and set it in a saucer after drawing a little of the pungent vapor into his lungs. His pale face seemed stretched on its bones; his eyes burned even more intensely than usual. Yet he seemed quite calm. He drew on the medicinal cigarette again and set it aside.
For a long moment neither of them spoke. He lay motionless on the bed, his knees propped up under the covers, never taking his eyes from her.

  Finally he smiled. “You’re afraid that I’ve caught you out. But it was long ago that I caught you out. You see, I am the only one who knows your secret. It is because of this that we are friends. Both you and I, and Fred too.”

  “Secret?”

  He seemed to turn away from this for the moment. “Even the wily Ulysses didn’t recognize Athena at first. That was because he was mortal. But the gods are immediately perceptible to each other, as like to like. So we in the world, even in a theater, even before we have spoken, recognize each other as kindred.”

  “I saw you too, before I was five minutes into the Olympia act.”

  “Of course you did. Believe me, it is not in order to invite prima donnas to supper at the Ritz that I go, so very rarely, to the Opéra. And I imagine that you too are not in the habit of accepting invitations from every music lover in the audience who takes a fancy to you.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Then why did you accept?”

  She had no answer to this, because she didn’t know.

  His formerly charming smile had a slight cadaverlike quality to it now, a kind of rictus. It was as though he made it only with difficulty. Yet it was still charming, perhaps because one saw that it was difficult for him to make it.

  “Do you know the Myth of the Androgynes in Plato?”

  “I don’t read very much, as you know.”