As she bowed statuesquely to the assembled clapping, Jacques whispered in Jacob’s ear. ‘You have before you, an incarnation of Ma Rainey.’
‘Who?’ Jacob murmured.
‘It doesn’t matter. Some earth mother or other, but nothing so messy as a specific one.’
Sylvie sang again, ‘Goodbye daddy goodbye. I don’t want you no more…’ A contempt for all men merged in her voice with a mournful regret.
Jacob watched spellbound. It was extraordinary. It was not the song which was so different from some of her usual repertoire. It was Sylvie herself. Gone was the seductive temptress whose hips flicked rhythmically. Gone was the plodding pale-face frightened girl, obliterated beneath the weight of her pregnancy. In her place a solid, powerful, presence, an icon of the maternal.
During the next round of clapping, Jacques whispered, ‘She’s bloody good. You ought to be congratulating me.’
‘I am. You have a future as a latter day Diaghelev. But what happens when the show is over?’
Jacques shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. But I have a feeling you may not altogether like it. My concern was Sylvie. You can cope.’
Jacob didn’t like it. The spectacle over, Sylvie sat down heavily, but regally. Kisses flew. Congratulations were general. Jacob waited his opportunity. When the small circle around Sylvie had unwound, he approached her.
‘You were superb, Sylvie,’ he said softly. Sensing Jacques’s eyes on him, he bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek. She didn’t recoil as she would have just a few days back. She simply dismissed him with an austere thank-you as if he were one of a numerous crowd and turned to Caroline.
‘By the way,’ Sylvie said a moment later, ‘I’ve invited Caroline to stay. Jacques’s place is quite comfortable for you, isn’t it?’
Jacob looked at her uncomprehendingly.
There was a vengeful glimmer in Sylvie’s eye. ‘I’ll be much happier with her here. These things should be kept among women, really.’
Jacob strode off to his study which until a few days ago had also served as his bedroom. He could barely contain his rage. Wildly, he threw some clothes and books into a case. Jacques came in and watched him for a moment. His eyes were amused.
‘So she’s kicking you out. I thought she might.’
‘And you find the sight entertaining. What on earth did you do to her?’
‘I simply freed her of her self-loathing. Told her the big mamas of this world, the Ma Raineys, were proud of their girth, proud of their babies, proud of their sex. I thought that was the point of the exercise. She looks better doesn’t she. She’s not moping around in a suicidal daze.’
Jacob looked at his friend with undisguised hostility. ‘No, that’s quite true. On the other hand, she’s hardly reconciled to me.’
‘No,’ Jacques smiled reflectively. ‘In order to prove my point, I had to make it evident to her that men were irrelevant. Both dispensable and replaceable. I should say it wasn’t too difficult to do, really. Once I’d got through to her, she seemed quite ready to turn her self-hatred into a murderous contempt, passing, I’m sure, for you.’
Jacob snapped his suitcase shut noisily. He looked Jacques steadily in the eyes. ‘I don’t know what enrages me more, Sylvie’s histrionics or your obvious relish in the spectacle of my misery.’
‘Come come, old chap. You can drown your misery in my best brandy.’
‘While you crow with delight. No thank you.’
Jacob stormed from the room and out of the apartment. At the bottom of the stairs, he bumped into Amy who was coming out of the lift.
‘Running away from home?’ she looked meaningfully at his case and turned softly mocking brown eyes on him.
‘Running is not the operative word,’ Jacob said with more bitterness than he had intended.
Amy swung her short sheath of corn-blonde hair away from her face. ‘She’s given you the push, has she,’ she broke into English as she always did with him.
‘You might call it that.’ He looked at her intently. Then he laughed. A tie, a pair of socks peeked disreputably from the crack in his case. Jacob was suddenly struck by the picture he must cut in the bedraggled suit he had worn for several days, the shirt which didn’t fit. ‘You have before you the very image of a man who has, as you say, been given the push.’
Amy shook her head. ‘Brave woman, that Sylvie of yours.’
‘I guess she is,’ Jacob murmured. ‘But what about you? Can I buy you a drink?’
‘So that you can weep on my shoulder?’ she eyed him wryly.
‘A distinctly strange posture for a man of my profession, don’t you think?’ he met her mockery.
‘Well, since I’ve always liked you and I’m leaving for the States in a few week’s time…’ she gave him her arm. ‘I’ve had enough of this old world of yours.’ She looked round her with general distaste.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Jacob said as he opened his car door for her. ‘I’m not at all surprised.’
Later that night he drove her to her door and turned to kiss her goodnight. He was surprised by the rush of passion her cool wide lips elicited in him. He pulled back and gazed at her.
‘Would you like to come up?’ she asked, without a trace of coquettishness.
Jacob nodded. ‘Very much.’ His voice was hoarse. Months had passed since he had held a woman.
She led him up four long flights of stairs to her small studio flat. No sooner were they inside the door than he embraced her. Her body was long, supple. It curved to him with a languorous energy. She threw her neck back to receive his kisses. Her flesh smelled of the freshness of apples. When he moved heavily inside her, she dug her fingers into his shoulders and gasped softly. He felt as if he had come home.
‘We should have done this before,’ she said to him afterwards. They were lying naked on the large mattress which served as her bed. Amy lifted her head from where it had nestled on his chest and searched his eyes.
Jacob stroked the heavy sheen of her hair. He remembered his first meeting with Amy, her wry wit, the straightforward honesty of her eyes. If only on that night his desires had not already been fixed on Sylvie. Sylvie, the fugitive, the ungraspable. Pain streaked across him. He found refuge in Amy’s mouth.
‘We should in any event do it again,’ he murmured.
‘Yes,’ her eyes played lazily over him and rested humourously on his jutting penis. ‘Yes, perhaps we should,’ she teased him.
Wonderingly, he traced her smile with his fingers. His lips lingered over her taut nipples, the long smooth expanse of her belly, the blond mound. She gasped. Then with an urgency which was sure of its goal, he thrust into her with hard certain strokes.
Jacob stayed with Amy. The delight of being with a woman who shared his uncomplicated desire was like a new world. Nights grew into weeks. He lived in a state of limbo. Both of them knew he would not, could not, abandon Sylvie. Yet Amy postponed her departure for America. She shared his life more than Sylvie had ever done. He showered her with presents. He was grateful and guilty.
Every evening or two, Caroline rang him to report on Sylvie’s welfare. They had agreed this between them. Should Sylvie wish to see him, then he would be available. But from Sylvie herself there was no sign. Jacob did not allow himself to think beyond the baby’s birth.
One Saturday evening just before Christmas Jacob and Amy were leaving the flat when loud voices echoed through the inner courtyard from the concierge’s rooms.
A broad, darkly clothed form turned as they approached.
‘I knew he was here,’ Sylvie hissed as she spied Jacob.
Before he could altogether take in her presence, he felt a hard slap ringing across his face.
‘You swine,’ she gave him and Amy a withering look and then her shoulders high strode out of the building.
A moment passed before Jacob rushed after her. He put a staying hand on her arm. Sylvie shrugged it off. The eyes she turned on him were coldly contemptuous.
‘It hard
ly matters what cesspit you put your cock into, does it?’
Jacob held back and watched her receding form.
Amy put her arm through his and followed the line of his gaze. ‘From one cesspit to another, I have to hand it to her. She’s got style.’ There was a bitterness in her voice which played havoc with her words.
Jacob squeezed her arm.
Christmas arrived in grey drizzle. In the recognition that his situation was hardly one of the worst, Jacob held a dinner for his new found refugee friends from Germany and Austria in the Bois de Vincennes. The generous quantities of drink consumed only lightened the atmosphere slightly.
Two days later, Amy booked her passage to New York.
‘Come with me,’ she said to Jacob, a note of challenge in her eyes. ‘It’s all over, here,’ she gestured randomly, diffusely, implicating the room, the streets beyond.
Jacob held her close. The sheen of her hair, her skin had a buoyant health, which made the small attic room seem tawdry.
‘You know I can’t,’ he said softly. He searched for her lips.
Amy turned away. ‘I know,’ there was a hardness in her tone.
‘I shall miss you,’ Jacob forced her to face him. ‘You know I shall miss you.’
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. He held her for a long time. Then they made love slowly, lingeringly with the sense that each gesture would become a memory to be traced over and over again.
He drove her to Le Havre. The white bow of the liner shimmered in the winter light. A city on water, its decks had a far more festive air than the town beneath. In the plush bar, they shared a bottle of champagne.
‘It would all be a lot simpler, if I despised you,’ Amy said, ‘if I didn’t think you were a good man.’
Jacob laughed hoarsely. ‘One woman’s good is another woman’s evil.’ He was suddenly tempted to break loose, to stay enclosed in the ship’s festive world, to set sail to unknown lands. The whiff of freedom elated him. He emptied his glass. A sardonic expression crept over his face. ‘But Amy, just think, if I were to stay here, escape to the brave new world with you, I would cease in your eyes to be a good man.’ He kissed her brusquely. ‘We’ll meet again, I hope.’
With long even strides, Jacob left the ship. Amy’s tears followed him.
Jacob had arranged to stay on in Amy’s flat. No sooner had he returned there, then the concierge gave him an urgent message. He was to go straight to the Hôpital Ste Marie. Jacob flew. Sylvie. The baby. He suddenly thought hungrily of Violette, her plump arms around his neck, her joyous chatter. And now a second child, one which might again be kept from him.
He marched purposefully through the hospital corridors towards the maternity ward. In the nurse’s office, he asked for Madame Jardine.
‘There is no one here by that name,’ the duty nurse informed him. Jacob looked baffled. He insisted. He couldn’t have mistaken Caroline’s message. The nurse cast increasingly suspicious eyes on him. There was a wild air to this man. His hair was uncombed. His eyes were dangerous.
Jacob took on the crisp tone of hospital authority. ‘I am Dr. Jardine, Miss…’ he looked down on the desk where he recognized a rota book and read her name upside down, ‘Miss Brabant. My wife has perhaps registered here under her maiden name, Sylvie Kowalska,’ he said, the idea having just come to him. Trust Sylvie to try to exclude him, even at this point.
The nurse hesitated for a moment and then led him to a small room. To his right, he could hear the cries of infants, the comforting mews of mothers’ voices. But now, as the nurse opened the door of the labour room, a more piercing sound confronted him: Sylvie’s cries. Mingled amongst them was his name.
She was lying on a narrow bed. From where Jacob stood, her high bared stomach obscured her face. Between her raised legs, he could see the soft bloodied down of an infant’s head beginning to emerge. His heart pounded and he stepped forward. One of the midwives stopped him sternly and gestured for the nurse to take him away. ‘It won’t be long now,’ she added.
In the waiting room, he found Caroline. ‘At last you’re here,’ she masked her nervousness in anger. ‘It’s been going on for over twelve hours.’
Jacob put a consoling arm round her shoulders. ‘Don’t be so reproachful. I would have been here all the time if I’d been wanted. I know it’s hard on you.’
‘What do you mean, ‘if you’d been wanted’?’ Two pink spots burned in her pale cheeks. ‘She went to get you and said you wouldn’t come home.’
‘What?’ Jacob stared at her in some perplexity. But there was no time for explanations. The nurse came to fetch them. ‘You’ve got a beautiful boy, Dr. Jardine. Do come through. No, no, one of you at a time please.’
Jacob hurtled after her.
The sheets were now drawn neatly round Sylvie’s waist, as she rested against plumped pillows. In her arms, lay a tightly swaddled infant, its blind, fist-like face bright pink beneath a shock of dark hair. Her face drawn and perplexed, Sylvie looked down at the baby with an air of shocked disbelief.
‘Sylvie, oh Sylvie,’ Jacob forgot the ordeal of the last months and moved to kiss her.
She seemed to have some difficulty in focussing on him. At last, she picked up the baby and handed it to him as if she were holding an inanimate parcel. ‘Here. Your present. I promised you a present. But it’s not a girl.’ She diverted her eyes and twisted away from him, muffling her face in the pillow. ‘It’s a boy,’ he heard her say in a strange voice, shrouded by sobs.
Jacob barely had time to look at his child, before the nurse lifted the bundle from his arms. ‘A handsome little fellow,’ she said reassuringly, as if she had just witnessed the most ordinary scene in the world. Then with a brisk gesture, she effectively dismissed Jacob. He was being banished from a woman’s world.
A boy. The words rebounded in Sylvie’s mind. The gypsy had said it would be a boy. There. In the crowded street under the gothic shadow of Notre Dame, the gypsy had singled her out. Crushed a sprig of dried lavender in her hand. ‘For luck,’ she had said. ‘For your son.’ The grimy, reddened hand, freed of its lavender, was thrust at Sylvie. Payment was due. Sylvie had clumsily searched out some coins.
As the gypsy woman turned away, Sylvie had caught at her tattered coat. ‘Wait.’
The woman had looked up at her slyly.
‘My son, you said my son,’ Sylvie’s voice broke.
‘Yes,’ a smile which was half sneer spread over the woman’s face. She patted Sylvie’s stomach. ‘Very soon, now. A boy.’ She clutched at Sylvie’s hand. ‘You want me to tell your fortune?’
Sylvie twisted away, shaking her head.
She walked off in a daze. Babushka. Babushka had warned her about boys. Her husband had left her. Two boys had died. Tadzio, her brother had died. Sylvie eyes clouded with tears. She tripped on a cobble stone and only a passing woman saved her from falling.
That evening, she had taken a taxi to the address she had extracted from Caroline. Jacob needed to be told. She had intended a girl. She had told him she would give him a girl. Like Violette. Confusion poured through her, catapulting the months. No time intervened between her promise to Jacob and the present. Perhaps Jacob already knew there was a boy. That was why he wasn’t with her now. Babushka had warned her. The men. First they poisoned you with their cocks, then the sons came and they left you.
Sylvie sobbed into the starched hospital pillow. The gas, the overarching pain between her legs had blurred her mind. The midwives had had sneering faces like the gypsy.
A boy, one of them had said. Jacob had come. A vast frightening shadow. She had given him the bundle they said was a boy. He could keep him. She wanted nothing to do with him. With any of it.
Sylvie slept.
For the next three weeks, Sylvie lay in a private flower-bedecked room in a maternity clinic. Jacob, seeing her state, had arranged for it. On the surface, everything was as it should be. The attentive father spent as many hours a day as possible with his wife and stare
d contentedly at his child or held the tiny form cautiously in his arms. Friends came to visit. The baby was docile and cried little. Every few hours he was brought to his mother’s breast and fed.
But Sylvie spoke almost not at all and cried and slept a great deal. She paid no attention to the child and less to her husband. While the infant lay in her arms, sucking at her breast, she stared abstractedly into space. It was her only contact with him.
Meanwhile, with an eye to the future, Jacob organized. He rented a vast house in the quiet of Fontenay overlooking the leafy Bois de Vincennes. In the converted coachhouse at the end of the garden, he installed a penniless Austrian couple, the composer Erich Breuer and Anita, his Jewish wife. They had fled Vienna with only two suitcases between them and they were only too happy to look after the house, Sylvie, and the child’s needs. Madame Jardine, ever vigilant about her grandchildren, and particularly the first-born of her favourite son, oversaw the establishment of a nursery and herself interviewed potential nannies. Jacob set aside two rooms for Caroline’s use. As yet he had no idea whether he and Sylvie would be able to live side by side.
On the day before she was due to leave the clinic, Jacob sat with Sylvie and described all these new arrangements. She seemed not to be listening, but he persisted. In his arms he held his small son and rocked him gently. Suddenly the baby started to cry. Jacob paced the room with him, trying to quieten his shouts.
All at once Sylvie leapt from her bed.
‘Give him to me,’ she said adamantly.
Startled by the first direct words she had spoken to him in weeks, he hesitated for a moment.
‘Give Tadzio to me,’ Sylvie repeated in a tone of command.
Smiling, Jacob handed her the small bundle. She stared at the baby for a moment, then crushed him to her breast. With swift assurance, she sat down on the edge of the bed and bared her nipple to the child’s searching lips.
Memory and Desire Page 20
