“I’m Mrs Holt: you may not know my name, but I know yours. I’ve been dying to meet you. I’ve been to Holland a lot and read a bit of Dutch. I read your pamphlet on the Social Position of Divorced Women, and I was interested in much that you wrote.”
“You’re very kind; shall we sit down for a moment … I remember your name too … Weren’t you on the committee of the Women’s Conference in London?”
“Yes … I spoke about the upbringing of children … Weren’t you able to come to London?”
“No, I did think about it, but I was in Rome at the time, and I couldn’t.”
“What a shame. The conference was a great step forward. If your pamphlet had been translated for it, and become known, you would have had great success.”
“I’m not really striving for success of that kind …”
“Of course, I quite understand. But the success of your book surely also benefits the great cause.”
“Do you really mean that? Is there something valuable in my pamphlet?”
“Do you doubt it?”
“Very often …”
“Unbelievable … Yet it is written with such assurance.”
“Perhaps for that very reason …”
“I don’t understand you. There is sometimes a vagueness about the Dutch that we English find hard to understand. Something like the reflection of your beautiful skies in your characters.”
“Do you never doubt? Are you sure about your ideas on the upbringing of children?”
“I have studied children in schools, crèches, at home, and I’ve developed very clear ideas. And following those ideas I am working for the people of the future. I’ll send you my pamphlet, the quintessence of my speeches at the conference. Are you working on a new brochure at present?”
“No, unfortunately not …”
“Why not? We must all close ranks in order to triumph.”
“I think I’ve said all I have to say … I wrote on impulse, from my own experience. And then …”
“Then …”
“Then everything changed … All women are different, and I never liked generalising. And do you believe that many women can work for a worldwide goal with the perseverance of a man, if they have found a small goal for themselves, a small happiness, for example, a love for their own self, in which they are happy? Do you not think that in every woman there is a latent egoism for her own love, happiness, and that when she has found that … she loses interest in the world and the future?”
“Perhaps … But how few women find that.”
“I don’t think many do … But that is a different question. And I believe that for most women interest in world affairs is a second best.”
“You have lost the faith. You speak quite differently than you wrote a year ago …”
“Yes. I’ve become very humble, because I am more honest. Of course I believe in a few women, in a few great spirits. But I wonder if the majority are not stuck with their female frailty …”
“No, not with a sensible upbringing.”
“Yes, I think it’s the upbringing …”
“Of the infant, of the young girl …”
“I don’t think I was ever brought up properly, and I expect that’s my weakness.”
“Our girls must be told very young about life’s struggles.”
“You’re right. We, my girlfriends, my sisters and I, were steered as soon as possible towards the safe haven of marriage … Do you know who I feel most sorry for? Our parents! Didn’t they think that they were teaching us everything we needed to know? And now at this point they have to realise that they could not look into the future, and that their upbringing wasn’t an upbringing, since they did not point out to their children the struggle that was being fought out before their very eyes. They are our parents and they deserve our pity. They cannot put anything right at this stage. They see us, girls, young women from twenty to thirty, overwhelmed by life, and they did not give us the strength to deal with it. They kept us safe for as long as possible in the parental niche, and then they thought about marrying us off. In no way in order to get rid of us, but for our happiness, our safety and our future. We may be unhappy, we girls and women, who did not, like our younger sisters, have the struggle close to home pointed out to us, but I believe that we still have the hope of our own youth, and I feel that our poor parents are unhappier and more pitiable than we are, because they have nothing left to hope for, because secretly they must admit to themselves that they went astray in their love for their children. They brought us up by the rules of the past, when the future was already so close at hand. I feel sorry for our parents and it almost makes me love them more than I ever did …”
XLVII
SHE HAD SUDDENLY GONE PALE as if seized by a powerful emotion. She covered her face with her waving fan and her fingers trembled violently; her whole body shuddered.
“That is a beautiful thought,” said Mrs Holt. “It was a pleasure to meet you. I always find a particular charm in Dutch people. There is that vagueness that we find so elusive, and then a sudden light that flashes as if from a cloud … I hope to meet you again. I am at home every Tuesday at five o’clock. Would you drop in sometime with Mrs Uxeley?”
“Certainly, with great pleasure …”
Mrs Holt proffered a hand, which she shook, and disappeared among the other guests. Cornélie had got up, her knees unsteady. She stood there, half turned towards the room, looking in the mirror. Her fingers played with the orchids in a Venetian glass on the console. She was still a little pale, but she controlled herself, though her heart was pounding and her chest heaving. She looked in the mirror and saw first her own figure, her slender beautiful shape in her black and white chantilly outfit, with its white lace train, foaming with flounces; the black lace tunic over it was scalloped and strewn with steel sequins and blue stones with a spray of orchids on her completely sleeveless corsage, which left her neck, arms and shoulders bare. Her hair was held in place by three Greek pearl bands, and her white feather fan—a present from Urania—was as light as foam against her neck. In the mirror she saw first herself and then him. He approached her. She did not move, only her fingers played with the flowers in the glass. She had an impulse to flee, but her knees were shaking and her feet seemed paralysed. She seemed rooted to the spot, as if hypnotised. She could not move. And she saw him coming closer and closer, while her back was half turned to the room. He approached and in so doing seemed to emit a web in which she was trapped. Mechanically she looked up and her eyes met his in the mirror. She thought she would faint. She felt wedged between him and the glass. In the mirror the room revolved, the candles whirled giddily, like a dancing firmament. He still said nothing. Then in the unbearably narrow space between him and the mirror, which did not even protect her as a wall might have done, but reflected him so that he seemed to have caught her twice over, from two directions at one—she slowly turned and looked him in the eye, but did not speak either. They surveyed each other in silence.
“You never thought … you’d ever see me here,” he said at last.
It was over a year since she had heard his voice. But she felt it inside her.
“No,” she said at last, haughty, cold and distant. “Although I saw you a few times, in town, on the Jetée.”
“Yes,” he said. “Should I have said hello, do you think?”
She shrugged her bare shoulders, and he looked at them. She felt for the first time that she was half-naked that evening.
“No,” she replied, still cold and distant. “Just as you needn’t have spoken to me just now.”
He smiled at her. He stood before her like a wall. Like a man. His head, his shoulders, his chest, his legs, his whole figure loomed in front of her in their intense masculinity.
“Naturally I didn’t need to,” he replied, and she felt his voice inside her, and she felt the sound of him pouring into her like molten bronze into a vase. “And if I’d met you somewhere in Holland, I would have simply taken of
f my hat, but not talked to you. But we’re in a foreign country here …”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“I felt like talking to you … I wanted a talk with you. Can we do that as strangers?”
“Strangers …” she repeated.
“Well, all right, we’re not strangers. In fact, we are surprisingly intimately acquainted, aren’t we? Come and sit next to me and tell me how you’ve been getting on. Did you like Rome …”
“Yes,” she said.
As if by willpower he had guided her towards a chaise-longue behind a Louis XV screen, half damask, half glass—and she sank down into a rosy twilight of candles, surrounded by bouquets of pink roses in all kinds of Venetian glasses. He sat down on a pouf, leaning slightly towards her, arms across his knees, hands folded.
“There was quite a lot of talk about you in The Hague. First about your pamphlet. And then about your painter.”
Her eyes bored into him like needles. He laughed.
“You can look just as angry as you used to. Tell me, do you still hear from your family? They’re in a bad way.”
“Now and then. I was able to send them some money recently.”
“That’s damned nice of you. They don’t deserve it. They said that you’d ceased to exist for them.”
“Mama wrote to say they had such terrible money worries. So I sent a hundred guilders. I couldn’t afford any more.”
“Oh, now they see you send money, I expect you’ll exist for them again.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t care about that. I felt sorry for them. I was sorry I couldn’t send more.”
“No, not if you look so extraordinarily chic …”
“I don’t pay for this …”
“I just mention it in passing. I’m not venturing to criticise. I think it’s damned nice of you to send money. But you’re still extraordinarily chic. Listen, shall I tell you something. You’ve grown into a damned beautiful woman.”
He looked at her with that smile of his, which she had to look at. Then she answered very calmly, waving her fan lightly over her bare neck, concealed in the froth of her fan:
“I’m damned pleased you think so.”
He guffawed loudly.
“Right, I like that, you’re still good at witty repartee. Always on the ball. Damned good show!”
She got up, nervous, her face contorted.
“I must leave you, I have to go to Mrs Uxeley.”
He spread his arms a little.
“Stay and sit for a bit. It’s a tonic talking to you.”
“Restrain yourself a bit then and don’t ‘damn’ so much. I’m not used to it any more.”
“I’ll do my best, if you stay.”
She flopped down and hid behind her fan.
“Let me say then that you really have become a very, very beautiful woman. Is that what you call a compliment?”
“It’s more like it.”
“Well, I can’t do any better than that, you know. You’ll have to make do with that. So tell me something about Rome. What was your life like there?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because I’m interested.”
“You’ve no business to be interested in me …”
“No, but I just am. I’ve never forgotten you completely. And I’d be amazed if you’d forgotten me.”
“Completely,” she said coolly.
He looked at her with that smile of his. He did not reply, but she sensed that he knew better. She was afraid to go on trying to persuade him.
“Is it true what they say in The Hague? About Van der Staal?”
She looked at him loftily.
“Well, tell me …”
“Yes …”
“My, you’re a shameless one. Don’t you care about anything any more?”
“No …”
“And how are you getting on here, with the old woman?”
“How do you mean?”
“Do they accept that just like that here in Nice?”
“I don’t flaunt my independence and my behaviour here is beyond reproach.”
“Where is Van der Staal?”
“In Florence.”
“Why isn’t he here? …”
“I don’t feel like giving any more answers. You’re being indiscreet. It’s no business of yours and I won’t be interrogated.”
She became very agitated and got up again. He stretched out his arms.
“Really, Rudolf, let me go,” she begged him. “I must see Mrs Uxeley. They’re dancing a pavane in the ballroom and I have to receive and give some orders. Let me go.”
“I’ll take you then. May I offer you my arm.”
“Rudolf, please go away. Can’t you see how nervous you’re making me? It was so unexpected meeting you again here. Please go away, leave me alone, otherwise I won’t be able to keep up appearances. I’ll start crying. Why did you speak to me, why did you come here, where you knew you would meet me?”
“Because I wanted to see one of Mrs Uxeley’s parties, and because I wanted to meet you.”
“Surely you realise that seeing you again makes me nervous. What good does that do you? We’re dead for each other … What’s the point of taunting me like this …”
“That’s precisely what I’d like to know. Whether we’re dead for each other.”
“Dead, dead, completely dead!” she cried violently.
He laughed.
“Come on, stop being so theatrical. Surely you can understand that I was curious to see you again and talk to you. I saw you in the streets, in your carriage, on the Jetée, and I liked seeing you looking so good, so chic, so happy, and so lovely. You know that I simply have a great weakness for beautiful women. You’re much lovelier than you were when you were my wife. If you had been as you are now back then, I would never have divorced you … Come on, don’t be childish. No one knows us here. I think it’s damn wonderful to meet you here, to chat to you and give you my arm. Take my arm. Stop nagging and I’ll take you where you have to go. Where will we find Mrs Uxeley? … Introduce me … as an acquaintance from Holland …”
“Rudolf …”
“Come on, I want to, stop nagging. What harm will it do? It amuses me, and it’s fun walking around with your ex-wife at a ball in Nice. Wonderful town, isn’t it? I go to Monte Carlo every day, and I’ve been damn lucky. Won three thousand francs yesterday. Do you fancy coming with me …?”
“You’re out of your mind!”
“I’m not out of my mind. I want to enjoy myself. And I’m proud to have you on my arm.”
She pulled her arm free.
“There’s nothing for you to be proud about …”
“Now don’t get spiteful, I’m just joking; let’s enjoy ourselves. There’s the old woman … She’s looking for you.”
She had gone through a number of rooms on his arm and at a tombola, where people were jostling to win gifts and trinkets, they saw Mrs Uxeley, Gilio and the ladies Rosavilla, Costi and Luca. They were very cheerful, acting like children round the pyramid of baubles, when the roulette wheel had come up with their number.
“Mrs Uxeley,” Cornélie began, her voice trembling. “May I introduce a compatriot of mine, Baron Brox …”
Mrs Uxeley fluttered, and said a few friendly words, and asked if he would like to draw a number … The roulette wheel spun …
“A countryman of yours, Cornélie?”
Inevitable Page 21
