Belle De Jour

by Joseph Kessel

  However, she was forced to study the tricks of her trade, even the most intimate. And her apprenticeship was revolting enough, made her feel sufficiently like some soiled love-machine, for her once more to shudder with perverse humiliation. But carnal excess has limits quickly reached unless a mutual passion extends them. Séverine realized this and once more became numb. Her sense of shame was worn out, and horror also began to die. She could now be taken by a man while others watched; Charlotte or Mathilde or both together could engage her in bouts that meant nothing to her; in fact, nothing meant anything to Séverine any more. All that remained was a faint shiver when Mme Anaïs called her to be looked over, and she went forward obediently. She could feel a certain relish in submission.

  At times now, when Séverine remembered the pride she’d clung to for so long, she felt there was an emptiness within her. It was this emptiness that tormented Pierre. He couldn’t seem to recover the absolute simplicity, the marvellous ease of the life he had once known with Séverine. For a while he was protected against his own perspicacity by his happiness at finding false a fear which had all but exploded his existence. Yet soon he began to wonder about his wife’s persistent, abnormal humility. A nervous breakdown might explain her odd quirks of humor; but that scared, mournful tenderness of hers, that eagerness to be of use to him, her total lack of private life—it was hard not to be alarmed by such symptoms in a woman who, a month ago, had been lovable for her self-will and for a pride so natural it seemed as much a part of her as her heart.

  Pierre’s anxiety found no satisfactory answer. He couldn’t doubt Séverine’s love for him; in fact, he’d never been more sure of it. But what redoubled his uneasiness was that this didn’t make him feel any happier. There were moments when he half-consciously remembered the day Séverine had first seemed really disturbed, when she told him about that little business of Henriette … and whore-houses. He immediately abandoned the train of thought. Séverine wasn’t the kind of woman who could be caught up by the idea of sensuality—especially that kind.

  So Pierre suffered also. Each morning he hoped to see in Séverine’s face what he needed for his own happiness; and each morning he met a submissive being who constantly tried to anticipate his wishes. Séverine herself realized that the servile character her love was assuming was the opposite of what he sought; but she couldn’t help herself. She looked at Pierre, and from the depths to which she’d fallen he seemed to be living on an overwhelmingly high plane. At the same time he became even dearer to her. She developed a respectful adoration for his cleanliness and youth, qualities that had once been hers also (she now felt terribly old). And the more she loved him the more she hated seeing him racked by pain which she inflicted.

  The only place she could forget the vicious situation was in the rue Virène. As soon as she’d stepped over Mme Anaïs’ threshold she forgot Pierre; that she did was, in fact, a sign of her love for him. And this very love now inflicted such intolerable suffering on Séverine that it drove her to Mme Anaïs not three times a week, but daily.

  Daily prostitution only increased her lassitude and misery, from which she escaped only in returning home to face her husband’s mental anguish. Continually flung from one agony to another, Séverine wondered more than once, as she walked the now familiar quays, whether the Seine’s cold grip would finally hold her long enough for her to give herself to its depths. Perhaps the boatmen would someday find her drowned body: unless she were granted some other martyrdom.

  Séverine was brought in to him one evening when, dirtied and again disappointed, she was about to leave Mme Anaïs’. The bell stopped her just as she was reaching for her hat. The girls could tell that something unpleasant was in store by the way the madame called them. And they were right.

  The man waiting to look them over was drunk. Wearing the short canvas coat of a market laborer, he alternately stared at his muddy shoes and around the room—which obviously pleased him. Two strong hands rested on his knees.

  “That one,” he nodded at Belle de Jour, “and a shot of rum.”

  She undressed while he drank. He watched her without a word. Then he took her without a word. His body was heavy. Everything about him, even the rheum in his eyes, seemed thicker than in an ordinary man. And Séverine, suddenly recognizing coarse fury and bestial sensuality, groaned from the depths of her being. The desire slaking itself on her body was no careful, refined thing: it was an aspect of that trinity which had led her to this bed. The man in the blind-alley, the man with the obscene neck, the bargeman: they were all three satisfying themselves on her body in the person of this man whose weight crushed her, whose knotty limbs quartered her. An undefinable flood of feeling coursed through her. Both surprise and fear appeared on her face. She ground her teeth; then, suddenly, her expression become so relaxed, so happy and young, that anyone but the man whose prey she was would have been amazed. He put a folded bill on the bedside table and left.

  Séverine lay sprawled there for a long time. An urgent duty called her, but she ignored it. She felt that from now on she had nothing to fear. She had just received a gift upon which no one else had the right to look. She had reached the end of her dreadful race and her finish-line had turned into a new beginning. The sense of joy she felt now was even greater than the physical joy which had shuddered through her with such unspeakable ecstasy. All the drives that had ruled her since her convalescence were justified for Séverine now, whereas before they had seemed a disgusting, impossible madness. She’d conquered what she had sought so blindly; and this conquest, won through hell, filled her with an enormous, strange, stunning pride.

  Charlotte asked her sympathetically, “That animal give you a hard time?”

  Séverine didn’t answer; she only chuckled richly. Charlotte and Mathilde looked at each other in surprise. They realized that till that minute they’d never heard Belle de Jour laugh.

  That evening Pierre, too, was astonished by Séverine’s behavior.

  “Let’s go and eat out in the country. Quick, go and get the car.” She spoke in a radiant voice that brooked no contradiction.

  Séverine made no attempt to analyze the elements of her sudden sensual revelation. She was afraid that introspection might sully the integrity of her discovery. She didn’t even wonder how to reactivate the wonderful lightning that had struck her. Now that she knew her body could accept it, she was sure she couldn’t prevent it from striking again. But none of the men who picked Belle de Jour in the next few days managed to reawaken the flame, and a feverish, impatient Séverine vainly sought the bliss she had captured once and which now escaped her again. She sensed that she could only recapture it under special circumstances, but what those circumstances were she didn’t know. Soon an incident occurred that gave the answer to her question.

  Early one afternoon a tall young man with a package under his arm appeared on Mme Anaïs’ doorstep.

  “I’ll keep it with me,” he announced at once. “Much too fond of it to let it get away.”

  He had a charming voice, and he pronounced all his syllables as if he were amusing himself by joining them together in words for the first time, and was surprised that they had only one meaning instead of dozens.

  Like most women, Mme Anaïs disliked irony; but this young man’s brand seemed much nicer, since it was spoken with enormous courtesy. What’s more, he was slim, broad-shouldered, well-dressed and had a pleasant face that was at once clever, gentle and childish.

  “I’ll get the girls for you, O.K.?” she asked.

  “An eminently logical suggestion. Tell them my name is André, and I insist they call me that. I suspect they’ll address me familiarly, and familiarity turns into intimacy unless it’s kept anonymous. Please add that they have no right to be ugly, not even plain, since I didn’t choose your house, Madame: I’m here because I shut my eyes and put my finger on a list of ads. So it was fate sent me here, you see. It never fails and if.…”

  Mme Anaïs interrupted with a laugh.

>   “If you weren’t so nice I think I’d be a little scared of you,” she said.

  Both Mathilde and Charlotte kept wonderful memories of the hour that followed. An exquisite madness ruled all of Andre’s actions; the girls didn’t know quite what was going on, but they had the feeling that such exploits belonged to a superior world. And they were confused and touched by the fact that this man refrained from using them as pleasure-machines, but instead gave them, so they guessed, the very best of himself.

  Only Séverine remained unmoved by these games, whose ins and outs she alone really understood. Mathilde was shocked by her disinterest and whispered to her, “Hey, be good to this kid. You don’t get many like him in here.”

  André thought there was something Mathilde was afraid to ask for.

  “My friends,” he exclaimed, “you’re not making any demands on me. I must say I’m glad you aren’t, not because I’m avaricious but because it flatters my vanity. Even if I was rich, you know, I wouldn’t make a business of it, but today it happens I’ve a little cash on me and I insist on drinking it up with you in the form of the most expensive wine in the house.”

  Mme Anaïs glanced at her girls. They all wore the same look of affectionate hesitation.

  “Thank you, ladies,” said André with more gratitude than he meant to show. “But do you really mean me to take my money elsewhere? Do you refuse to drink to my first book?”

  “You’re a writer?” cried Charlotte incredulously. She’d often wondered what kind of men could be behind the names one saw in bookshop windows.

  André unwrapped his package, which he had put on the mantelpiece, and revealed five books all bearing the same title.

  “It’s true,” said Charlotte. “You’re really André Millot?”

  The pride in Andre’s smile was so naïve it could almost have been put-on.

  “I’d never’ve believed it,” Charlotte continued innocently. “You’ve got to give me a copy.”

  “Well, the fact is … they’re first edition.”

  “Yeah, honey, so …?

  The young man didn’t have the courage to say that he was hoping to sell them. He was moved by the deep sincerity on those price-tagged lips, of words that were usually so false. He gave Charlotte a copy. Having done so he met Mathilde’s timid eyes. He couldn’t resist those, either. After which his honor wouldn’t permit him to ignore Mme Anaïs or Séverine. With a jerk of the head he looked at the last copy he had and slipped it in his pocket; then he inscribed loving dedications for all four women.

  The champagne was brought in. Never had it been drunk with such happy innocence in Mme Anaïs’ house.

  But the bell rang. A strange annoyance, a sadness, made both Charlotte and Mathilde lower their heads.

  “I must go,” said Mme Anaïs, excusing herself.

  André could know nothing of the cruel happiness he’d brought into the lives of these cloistered women, and he was surprised at the sudden silence. He looked from Mathilde to Charlotte to Séverine. And Séverine’s eyes, shining most brightly, glowed with the joy of a deliverance.

  “Anyway you stay here with me,” André told her.

  But Belle de Jour knew that for nothing in the world would she allow pleasant, charming youth to take her in his arms.

  So softly that only he could hear she said, “Please excuse me.”

  Something passed over Andre’s mobile features. Later, he was often to recall that request filled with a delicacy foreign to a woman of her world; but now he merely gave an imperceptible bow and turned to Charlotte. She kissed him passionately.

  “Too bad, honey,” Mme Anaïs said to Séverine. “I would have bet my bottom dollar he’d pick you. Oh well, you’ll have to hurry, M Leon’s waiting and he’s only got a quarter of an hour.”

  Belle de Jour knew M Léon, the hurried businessman who had a tannery near the rue Virène. She’d already received his favors, of which she retained a dismal memory. But this time the little man—so impregnated with raw leather you could smell it on his breath —made Séverine shudder with the agony and heat of lust she’d begun to despair of ever finding again. He was so avid to take her quickly.

  After lying quietly for a few minutes she went into Mme Anaïs’ room. The madame wasn’t there; Séverine heard her laughing in the room from which came Andre’s refined accents. Séverine sat down by the work-table. Resting her chin on hands still damp with pleasure, she began to consider the secrets of her body.

  When she once more became aware of her surroundings, her face was calm and serious. She knew now.

  She knew that she’d refused André because he belonged to the same physical and spiritual world as the men she knew in her normal existence. He was of the same class as Pierre. With André she would have deceived the husband she loved so completely. It was not for tenderness, for trust, for charm, that she had sought out the rue Virène. Pierre flooded her with all of those. What she’d sought was what he couldn’t give her: this supreme bestial ecstasy.

  Pierre’s manner, his taste, his desire to please, all were poles apart from something in her that had to be beaten and subdued, mercilessly defeated, before her flesh could flame out. Séverine was not disturbed by the recognition of this fatal divorce between herself and he who was her whole life. On the contrary, she felt a comforting sense of relief. After weeks of mental torture that was close to insanity, she had come to know herself; the dreadful twin who had ruled her in darkness and dismay melted away. Strong and serene, she found her soul united again. Since destiny refused to permit Pierre to give her the joy that gross strangers gave, what could she do about it? Did she have to surrender a pleasure which with other women was a part of love? If she’d had their luck would she ever have taken this frightful path in the first place? Who then could reproach her for actions that the very cells of her body, over which she had no control, demanded? It was the right of every animal to know the sacred spasm which each spring makes the earth tremble.

  This revelation transformed Séverine. The suffering of her wretched struggle was annulled, so that she was once more her former self. She recovered her self-assurance, together with the serene zest for life she’d previously known. In fact, she felt stronger than ever; for now she had discovered and destroyed the quicksand, teeming with monsters, on which she had so long and so precariously struggled to maintain her life.

  Had Séverine been at all disturbed about the path she had deliberately chosen, Pierre’s once-feared eyes would have been the first to confirm her doubts. But as it was, they watched Séverine’s resurrection with touching joy. And they had plenty of time to feast themselves on the spectacle, since she was clever enough to draw out her recovery. Only by degrees did she give up her humility, her timid servitude. She took a daily step in this direction, but only one. Daily she made some new demand on her husband, but one only. She could see how happy he was to obey her, but she knew that if her personality altered too quickly she ran the risk of alarming him and making him suspicious. She didn’t want to do that, nor did she want to give up her visits to Mme Anaïs. She sought for a balance between these two necessities: the balance of her fulfillment.

  Very patiently and calmly she reached her goal. Or was even this an act? Séverine could pretend so easily now, she was no longer able to recognize pretense. But she’d never felt so completely and purely Pierre’s as when she now returned from the rue Virène, exorcized. The two hours she spent there every day were a separate, isolated life, hermetically sealed and feeding on itself. And during those hours Séverine truly forgot who she was. Only her body’s secret existed, like one of those strange flowers which open for a moment only to return at once to their virginal repose.

  Soon Séverine hardly realized she was leading a double life. Her existence seemed to have been planned like this long before she was born.

  She placed the seal on her new life by once more becoming physically Pierre’s wife. She no longer had any qualms about bringing him a soiled body, because she felt that
on the way back from the rue Virène she was completely renewed, even to the substance of her flesh. And in her love-making with Pierre she was now more maternal than ever, for without realizing it, she was afraid that some too passionate or skillful movement might reveal the illicit knowledge of Belle de Jour.

  VII

  The first time she saw Marcel Séverine hardly noticed him. He came in with Hippolyte, who attracted her attention immediately: even before she met him Séverine had been intrigued by the sense of evil which surrounded him.

  “Now be nice to Hippolyte,” Mme Anaïs instructed, without looking them in the face.

  “Don’t worry, we will,” Charlotte answered uneasily, “but I thought we’d got rid of him for good.”

  With a sigh Mme Anaïs shrugged her shoulders.

  “You never know with him. Maybe we’ll never see him again. Or maybe he’ll be here for a week on end. Anyhow, be nice to him, you won’t be sorry.”

  In the hall Séverine asked, “Who is he?”

  “She won’t tell us,” Mathilde murmured.

  “Rich?”

  “You kidding!” cried Charlotte. “He never pays a red cent.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mme Anaïs says so. At first we thought he was her lover, but he isn’t. My guess is he used to be and he still has a hold over her. Thank God he doesn’t come in much. Twice in eighteen months is plenty for me. Otherwise I’d get out of here.”

  “Me too,” put in Mathilde.

  They hesitated a moment when they reached the door to the big room. Séverine pressed them:

  “Is he very passionate then? Brutal?”

  “Not really—is he, Mathilde? He’s pretty quiet, not even dirty. But he scares the shit out of you, I can’t explain it.”

  A few seconds later and Séverine understood. Hippolyte was a barbaric hulk of a man, bigger and taller than anyone she’d ever seen. True, there was nothing particularly cruel about his face, which was fat and very large. But there was something else, perhaps the contrast between his majestic, almost deadly immobility and the savage animal life that darkened his lips, closed his jaws like a trap, and turned his fists into hammers of flesh and bone. Perhaps it was the way he rolled his cigarettes and licked them together. Or perhaps it was the tiny gold ring he wore in his right ear. Like Charlotte, Séverine couldn’t say what it was; but fear slid slowly up her veins. Fascinated, she couldn’t take her eyes off this man with the color and size of some bronze idol.