Belle De Jour

by Joseph Kessel

  “You’ll have lunch at home, won’t you?” she asked as he left. “Nothing’ll come up to stop you, will it? … Do you promise?”

  And the morning began to drag by, each second beating drop by drop on Séverine’s heart. In any one of those fractions of time Pierre might be learning the truth. And so many many minutes still separated her from his return. Husson … Pierre … Pierre … Husson. Two faces ceaselessly haunted her mind; the one she loved faded before the other, which grew larger, glazed. Her thoughts carried her to the point at which, drilling into the cerebral matter, they led to insanity. She knew she couldn’t go on this way much longer. Pierre mustn’t leave her. Could she go away with him somewhere? He’d have to refuse. She’d just used up her best weapon. Her best … and in any case she’d have to come back and Husson would still be there.…

  At noon an agony even more bitter than she’d known the night before mesmerized Séverine’s thinking. Now the passing time was even more relentlessly eating into the respite granted her. Danger gathered like a storm-cloud, driving up the hours to the one chosen by Husson. Her vision blurred. She felt now that even Pierre’s presence would not suffice to untie the knot tightening at her throat. Still she struggled against the invisible, imminent adversary.

  “I’m pretty depressed today,” she told her husband, when—after what frights!—she once more knew he didn’t know. “Do you think you could call the clinic and say you can’t leave me?”

  She asked with all the appeal of a sick child. He couldn’t refuse.

  Often, that afternoon, he was surprised to notice the burning, eager glances Séverine gave him. They sprang from a knowledge of the hopelessly precarious nature of her present safety. And what safety! Every ring of the telephone stopped her wretched heart. Finally she couldn’t stand it any more and picked up the receiver herself.

  “It’s something to do,” she explained fearfully.

  Then the mail came. And when Pierre paused to scan the envelopes Séverine felt she was going to faint.

  “Anything interesting?” she summoned up the courage to ask after she’d taken several seconds to calm herself.

  “Nothing,” he answered evenly, not knowing the unbearable burden he was taking off her shoulders.

  They slept together that night also, since even in their apartment Séverine now sensed danger on the watch, and could only relax a little by actually touching the man she would have to give up. She couldn’t sleep; she lay listening to the calm breathing beside her, that she would hear only a little longer now.

  When the new day dawned, the day of her discovery as it seemed, she couldn’t hold Pierre at home any longer. Unless she herself … For a second she was nearly decided. Wouldn’t it be better if he found out that way? But instantly she knew she couldn’t do it. So he went into the city, where that other would certainly search him out. They’d meet … She fell back, limp.

  Her faint was brief, the same stroke of fear that had stunned her brought her to. Since she still had several hours to get through she ought to use them to think, to struggle. She’d go and see Husson, she’d implore him … No … she wouldn’t … that’d be the worst possible thing to do … he’d play with her terror just as he had when, lying on her whore-house bed she’d begged his silence … No … it was the opposite … he ought to understand she wasn’t scared of anything. Perhaps in that case … And Séverine’s despair became so total, so insupportable, that she hung on this new hope.

  That same morning Husson called. He knew Pierre would be at the hospital. Actually, he was only guided by curiosity. Did Séverine really believe him capable of the infamy she’d suggested in her fear?

  “If she trusts my discretion,” thought Husson, “I’ll confirm her confidence. And if she doesn’t, I’ll reassure her that everything’s all right.”

  But Séverine took neither attitude. It was obvious to her that Husson wanted to talk with Pierre; so, following up the only course of battle she’d conceived she said drily:

  “My husband’s not in.”

  And hung up.

  Husson took this desperate maneuver as an effect of her pride, insufficiently schooled by her one humiliation.

  “She’ll come on her knees to me yet,” he thought.

  An hour later the maid came in to tell Séverine that a young man was asking to see her.

  “He wouldn’t give his name,” she added, “and what a character, with all that gold in his mouth.”

  “Send him in.”

  Under any other circumstances the sight of Marcel in her own apartment would have staggered Séverine; in her present condition she was barely surprised. Her mind was full of Husson’s call, which made her totally indifferent to anything else. Marcel … Hippolyte.… Their reactions were natural, predictable, preventable. She could satisfy them if need be. But chilly, emaciated Husson, who lusted after dominating souls, rather than bodies.…

  “Good morning, Marcel,” said Séverine in a strangely gentle tone.

  Her welcome cut short the angry speech he’d prepared. Séverine’s sad unconcern crowned the sense of discomfort the room gave him. He stared at her, torn between fading anger and mounting admiration. He had finally placed this young woman, whose style, accent, and general manner had always given him a bewildering but beloved feeling of inferiority.

  “Well, Marcel?” Séverine asked in the same softly absent voice.

  “Not surprised to see me here? Don’t you want to know how I found out you lived in this place?”

  Her gesture was so broken it made him feel ill. He loved her much more than he realized; she was all he thought of now.

  “What’s wrong, Belle de Jour?” He approached her with a silent movement of his dangerously angular body.

  Séverine looked fearfully towards the door: “Don’t use that name here. You mustn’t.”

  “Whatever you say. I didn’t come to give you any trouble”—he had in all sincerity forgotten the blackmail he had planned. “I just wanted to know why you left, how I could get to see you again.” His voice took on a note of indomitable will as he added, “Because I tell you straight, I’m going to be seeing you again.”

  Séverine shook her head with a sort of fond surprise. She found it hard to think of the future.

  “It’s all over,” she answered.

  “What is?”

  “He’s going to tell him.”

  Marcel was frightened by the strange, half-crazy way she shrugged her shoulders. He’d had the feeling she was going crazy ever since he’d come in. Harshly he squeezed her hand, trying to shake her out of her daydream.

  “Talk straight,” he said.

  “A terrible thing has happened, Marcel. My husband’s going to find out all about it.”

  “That’s right, you’re married,” he returned slowly. It would have been hard to say whether there was more jealousy or respect in his voice. “That him?”

  He pointed to a photograph. Her favorite portrait of Pierre. It caught all the youth and candor of his eyes. It had been some time since Séverine had looked at it with enough attention to overcome the dulling effect of habit. Marcel’s question made the picture suddenly alive and vital. She shivered and groaned, “It’s impossible, isn’t it, that anything could come between us.” Then feverishly she said, “Go on, get out, he’s coming back. He’ll know soon enough.”

  “Listen, maybe I can help you.”

  “No, nobody can help me now.”

  She shoved him towards the door, too frantic for him to try to resist; nevertheless he said:

  “I’ll wait to hear from you. Hotel Fromentin, rue Fromentin. Just ask for Marcel. If you don’t get in touch with me, I’ll be back in two days.”

  Before leaving he made her repeat the address.

  Another day, another night.

  Séverine went through the motions of eating, listening, replying, like an automaton that she herself didn’t know how to work. The whirlpool she’d fallen into had first flung her from its narrowest to its
widest point. Now she felt herself slipping into the center of the vortex, where the eddies close as they form. And always beside her floated those cardboard masks, the faces of Husson and Pierre.

  After three nights of insomnia Séverine had reached such a pitch of nervous exhaustion that intermittently she longed for the whole thing to end. Then one morning Pierre, still in bed, glanced through the morning mail and murmured:

  “Why, that’s odd. I haven’t heard a thing from him in six months.”

  With every fiber of her being Séverine prayed that the letter wasn’t from Husson.

  But it was. Pierre read it half-aloud:

  My dear fellow,

  I have something I must tell you. I know you’re very busy. So in order not to take you out of your way and since I’m going to be in the neighborhood, I’ll expect you tomorrow at twelve thirty in the little Notre-Dame garden. If I’m not mistaken that’s the time you leave your hospital. Kindest regards to Madame Sérizy.…

  “He wrote this yesterday, so presumably,” said Pierre, “he means today.”

  “Don’t go, don’t go,” Séverine’s voice rose to a wail. She clung to her husband as if to bind him with her body.

  “But, darling, I must. I know you don’t like him, but I’m afraid that’s not a good enough excuse.”

  Wearily she recognized the one attitude in Pierre which would not yield to her wishes—his desire to maintain free, loyal friendship with men he respected. And Séverine gave in to a hopeless lethargy.

  This resignation lasted until Pierre left the apartment. But once the silence of death surrounded her again, once she saw and heard Husson giving her secret away (for she saw and heard him plainly), then she began to pace her room with the gestures and pleas of madness.

  “Please, I don’t want … I’ll go and … on my knees … he’ll tell everything … Pierre … help me … he’s going to tell everything—Anaïs … Charlotte … Marcel.…”

  And when reason again softened the glitter in her eyes she repeated over and over, “Marcel … Marcel … rue … rue Fromentin.”

  Marcel was still in bed when she entered the small, dubious Montmartre hotel room. His first movement was to draw Séverine onto the bed. She barely noticed. Imperious as destiny, she commanded: “Get dressed.”

  He wanted some explanation. She cut him short.

  “I’ll tell you everything, but get dressed quickly.”

  When he was ready she asked:

  “What time is it?”

  “Eleven.”

  “We’ll have time before twelve thirty, won’t we?”

  “To do what?”

  “Get to the Notre-Dame park.”

  Marcel wet a towel, passed it over Séverine’s forehead and temples, filled a glass with water.

  “Drink it,” he told her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you but you won’t last long if you go on like this. Feeling better now?”

  “We do have time, don’t we?” she impatiently repeated. It was becoming hard for her to connect two ideas, so deaf and dumb was she to everything but her single purpose.

  Her hypnotic state was contagious. Marcel didn’t even feel the need to discuss the matter. And where wouldn’t he blindly have followed his Séverine now that he had found her in his room, seeking his protection, after he’d despaired of getting her back by any faintly honorable means? His pimp’s instinct told him that she had come for one purpose only: to put herself under his protection. Moreover, everything conspired to make him obey Séverine: his love for her, his natural violence, and the savage laws of the underworld which required that men living off women pay for such assistance bravely and with blood.

  “We’ll be there an hour ahead of time,” Marcel remarked. “What’ve I got to do?”

  “I’ll show you, when we’re there … we’re going to be late.”

  He saw that she would calm down only at the place to which her whole being was directed.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  His hand plunged quickly under his pillow, sank into a side pocket. Then he rejoined her in the corridor. She didn’t notice that Marcel by-passed the cabs on the Place Pigalle rank, and made for a tiny garage in a side-street. Only there, as he began a whispered discussion with a man in a stained sweatshirt, did she protest. But Marcel answered sharply:

  “Let me run this. Do you think you can teach me anything about this racket?” Then he said to the other, “O.K., I’ll wait, Al. Between friends, right?”

  A few minutes later they got into a run-down Ford. Wearing a jacket, now, but no shirt, Al drove. He dropped them off in front of the garden, on the Île Saint-Louis side, as Séverine had instructed him; she knew Pierre would come through the Norte-Dame courtyard.

  “Stay here till we’re ready,” Marcel said as he got out.

  Al complained. “Only two guys in the world I’d take this chance for—you and Hippolyte.”

  Séverine and Marcel went into the garden.

  “Now then,” he said, “let’s have it.”

  Séverine glanced at her watch. Not even noon yet. There was time.

  “A man came to Mme Anaïs’ house the last time I was there. One of my husband’s friends. At twelve-thirty he’s going to tell him everything.”

  “Because he couldn’t have you?”

  “If only that were it.”

  “The sonofabitch,” swore Marcel.

  Then in a cold, unnatural tone of voice:

  “You don’t want him talking, I get it. If only you’d have told me sooner, it could have been fixed that much easier.”

  “I only knew this morning.”

  He was touched by the realization that she’d come straight to him, without hesitation.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “I’ll fix it.”

  He led her to a bench behind a clump of trees, which completely hid them from the square side of Notre-Dame. He lit a cigarette. They sat in silence.

  “After it’s over?” he asked her. “Yeah, what about it? If everything works out like you want, you’ll be mine? You won’t be anyone else’s? Of course, I’m not talking about your husband.”

  She resolutely nodded her head. Who besides this man had come to her aid?

  Marcel smoked on, without another word. From time to time his look measured the distance between their bench and the grilled gate opening on the square; then the distance between themselves and the car whose engine could be heard intermittently. Deprived of strength, of thought itself, Séverine waited. She had never felt less mistress of herself, nor felt so with greater resignation.

  “Twelve twenty-five.” Marcel stood up. “Take a good look and point him out to me quickly.”

  Séverine turned, started to tremble. Husson was standing about a hundred yards away, in a little alley leading to the gate Pierre would be coming through. Marcel did not mistake this trembling.

  “He’s there?” he asked. “Show me.”

  Séverine’s courage failed her. On Marcel’s forehead she saw the same sign that had shown there that evening in Les Halles.

  “Start talking,” he ordered. “You don’t realize.…”

  “No, no, let’s go,” Séverine stammered.

  All the same she didn’t move. Striding from under the shadow of the cathedral Pierre entered the garden. Husson started toward him.

  “That man, the thin one, going to meet my husband,” she whispered.

  Then, savagely, like someone releasing a killer-dog: “Go, Marcel. Go.”

  He bent a little. The curve of his neck became so expressive Séverine started running wildly. Instinctively she ran in the opposite direction to that Marcel had taken. Mindlessly, she passed through the gate by which she and Marcel had entered. Al was waiting there with his car.

  “Get in,” he said, with contempt.

  They listened. They could hear mingled cries. People were all rushing to one spot. Al kept on waiting.

  The noise grew. A police sergeant ran by. Al floored the accelerator.

 
When Husson wrote his letter to Pierre he guessed it would surprise him and that he’d mention it to Séverine. He felt certain she’d call him or even come to see him. He proposed to indulge in a conquest of her stubborn pride, and then give up a game he was already beginning to find tiresome and a trifle shameful. But the morning went by without a word from Séverine. He called her up. She’d gone out. At that point he hesitated. Should he go to the Notre-Dame garden? Of course, he’d prepared a plausible enough story to tell Pierre, but Séverine’s silence filled him with an indefinable sense of danger. And for that very reason he decided to go.

  Like many people who are essentially noble enough, but who are eaten within by a secret blight, Husson sought to fight free of his evil genius by deploying as intensely as possible the good qualities he did have. Therefore, since this meeting made him uneasy, it was necessary that he should keep it.

  The end result of these conflicts was that he got to the garden a few minutes before the agreed-upon hour. He had hardly entered the little alleyway with its view over the left bank before he caught sight of Pierre. He went straight toward him.

  It was at that moment that Marcel sprang forward.

  Even if Marcel’s resolution had been insufficiently powerful, Séverine’s murderous, passionate cry would have made him strike by its very vehemence. It was a cry which, with men like Marcel and Hippolyte, stiffened the spirit for battle, heated the still-fearful blood. And since he’d been lucky so far in a number of difficult affairs like this, nothing could hold him back.

  He ran with his hand gripping the handle of the switch-blade in his pocket. He was thinking lucidly: I’ll get him, make that plot of grass, and before anyone knows what’s hit him Al’ll be on his way. He trusted his own strength and agility, and his driver’s skill. But he hadn’t calculated on Pierre’s intervention, nor on his intended victim’s uneasiness.

  As he went to meet his friend, Pierre saw a man rushing at Husson. He made a violent sign of warning. Husson whirled and drew back in a motion that could never have been so fast if his instinct hadn’t been on the alert: there was a flash in front of his face. Supple as an animal, Marcel recovered his balance and raised his knife again. But Pierre had thrown himself forward: he saw a contracted face, a metal snarl. It was Pierre who received the blow, which caught him in the temple.