Belle De Jour

by Joseph Kessel

  “Paralysis,” Séverine repeated dully.

  As long as she hadn’t known the medical word for Pierre’s immobility, it had seemed somehow less disastrous. The affliction belonged to him, all by himself; it was in his power. Once labeled, however, he entered an anonymous category, subject to the dreary laws of all.

  “Now that you know the truth,” went on the intern, “may I offer a word of advice. Don’t talk to him too much. Make him realize as little as possible.…”

  “Pierre!”

  “I agree. With Sérizy it will be doubly difficult, but all the same we ought to be able to numb his intellect a bit. We’ve done it with others, I assure you. In sickness even the liveliest minds.…”

  “No, I don’t want to,” Séverine interrupted nearly savagely. “He isn’t impaired at all. He’s still Pierre. If you don’t think so, give him to me. I’ll be able to do it.”

  There was such absolute determination, such overpowering love in Séverine’s face that the intern felt like shaking her hand, as he might that of a gallant fighter.

  She never left his room. Day and night she belonged to those eyes that glowed like lost lanterns. Her own life was abolished. For what could equal the drama of the closed, desperate struggle that was going on within the immobile body powerless to transmit its will? And what a matchless victory Séverine felt she had won on the morning she thought she saw Pierre’s lips tremble. A scarcely visible vibration, but she was certain she had seen it. Later in the day the trembling recurred, grew stronger. Professor Henri stroked his patient’s forehead more warmly than he had the night before.

  The next morning Pierre could form syllables, his weak fingers were able to make folds in the sheets. A boundless song poured through Séverine’s soul. She was now convinced that a complete cure would come about, and the doctors’ cautious attitude only irritated her. At the end of a week she had wrung from them an authorization to take Pierre home. The wound had closed. She’d answer for the rest. For even if the lower part of his body so far remained paralyzed, he could move his arms and torso—in an uncontrolled way, true, but enough to satisfy Séverine. Moreover, Pierre had begun to be able to speak relatively well, and two experiments had proved that he could read.

  Never would Séverine have suspected that the simple act of bringing home a crippled man could have given her so much unadulterated joy. She had hated to see Pierre’s lips making effort after effort to formulate a single word; had hated to see him make a spasmodic gesture whenever he wanted to move his hand. Everything would get better now that he was back in his own room, now that he had smiled at the sight of his books —a smile the more touching for being incomplete. All that was needed now was patience. Séverine felt warmly and infinitely patient, and ready to triumph over everything.

  She’d completely forgotten that the woman who planned to nurse Pierre back to health had a double within her, who was a prostitute and murderess. She was abruptly reminded the following day.

  The gentle young maid who had worked for the Sérizys since their marriage came to her, obviously embarrassed.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you, madame, so long as you were at the hospital, and I didn’t want to the first day Monsieur came back, but—you’ve seen the papers?”

  Séverine answered truthfully, “No.”

  “I see,” the maid continued with evident relief. “If you’d seen the photos of the murderer.…”

  Séverine let her continue, but she heard nothing more. She had no need to. Her maid had recognized Marcel from the photographs in the papers.

  The room and its furnishings, and the still-speaking maid (Séverine heard vaguely “gold mouth”), all started to sway heavily and steadily. She felt herself swaying. She had to sit down.

  “I see you’re just as much amazed as I was, madame,” concluded the maid. “I didn’t want to say anything to anyone about it before talking to you, but now I must tell the police.”

  Séverine was sorry she had come home at all. Cut off from the outside world as well as from her own past, she’d had the right of sanctuary at the hospital. How utterly mad she had been to imagine the invisible ten-tacles around her severed forever. They were entangling her again. Oh, hadn’t she suffered enough? What further ransom did they want of her?

  “It’s true, isn’t it,” the maid asked, “I ought to, oughtn’t I?”

  “Naturally,” Séverine got out without knowing what she was saying.

  At once she realized the results of her reply—she’d be subjected to an interrogation, accused of complicity, imprisoned. And Pierre, barely free of his fleshly coffin, would learn the story—for not knowing which she’d made him pay so dearly. It was too absurd.

  “Wait … no, you mustn’t,” Séverine exclaimed.

  The maid looked surprised. Her suspicion helped Séverine calm down a little.

  “Yes, of course … testimony like that of yours, of ours,” she corrected herself forcibly, “it won’t lose anything by waiting two or three days now. But for the moment I can’t get away, you can see that for yourself.”

  “As you say, madame, but I feel badly for having delayed so long already.”

  Once more that sensation she’d hoped to feel no more, the despair of a hunted animal, filled Séverine. Once more she felt herself driven, cornered, at bay. And now it was no longer a man after her, but a mob society had trained for hunting her. Who would there be to take care of Pierre, to smile at him, amuse him, feed him, put him to sleep? All she asked was to be allowed this humble duty. And it was going to be refused her.

  The idea of death entered her mind; at this point she would have welcomed the icy deliverer with all her exhausted soul. But, thinking she heard a sound in Pierre’s room, her whole being was suddenly prepared to struggle—threatened love, dark anger, a furious defiance.

  “I’ll go on to the very end,” she murmured, “but they mustn’t hurt him.”

  She called Husson and asked him to come over.

  My accomplice, she thought. He knows. He’ll help me out.

  Husson became extremely attentive from the moment Séverine began to speak.

  “It’s worse than you think,” he said. “I see you haven’t been reading the papers. The police are on the right track.”

  “They’re after me?”

  “In a sense. That young man has a rather conspicuous lower jaw. The Anaïs household talked. It was easily established that your Marcel went to the rue Virène daily, and for the same person. Likewise Anaïs and the other two recognized me from those photographs I couldn’t avoid. A connection was established between my visit and your disappearance. In short, they deduce that Marcel hurled himself on me because of a girl in the whore-house. Next, several spectators, including a cop, said they saw a woman getting away in a car at the moment of the attempt. Other passers-by say they noticed the car parked at the gate, engine kept running, between twelve and twelve-thirty … The press is full of it. The story was cut out for them—an attack like that in plain daylight … Marcel and his various and sundry pseudonyms … the mysterious car, and above all this woman … There isn’t a tabloid in town that hasn’t used Belle de Jour in its headlines.”

  “Faster,” Séverine said, “tell me all of it.”

  “So much for what’s against you. There’s one fact in your favor, namely that in spite of all inquiries neither the car nor the driver have been picked up, and—most important—Marcel won’t talk. Which is pretty heroic on his part since if he did he’d be let off lightly. But he’s going to keep quiet, that’s clear enough. In other words, though the material facts they’ve got hold of are correct, their moral theories are hopelessly mistaken. At present the police, the press, the law, all believe Belle de Jour to be … if you’ll forgive my.…”

  “Say it. What do you think it matters to me?”

  Husson admired the way she’d given up all thought of herself in her love for Pierre (but the other man, the pimp, wasn’t he risking imprisonment for love of her?). He went
on:

  Everyone thinks Belle de Jour is a whore. And since you left no trace of your real identity in the rue Virène, there’s no foreseeable chance that any connection will be established between Belle de Jour and you. But you understand that if your maid breathes a single word, if the faintest thread leads here, you’re lost.”

  “But I’d deny … I’d say she was lying … she was trying to hit back at me … I’d.…”

  “Please,” said Husson, taking her hands. “We’ve reached a point at which you simply have to keep hold of all your common sense. Your maid wouldn’t be credited alone, true, but if Anaïs recognized you, and the others.…”

  “Charlotte … Mathilde,” Séverine murmured, “and then … all those men.”

  She started to list their names as if some dread clamor of wind, of which she was only the echo, were conducting them up to her: Adolphe … Léon … André … Louis … others, so many, many others.

  “And it’ll all be in the papers,” she said slowly, “and Pierre will read it, because he can read now, you know, I was so happy he could read.”

  She smiled then, a sudden grin that oddly recalled a mouth filled with gold, and whispered:

  “She won’t talk.”

  Séverine tried to take her hands out of Husson’s hold. He gripped them harder, said in a low tone:

  “Look, Marcel’s in prison. By yourself you can’t possibly.…”

  She shuddered. It was true. She’d actually wanted.…

  “Do you think a fat sum of money might do the trick?” asked Husson.

  “No. I’ve had her for ages. I know her through and through. I used to have only absolutely honest people around me.”

  “So?”

  Husson released Séverine’s hands, since his own had started to tremble. He left without asking to see Pierre.

  After Professor Henri’s daily visit, Séverine called in her maid. She told her the doctor had advised her not to go out for some time; she begged the girl not to hand over her evidence or, at least, to postpone doing so indefinitely. All she got out of the maid, who was now thoroughly suspicious, was the promise of a week’s delay.

  In the days immediately prior to the crime Séverine had thought nothing could exceed her suffering. She learnt now that pain is boundless. More than once she recalled a foreign proverb which Pierre had translated for her: “Oh God, do not give man all he is capable of suffering.” In truth, Séverine felt her martyrdom extending into infinity. Every hour brought her some unsuspected pang, since every hour showed her more clearly Pierre’s complete need of her.

  His wan smile and pathetically happy eyes whenever he saw her had been wonderful discoveries for her at the hospital; now they turned into awful accusations. What would become of her when she was arrested? When Pierre found out. When he learnt that, not content with tarnishing his love, she’d cut down all his strength and youth with the knife of a lover picked up in a whore-house.

  At least Pierre had then had a faultless body, a good job, with which to defend himself. Perhaps she’d die; or, if she lacked the courage for that, she might be able to rejoin Marcel, be soon buried in the mud of a classless existence. In the rue Virène she’d heard talk of women entangled in that way, passed memories rising intermittently to the surface of their drugged or alcoholic degradation.

  Drugs or alcohol … she might have had recourse to them, too; she felt the need enough during those leaden days. But she couldn’t possibly think of such a thing. She had to appear calm and contented whenever she was with Pierre, and she had to be with him constantly. He didn’t require her to be present, he didn’t even ask her to be. But whenever she left his room, the worried fixity of that lost face was itself sufficient appeal.

  She went into the next room to read the papers. They fascinated her now. They were full of information about her, in about equal parts of fantasy and truth. Now that everything else about the crime was known, the enigma of Belle de Jour had become the focus of interest. Reporters had questioned Madame Anaïs and her girls. The clothes Belle de Jour had worn in the rue Virène were minutely described, her hours of attendance discussed. Eventually a reporter rang the Sérizys’ doorbell.

  Séverine imagined she’d been found out, but the young man only wanted a report of Pierre’s progress. It was his visit that made Séverine realize her husband wasn’t getting any better. And that same evening Professor Henri said with unusual gentleness:

  “I’m afraid Sérizy’s going to stay just about as he is now. Possibly there’ll be an improvement in his speech, in control of the neck and arm muscles; but from the pelvis down the body’s dead.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Séverine said.

  She wanted to burst into wild, convulsive laughter. This was the state to which she’d reduced Pierre: he could no longer live like a man, but he could suffer with the best of them.

  The next day, having been given Professor Henri’s permission to read, Pierre asked to see the papers.

  “He thinks about it too much for us to keep the papers away from him,” the Professor had told Séverine.

  And Pierre, seeing his wife’s fearful hesitation, had articulated the words:

  “I’m not afraid.…”

  He wanted to add “darling” but it was a word he hadn’t yet succeeded in forming.

  His hands wandered erratically before he found what he wanted to see; Séverine had to turn the pages for him. Belle de Jour was the center of attention, and Pierre, with a sick man’s curiosity, grew interested in this woman on whose account he’d been so pointlessly stabbed. He couldn’t talk very much, but each time he read that name his expressive eyes turned to Séverine. His look tortured her. Soon those same eyes, more full of her than ever, would see the photograph of his wife under the notorious nickname. Her time was running out. She knew the term of her freedom—Tuesday morning the District Attorney’s office would have her maid’s evidence. And today was already Friday.

  On Sunday her maid came to tell her that she was wanted on the telephone.

  “It’s a Monsieur Hippolyte,” she pronounced distastefully, “and he sounded like a character too.”

  Séverine paused before picking up the receiver. What was he going to tell her? By how much was her wretched respite to be curtailed? Terror at the idea of setting off another disaster possessed her. Without giving any explanation, Hippolyte insisted on seeing Séverine right away, at the lake jetty in the Bois de Boulogne.

  She found Hippolyte dully contemplating the ripples on the surface of the water. His shoulders hung a little, something that would have seemed impossible two weeks before. His cheeks were grey. As Séverine greeted him his vast frame quivered slightly, his lips contracted in a destructive crease. But these signs disappeared immediately.

  “Get in,” he said in a dead voice, pointing to a boat he’d hired.

  Séverine was convinced he was going to kill her. A great peace closed upon her. Hippolyte pulled at the oars. He hardly exerted himself, but his strength sent them out to the center of the lake. He let go the oars, and in the tired voice he maintained throughout their conversation he said:

  “We can talk here. In a bar someone would have turned us in. But here.…”

  Their boat was lost among a dozen others, amid holiday laughter. It was a summer Sunday.

  “Marcel wanted me to see you,” Hippolyte continued, “and to tell you to keep calm. He won’t give you away. That was all his idea, see. If it was me, I’d have squealed right away, I don’t mind telling you. He’s got a good lawyer, I saw to that. With Belle de Jour in court he was O.K. Unpremeditated. Passion of the moment. O.K. And I’d have squealed on you in spite of him, even, only he told me if I did he’d tell about the two guys he killed. And he’d do it, too. He’s that crazy.”

  He ground his jaws, which seemed less hard than they had been. He sighed:

  “You’re lucky, you know it? Al saved your skin, and me, I keep my mouth shut. Now Marcel wants for me to tell you wait for him. He’ll get out
. He’ll come back. You’ll see. We’ll give him a hand. He wants you to stay his woman, know what I mean.”

  Hippolyte stared harshly at Séverine. She moaned:

  “What’s the use? The day after tomorrow Juliette’s going to the police and I’ll be arrested.”

  “Who’s this Juliette?”

  “My maid. She saw Marcel in my apartment.”

  “Wait a minute,” Hippolyte said.

  There followed a profound meditation. Without his having anything to do with it, a surprise witness was going to disclose the identity of Belle de Jour. Marcel’s interests and honor would be safe. But would he accept neutrality from Hippolyte? Might he not take vengeance, in the heat of his anger, as he’d promised? For several long minutes Hippolyte summed up these conflicting possibilities and also his duty as a friend. Séverine didn’t know it, but her fate was being played out.

  “So she thinks she’s going to the cops,” Hippolyte said finally. “That wouldn’t change anything if I didn’t want it to. I’ve got Anaïs and her girls right in my hand.

  All you’d have to do would be deny it, you’d be believed before your maid. But she won’t go. It’d be better if she didn’t go.”

  Séverine said in a whisper, “You mean, you’ll.…”

  “Don’t be scared. I don’t hit often, only when I have to. No, I’ll just talk to her. That’ll be enough. Just like I’d have talked with the other one, the guy Marcel missed.”

  He was swinging the boat back to the landing-platform. Before coming alongside he asked her: “Any message for Marcel?”

  Séverine looked Hippolyte straight in the face.

  “Please tell him,” she said, “that after my husband there’s no one in the world I love more.”

  Her tone seemed to touch Hippolyte. He shook his head. “Ah, that husband of yours, I read how he’s half done for … and I once said you were lucky! The whole thing’s come out bad. But any way, you don’t have to bother about Juliette any more. Now go and take care of your cripple and don’t worry, poor girl.”