by Edna O'Brien
When he came, she refused to claim to be satisfied and with a few rough strokes insisted he fill her again and search for her every crevice. This all happened without speech except for the names he muttered as she squeezed from him the juices he did not have left to give. She was certainly getting her own back.
Afterward she washed, and as he lay on the bathroom floor out of breath, she stepped over him and went to her room to rest. She felt like a queen, and lying on her bed, her whole body was like a ship decked out with beauty. A victory! She had locked the bedroom door. Let him wait, let him sweat. She would join him for dinner. She had told him so in French, knowing it would doubly confound him. She went to sleep, ordering herself pleasant dreams, colored dreams, the colors of sunlight and of lightning, yellow sun and saffron lightning.
He kept the dinner appointment. Mrs. Reinhardt saw him from a landing, down in the little salon, where there were lace-covered tables and vases of wildflowers. She remembered it from her first day. He was drinking a Pernod. It was almost dark down there except for the light from the table candles. It was a somewhat somber place. The drawings on the wall were all of monks or ascetics, and nailed to a cross of wood was a bird; it seemed to be a dead pheasant. He was wearing green, a green silk dinner jacket—had she not seen it somewhere? Yes, it had been on display in the little hotel showcase where they also sold jewelry and beachwear.
The moment she went to his table she perceived the change in him. The good-natured truant boy had given way to the slightly testy seducer, and he did not move a chair or a muscle as she sat down. He called to Michele, the girl with the curly hair, to bring another Pernod, in fact, to bring two. Mrs. Reinhardt thought that it was just a ruse and that he was proving to her what a man of the world he was. She said she had slept well.
“Where’s your loot?” he said, looking at her neck. She had left it in her room and was wearing pearls instead. She did not answer but merely held up the paperback book to show that she had been reading.
“You read that?” he said. It was D. H. Lawrence.
“I haven’t read that stuff since. I was twelve,” he said. He was drunk. It augured badly. She wondered if she should dismiss him there and then, but as on previous occasions when things got very bad, Mrs. Reinhardt became very stupid, became inept. He gave the waitress a wink and gripped her left hand, where she was wearing a bracelet. She moved off as languidly as always.
“You’re a doll,” he said.
“She doesn’t speak English,” Mrs. Reinhardt said.
“She speaks my kind of English,” he said.
It was thus in a state of anger, pique, and agitation that they went in to dinner. As he studied the four menus, he decided on the costliest one and said it was a damn good thing that she was a rich bitch.
“Rich bitch,” he said, and laughed.
She let it pass. He said how about taking him to Pamplona for the bullfights and then went into a rhapsody about past fights and past bullfighters.
“Oh, you read it in Ernest Hemingway,” she said, unable to resist a sting.
“Oh, we’ve got a hot and cold lady,” he said as he held the velvet-covered wine list in front of him. The lobster tank was gapingly empty. There were only three lobsters in there and those lay absolutely still. Perhaps they were shocked from the raid and were lying low, not making a stir, so as not to be seen. She was on the verge of tears. He ordered a classic bottle of wine. It meant the girl getting Monsieur, who then had to get his key and go to the cellar and ceremoniously bring it back and show the label and open it and decant it and wait. The waitress had changed clothes because she was going to the cycle tournament, Her black pinafore was changed for a blue dress with colors in the box pleats. She looked enchanting. Ready for showers of kisses and admiration.
“How would you like me to fuck you?” he said to the young girl, who watched the pouring of the wine.
“You have gone too far,” Mrs. Reinhardt said, and perhaps fearing that she might make a scene, he leaned over to her and said: “Don’t worry, I’ll handle you.”
She excused herself, more for the waitress than for him, and hurried out. Never in all her life had Mrs. Reinhardt been so angry. She sat on the hammock in the garden and asked the stars and the lovely hexagonal lamps and the sleeping ducks to please succor her in this nightmare. She thought of the bill and the jacket, which she realized would also be on her bill, and she cried like a very angry child who is unable to tell anyone what happened. Her disgrace was extreme. She swung back and forth in the hammock, cursing and swearing, then praying for patience. The important thing was never to have to see him again. She was shivering and in a state of shock by the time she went to her room. She really went to put on a cardigan and to order a sandwich or soup. There he was in her dressing gown. He had quit dinner, he said, being as she so rudely walked away. He, too, was about to order a sandwich. The fridge door was open, and as she entered he clicked it closed. Obviously he had drunk different things, and she could see that he was wild. He was not giving this up, this luxury, this laissez-faire. He rose and staggered.
“Round one,” he said, and caught her.
“Get out of here,” she said.
“Not me, I’m in for the licks.”
Mrs. Reinhardt knew with complete conviction that she was about to be the witness of, and a participant in, the most sordid kind of embroilment. Alacrity took hold of her, and she thought, Coax him, seem mature, laugh, divert him. But seeing the craze in his eyes, instinct made her resort to stronger measures, and the scream she let out was astounding even to her own ears. It was no more than seconds until Monsieur was in the room grappling with him. She realized that he had been watching all along and that he had been prepared for this in a way that she was not. Monsieur was telling him in French to get dressed and to get lost. It had some elements of farce.
“O.K., O.K.,” he was saying. “Just let me get dressed, just let me get out of this asshole.”
She was glad of the language barrier. Then an ugly thing happened; the moment Monsieur let go of him, he used a dirty trick. He picked up the empty champagne bottle and wielded it at his opponent’s head. Suddenly the two of them were in a clinch. MR. Reinhardt searched her mind for what was best to do. She picked up a chair, but her action was like someone in slow motion, because while they were each forcing each other onto the ground, she was holding the chair and not doing anything with it. It was the breaking bottle she dreaded most of all. By then her hand had been on the emergency bell, and as they both fell to the floor, the assistant chef came in with a knife. He must have dashed from the kitchen. The two men were, of course, able to master the situation, and when he got up, he was shaking his head like a boxer who has been badly punched.
Monsieur suggested that she leave and go over to Reception and wait there. As she left the room, he gave her his jacket. Walking down the little road, her body shook like jelly. The jacket kept slipping off. She was conscious of having just escaped indescribable horror. Horror such as one reads of. She realized how sheltered her life had been, but this was no help. What she really wanted was to sit with someone and talk about anything. The hotel lounge was propriety itself. Another young girl, also with a rose in her hair, was slowly preparing a tray of drinks. A party of Dutch people sat in a corner, the dog snapped at some flies, and from the other room came the strains of music, as there was a wedding in progress. Mrs. Reinhardt sat in a deep leather chair and let all those pleasant things lap over her. She could hear speeches and clapping and then the sweet and lovely strains of the accordion, and though she could not explain to herself why these sounds made her feel enormously safe, made her feel as if perhaps she were getting married, she realized that that was the nice aftermath of shock.
The principal excitement next morning was the birth of seven baby ducks. The little creatures had been plunged into the brown rushing water while a delighted audience looked on. Other ducks sat curled up on stones, sulking, perhaps since they were so ignored in favor of
a proud mother and these little daft naked creatures. The doves, too, fanned their tails in utter annoyance, while everyone looked toward the water and away from them. She sat and sipped coffee. Monsieur sat a little away from her, dividing his admiration between her and the baby ducks. He flaked bread between his hands, then opened the sliding door and pitched it out. Then he would look at her and smile. Speech was beyond him. He had fallen in love with her, or was infatuated, or was pretending to be infatuated. One of these things. Maybe be was just salvaging her pride. Yet the look was genuinely soft, even adoring. His swallow was affected, his cheeks were as red as the red poppies, and he did little things like wind his watch or rearrange the tops of his socks all for her benefit. Once he put his hand on her shoulder to alert her to some new minutiae of the ducks’ behavior and he pressed achingly on her flesh.
If Madame were to find out! she thought, and her being shuddered at the prospect of any further unpleasantness. She did not ask about the bounder, but she did ask later for a glance at her bill and there indeed was the veston, the gentleman’s veston, for sixteen hundred francs. After breakfast she sat out on the lawn and observed the behavior of the other ducks. They pass their time very amiably, she thought; they doze a lot, then scratch or clean themselves, then doze again, then have a little waddle, and perhaps stretch themselves, but she doubted that a duck walked more than a furlong throughout its whole life. Then on beautiful crested hotel notepaper she wrote to her son. She deliberately wrote a blithe letter, a letter about ducks, trees, and nature. Two glasses with the sucked crescent of an orange in each one were laid in an alcove in the wall and she described this to him and thought that soon she would be indulgent and order a champagne cocktail. She did not say, “Your father and I have separated.” She would say it later when the pain was not quite so acute, and when it did not matter so much. When would that be? Mrs. Reinhardt looked down at the cushion she was sitting on, and saw that it was a hundred percent Fibranne, and as far as she was concerned, that was the only thing in the world she could be absolutely sure of.
Going back to her room before lunch, she decided to put on a georgette dress and her beads. She owed it to Monsieur. She ought to look nice, even if she could not smile. She ought to pretend to, and by pretending she might become that person. All the burning thoughts and all the recent wounds might just lie low in her and she could appear to be as calm and unperturbed as a summer lake with its water-lily leaves and its starry flowers. Beneath the surface the carp that no one would cast down for. Monsieur’s tenderness meant a lot to her, it meant she was still a person on whom another person lavished attention, even love.
Poor lobsters, she thought, and remembered those beseeching moves. When she opened the heart-shaped box in which the beads were hidden, Mrs. Reinhardt let out a shriek. Gone. Gone. Her talisman, her life insurance, her last link with her husband, Harold, gone. Their one chance of being reunited. Gone. She ran back the road to Reception. She was wild. Madame was most annoyed at being told that such a valuable thing had been so carelessly left lying around. As for theft, she did not want to hear of such a thing. It was a vulgarity, was for a different kind of premises altogether, not for her beautiful three-star establishment. She ran a perfect premises, which was her pride and joy and which was a bower against the outside world. How dare the outside world come into her province. Monsieur’s face dissolved in deeper and deeper shades of red and a most wretched expression. He did not say a word. Madame said, of course, it was the visitor, the American gentleman, and there was no knowing what else he had taken. As far as Madame was concerned, the scum of the earth had come into her nest, and though it was a small movement, it was a telling one, when she picked up a vase of flowers, put them down in another place, and put them down so that the water splashed out of them and stained the account she was preparing. This led to a greater vexation. It was a moment of utter terseness, and poor Monsieur could help neither of them. He pulled the dog’s ear. Mrs. Reinhardt must ring her husband. She had to. There in full view of them, while Madame scratched figures onto the page and Monsieur pulled the dog’s ear, Mrs. Reinhardt said to her husband, Harold, in England that her beads had been stolen, that his beads had been stolen, that their beads had been stolen, and she began to cry. He was no help at all. He asked if they could be traced and she said she doubted it.
“A case of hit-and-run,” she said, hoping he would know what she meant. Perhaps he did, because his next remark was that she seemed to be having an eventful time. She said she was in a bad way, and she prayed to God that he would say, “Come home.” He didn’t. He said he would get in touch with the insurance people.
“Oh, fuck the insurance people,” Mrs. Reinhardt said, and slammed the phone down. Monsieur turned away. She walked out the door. She had not a friend in the world.
Mrs. Reinhardt experienced one of those spells that can unsettle one forever. The world became black. A blackness permeated her heart. It was like rats scraping at her brain. It was pitiless. Phrases such as “how are you,” or “I love you,” or “dear one” were mockery incarnate. The few faces of the strange people around her assumed the masks of animals. The world she stood up in, and was about to fall down in, was green and pretty, but in a second it would be replaced by a bottomless pit into which Mrs. Reinhardt was about to fall for eternity. She fainted.
They must have attended to her, because when she came to, her court shoes were removed, the buttons of her blouse were undone, and there was a warm cup of tisane on a stool beside her. A presence had just vanished. Or a ghost. Had just slipped away. She thought it was a woman, and perhaps it was her mother anointing her with ashes, and she thought it was Ash Wednesday. “Because I do not hope to live again,” she then said, but fortunately no one seemed to understand. She sat up, sipped the hot tea, apologized about the necklace and about the scene she had made. She was uncertain how far she had gone. King Lear’s touching of the robe of Cordelia sprang to mind and she asked God if the dead could in fact live again; if she could witness the miracle that the three apostles witnessed when they came and saw the stone rolled away from Christ’s grave. “Come back,” she whispered, and it was as if she were taking her own hand and leading herself back to life. The one that led was her present self and the one that was being led was a small child who loved God, loved her parents, loved the trees and the countryside, and had never wanted anything to change. Her two selves stood in the middle, teetering. These were extreme moments for Mrs. Reinhardt, and had she surrendered to them she would have toppled indeed. She asked for water. The tumbler she was holding went soft beneath her grip, and the frightened child in her felt a memory as of shedding flesh, but the woman in her smiled and assured everyone that the crisis had passed, which indeed it had. She lay back for a while and listened to the running water as it lashed and lashed against the jet-black millstone, and she resolved that by afternoon she would go away and bid goodbye to this episode that had had in it enchantment, revenge, shame, and the tenderness of Monsieur.
As she drove away, Monsieur came from behind the tree house bearing a small bunch of fresh pansies. They were multicolored, but the two predominant colors were yellow and maroon. They smelled like young skin and had that same delicacy. Mrs. Reinhardt thanked him and cherished the moment. It was like an assuage. She smiled into his face, their eyes met; for him, too, it was a moment of real happiness, fleeting but real, a moment of good.
The new hotel was on a harbor, and for the second time in four days she walked over boulders that were caked with moss. At her feet the bright crops of seaweed that again looked like theater wigs, but this time she saw who was before and behind her. She was fully in control. What maddened her was that women did as she did all the time and that their pride was not stripped from them, nor their jewelry. Or perhaps they kept it a secret. One had to be so cunning, so concealed.
Looking out along the bay at the boats, the masts, and the occasional double sails, she realized that now indeed her new life had begun, a life of adjust
ment and change. Life with a question mark. Your ideal of human life is? she asked herself. The answer was none. It had always been her husband, their relationship, his art gallery, their cottage in the country, and plans. One thing above all others came to her mind; it was the thousands of flower petals under the hall carpet which she had put there for pressing. Those pressed flowers were the moments of their life, and what would happen to them—they would lie there for years, or else they would be swept away. She could see them there, thousands of sweet bright petals, mementos of their hours. Before her walk she had been reading Ruskin, reading of the necessary connection between beauty and morality, but it had not touched her. She wanted someone to love. As far as she was concerned, Ruskin’s theories were fine sermons, but that is not what the heart wants. She must go home soon and get a job. She must try. Mrs. Reinhardt ran, got out of breath, stood to look at the harbor, ran again, and by an effort of will managed to extricate herself from the rather melancholy state she was in.
During dinner the headwaiter came, between each of the beautiful courses, and asked how she liked them. One was a fish terrine, its colors summery white, pink, green, the colors of flowers. She would love to learn how to make it. Then she had dressed crab, and even the broken-off claws had been dusted with flour and baked for a moment, so that the effect was the same as of smelling warm bread. Everything was right and everything was bright The little potted plant on the table was a bright cherry pink, robins darted in and out of the dark trees, and the ornamental plates in a glass cupboard had patterns of flowers and trelliswork.
