The Collected Short Stories

by Jean Rhys

  Well, and Ishima had got rid of her because she was faithful to him. Odd reason.

  It happened like this: he had a visit from a friend from Japan – a prince of the blood, who adored plain boiled fish and ate them in a simple and efficient way, holding them up by the tail with one hand and using his fork vigorously with the other. Ishima offered him with Eastern hospitality everything he possessed – his suite of rooms at the Sacher and the services of his little friend. But the little friend, thinking perhaps to enhance her value, objected – objected with violence, made a scene in fact, and Ishima, more in sorrow than anger, never saw her again.

  He just couldn’t get over it.

  Pierre told me that one day, after meditating for a long time, he asked: ‘Was she mad, poor girl, or would others have done the same?’

  Pierre answered cautiously that it depended. The ones with temperament would all have made a fuss if only for pride’s sake, and the Viennese have nearly as much temperament as the French, the Hungarians even more. On the other hand, the Germans – enfin, it depended.

  Ishima meditated a long time. Then he shook his head and said: ‘Tiens, tiens, c’est bizarre!’ . . .

  I thought of the story that night and hated him. He was so like a monkey, and a fattish monkey which was worse . . .

  On the other hand there was Kashua, who looked even more like a monkey and he was a chic type who had rescued another unfortunate bit of war material deserted without a penny by an Italian officer. Not only did Kashua give her a fabulous sum in yen, but also he paid her expenses at a sanatorium for six months – she was consumptive.

  There you are! How can one judge!

  Kashua came up grinning and bowing and sat with us. He showed me photographs of his wife – she looked a darling – and of his three daughters. Their names meant: Early Rising, Order, and Morning Sun. And he had bought them each a typewriter as a present.

  Then, with tears in his eyes and a quaver of pride in his voice – his little son.

  ‘I think your wife is very pretty,’ I told him.

  He said, grinning modestly: ‘Not at all, not at all.’

  ‘And I am sure she will be very happy when you will go back to Japan,’ I said.

  ‘Very happy, very happy,’ he told me. ‘Madame Kashua is a most happy woman, a very fortunate woman.’

  I said: ‘I expect she is.’

  Well, Kashua is a chic type, so I expect she is too.

  But I believe my dislike of the Viennese nightplaces started at that moment.

  We found a flat – the top floor of General von Marken’s house in the Razunoffskygasse, and André shared it with us for a time.

  He was a little man, his legs were too short, but he took the greatest trouble to have his suits cut to disguise it.

  I mean, with the waist of his coat very high, almost under the arms, the chest padded, decided heels to his shoes.

  After all these pains what Tilly called his ‘silhouette’ was not unattractive.

  One could tell a Frenchman, Parisian, a mile off. Quantities of hair which he had waved every week, rather honest blue eyes, a satyr’s nose and mouth.

  That’s what André was, a satyr – aged twenty-four.

  He’d stiffen all over when he saw a pretty woman, like those dogs – don’t they call them pointers – do when they see a rabbit. His nose would go down over his mouth.

  It was the oddest thing to watch him at the Tabarin where there was a particularly good dancer.

  He spent hours, all his spare time, I believe, pursuing, searching.

  One day walking in the Kärntnerstrasse we saw the whole proceedings – the chase, the hat raising, the snub. He often got snubbed.

  He was so utterly without pretence or shame that he wasn’t horrid.

  He lived for women; his father had died of women and so would he. Voilà tout.

  When I arrived in Vienna his friend was a little dancer called Lysyl.

  Lysyl and Ossi was her turn – an Apache dance.

  She had a wonderfully graceful body, and a brutal peasant’s face – and André was torn between a conviction that she wasn’t ‘chic’ enough and a real appreciation of the said grace – he’d lean over the loge when she was dancing, breathing, hard eyes popping out of his head.

  One night we went with him to some out-of-the-way music-hall to see her, and after her turn was over she came to visit our loge – on her best behaviour of course.

  I took a sudden fancy to her that night – to her grace and her little child’s voice saying: ‘Ach, meine blumen – André, André. Ich hab’ meine blumen vergessen’ – so I snubbed André when he started to apologize, I suppose for contaminating me, and told him of course he could bring her back to supper.

  We squashed up together in one of those Viennese cabs with two horses that go like hell. She sat in a big coat and little hat, hugging her blumen – in the dark one couldn’t see her brute’s face.

  She really was charming that night.

  But next morning, when she came to say good-bye before going, the charm wasn’t at all in evidence.

  She took half my box of cigarettes, asked by signs how much my dress had cost, ‘Why is this woman polite to me,’ said her little crafty eyes.

  Also, most unlucky of all, she met Blanca von Marken on the stairs.

  An hour afterwards Madame von Marken had come to see me, to protest.

  Blanca was a jeune fille. Surely I understood . . . I would forgive her, but in Vienna they were old-fashioned . . .

  Of course I understood, and against all my sense of fairness and logic apologized and said I agreed.

  For God knows, if there’s one hypocrisy I loathe more than another, it’s the fiction of the ‘good’ woman and the ‘bad’ one.

  André apologized too, but I’m sure he had no sense of being wanting in logic.

  So he grovelled with gusto, feeling chivalrous as he did so, and a protector of innocence. Oh, Lord!

  ‘Vous savez, mon vieux, je n’ai pas pensé – une jeune fille!’

  However, not being Don Quixote I did not even try to protect Lysyl.

  I think she could take care of herself.

  But though she got on as a dancer and became mondäne Tänzerin – I think that’s how they spell it – André was done with her.

  The fiat had gone forth.

  Elle n’a pas de chic.

  Because I liked Blanca and Madame von Marken, I even tried to make up for the shock to their virtue by hanging up Franz Josef and all the ancestors in the sitting-room.

  I’d taken them all down in an effort to make the place less gloomy and whiskery and antimacassary – but I saw it hurt that poor pretty lady so up they went again and I started living in my bedroom, which was charming.

  Very big, polished floor, lots of windows, little low tables to make coffee – some lovely Bohemian glass.

  Also I spent much time in the Prater.

  Quantities of lilac, mauve and white –

  Always now I’ll associate lilac with Vienna.

  The Radetsky Hotel was perhaps twenty minutes or half an hour from Vienna by car – and it was real country.

  But that is one of the charms of the place – no suburbs.

  It wasn’t really comfortable; there wasn’t a bathroom in the whole establishment, but for some reason it was exciting and gay and they charged enormous prices accordingly.

  All the men who made money out of the ’change came there to spend it, bringing the woman of the moment.

  All the pretty people with doubtful husbands or no husbands, or husbands in jail (lots of men went to jail – I don’t wonder. Every day new laws about the exchange and smuggling gold).

  Everybody, in fact.

  Very vulgar, of course, but all Vienna was vulgar.

  Gone the ‘Aristokraten’.

  They sat at home rather hungry, while their women did the washing.

  The ugly ones.

  The pretty ones tried to get jobs as mondäne Tänzerinnen. />
  Quite right too – perhaps.

  Just prejudice to notice podgy hands and thick ankles – keep your eyes glued on the pretty face.

  Also prejudice to see stark brutality behind the bows and smiles of the men.

  Also prejudice to watch them eat or handle a toothpick.

  Stupid too – so much better not to look.

  The girls were well dressed, not the slightest bit made up – that seemed odd after Paris.

  Gorgeous blue sky and green trees and a good orchestra.

  And heat and heat.

  I was cracky with joy of life that summer of 1921.

  I’d darling muslin frocks covered with frills and floppy hats – or a little peasant dress and no hat.

  Well, and Tillie was a queen of the Radetzky. It was through her (she told André) that we got to know of it.

  Tillie possessed wonderful eyes, grey-blue – hair which made her look like Gaby Deslys, a graceful figure.

  And with that she made one entirely forget the dreadful complexion, four gold teeth, and enormous feet.

  This sounds impossible in a place where competition was, to say the least of it, keen, but is strictly true.

  Every time one saw Tillie one would think – ‘Gee, how pretty she is.’ In the midst of all the others everyone would turn to look at her and her gorgeous hair.

  And behind walked André, caught at last, held tight ‘by the skin’, as the French say.

  All his swank was gone – he watched her as a dog watches his master, and when he spoke to her his voice was like a little boy’s.

  She’d flirt outrageously with somebody else (half the men there had been her lovers so it was an exciting renewal of old acquaintanceships), and André would sit so miserable that the tears were nearly there.

  One night in fact they did come when I patted him on the arm and said ‘Poor old André – cheer up.’

  ‘Une grue,’ said Pierre brutally, ‘André is a fool – and Frances, leave that girl alone –’

  But I didn’t leave her alone at once, too interested to watch the comedy.

  Next Saturday evening we were dining at Radetzky with a German acquaintance of Pierre’s.

  Excessively good-looking, but, being a Prussian, brutal, of course.

  ‘Donner-r-r- wetter-r-r-,’ he’d bawl at the waiters, and the poor men would jump and run.

  But perhaps I exaggerated the brutality, for he’d done something I’m still English enough to loathe: he’d discussed Tillie with great detail and openness – he’d had a love affair with her.

  Just as we were talking about something else, herself and André hove in sight.

  André walked straight to our table and asked if they might join us.

  Impossible to refuse without being brutal, though Pierre wasn’t cordial, and the other man kissed her hand with a sneer that gave the whole show away.

  As for Tillie, she behaved perfectly – not a movement, not the flicker of an eyelash betrayed her – though it must have been trying, just as she was posing as a mondaine, to meet this enemy openly hostile.

  Nor did she let it interfere in the slightest with her little plan for the evening, well thought out, well carried out.

  She owned a beautiful necklace which she always wore, and that night she firmly led the conversation in the direction of pearls.

  I couldn’t do much ‘leading’, or indeed much talking in German. I gathered the drift of things, and occasionally Pierre translated.

  Tillie’s pearls (she told us) were all she had left of a marvellous stock of jewels (wunderschön!).

  In fact, all she had between herself and destitution, all and all –

  Ach – the music chimed in a mournful echo . . .

  She was sad that evening, subdued, eyes almost black, voice sweet and quivery.

  After dinner she asked me charmingly if I would mind ‘a little walking’ – it was so hot – they weren’t playing well.

  I was quite ready – it was hot – and Tillie went up to her room and came down with a scarf very tightly wrapped round her throat.

  We set out. Myself, Pierre and Lieutenant – I’ve completely forgotten his name – walking together, André and Tillie some little way in front.

  Pitch dark in the woods round the hotel – so dark that it frightened me after a while, and I suggested going back.

  Shouted to the others, no answer, too far ahead.

  We’d got back and were sitting comfortably in the hall drinking liqueurs (alone, for everybody assembled in the bar after dinner to dance) when André came in running, out of breath, agitated.

  ‘The pearls, Tillie’s pearls, lost – Bon Dieu de bon Dieu. She’s dropped them –’

  He spoke to me, the only sympathetic listener.

  Then entered Tillie. Gone the pathos. She looked ugly and dangerous with her underlip thrust out.

  A torrent of German to Pierre who listened and said in a non-committal way: ‘She says that André kissed her in the woods and was rough, and that the clasp of the pearls wasn’t sure. It’s André’s fault, she says, and he’ll have to pay up.’

  The other man laughed. Suddenly she turned on him like a fury.

  ‘Mein lieber Herr . . .’ I couldn’t understand the words; I did the tone.

  ‘Mind your own business if you know what’s good for yourself.’

  Meanwhile Pierre, whose instinct is usually to act while other people talk, had gone off and come back with two lanterns and a very sensible proposition.

  We would go at once, all four of us, holding hands so that not an inch of the ground should be missed, over exactly the same road.

  Too dark for anyone else to have picked them up.

  Tillie, to my astonishment, didn’t seem very keen.

  However, we set out in a long row stooping forward. André held one lantern, Pierre the other.

  I looked at first perfectly seriously, straining my eyes.

  Then André moved his lantern suddenly and I saw Tillie’s face. She was smiling, I could swear – she certainly wasn’t looking on the ground.

  I looked at Pierre – his search was very perfunctory; the other man wasn’t even pretending to look.

  At that moment I liked André – I felt sorry for him, akin to him.

  He and I of the party had both swallowed the story; we were the Fools.

  I could have shaken his hand and said: ‘Hail, brother Doormat, in a world of Boots.’

  But I’d been too sure of the smile to go on looking.

  After that I gave all my attention to the little game the German was playing with my hand.

  He’d reached my wrist – my arm – I pulled away –

  My hand again, but the fingers interlocked.

  Very cool and steady he was – and a tiny pulse beating somewhere.

  A dispute. We didn’t come this way Tillie was saying.

  But it had become a farce to everybody but the faithful André.

  We went back, but before we’d come within hearing of the music from the hotel, he had comforted her with many promises.

  And he kept them too. He turned a deaf ear to all hints that it was or might be a trick.

  When we went to Budapest Tillie came. Later on to Berlin, she went too.

  She never left him till she could arrange to do so, taking with her every sou he possessed, and a big diamond he’d bought.

  This sequel we heard only later.

  Poor André! Let us hope he had some compensation for forgetting for once that ‘eat or be eaten’ is the inexorable law of life.

  The next girl, perhaps, will be sweet and gentle. His turn to be eater.

  Detestable world.

  Simone and Germaine, two of the typists at the delegation, were having a succès fou. Simone at least deserved it.

  She specialized in English, Americans and French.

  Germaine on the other hand had a large following among the Italians, Greeks, and even a stray Armenian who (she said) had offered her fifty thousand francs for on
e night.

  Simone was sublimely conceited.

  She told me once that Captain La Croix had called her the quintessence of French charm, Flemish beauty and Egyptian mystery. (She was born in Cairo, French mother, Belgian father.)

  Both girls looked at me a little warily, but they were too anxious to keep in with Pierre to be anything but polite. I’d noticed people growing more and more deferential to Pierre, and incidentally to me. I’d noticed that he seemed to have money – a good deal – a great deal.

  He made it on the ’change, he told me.

  Then one day in the spring of 1921 we left the flat in Razunoffskygasse for rooms in the Imperial.

  We sent off the cook and D—, promoted to be my maid, came with us.

  Nice to have lots of money – nice, nice. Goody to have a car, a chauffeur, rings, and as many frocks as I liked.

  Good to have money, money. All the flowers I wanted. All the compliments I wanted. Everything, everything.

  Oh, great god money – you make possible all that’s nice in life. Youth and beauty, the envy of women, and the love of men.

  Even the luxury of a soul, a character and thoughts of one’s own you give, and only you. To look in the glass and you think I’ve got what I wanted.

  I gambled when I married and I’ve won.

  As a matter of fact I wasn’t so exalted really, but it was exceedingly pleasant.

  Spending and spending. And there was always more.

  One day I had a presentiment.

  Pierre gave an extra special lunch to the Japanese officers, Shogun, Hato, Ishima and Co.

  We lunched in a separate room, which started my annoyance, for I preferred the restaurant, especially with the Japanese, who depressed me.

  It was rather cold and dark and the meal seemed interminable.

  Shogun in the intervals of eating enormously told us a long history of an officer in Japan who ‘hara-kari’d’ because his telephone went wrong during manoeuvres.

  Rotten reason I call it, but Shogun seemed to think him a hero.

  Escaped as soon as I could upstairs.

  I was like Napoleon’s mother suddenly: ‘Provided it lasts.’

  And if it does not? Well, thinking that was to feel the authentic ‘cold hand clutching my heart’.