Women's Barracks

by Tereska Torres

  There was a little blonde Provencale whom Claude had baptized "Baby" and who was the most stupid, most vain, and most good-natured little thing to be found anywhere. She had rosy cheeks, blue eyes, and a perfect pretty-doll face, and she dyed her long eyelashes pale blue. Baby was interested only in boy friends, whom she recruited with great perseverance from the navy. Claude lent her own civilian clothes to Baby whenever she went on leave, gave her money, and bought her the little cakes of which she was especially fond. And with Baby, as with Paula and the Alsatian, Claude's relationship was never anything but completely normal.

  Now Ursula took her place among these neutral and restful friendships. She saw Claude as she was, a disoriented woman filled with rare qualities, and with common faults; a woman who would be old soon enough, but who preserved astonishing areas of youthfulness in her heart. Ursula defended Claude to me. At bottom, Ursula felt, Claude had done her no harm; she had never harmed anyone, for there was nothing destructive in her.

  Chapter 27

  Ann had a date in town with her new love, Lee. She arranged with the hall guard not to mark down the hour when she went out, for Petit watched her ceaselessly. Petit knew that Ann was secretly seeing Lee, and the poor woman's eternally vigilant jealousy had become the newest joke of the barracks. Petit questioned the guard, searched through the register, and was even to be seen lurking in the entry hall, waiting for Ann to come home. And during her lonely hours of vigil she drank at the bar, offering rounds to the girls, and taking one or the other of us into her confidence.

  One evening as I was talking to Mickey, Petit got hold of us and proposed that we come have a drink in a military canteen near Down Street. It wouldn't have been healthy for us to antagonize her, and so we accepted, though Petit was generally known as a bore. And when Petit was drinking she became more and more lugubrious, and her air of a little old man became increasingly pathetic.

  When Petit opened the door and we entered the canteen, all the soldiers in the place turned their heads to gaze at us, with particular attention to Mickey. They seemed to be sizing us up, wondering if the lively-looking Mickey was in the clutches of the elderly gousse, wondering, I suppose, whether I too belonged to that sect.

  Mickey tried to give the men the eye, as though to reassure them that she was a real woman; but Petit had installed herself directly in front of us, at a little table, so there could be no side flirtation. Now Petit began recounting her troubles with Ann.

  "Yes, it's horrible," Mickey sympathized, with her English intonation, and opening wide her large blue innocent eyes. Though she was intrigued by someone like Claude, the love affairs of a real Lesbian like Petit were a matter of complete indifference to Mickey.

  It seemed to me that our indifference, the indifference of the "normal" world, made the life of such women even more tragic. For they suffered from their loves, like any other woman, but without the balm of sympathy and understanding.

  Petit went on with her grief. It seemed that the newcomer, Lee, had acquired a complete dominance over Ann. Lee was very rich, Petit complained, and showered Ann with gifts. When the three of them were together, Ann and Lee behaved as though nothing at all were going on between them. They took pains to turn away Petit's suspicions. Tricky lads, Petit said, but she knew the truth well enough. She knew that Ann was being unfaithful to her. And Lee also, for that matter, for Petit had gone to bed once or twice with the Englishwoman herself. But Petit wasn't going to permit herself to be treated that way. There was going to be an explosion, they'd see! Ann belonged to her! And she went on complaining, and then she began to grieve for her life at home in France, where her two friends were waiting for her, two girls who had always been faithful to her.

  Petit knew, of course, that Mickey had made love with Claude, so she addressed herself to Mickey, as to someone who was sure to understand. But Mickey was obviously not listening.

  I wondered what Mickey was thinking about. Probably she was letting her mind roam over her years in the barracks, thinking about Claude, about Max, about Robert and the other men, and then coming back to Petit, and drifting from Petit to the Lesbians, and wondering about the soldiers who were eying her, and remembering a theory of love that Claude had once propounded to her.

  Love, love, love—even what Petit was talking about was love, and my mind, too, wandered on this all-absorbing subject. I was still like a bystander at a carnival, watching people risking themselves on a slippery revolving floor, whirling and bumping and sliding and falling and half getting up and slipping again, and sprawling on the spinning floor. Why did they have to do it?

  "Come on, come on," the people sprawling on the floor would cry, laughing hysterically and beckoning to the timorous bystanders like me. Indeed, Mickey had often given me the most meticulous explanations of her love affairs, and of Claude's theories on the subject. As Petit's monotonous complaint continued, I recalled one of these explanations for love between women.

  In every woman, Claude had told Mickey, there is a need rarely satisfied by men, a need for simply caressing, and she had described how one of her women friends loved to caress the "neutral parts" of her body for hours at a time. The neutral parts were the shoulders, the arms, the throat, the back, the parts that men seemed to forget. The insatiable desire for tenderness was felt most strongly in these neutral parts, which were so rarely caressed. Men made love each in his fashion, more or less expertly, according to Claude, and they were especially fond of those things in women that were different from their own bodies. When women made love with men, it was quite often with joy and passion, yet there was almost always a feeling of deception. It was perhaps the neutral parts that were disappointed, Claude had instructed Mickey. The very body of woman seemed to complain, "I want your love over me, aside from sex, aside from physical desire. I want the feel of your hand filled with a fraternal affection, forgetting my sexuality, just resting with pure friendliness on my arm."

  When she had made love with Claude, Mickey had said, there had been long hours when no one was in a hurry, when it had seemed that the entire night could pass without the necessity of reaching a final point, and she had understood Claude's meaning. This was love between women—to be able to rest their heads together, to hold hands. The stroking of a knee, the kissing of a shoulder-all this was part of love between two women, and this in itself could often suffice.

  Inexperienced as I was, I felt that I was becoming something of an expert on love, matching the evidence offered by my friends, and I wondered now whether love had the same meaning for Petit, whether with her also love was a tenderness. And I wondered, almost with dismay, whether all these physical things they talked about could really express love. Sometimes when Mickey rattled on with her technical explanations I felt a disgust growing in me, and had to warn myself that I must not let this grow, or I might become like Paula, colorless, unlovely.

  Now I was suddenly interrupted in my reflections; Petit's voice had paused, suspended. I heard Mickey say automatically, "Yes, of course." And Petit resumed.

  I knew that Mickey did not believe herself to be a Lesbian, although a sort of understanding had come into being between her and the gousses. Mickey was voluble too about her experiences with men, comparing them with her experiences with Claude. She had adopted Claude's technical explanation, that some women could experience only an exterior climax. They were frigid within, and could never be satisfied by men. Claude herself could experience a climax in both ways, and Mickey had immediately declared that she possessed the same gift.

  I wondered if it were so simple. Seated facing Petit, I kept thinking how sad her life must be, how sad must be the life of Ann, of Lee, of all these women. Their mournful eyes never laughed, even when their lips laughed. They lived separately from the rest of the world, cloistered among themselves, going out together, living together, going to Lesbian night clubs together, and the only men with whom they had anything to do were pederasts.

  Petit was talking about her farm. It was strang
e how all of them, before the war and in their postwar projects, were centered around this love of the earth. Ann's one dream was to install herself in the country and raise horses. Lee had an estate in Scotland. Most of the others who frequented our bar in Down Street also talked about their farms, or the farms they were going to acquire.

  Then I thought that Mickey's explanation was altogether wrong. They were simply more like men, these unfortunate women.

  Petit ordered three fresh cups of tea with buns, since no alcohol was served at the canteen. Then suddenly she looked at her wrist watch. She got up precipitately.

  "Ann should be getting in now. She hasn't got a late pass. Come on, we'll see what she has to say!"

  She rose, paid for all of us, and hurried out, glancing over her shoulder to see if we were following. We arrived at the door of the barracks at the same moment as Ann.

  Petit left us to fall upon Ann. The two of them turned from the door and went off down the street, talking. We watched the two women for an instant, disappearing into the fog.

  For once, even Mickey's natural exuberance was smothered. We could not help but feel a sort of sadness, growing heavier, a sentiment that there was something rather unjust in Nature itself.

  As we went into the dormitory, I realized that among all of the women in our little group there was not one who was involved in what I had always dreamed about, in childhood, as love. There seemed to be only frenzied sexual adventures, promiscuity, or these sad, strange inversions. I wondered unhappily whether such love could exist in our upset wartime world, the plain, faithful love between one woman and one man. I thought of Jacqueline and her passion for her captain, almost as a desperately wanted token that such love was no childhood myth. I needed their love to succeed.

  Chapter 28

  Jacqueline now had moved all her civilian clothes to De Prade's house in Kensington. Every Saturday evening she went to the house, changed into a civilian dress, undid her little bun, brushed her hair; she became once more a civilized young lady, and went to give orders in the kitchen, supervising the menu. She loved this role, and luxuriated in the respectful attention that she received from De Prade's officer friends. Here, at least, she could forget Machou's curses, Ginette's vulgarity, the curt commands of her superiors, and the common atmosphere of the dormitory.

  Every Saturday night De Prade came to her room to say good night, and then went off. Every Sunday morning Jacqueline, in her pretty flowered linen nightdress, went to sit on De Prade's bed and to wake him by tickling him. This had become a ritual. Each of them pretended to ignore the obvious; each played the innocent. Jacqueline would say that she was cold, and slip into bed beside him, while discussing literature or the weather. De Prade, feeling her warm body next to him, behaved as though it had no effect on him. There was a tradition of honor in him, a tradition of hardened generations of strong-willed men who did not readily accede to any desire that they could not control with their minds. And in his mind, De Prade had decided that he would not be unfaithful to his wife; because of honor, because of religion, because of a sense of duty—a mixture of reasons whose force arose out of his very blood.

  As both of them were from the same sort of world, neither of them spoke of what was going on within them; of desire, of violence contained, of home, or of love. Jacqueline still called De Prade "Uncle," and De Prade treated her like a young niece, a virgin, and the more warmly he felt her body against his the more persistently he set himself to speaking of politics and to pretending that everything was quite natural.

  But the intensity of Jacqueline's desire was as great as De Prade's will to resist. Soon their struggle was to reach a decisive point. In a subterranean way, I felt that the climax was precipitated by a great event at the barracks.

  Once more Christmas had passed over Down Street, and the New Year's holiday. Once again we were certain that the invasion would take place in the spring. It was 1942.

  The news came that General de Gaulle was to inspect Down Street. During the week preceding this event, one would have thought that his inspection of our quarters was a very important part of invasion preparations. We polished the house just as though General de Gaulle were sure to climb up to examine the tops of the wardrobes and to crawl inside the kitchen stove. Under the command of Petit and the officers, we drilled and drilled. The assembly bell never stopped ringing, and punishments for the slightest infraction came down on us like rain. Our dear captain had launched a veritable offensive in the realm of discipline. If one of us had the misfortune to fail to salute a superior officer in the street, if a sentinel forgot to come to attention at the passing of an officer, if a button didn't shine brightly enough, there came an avalanche of punishment details. And the worst crime of all was to voice an objection, for the officers, naturally, were always right.

  The most excited of all of us over the coming of the General was Jacqueline. To her, he represented something beyond the savior of France. He was the justification of aristocracy. He was the living proof that France had to be saved through someone who had issued from this superior group. Even her passion for De Prade had in it something of this worship of aristocracy, and I suppose the modern psychologists would say that she was in this way expressing her love and her longing for her aristocratic father, who had died when she was a child. But Jacqueline was so nervous over the coming visit of the General that she became almost as irritating as the officers; if someone so much as left an open newspaper lying on a cot, she would exclaim over the disorder in our dormitory.

  On the day of the General's inspection, everything shone in Down Street, and we all stood at attention for an hour in advance. The Captain had assumed her most important air, as though the visit were addressed to her personally.

  Finally he arrived, and every feminine heart beat more rapidly, and each of us forgot her years of exile and unhappiness. We felt only the pride of being there among the chosen, among the volunteers, before the leader who at that time personified all of Free France.

  From our first day of enlistment, except for the months when Jacqueline was in the hospital, Jacqueline, Ursula, and I had kept our places next to each other in ranks. As we saw the General appearing in the doorway, it seemed to me that I could feel the charge of pride that passed through Jacqueline, a possessive pride.

  De Gaulle was as tall as we had expected he would be, and he did not know how to smile. Grave and solemn, he had a face impassive in its severity. But one could see that he was a true aristocrat, born in the great tradition of the high French families. He did not try to exert any sort of charm, to make any conquests, to make himself well thought of. On the contrary, he was austere and hard. He said a few words to each of us, asked each woman her name and what she did, and passed on from one to the other, and our responses seemed to leave him totally indifferent.

  All at once a Brittany girl broke the monotony by responding that she didn't like her job, that she had too much to do, working as a waitress in a sailor's canteen. Her honest, prepared little speech came out in one timorous breath, like a complaint to a parent. One could see a shiver of horror going through the Captain and communicating itself to all the other officers, and then down to the noncoms. But the General paid no more attention to this reply than to the others, and passed on to the next volunteer.

  During the Brittany girl's outburst I felt Jacqueline become rigid. She was staring at the General in a hurt, puzzled way. At first I didn't understand why she should feel upset. Jacqueline was the last person to feel a democratic indignation. But I sensed that in some way he had failed her; he had not perhaps displayed the concern of a true aristocrat, a god, for every least one of his children.

  This incident of the complaining girl had a continued effect on Jacqueline. She remarked about it once or twice, until I understood that for her this incident had meant the loss of an idol. The General had not cared, any more than our captain cared. And she needed someone to care, she longed for someone to care as she longed for a father, and as I suppose
all of us long for a faith, a feeling that above us there is someone who is good, and pure, and responsible—as she told herself her own father must have been. And now that the General had disillusioned Jacqueline, he was gone for her, and only De Prade was left.

  It was shortly after this, at the end of March, that. De Prade received orders to leave on a mission to Africa.

  Jacqueline talked of no one and nothing else but this man with his deep intelligent black eyes and his square chin and his courteous manners. And now he was going away—the only person in whom she could believe.

  Just because he had resisted her so strongly, just because he had behaved so honorably, according to the perfect aristocratic code, just because he had shown himself superior to impulse, she had to seal herself to him, even if in doing so she caused him to break the code for which she loved him.

  On his last evening in Kensington there was a little party in his honor. All of De Prade's friends were there. They danced and drank from a bottle of Armagnac that had been brought back from France by one of our secret agents. They talked of the second front and discussed the latest news of Paris.

  Jacqueline was seated on a low chair at De Prade's feet; he was stroking her hair. In a way, she knew he felt himself saved. He was going to leave, and this struggle between them would be over. His honor was safe, the honor of a De Prade, who had never deceived anyone, neither his God nor his wife nor himself. He looked down upon the bowed neck of Jacqueline, looked at her hair, following the few bleached locks that she liked to wind through the reddish-brown mass. He put his hand on her shoulder, and she knew that he must have felt her shoulder lift a trifle in response to his hand. But she did not turn her head toward him. For if he saw her face, he would know that it was not yet over with them; even though he was leaving tomorrow, it was not yet over.