She extracted an American filtered cigarette from her bag as unobtrusively as possible, for she did not want Claude to light it or want any of his attentions. Hastily, she snapped her lighter and applied it to the cigarette, so maintaining another small victory in her remote independence.
Not many hours ago—three, four, five at most—they had been brought across the smooth highway from Paris to Orly Field by a convoy of Institut colleagues and pompous government officials. They had boarded the Air France jet, Flight 794, at 10.40 in the morning, amid a noisy fanfare and demonstration from their friends and the circle of newspapermen. As they climbed into the plane, there had been shouts below for one last photograph. She had permitted Claude to hold her arm—the possessive façade of marriage—as they posed. The second that they were inside the jet, she had shaken her arm free.
In the noiseless, capsuled period since they were airborne, there had been only monosyllabic exchanges between them. Are you comfortable, Denise? Oui. Champagne? Non. Like one of my books? Non. Beautiful plane? Oui. The translucent barrier between them, like the one separating two male Siamese fighting fish, was made more bearable by the fact that they were, indeed, in an aquarium, watched, peered at, attended, thankfully not alone. Other passengers, informed of their fame and destination, drifted by to make conversation with Claude. Either a hostess or the steward seemed to hover constantly, awaiting command. Several times, one of the pilots came back to inquire if they were comfortable.
Now, Denise Marceau was aware that the taller hostess was addressing them on the intercom. She spoke first in French, then in English. ‘It is exactly two o’clock,’ she announced. ‘We will put down in Stockholm on schedule, in twenty-five minutes. Thank you.’
Watching this hostess, whose small brassière cups were outlined behind her white blouse, Denise was unaccountably enraged. Or accountably, for she associated this anonymous girl with Gisèle Jordan, and hatred of her husband filled her throat. She had almost spoken up in Copenhagen during the brief stopover when they had not left the plane, but had finally sat without progress or purpose. Now her resentment and wrath were even greater. Blindly, she twisted towards Claude.
‘Why in the devil do you not put down that goddam book and say something for yourself?’ she demanded, fighting to keep her voice low.
Claude recoiled instinctively from the harshness of her sudden outburst, then slowly, controlled, he placed the bookmark between the pages, shut the book, and sat up. ‘What do you want me to say?’ he asked. ‘I have tried to make conversation a dozen times. But you insist on punishing me with silence.’
‘I should not have come on this damn trip at all. I do not want be seen with you. You were with that bitch the night before last, and do not try to deny it.’
His composure broke briefly. ‘What do you mean? Denise—’
‘I mean you deliberately went to see her, dined with her, went to someone else’s apartment and slept with her.’
‘You are upset. You are imagining—’
‘Stop it, stop it. I know.’
She would not reveal to him exactly how she knew, even though he had probably already guessed, but still, she would not tell him outright. She would not discuss this part of it or any other details of her humiliation of the three weeks past.
‘Your horrible affair was bad enough,’ she was saying. ‘How I can even look at you again, I don’t know. But to lie to me after—deliberately lie—promise me, pat me on the head—a passing indiscretion, a mistake, no more—and then brazenly resume—’
‘Denise,’ he said with difficulty, glancing off to see if they were being overheard, ‘nothing more passed between us. I simply had to see her once more to—to tell her—’
‘You saw her more than once more, and you slept with her. You have lost all your pride and prudence. You do not give a damn about me, us, our reputations—you are going on headlong—like some schoolboy in the Place Pigalle, in love with a prostitute.’
She was uncontrolled, he saw, surprisingly wild and capable of anything. He did not wish a scene now or here, especially not here. ‘Denise, please,’ he pleaded. ‘Wait until we get to Stockholm and we are alone. I shall explain everything. This is a problem between us. We will work it out privately.’
‘No—now—’
‘I have tried to speak to you a dozen times in the last weeks,’ he said with exasperation, ‘but you were playing the great wounded—the sufferer. I could not get a word from you. Now you want to stage it here, in a crowded plane. Look, people are watching us right now. Where is your sense of respectability—decency? We still have a marriage—’
‘Have we?’ she demanded. ‘I love that. Look who speaks of decency—respectability—with a kept whore on the side.’
‘Denise, I beg of you. Everyone’s listening.’
This time, his plea reached her. She bit her lip, surreptitiously observed the passengers around them, and then sat back in sullen silence.
‘We will find a solution,’ he added lamel desperate to placate her. ‘Soon as this Nobel affair is over with—’
‘To hell with Nobel,’ she said, ‘and to hell with you.’ With a violent wrench of her body, she turned her back on him, curling in the seat, arms folded, pretending to sleep.
But Denise Marceau did not sleep. The play in her head was this, and the Chevalier von Sacher-Masoch had lent his name to it: act one, the discovery; act two, the confirmation and confrontation; act three, they lived unhappily ever after.
Act one. She let the players perform. She did not direct them. She was the leading lady. To avoid illusion, to highlight reality, her mind took her from the present and placed her on the stage of the past.
After the reading of their paper had secured their triumph, Claude’s restlessness began, and she had understood it for she felt as he did. The cluttered apartment was particularly empty after the busy, crowded years in the laboratory. Yet she adjusted quickly, occupied herself with women’s work, and was soon more satisfied.
Claude remained unsociable and moody, and when he took to protracted periods away from the apartment each day, she did not mind. People varied in their needs and ways to find their balance. She was correct in her tolerance, she believed, for soon Claude’s natural enthusiasm and vitality returned. Life became tolerable, even fun, again. Although his need for her body was less, she excused him. Six years of exhaustive labours had taken their toll. Moreover, he was affectionate and thoughtful, which was pleasing. One day, she surmised, he would be completely rested, and then be able to give her more. Sometimes, evaluating his returned good humour after evenings at restaurants or the club with other men, she decided that he was weighing a new project, a fresh undertaking, and this she hoped for more than anything else. While she could not articulate it to herself, her instinct told her that in scientific collaboration they succeeded in a union closer, more passionate, more successful, than those of other mortals who had only the lesser union of flesh.
She tried to pick up the slack strands of old friendships more and more, having some of the women whom she had so long neglected to the apartment for cakes and conversation, going shopping with others, and forcing herself to make luncheon dates. She was not surprised, therefore, when a friend, with whom she had long ago attended the Sorbonne and had recently revived old times, telephoned to invite her to tea the following afternoon at Rumpelmayer’s in the rue de Rivoli. She had tried to delay the engagement a few days, for she was absorbed in selecting new dining-room furniture, but her friend’s beseeching insistence forced her to capitulate.
The following afternoon at exactly four o’clock, Denise met her friend, Madame Cecilia Moret, before the sweets counter in the foyer of Rumpelmayer’s. Cecilia Moret, an energetic thin woman who wore sunglasses, filled in her pocked cheeks with powder, and carried an introverted miniature white poodle in the crook of one arm, led the way through the tables crowded with stylish French and English matrons, to a relatively isolated corner in the rear. They found an unoccup
ied table. Cecilia tied the leash of her poodle to a chair leg and fed him a sugar cube and baby talk. Divesting themselves of their coats, lighting cigarettes, they ordered tea and toast for Cecilia and coffee and small éclairs for Denise.
Cecilia carried the conversation, ecstatic about a Bombois oil that she had found in the rue de Seine and handbags she had found for the holidays in the rue La Boétie, and Denise listened dully, wondering why she had neglected her dining-room furniture for this. The moment they had been served, and the waitress was out of earshot, Cecilia’s tone changed from the frivolous to the conspiratorial.
‘What is Claude up to these days?’ she inquired, squeezing her lemon peel into the pale tea.
‘Nothing much. Trying to dream up a new project, I suspect.’
‘Are you doing anything together?’
‘Not really. I think this is a vacation for both of us, after six years’ collaboration. I am catching up with domesticity. He is out a good deal, seeing if he has any men friends left.’
‘Mmm,’ said Cecilia Moret, with subtle scepticism that made Denise, sensitive to semantic nuances, study her with sudden interest.
Cecilia touched her lips with a paper napkin, thoughtfully, and when she dropped the napkin, she removed her dark glasses as if to reveal a nakedly sincere and intimate face.
‘Denise, I have something to tell you. No one else will, I am sure. And I feel, in good conscience, I must. It is for your sake, it is you I am thinking about. If I cannot be honest with you, then who can, and what is friendship for anyway?’
Denise crinkled her eyes, puzzled.
Cecilia continued. ‘Have you any reason to suspect Claude of—of—oh, misbehaviour?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.’
‘I will be frank with you, because I am not ashamed of being frank about my own problems—well, to you, in this case. Eight years ago, my dependable Gaston, reaching your husband’s age, had a—a most shameful affair with a Lido girl. I learned about it in this room, this way, from an older woman who was a friend of mine, and I thank the Lord for her. You can be sure I put an end to the stupid affair immediately. It was not pleasant, I assure you, but today Gaston and I are more in love than ever, and it is as if the other never happened. I owe our present happiness to the fact that I was able to stop his aberration in time, before he went too far.’ She caught her breath, and then went on. ‘Now, in your case—’
Denise felt the heat high on her cheeks. ‘Cecilia, what are you saying?’
‘I think your Claude is playing it fast and loose. I have reason to believe this—’
‘What a terrible thing even to imagine!’
‘Hear me out, Denise. Last Friday night, I was burdened with showing some Americans—friends of friends—life on the Left Bank. We decided to walk a good deal, so that they could see more. I was on my way to show them St.-Germain-des-Près. We were in the rue du Bac, going slowly, chatting. A taxi pulled up across the street, beneath the lamp. I hardly paid attention, until I saw Claude step out of it. He was facing me. He did not see me, but I saw him. He was under the light, and there was no mistake. I almost called out to him—but just then someone else emerged from the taxi. A young lady. I could not see her well, except that she was tall, young, extremely smart in her grooming and clothes. Claude paid the taxi, and it left. He put his arm around the girl’s waist, and kissed her cheek, and they went into the apartment building. I even noted the address—53 rue du Bac. I cannot tell you how upset I was for the remainder of the evening. It was so difficult to believe—Claude, so conservative, and famous now—taking such risks. And then I thought of you, and what I had been through. I tell you, I had quite a weekend trying to reach a decision. Should I tell Denise? Shall I not? Now you know my decision, and you can act as I once acted.’
Denise had sat paralysed with shock and disbelief throughout the recital. She was still unable to find her voice.
‘It was about nine o’clock Friday night,’ Cecilia added. ‘Was he out then?’
With uneasiness, Denise peeled back the days. Nine o’clock Friday night. Callaux’s stag party. No. That was Thursday evening. Nine o’clock Friday night, Friday night. Yes, yes, Pavillon d’Armenonville in the Bois de Boulogne. A late dinner and reunion with a former colleague from Lyon who was doing work in the structure of proteins.
‘Yes, he was out then,’ said Denise, hardly hearing her voice. ‘He—he had a meeting. With a chemical researcher.’
‘Well, we must be fair. Maybe this girl I saw him with was the chemical researcher.’
‘No. His friend is an old man with a beard.’
‘This friend had no beard, I can tell you.’
‘I cannot believe it, Cecilia,’ Denise said brokenly. ‘Claude’s never been like that. We are happy. He—now that he is so well-known—why, there is always loose talk about famous people, that they are adulterers or homosexuals or dope addicts. People have to do that. They cannot stand idols too long. They have to tear the famous ones down to their level.’
Cecilia saw that her friend was distraught, and Cecilia was not offended. ‘Denise,’ she said levelly, ‘this is not secondhand gossip. I was a witness. My own eyes saw it.’
Denise suddenly pushed her chair back. ‘Let us go from here. I want some air.’
They walked, the poodle preceding them, under the arcades of the rue de Rivoli to the rue de Castiglione, and then turned right and walked to the Place Vendôme. Denise remained unseeing, unhearing, totally unaware of the expensive shops, the pedestrians in the streets, or her friend’s monologue about Gaston and the deceit of men in general and the traps of marital life.
In the Place Vendôme, circling towards the Ritz Hotel, Denise felt her legs giving, and knew that she could not continue. She wanted to be alone, in her bedroom, and she wanted to think.
‘I had better get home, Cecilia,’ she said. ‘It is the maid’s day off. I have to make dinner for Claude.’
‘Well, you just remember the man’s name, he’s a marvel,’ said Cecilia.
Denise looked at her without comprehension, ‘What man’s name?’
Cecilia shook her head. ‘You haven’t been listening at all. Poor darling. I do not blame you. I remember how I felt that day. I was trying to tell you that before I had it out with Gaston, I got facts and data, so that he would have no comeback. I located this private detective. Monsieur Jean Sarraut. He is off the Étoile in the Boulevard Haussmann. Very discreet and expert. He used to be with the Sûreté Nationale. It is costly, of course. Somewhere about a hundred and fifty new francs a day, as I remember. I hired Monsieur Sarraut for two weeks. The results were a revelation. When I brought out Monsieur Sarraut’s portfolio of reports, Gaston was unable to utter a word. I advise you to hire this man, learn the facts, and then confront Claude. You will win, I assure you. A few years from now, you will thank me.’
They had reached the taxi stand. ‘Cecilia, I cannot hire a detective. I mean, it is all right in the cinema—but Claude—he’s my husband.’
‘You do as I say, or perhaps he won’t be your husband.’
When Denise returned to the apartment, it was cold, and she put on the heat. She was too shaken to cook. For an hour, she moved restlessly around the living-room, searching the recent past for clues to support Cecilia’s fanciful story, and finding some so circumstantial that she had to reject them. At seven o’clock, after changing her clothes, she determined to start dinner. Before she could proceed, the telephone rang, and it was Claude. He was sweet and apologetic. He told her that he had, by chance, run into an old acquaintance from Toulouse University, and the man was doing some remarkable work in a new area of genetics, and it would be valuable to spend the evening with him. Pretending scientific interest, Denise wondered who this man was, and Claude said that he was someone she had never met, a Dr. Lataste. Casually as possible, Denise wondered where they would be dining. They were going directly to the Méditerranée, said Claude, where they had a reservation, and then
they would retire to Dr. Lataste’s hotel suite for further talk. With effort, Denise forced herself to ask what hotel, and Claude replied promptly that it was the California in the rue de Berri.
Denise waited one hour, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and then another half-hour to be certain, and then she telephoned the Méditerranée, not at all sure what she would say if Claude was brought to the phone. When someone at the restaurant answered, she inquired if they held a reservation for Dr. Marceau or Dr. Lataste for this evening. She was told there were reservations for neither one. Allowing for a chance of error in the reservation, she requested that Dr. Marceau be paged. She waited. At last, she was informed that no Dr. Marceau was present.
Still, she said to herself, this was not evidence enough. Often she and Claude, at the very last moment, had changed their minds about the restaurant at which they intended to dine. Now she waited another hour, smoking incessantly, and then, with trembling hand, she lifted the receiver and dialed the California Hotel. She asked to be connected with Dr. Lataste’s suite. There was an interminable wait. She listened for the hotel phone to ring the room, tempering her fears. It did not ring. The operator’s voice came on shrilly. There was no person named Dr. Lataste registered in the California Hotel. Denise said thank you dully, and hung up.
Her next act was directnd simple. She took down the telephone book for the eighth arrondissement, leafed through it, returned it to its shelf, and then she dialled M. Sarraut, private investigator, and was not surprised to be put through to him even at this hour. She asked for an appointment in his office the following morning, and it was granted.
(1961) The Prize Page 12
