Room to move! Space! She swept away her breakfast dishes with the back of one hand. The future needs plenty of room to manoeuvre in. She set those words to music and sang them as a song to the debris of her porcelain. The roar, I don’t give a damn for the roar, she shouted across to her umbrella, to her hat. She was so young, so modern; her don’t-give-a-damns were emancipation. But what was the cause she was fighting for? What was she emancipating herself from? From her virginity? But that suited her as much as her hair did when it was properly combed. What piles and piles of possessions one would have to have, how stupefied by them one would have to be to sell an iron for twenty francs. Twenty francs. The price of a slice of bread at the bakery. She was going to fritter it away, the money from the sale. But it was a matter of life and death. I am a saleswoman, she said to herself. The wind was scouring her, she had been washed clean, she almost had a profession. What was that flapping and slapping at her cheek? It was like washing hung out to dry and waving its arms in the wind; but it was also the enterprise she was about to undertake. She had always brushed him on high days and holidays, she had stretched him out on the table as it snowed, while the beggars begged in the streets. The idea would never occur to her that it is possible to share an icy room, to share the warmth of wooden logs at a hundred francs apiece. She had no more kisses to give him: she had already given him all she had left. No more emotionalism, she must be off on her way now to the land of success – she need do no more than open a telephone book, close her eyes, lower her finger on to the page. How was it possible to feel discouraged when there were pages and pages packed with names, when to consult a telephone book was free? …
An hour later, the package was ready. She lunched off a slice of dried bread and some cubes of sugar, then set sail into the sunlight.
The office boy knocked once. Silence. The office boy knocked twice with restraint. Silence, silence. The office boy knocked three times, with restraint at first, then more loudly. Silence, silence, silence. The office boy knocked four times with steadily decreasing temerity. He gazed at his wedding ring in panic. She also remained silent. The office boy stood in sullen hesitation. If I don’t keep on knocking, he’ll fire me, he thought. If I do keep on knocking, if I wake him up, he might fire me for that too. He sees everyone, that’s a principle. At such moments the office boy was always assailed by anxiety, angry with his forefinger because it was so timorous, angry with it for being too bold. He began another series of blows on the door. Being able to rest at the beginning of the afternoon was a stroke of good luck, even if you weren’t the boss. The office boy rejoiced at the thought that such a thing as a weekday siesta existed. Then, quite suddenly, he felt stifled by his employer’s silence. He was filled with an abrupt longing for a hammer so that he could knock harder and harder still.
M. Dumont-Boigny woke up, and with his eyes still scarcely open said: ‘Come in.’ He was available again; his five minutes of escape had rejuvenated him.
The office boy hesitated; M. Dumont-Boigny repeated his ‘come in’ and sniffed his hands: they had a scent of Gournay river mud. He had had a pleasant sleep and a pleasant dream about the boat in which he had once spent his days drifting down the river as a boy.
‘She’s peculiar,’ the office boy began.
M. Dumont-Boigny lit a cigarette. The stiffness in his elbows was irritating him. One thing at a time.
‘Explain yourself,’ he said, back once more with his business concerns on the rue d’Hauteville.
The office boy was trying to pinpoint the difference between the packet of Gauloises on his employer’s desk and the packet of Gauloises he himself would buy in rue Popincourt on his way home. He was all dangling arms – like an old monkey. M. Dumont-Boigny, very much at his ease, was comparing sample cards. The office boy shook himself.
‘She’s waiting without saying anything, that’s what makes her peculiar …’
‘So it’s a woman?’ M. Dumont-Boigny cut in.
‘I told you that in the beginning,’ the office boy said under his breath.
M. Dumont-Boigny was pushing away sample cards and pulling others towards him, all with one hand.
‘I don’t see what there is peculiar about being patient …’
He is taking her side without having seen her, the office boy said accusingly to the elegant pen stuck into the elegant penholder.
‘What does she want? What does she say she’s here for?’ M. Dumont-Boigny asked without lifting his head from his sample card.
The office boy was dozing on the penholder. He started.
‘She was already there waiting when I came on duty …’ He consulted his watch. ‘That makes it almost two hours she’s been standing out there. And she won’t have anything to do with the chairs I offer her,’ he added sourly. ‘She’s holding a package under one arm and she says she wants to show you what’s in it.’
M. Dumont-Boigny replaced the sample card in exactly the same spot on his desk from which he had taken it. His cigarette was burning away in the ashtray.
‘I want to see what it is she’s brought me, but I don’t want to see the woman herself,’ M. Dumont-Boigny decided.
The office boy turned on his heels.
A moment later he returned with the package done up in its pretty ribbon.
‘She says she wants to sell you what’s inside,’ he said.
He waited. He too was interested to see the contents.
M. Dumont-Boigny began meticulously untying the ribbon. He was irritated at so much mystery over a simple package.
‘I’ll ring for you,’ he said to the office boy.
The office boy left his employer’s office, inwardly blaming the strange woman for his dismissal. But he was scarcely over the threshold when there came the sound of his employer’s bell recalling him.
‘What am I expected to do with this?’ M. Dumont-Boigny asked, thrusting the package back at him.
He seemed depressed.
The office boy rushed back out to the visitor, mad with fury and curiosity.
‘Aren’t you ashamed to come bothering people like this!’
He tossed the package back into her outstretched arms.
The office boy was fascinated by the Anastasia mystery. It came into his mind as soon as the strange woman left. That black overcoat turning green … that round hat with the faded spots … perhaps they had been made by Anastasia’s tears – if she existed, that is. He stretched himself before going back to his desk.
My angel. Don’t be sad, little angel. Innocent little angel. I wanted to part with you, to get rid of you for money, but he didn’t want you, I would gladly kiss his hands, that man who didn’t want you. My angel, my little angel, I have learned what I already knew: we shall spend the rest of our lives together. I shall never be parted from you. I am hugging you because one always feels cold after people have been unkind. Warm yourself up close to me, we are closer together now than candlesticks on a mantelshelf. I can’t show you in broad daylight because they’d begin not wanting you again. Drink, my angel; everything I have inside me is yours, soak it up through the paper, through the sleeve of my coat. Suck my blood out of the hollow of my elbow where you are lying, where you are keeping warm. It’s just as you please, it will always be just as you please from now on. You’re tired because I’m tired; let’s sit down on one of the steps of his staircase. His double-barrelled name made me feel confident; especially the hyphen: it seemed like a link. What is he called? I’ve forgotten. It’s true, I’ve forgotten.
She sat down on the second step of the cramped staircase leading up to M. Dumont-Boigny’s business office in rue d’Hauteville. Tears of love flowed from her eyes out into the courtyard, the courtyard surrounded by tiers of business offices piled one on top of the other. She had become one with her little fox, now that they had been thrown out together. The first affront had bred and multiplied until it became a thousand different affronts. But now each tear of joy was washing one of those affronts out of her. To love one a
nother without asking each other questions. She emptied herself of everything, so as to become a simple posy of flowers. Life, oh life, she said, clasping her hands, though taking good care not to disturb the package under her arm. To be thrown out like that without being given a chance to explain, that was a misfortune. They close the door behind you, and you are in mourning for the very little that you had to tell. But the misfortune turned out to be a happiness: that was life. It was as simple as a marriage between blind people. So simple that her eyes were weeping tears of love in two long streams. My angel, my little angel. She could forget him now, if she wished, because he was herself: her withered dugs, the threads of silver under her arms. She did forget him for a moment, as she contemplated herself lying dead of hunger and cold in a ditch; but in her vision he was still surrounded by the warmth of her arm, by the warmth of the same piece of paper tied with the same pretty ribbon, and she wept at the reassuring sight of herself lying dead – yet still not parted from him. A noise. No one must laugh at them. She hid the package containing the little fox inside her coat. But it was only the doorbell of one of the business offices upstairs; silence returned. Her little fox’s eyes were round, they were boot buttons; but what was that she could see on the wall, above the staircase? A swelling, a lump of dough rising, a loaf of bread: it was him – that too was him, now that she had discovered they were never to be parted. I’m hungry but I can wait, she murmured to him gently, gently in the quiet staircase.
She took him out from inside her coat. If only she could see his eyes, two flinty sparks of gaiety since the insult they had suffered. No, she couldn’t take him out from inside his paper: someone would only come by, and then they would be forced to enact the same scene all over again with a different office boy. She was bound to him forever now, why try to turn the clock back? M. Dumont-Boigny’s knot fell apart, the package was about to open of its own accord – it was opening. The wall, the banister, the steps, the brass ball at the bottom of the stairs, they vied with one another to see who could shriek out those words the loudest. The doormat shouted them after the others, and more distinctly: ‘Aren’t you ashamed to come bothering people like this!’ They were all silent; the doormat had been the last to speak. And yet. When she thought about it. That page in the telephone book had been prodigal with promises. And yet. As she thought about it more. The finger she let fall upon that name had been so full of trust. She fled out into the street without opening her package.
The street after misfortunes. The eternal cinema that revives us with the spangled promise of its screen. She remembered: she had been wounded. She had already had it all out with herself: it was no longer possible for her to lose him by selling him, because she had tried it and failed. She had tried to make money from him, to abandon him, but now they were one and the same. Henceforth he would always be there, keeping warm in the crook of her arm whenever she went out. It was a long time since her dead had had a feast day. But there was no hurry for her to join her dead now that he was lying there, nice and warm, in the crook of her arm. She stood there sleeping with her eyes wide open; she stood there like an old, old child that has been punished and sent to stand at the back of the class: she turned her back to the street.
She was awakened by a baying of car horns. What was it the street had in store for her now? Portcullises were being hauled up, drawbridges were being lowered, swaying planks were being hauled into position, steps were unfolding from carriages, theatre curtains were swinging open: she turned back towards the street and held out her hand.
She kept her eyes closed a lot of the time: the endless procession of cars was tiring for them. She found herself aboard a moving train; she sat down beside herself in one of those old, jolting compartments … Distraught with gratitude at having found herself, she would open her eyes, see nothing in her hand, then close her eyes once more and continue with the train journey.
‘Here,’ a man’s voice said. A cruel-sounding, severe voice. The voice of a man already regretting what he was in the act of doing.
She opened her eyes.
A well dressed sort of man, a man of means, a man surrounded above all by that special glow that comes only from beautifully kept clothes, was putting a twenty-franc piece into her hand. The coin bounced off her palm and tinkled away across the pavement; whereupon the man picked it up and put it back in her hand again. Someone was taking care of her: she closed her eyes again.
‘How sad,’ he said, as though examining a case of contracted tendons rather than just looking at an outstretched hand.
He came and stood beside her, inspecting the wealth he had just donated. Then he picked up the twenty-franc piece and slipped it into the beggar-woman’s pocket. After which, satisfied with his attitude towards the alms he had given, he walked off. The woman standing there straight in front of her, indifferent to the money she was begging, made him feel ill at ease.
Having succeeded once, she tried it again. This time she formed her outstretched palm into a little hollow and stared down into it, absorbed by each deep wrinkle cutting across it. It was a nest she had built for money. Nothing came. She must divert her thoughts away from the matter. She gazed at the bundles of whitish furs in a furrier’s shop across the street until her mind became quite numb. The irregularly shaped skins looked like France on a map. ‘Wild fells bought,’ she read on the left side of the window. What were wild fells? She would leave this world without having discovered what they were. But, after all, ignorance was also a perpetual promise. Shop windows began to light up along the street: Paris was putting on its evening jewels before it was dark. She addressed herself to the bundle of whitish furs in the furrier’s: ‘I’m in mourning for all my things in the pawnshop,’ she said aloud.
A very short woman, scarcely able to balance herself on her high heels, was halted in her tracks by the sound of a pavement whispering to her about mourning and pawnshops. Her flared skirt danced round her legs, and her big, worn carpet-bag hid one of her reddish brown stockings with golden stars on them. She took a hundred-franc note out of her notecase, checked, after giving it, to make sure the money had not dirtied her gloved fingers, then tottered off on her high heels.
The street was kind, the city was tender at that hour of the day: she was a pigeon and the passers-by were bags of corn. A hundred francs. She wept and laughed. A hundred and twenty francs. All she had to do was stretch out her hand and it came: money was so obedient. Someone whistled, and there it was, driving towards her in a sleigh all hung with bells: the bread roll, bearing down upon her with its princely air. But this time she too was able to draw herself up like a princess: she was a woman of substance who owed nothing to anyone. She had just earned a hundred and twenty francs: it was as though the future were giving her a friendly handshake. She had difficulty in closing her fingers again; they had become so rapacious.
Happily, she noted, it was still not six o’clock: she was the ribbon in a little girl’s hair, fluttering in the breeze. After six, the wind in Paris grows stronger and disarranges all our principles. My beloved in my arms, my beloved I can never feed, she whispered very quietly. Her hundred and twenty francs were curing her of her hunger as she walked along between rue d’Hauteville looking into all the bakeries and pastry shops. Six o’clock. Flirtations between daylight and lighted windows, electricity playing truant. By six in the evening, everything had been sold. She didn’t want just bread, she didn’t want a bar of chocolate, she had to have something really special in exchange for this money so easily earned. The last two … among the croissants, among the apple turnovers: her luck had been doubled. To harvest a hundred francs. She was growing; she was too big to be measured; she was brushing against the tops of the apartment houses; she could feel the soot, the grime against her cheek … they were her friends as she rose, weeping, high above the cemeteries. A hundred francs: domination. The bakeries were at her feet.
She went in, imitating the carefree young man she had seen walking into the furrier’s an hour before.
‘Don’t maul them about like that; you’re not supposed to touch,’ the saleswoman said.
‘But I’m buying them!’ she answered, with a full swell of sail.
‘All right, you’re buying them, so!’ the saleswoman said.
Her hands trembled; the two rolls fell on to the tiled floor.
‘You see!’ the saleswoman cried.
They looked at one another.
‘Take my sins, all my sins, even the ones I don’t know about. I confess them all, because I know you will always be there, because I know you will always catch me in the act. I will give you what you want: a caress for you, a blow for me. I am your dog, and you are in your seventh heaven.’
The Lady and the Little Fox Fur Page 6
