Mathieu shook his head. ‘No. There’s something else. She knew quite well what she was doing. Why did she do it?’
‘But...’ said Daniel. ‘I imagine it can’t always be very comfortable to live within your orbit. She wanted to find a shady corner.’
‘She finds me too dominating?’
‘She didn’t exactly say so, but that is what I gathered. After all, you are rather compelling,’ he added with a smile. ‘But don’t forget that she admires you, she admires your habit of living in a glass-house, and announcing to the world what one usually keeps to oneself: but it gets her down. She didn’t tell you about my visits, because she was afraid you might put pressure on her feelings for me, that you might force her to give them a name, that you might dissect them and return them to her in small pieces. They need to be kept in a half-light, you know... they are rather nebulous and ill-defined...’
‘She told you so?’
‘Yes: she did. She said to me: “What amuses me in your company is that I don’t in the least know where I am going. With Mathieu, I always know.”’
‘With Mathieu, I always know.’ And Ivich: ‘With you one never has to fear anything unexpected.’ He felt a little sick.
‘Why didn’t she speak to me about all this?’
‘She says it’s because you never asked her.’
It was true, Mathieu bowed his head: each time when it was a question of getting at Marcelle’s feelings, an invincible lethargy weighed him down. When sometimes he thought he noticed a shadow in her eyes, he had shrugged his shoulders: ‘Nonsense! If there was anything, she would tell me, she tells me everything.’ And that is what I called my confidence in her. I’ve ruined everything.
He shook himself, and said abruptly: ‘Why are you telling me this today?’
‘I had to tell you one day or another.’
This evasive air was intended to stimulate curiosity: Mathieu was not duped by it.
‘Why today, and why you?’ he went on. ‘It would have been more... normal that she should mention it first.’
‘Well,’ said Daniel, with an assumption of embarrassment, ‘I may have been mistaken, but I... I thought it was in the best interests of you both.’
Good. Mathieu stiffened: ‘Look out for the real attack, it will be coming now.’ And Daniel added: ‘I’m going to tell you the truth: Marcelle doesn’t know I’ve spoken to you, and only yesterday she didn’t look as though she had made up her mind to make it known to you so soon. You will do me the favour of saying nothing to her about our conversation.’
Mathieu laughed despite himself: ‘How truly Satanic! You sow secrets everywhere. Only yesterday you were conspiring with Marcelle against me, and today you ask for my collusion against her. A peculiar brand of treachery.’
Daniel smiled: ‘There’s nothing Satanic about me,’ he said. ‘What impelled me to speak was a genuine feeling of anxiety that came over me yesterday evening. It seemed to me that you were both involved in a serious misunderstanding. Naturally Marcelle is too proud to mention it to you herself.’
Mathieu took a firm grip of his glass: he began to understand.
‘It’s about your...’ Daniel struggled with his modesty, and continued: ‘Your accident.’
‘Ah,’ said Mathieu. ‘Did you tell her you knew?’
‘Certainly not. It was she who mentioned it first.’
‘Ah.’
‘Only yesterday, on the telephone,’ he thought, ‘she seemed to be afraid I should refer to it. And in the evening she told him everything. Another little comedy.’ And he added: ‘Well, what then?’
‘Look here, all is not well: something has gone wrong.’
‘What makes you say so?’ asked Mathieu hoarsely.
‘Nothing definite, it’s rather... the way in which she put things to me.’
‘What’s the matter? Is she angry with me for having got her with child?’
‘I don’t think so. No, it’s not that. It’s your attitude yesterday, rather. She spoke of it with bitterness.’
‘What did I do?’
‘I couldn’t tell you exactly. But there’s something she said to me, among other things: “It’s always he that decides, and if I am not in agreement with him, it is understood that I am to object. But that is entirely to his advantage, because he always has his mind made up, and he never leaves me the time to make up mine” — I won’t guarantee the exact words.’
‘But I have never had a decision to make,’ said Mathieu with a puzzled look. ‘We have always been in agreement on what had to be done in such cases.’
‘Yes, but did you worry about what she might think, the day before yesterday?’
‘Certainly not. I was sure she thought as I did.’
‘Yes, the point being that you didn’t ask. When did you last consider this... eventuality?’
‘I don’t know — two or three years ago.’
‘Two or three years. And you don’t think she may have changed her mind in the interval?’
At the far end of the room, the men had got up, they were laughing with genial familiarity, a chasseur brought their hats, three black felts and a bowler. They went out with a friendly salute to the barman, and the waiter switched off the radio. The bar sank into arid silence; there was a savour of disaster in the air.
‘This is going to end badly,’ thought Mathieu. He did not exactly know what was going to end badly: this stormy day, this abortion business, his relations with Marcelle? No, it was something vaguer and more comprehensive: his life, Europe, this ineffectual, ominous peace. He had a vision of Brunet’s red hair: ‘There will be war in September.’ At that moment, in the dim, deserted bar, one could almost believe it. There had been something tainted in his life that summer.
‘Is she afraid of the operation?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Daniel, with a distant air.
‘She wants me to marry her?’
Daniel burst out laughing: ‘I don’t know at all, that’s asking me too much. Anyway, it can’t be as simple as all that. Look here, you ought to have a talk with her this evening. Without mentioning me, of course: as though you had been attacked by scruples. From her manner yesterday, I should be surprised if she doesn’t tell you everything: she looked as though she wanted to unburden herself.’
‘Very well. I’ll try to make her talk.’
A silence followed, then Daniel added with an embarrassed air: ‘Well, I’ve warned you.’
‘Yes, thanks all the same,’ said Mathieu.
‘Are you annoyed with me?’
‘Not at all. It is so very much the sort of service that you favour: it drops on a fellow’s head as plumb as a tile.’
Daniel laughed heartily, opening his mouth wide, exposing his brilliant teeth and the back of his throat.
‘I oughtn’t to have done it,’ she thought, with her hand on the receiver; ‘I oughtn’t to have done it, we always told each other everything. He is thinking — Marcelle used to tell me everything — Oh, he thinks it, he knows, by now he knows; shocked amazement in his head and this little voice in his head — Marcelle always told me everything, it is there, at this moment — it is there in his head. Oh, it’s beyond bearing; I would a hundred times rather he hated me, but there he was, sitting on the café sofa, his arms dangling as though he had just dropped something, and his eyes fixed on the floor as though something lay there broken. It’s done, the conversation has taken place. Neither seen nor heard, I was not there, I knew nothing; but it has happened, the words have been spoken and I know nothing; the grave voice rises like smoke to the café ceiling, the voice will come from there; the fine, grave voice that always makes the disc of the receiver quiver; it will come from there and say that it is done; O God — O God, what will it say? I am naked, I am pregnant, and that voice will come out fully clad from the white disc; we oughtn’t to have done it, we oughtn’t to have done it. She could almost have been angry with Daniel if it had been possible to be angry with him; he has been so
generous, so good; he is the only person who ever bothered about me. He took up my cause, did the Archangel, and he devoted his grand voice to it. A woman, a weak woman, utterly weak, and protected in the world of men and of the living by a dark, warm voice. The voice will come from there, and it will say — Marcelle used to tell me everything — poor Mathieu, dear Archangel! At the thought of the Archangel, her eyes melted into soft tears, tears of abundance and fertility; the tears of a true woman after a scorching week; tears of a soft, soft woman, who has found someone to protect her. He took me in his arms, a woman caressed and now protected; teardrops glimmering in her eyes, a caress trickling sinuously down her cheeks on to pouting, quivering lips. For a week she had been looking at a fixed point in the distance, with dry and desolate eyes: they’ll kill me. For a week she had been a Marcelle who knew her mind, a hard and sensible Marcelle, a manly Marcelle. He says I am a man and behold the tears; the weak woman, the streaming eyes. Why resist, tomorrow I’ll be hard and sensible; once and for once only, tears, remorse, sweet self-pity, and humility sweeter still; velvet hands on my sides and on my thighs. She longed to take Mathieu in her arms and ask his pardon; pardon on her knees: poor Mathieu, my poor dear fellow. Once, once only, to be protected and forgiven, it’s so comforting. An idea suddenly took her breath away, and filled her veins with vinegar. This evening when he comes into the room, when I put my arms round his neck and kiss him, he’ll know everything, and I’ll have to pretend not to know that he knows. Ah, we’re deceiving him, she thought in desperation, we’re still deceiving him; we tell him everything, but our sincerity is tainted. He knows he will come in this evening, I shall see his kind eyes, I shall think to myself — he knows and how shall I bear it; my poor old fellow, for the first time in my life I have hurt you — ah, I’ll agree to everything, I’ll go to the old woman, I’ll destroy the child; I’m ashamed, café I’ll do what he wishes, everything you wish.’
The telephone-bell rang beneath her fingers, she clutched the receiver.
‘Hullo!’ she said. ‘Hullo! Is that Daniel?’
‘Yes,’ said the fine, calm voice. ‘Who is that speaking?’
‘Marcelle.’
‘Good morning, my dear Marcelle.’
‘Good morning,’ said Marcelle. Her heart was thumping heavily.
‘Did you sleep well?’ — deep down within her the grave voice echoed — oh the exquisite pain of it! ‘I left you terribly late last evening, Mme Duffet will be furious. But I hope she didn’t know.’
‘No,’ gasped Marcelle, ‘she didn’t know. She was fast asleep when you left...’
‘And you?’ insisted the gentle voice. ‘Did you sleep?’
‘I? Well — not badly. I’m rather nervy, you know.’
Daniel laughed, a lovely, luscious laugh; a delicate and melodious laugh. Marcelle felt a little easier.
‘You mustn’t get nervy,’ said he, ‘everything went very well.’
‘Everything... Is that true?’
‘It is. Even better than I hoped. We have never really appreciated Mathieu, my dear Marcelle.’
Marcelle felt a stab of harsh remorse. And she said: ‘I quite agree. We never did appreciate him, did we?’
‘He pulled me up at the very start,’ said Daniel. ‘He said that he quite understood that something had gone wrong, and that this had been on his mind all yesterday.’
‘You... you told him that we had been seeing each other?’ asked Marcelle, in a strangled voice.
‘Of course,’ said Daniel, with astonishment. ‘Wasn’t that what we agreed?’
‘Yes... yes... how did he take it?’
Daniel appeared to hesitate: ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Definitely, very well. At first he wouldn’t believe it...’
‘I expect he said — “Marcelle tells me everything.”’
‘He did’ — Daniel seemed amused — ‘he said it in so many words.’
‘Daniel!’ said Marcelle. ‘I feel rather remorseful.’
Again she heard the deep, exultant laugh. ‘Ah well, and so does he. He departed in a torment of remorse. If you are both in that sort of mood, I should like to be concealed somewhere in your room when he sees you: it looks like being a delightful scene.’
He laughed again, and Marcelle thought with humble gratitude: ‘He’s making fun of me.’ But the voice had resumed its gravity, and the receiver vibrated like an organ.
‘No, seriously, Marcelle, everything is going as well as possible: I am so glad for your sake. He didn’t let me talk, he stopped me almost at once, and said: “Poor Marcelle, I am deeply to blame, I loathe myself, but I’ll make it up to her, do you think there’s still time?” — And his eyes were quite red. How he does love you.’
‘Oh Daniel!’ said Marcelle. ‘Oh Daniel... Oh Daniel.’
A silence followed, then Daniel added: ‘He told me he would have a frank talk with you this very evening. We’ll clear it all up — At present, everything is in your hands, Marcelle. He’ll do everything you wish.’
‘Oh Daniel! Oh Daniel!’ she recovered herself a little, and added: ‘You’ve been so good, so... I should like to see you as soon as possible, I have so many things to say, and I can’t talk to you without seeing your face. Can you come tomorrow?’
The voice, when it came, seemed harsher, it had lost its harmonies.
‘Not tomorrow. Of course I’m most anxious to see you... Look here, Marcelle, I’ll ring you up.’
‘All right,’ said Marcelle: ‘ring me up soon. Ah! Daniel, my dear Daniel...’
‘Good-bye, Marcelle,’ said Daniel. ‘Play your cards well this evening.’
‘Daniel!’ she cried. But he had gone. Marcelle put down the receiver, and passed her handkerchief over her damp eyes. ‘The Archangel! He ran away pretty quick, for fear I might thank him.’ She approached the window, and looked at the passers-by: women, street-boys, a few workmen — how happy they looked. A young woman was running down the middle of the street, carrying her child in her arms, talking to him as she ran, gasping and laughing in his face. Marcelle stood watching her, then she approached the mirror, and eyed herself with astonishment. On the wash-basin shelf there were three red roses in a tooth-glass. Marcelle paused, picked out one of them, twirled it diffidently in her fingers, then shut her eyes, and stuck the rose into her black hair. ‘A rose in my hair...’ She opened her eyes, looked in the mirror, patted her hair, and smiled wryly at herself.
CHAPTER 15
‘PLEASE wait here, sir,’ said the little man.
Mathieu sat down on a bench. It was a dark waiting-room redolent of cabbage; on his left a glass-panelled door admitted a faint light: a bell rang, and the little man opened it A young woman entered, clad with distressful neatness.
‘Kindly sit down, madam.’
He walked close beside her to the bench, and she sat down, gathering her legs beneath her.
‘I’ve been before,’ said the woman. ‘It’s about a loan.’
‘Yes, madam; certainly.’
The little man was talking right into her face. ‘You are in the Government Service?’
‘No: my husband is.’
She began to rummage in her bag: she was not ill-looking, but she had a harsh and harassed look: the little man was eyeing her greedily. She produced from her bag two or three papers carefully folded; he took them, went up to the glass door to get a better light, and examined them meticulously.
‘Quite all right,’ said he, handing them back to her. ‘Quite all right Two children? You look so young... We so look forward to having them, don’t we? But when they arrive, they rather disorganize the family finances. You are in a little difficulty at the moment?’
The young woman blushed, and the little man rubbed his hands: ‘Well,’ he said genially, ‘we’ll arrange it all, that’s what we’re here for.’
He eyed her for a moment with a pensive, smiling air, and then departed. The young woman threw a hostile look at Mathieu, and began to fidget with the clasp of her bag. Mathieu fel
t ill at ease; he had come into the company of people who were really poor, and it was their money he was going to take, grey and tarnished money, redolent of cabbage. He bent his head, and looked down at the floor between his feet: again he saw once more the silky, perfumed bank-notes in Lola’s little trunk: it was not the same money.
The glass door opened, and a tall gentleman with white moustaches appeared. He had silver hair, carefully brushed back, Mathieu followed him into his office. The gentleman pointed genially to a rather shabby leather-covered armchair, and they both sat down. The gentleman laid his elbows on the table, and clasped his fine white hands. He wore a dark-green tie, discreetly enlivened by a pearl.
‘You wish to take advantage of our service?’ he asked paternally.
‘Yes.’
He looked at Mathieu: he had rather prominent, light-blue eyes.
‘Monsieur...?’
‘Delarue.’
‘You are aware that the regulations of our Society provide solely for a loan service to Government officials?’
The voice was fine and white, a little fleshy, like the hands.
‘I am a government official,’ said Mathieu. ‘A professor.’
‘Indeed?’ said the gentleman, with interest. ‘We are particularly glad to help university men. You are professor at a Lycée?’
‘Yes. The Buffon.’
‘Good,’ said the gentleman suavely. ‘Well, we will go through the usual little formalities... First, I am going to ask you whether you have about you any evidence of identity — anything will do, passport, army pay-book, or electoral card...’
Mathieu produced his papers. The man took them, and glanced at them abstractedly.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Very good. And what is the amount you have in mind?’
‘I want six thousand francs,’ said Mathieu. He reflected for a moment, and said: ‘Say seven thousand.’
He was agreeably surprised. And he thought: ‘I wouldn’t have believed it would go through so quickly.’
‘You know our conditions? We lend for six months, absolutely without renewal. We are obliged to ask twenty per cent interest, owing to our heavy expenses, and the considerable risks we run.’
The Age of Reason Page 30
