Madame

by Antoni Libera

  But that isn’t the only way! I thought excitedly. A truly Machiavellian scheme had occurred to me. There are other ways of finding out. By trial of fire: news that someone close to us is dead or in mortal danger. That’s an infallible test, a true trial of the heart. The reaction to such news, especially the first reaction, is always revealing.

  Yes, I went on, as details of this insane plan tumbled about in my mind, I could go back there and call her from the phone box downstairs; I could alter my voice and pretend to be a doctor from the casualty department or a paramedic calling from an ambulance . . . ask her if she knows a dark-haired man . . . ‘looks like a foreigner . . . probably French . . . Unfortunately he has no documents on him, so that’s all we know . . . the only clue is a scrap of paper with this telephone number . . . But perhaps it’s a mistake? A misleading clue? A coincidence?’ And then, when the inevitable question comes – ‘But what is all this about?’ or, more likely, ‘But what’s happened?’ (how would she ask it? calmly? or hysterically? that would already tell me something) – I could inform her with regret that ‘he’s had a serious accident . . . he’s in intensive care . . .’ and then, in a more official tone, ‘Could you give us some information? His name, his address? Who to contact? . . . Or perhaps it is you? Are you the person we’re looking for?’ And then wait and see what she does. Would she run out of the house, get a taxi, rush to the hospital? Or . . . not?

  Such an exercise was not beyond my skills, dramatic and vocal. I had played hundreds of practical jokes like this on the telephone, with great success: even close friends had been taken in. So I wasn’t afraid that my voice would betray me or that I might lose my nerve or inspiration. And even if it didn’t work and she realised it was a hoax, it was still unlikely that she’d think of me. She had no idea how much I knew about her and didn’t know what my voice sounded like over the phone. Sooner or later her suspicions would turn in a different direction: not to any one person but to an institution – the security services. Something like this was just in their line; it could only be them. In which case . . . in which case I would be playing their part. Involuntarily, I would have taken on the role of her persecutors. That would be the price of the exercise.

  This held me back. The thought that I would be inscribing myself in her life as the instrument or agent of the dark forces of the world, as ‘Mr Jones’ or ‘Ricardo’ or ‘the terrible brute Pedro’, was unbearable – even if I knew it wasn’t true, even if I had a guarantee I’d never be found out. I couldn’t do it. Her life, for me, represented Myth – that ‘one day’, that ‘somewhere’, that world of heroic greatness of which I dreamt and to which I aspired, which I had yet to encounter but hoped one day to touch, at least to brush against. She was both the ‘there’ and the ‘then’, the Past made present and Distance made closer, the dimension of Legend, the stuff of Tales. To appear in that tale, that life, playing so base and vile a role would be an ignominious, ultimate defeat.

  I went home. Mercifully no one was in. I threw myself down on the bed and tried to sleep, but in vain. A witches’ sabbath was going on in my head. Exhausted, unable to take any more, I rummaged in my father’s desk for sleeping pills (he used Phanodorm). I couldn’t find them. I did, however, find an opened bottle of Danish eggnog. Heedless of the consequences (which would be manifold), I finished it off in less than half an hour. For a while I felt better. Everything started to seem funny: my own state of nerves, my longings, the whole ‘affair’ with Madame. Then I began to feel sick, and soon brought up what I had drunk and returned it to Nature by way of the drains. After that I finally fell asleep. A deep sleep, and quite dreamless.

  The next day, a Sunday, wasn’t much better. Nothing happened to inspire any hope of improvement.

  SIX

  Handicrafts

  On Monday things did improve, although none of the celestial signs augured well: the day began miserably. (The last drop, perhaps, in the cup of bitterness I had to drain in order to propitiate Fate.)

  The first echoes of my run-in with the Viper reached my ears almost as soon as I got to school, and they boded very ill indeed. According to the reports, my ostentatiously defiant exit had driven her to an attack of unprecedented fury (‘she foamed at the mouth’ was the succinct description): she had raged and fumed and threatened, pronounced with venom that I was out-of-this-school, at least could certainly-forget-about-graduating-this-year, and sworn to make-sure-that-my-behaviour-was-properly-dealt-with by the school board. True to her word, she must have started a song-and-dance about it at once, for soon thereafter our history teacher (known as Old Livy, less because of the way he taught history than because of his venerable-old-historian look) had burst in and ordered a search party to be sent out. When this brought no results, he had launched an investigation. Some people said he gave the impression of being on my side, for he seemed to do his best to find extenuating circumstances that might mitigate or at least explain my crime. It was also common knowledge that he disliked the Viper and often found himself at loggerheads with her, whereas he quite liked or at least respected me. Others maintained that this impression was deceptive and that he was impartial at best: while he wouldn’t fan the flames, he’d not go out of his way to help me, either.

  Whatever the truth of the matter, there was no doubt that thunderclouds were gathering, and lightning was not far off. The view taken by my classmates seemed to be that I was an admirably bold and reckless spirit caught through a stroke of bad luck and now forced to sit and await sentencing like a condemned man. They treated me kindly and offered sympathy, cigarettes and chewing gum (also frowned upon at school). ‘Don’t worry,’ Prometheus said encouragingly, ‘have a smoke. There’s nothing to be afraid of; they won’t do anything, and even if they did, so what? At worst you’d just have an extra year to wait. What’s a year? You can hibernate. You’ll have some peace and quiet.’

  Despite the fuss and the dire forecasts, no lightning struck. No one summoned me anywhere, no one demanded to see my parents and no one officially informed me of anything. Lessons crept on in their usual somnolent way. The last class of the day was woodwork.

  Woodwork was not a subject in which I had a consuming interest, to put it mildly. I had neither liking nor talent for ‘crafts’, and the results of my efforts were always hopeless. I also couldn’t stand the so-called workshop where the classes took place, a dark, fetid hole in the basement, next to the boiler room, stinking of glue and grease. Just being there was depressing, and the poisonous fumes and the din gave me terrible headaches that lasted for hours. Fortunately, the teacher, an affable character known as the Workman, was not (unlike the Viper or the Eunuch, say) prone to excessive ambition; in his class the less-than-enthusiastic and the less-than-talented – those who were ‘all thumbs’ – were treated with tolerance. He would give them a C (‘your basic no-frills mark’) and demanded only that they turn up.

  It was my bad luck that today of all days, owing to a special burden that had been imposed on him, things were rather different. He was required, namely, to prepare the school for the ball that was held a hundred days before graduation. This involved a serious amount of work, for it meant doing up the whole gym where the ball took place, as well as constructing the centrepiece of the decorations, and naturally he wanted to impress the school with what he could do. So discipline was tightened and we were all put to work.

  I was entrusted with the task of sawing branches for an imitation fire, and was making my usual ham-fisted job of it. Every few minutes the Workman would come by, survey with horror the results of my efforts, throw up his hands in despair and exclaim, ‘Good heavens, boy, what on earth is that supposed to be? Can’t you even handle a saw? What a feeble specimen! You’ll never find a woman if you can’t even do the simplest things around the house! Now, watch me.’ He would take the saw from me, place it at the appropriate angle on the branch and cut through it in a couple of smooth and effortless movements. ‘There, that’s how it’s done. Lightly and evenly. No nee
d to thrash around. There’s no strength involved; you can cut through any thickness of wood just as easily if you go about it the right way.’

  I would take back the saw and try to imitate what he had done, but already on the second or third pull the thing would get stuck or come out of its groove and slide dangerously about. In the end it slid straight into the hand with which I was holding the branch, cutting the base of my index finger. It was a deep gash and soon it was bleeding profusely.

  ‘He’s cut himself!’ cried Mephisto, immediately scenting a possible excuse for getting out of the lesson.

  ‘I knew it,’ said the Workman with gloomy resignation, and then fired off a round of orders: ‘Take him away, someone! Get him to the sick bay. Put some iodine or spirits on it, and he’ll need a tetanus injection. Go on, get on with it! Get a move on! Quickly!’

  The second volunteer for the job of stretcher-bearer, in addition to Mephisto, turned out to be Prometheus. Eagerly abandoning his lathe, he leapt to my side and at once offered his services. The two of them, with expressions of concern proper to the gravity of the situation, faces arranged into what they evidently hoped was a convincing I-am-completely-to-betrusted look, seized me under the armpits and hauled me out of the room as if they were bearing a wounded comrade-in-arms off the field of battle.

  ‘Arm up! Keep his arm up!’ the Workman cried after them. ‘Up, up, up! Or he’ll lose all his blood, and then God knows what we’ll do . . .’

  The sick bay, as always when it was needed, turned out to be locked. We sat down on the bench that served as the waiting-room and Prometheus ran off to the office to make inquiries. He reappeared with the news that the doctor and nurse had both gone off that morning to buy medical supplies and had not yet returned, but added that the secretary (an old-fashioned woman in horn-rimmed spectacles), in proffering this piece of information, had made strange faces and rolled her eyes, signifying her utter lack of faith in its veracity. That was what they had said, the two who weren’t here, that is, but she didn’t believe a word of it. Did they really expect her to fall for a story like that when it was perfectly plain to everyone that the two of them had a thing going? It wasn’t any of her business, of course; she didn’t care what they did, as long as they didn’t do it at the expense of our schoolchildren’s health. But there it was, times had changed, that was how people behaved nowadays, doing that kind of thing right under her nose – not to speak of the way this school has been run ever since . . . at this point she had trailed off into eloquent silence, accompanied by a meaningful look in the direction of Madame’s office.

  Prometheus’s account stung me like a spur. I knew Madame wasn’t popular among the staff, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she was surrounded by overt hostility. If her secretary – a low-ranking subordinate – permitted herself remarks of that kind (to a pupil!), she clearly thought she had nothing to fear. Worse, it meant she was sowing rebellion; it was part of a premeditated plan of subversion. If so, Madame might be in danger – in which case the present situation could well be the final nail in her coffin. It would be enough for one of her enemies – the Tapeworm, for instance – to send a ‘note’ (in other words, a denunciation) to the school board about the dangerous chaos that reigned in the school (‘severely wounded pupil fruitlessly seeks aid in sick bay; doctor doesn’t care; basic discipline falling apart’): that was just what the board members – and others higher up who knew the political background of her appointment – were waiting for, a perfect excuse to get rid of her. They’d probably been told to kill off the whole ‘experiment’ at the first opportunity, before it had a chance to get off the ground. All they needed was a good pretext to show the French: ‘We’ve been flexible, we’ve agreed to everything, but our good will has been abused; your candidate, however distinguished in her field, simply does not have the qualifications for the post. She’s a disaster! Under no circumstances can we allow this experiment to wreak havoc with our schools; you will understand that we cannot permit it to go on any longer.’ A note from the Tapeworm would be their call to arms. A special inspection would be organised, and every single defect and omission would be put down to Madame’s account. She would be dismissed immediately.

  It was hard for me to judge if these gloomy visions were really justified or merely the result of my weakened state; the loss of blood might have affected my brain. Justified or not, they spurred me to action. Pretending to be rapidly fading and about to faint, I turned to Mephisto and, like the dying Hamlet to Horatio, gasped weakly, ‘Go . . . go and fetch Madame. Tell her . . . she ought to know what’s going on here . . . It smells like a case for the prosecutor’s office . . . Let’s see what she has to say.’

  This time he didn’t need much persuading. Whatever he thought of my swooning act, he shot off at once.

  As I waited for the resolution, I thought with a bitter smile that perhaps this was Fate’s mocking riposte to my idea of submitting Madame to a ‘trial by fire of the heart’. You concocted vile, treacherous schemes against the director, Fate seemed to be whispering somewhere in the dim reaches of my weakened consciousness; you wanted to kill him off verbally or at least hurt him in order to see whether she really cares about him – if her heart is really engaged. But why such a shy, roundabout approach? Wouldn’t a direct way be better? Why not find out whether she has any room in her heart for you? The heart is an ample thing, with space enough for more than one. Did not Mademoiselle Champsmeslé, with all her lovers, still find room in her heart for Racine? Then what do Madame’s feelings for the director matter? They’re neither here nor there; what matters is whether she has any feelings for you. And that’s why this accident has been ordained: so that you can find out . . .

  Then I heard a familiar click of heels.

  Now I’ve got delusions, I thought weakly, feeling my strength fading. I’m hearing things. It’s the loss of blood.

  But it was no delusion. For all of a sudden Prometheus, who had been watching over me during Mephisto’s absence, jumped up and bent almost double in a subservient bow; then Mephisto ran up, panting excitedly. And finally, there, unquestionably, she was – Madame, standing before me.

  She was wearing a suit of light-coloured checked tweed, a white silk blouse with a silver brooch pinned at the neck and low-heeled brown shoes, long, narrow and pointed, with a thin strap that clasped the foot gracefully just below the ankle. Her lips, eyelids and lashes were discreetly made up, and her hair was impeccable.

  ‘Well, now, what have we here?’ she began ironically, but her voice held a discernible note of concern. ‘Weary of life already?’

  ‘Frankly, yes,’ I replied quietly.

  ‘Far too soon,’ she pronounced. ‘Well, get up, what are you waiting for?’

  ‘For help. For a doctor,’ I said provocatively, not quite sure where she was headed. ‘In vain, it seems.’

  She ignored this. ‘Help him up, you two,’ she commanded, ‘since he seems unable to get up by himself. And bring him to my office,’ she added, leading the way.

  The two good Samaritans hastened to do her bidding, one grabbing me by the waist and putting my arm around his shoulders while the other took tight hold of my wrist and held up the wounded hand. Thus entwined, like something out of a Delacroix painting, the three of us hobbled into the different world of Madame’s office.

  ‘Sit him down here,’ she ordered, leading the way to the sofa. Then she went round to the other side of the desk and took her handbag from the back of the chair, where it hung as it had hung before, slightly open.

  Mephisto and Prometheus, having executed her orders, stood there like two statues, their eyes avidly following her every movement.

  ‘What do you two think you’re doing? Providing the audience?’ Her hand, which had been rummaging in the handbag and had seemed to be about to extract something from its depths, stopped in mid-movement. ‘Back to class with you! At once! Your mission is over.’

  ‘B-but,’ Mephisto stammered desperately, trying to fin
d some way of maintaining his position, ‘the woodwork teacher told us to help.’

  ‘Thank you, I can manage,’ she replied with a sarcastic smile, and waited until they had gone before resuming her rummaging.

  Her hand emerged from the bag holding a small bottle with a square label that said ‘Chanel No. 5’ (not the parfum, as it shortly turned out, but the eau de toilette, in a spray). Then she delved back into the handbag, this time with both hands, and withdrew a large wad of cotton wool. It looked as if she had torn it off a larger piece, which presumably was why she had needed both hands.

  She carries cotton wool in her handbag. The sentence formed itself suddenly in my mind, as if it described a fact worthy of note. And then a vague question: three days after . . .? But I had no time to consider its significance, for suddenly she was beside me or rather, strictly speaking, sitting opposite me.

  ‘Well, now, let’s see what you’ve managed to do to that poor little finger of yours,’ she said lightly. ‘Can it be saved, do you think, or will we have to amputate?’

  Uncertain whether I might not be dreaming again, whether all that had happened since I had entered her office was really happening to me, I obediently stretched out my wounded left hand. Madame grasped it firmly from below (also with her left), just under the wrist, pulled it towards her and surveyed it critically.

  ‘Oh là là! It looks bad,’ she observed with mock concern. ‘You’ve really done a good job this time.’

  I didn’t recognise her. She was a different person. Like – oh, I don’t know . . . an Amazon? Hercules in a skirt? An energetic, no-nonsense nurse with a masculine disposition? I would never have suspected that in such a situation she would behave like this. I would have thought she’d go pale, lose her nerve, panic – or assume a remote and contemptuous air, approaching my bloody problem with disgust and annoyance. But instead it appeared, curiously, to stimulate her; it was as if she drew some kind of strength from it, as if it had tapped into some hidden reserves. It also seemed to have set off a kind of ‘thaw’ in her demeanour: she was freer, warmer, less stiff and constrained. I had never seen her so relaxed; she was almost . . . mellow! And at the same time confident, efficient and fully in control – the perfect soldier.