Her Lover (Belle de Seigneur)

by Albert Cohen

  'You swine!' he shouted at his boss.

  Removing his peccary-skin gloves and his brown waisted overcoat, he sat down and at once began going through the four new arrivals in turn. Though the work that would subsequently have to be done was irksome, he enjoyed this first contact with a file. He liked tracing its fate and following its peregrinations in the comments scribbled on minute-sheets attached to the left inside cover where one colleague after another had noted brief views for each other. He liked rooting out the ironies, acrimonies and hostilities which lurked beneath the polite phrasing, and even, and this was a refinement of pleasure, detecting and savouring what he called Dirty Tricks or Stabs-in-the-Back. In a word, the arrival of a new batch of files, no sooner on his desk than avidly perused, brought him a whiff of the world outside and was always a stimulating event, a distraction, a diversion, which in a sense was not unlike the arrival of passing tourists who drop by on a jaded castaway on his desert island.

  When he had finished reading file number four, he treated himself to the liberty of adding to the handwritten comment in the margin of the minute-sheet, next to a grammatical mistake perpetrated by an A-grade colleague, an anonymous and vengeful exclamation mark. He closed the file and sighed. That's the nice part over.

  'To work!' he said when he had changed out of his outdoor jacket into an old one with shiny sleeves.

  For the fun of it, he crunched a sugar lump with his front teeth. Then he took hold of his glasses by the crosspiece over his nose, whipped them off sharply to avoid damaging the legs, wiped the lenses with a piece of chamois leather which he kept in a tortoiseshell snuffbox, put them on again, picked up a folder without looking at the cover, and opened it. Ugh! Rotten luck: it was Syria (Jebel Druses), a file he definitely did not care for. Mental block on that one pro tem. Come back to it later. He closed it, stood up and, going across to Kanakis's office for a chat, swapped a few careful slanderous items with him on the subject of Pei, a Chinese who had just been made up to grade A.

  When he returned some minutes later, he opened the Syria (Jebel Druses) file, rubbed his hands, and readied himself with some deep breathing. Right, to work! He marked his solemn decision by declaiming a snatch of Lamartine:

  O holy law, which levies universal toil

  In this wise are thy ways set:

  That he who would fructify the soil

  First must water it with his sweat.

  Like a wrestler making ready for the fray, he rolled up his sleeves, hunched his back over Syria (Jebel Druses), and then closed the file again. He didn't seem able to connect with this one. Get back to it later when in the proper frame of mind. He stuffed it into the bottom right-hand drawer, which he called Limbo or sometimes the Lazar House. It was his repository for nauseous files which he could deal with only when he felt really up to it.

  'Next please! First come first served! No favouritism!' The second file, which he picked up at random, turned out to be N/600/300/42/4, Correspondence with the Association of Jewish Women in Palestine, which he had already glanced at last night. They were always whinging about the mandatory power! Hell of a cheek, really! After all, there was a world of difference between a group of sheeny women and His Britannic Majesty's government! Make them wait a month or two, that'll larn 'em. Better still, don't reply at all! There'd be no come-back: they're private not official. So off you go, get thee to the Boneyard! He pushed the file into the bottom left-hand drawer, which he kept for work which could be safely forgotten for ever.

  He stretched and groaned, glanced smilingly at the wrist-watch he had bought last month but still fondly thought of as being brand-new. He examined the face and the back, rubbed the glass, and drooled at the thought that it was completely waterproof. Nine hundred Swiss francs, but it was worth it. It was even better than that snob Huxley's, he only said hello every other time you met him. Then his mind turned to his old Brussels chum, Vermeylen, poor sap, he had an arts degree and was currently teaching grammar to scruffy kids for starvation wages, something like five hundred Swiss francs a month.

  'I say, Vermeylen, take a peep at my wrist-watch. It's a Patek Philippe, the best Swiss make, old man, a first-class time-keeper, old friend, guaranteed to keep perfect time, comes with a built-in alarm, see? if you want I'll set it off for you, and completely waterproof, you can have a bath without taking it off, you could even wash it in soap and water if you wanted, and none of your gold-plate, it's solid gold, eighteen carat, see the hallmark for yourself if you like, two thousand five hundred Swiss smackers, old bean!'

  He snickered with pleasure and thought kindly of good old Vermeylen and his big steel pocket-watch. Poor Vermeylen, never had the breaks, a really good bloke, he liked him a lot. Tomorrow, he would send him a large box of the very best chocolates, the biggest size they had. Vermeylen would be delighted to sample them with his poor, sick, tubercular wife in their gloomy little kitchen. It was very nice to be nice. He rubbed his hands together at the thought of how pleased Vermeylen would be. Then he opened another file.

  'Damn! Not the Cameroon Acknowledgement again!'

  This Acknowledgement business was never-ending. He was fed up to the back teeth with acknowledging receipt of a French government report on this to-do about trypanosomiasis in the Cameroons! He couldn't care less about a lot of nig-nogs in the Cameroons and their sleeping-sickness! Still the Acknowledgement was urgent: there was a government involved. Absolutely must concoct something today. The bloody file had been toing and froing for weeks. It was VV's fault for sending it back to him so many times for amendment. And every time he had had to start from scratch. The last time was because of the insofar as. Ever since the Secretary-General's principal private secretary had told van Vries that he did not care for insofar as, VV had been on the lookout for insofar as. The mentality of a slave! What was it this time? He read his chief's memo: 'Dear Deume, Please modify the final paragraph of your draft. The word "you(r)" appears four times. What would the French government think of us? VV.' He reread the paragraph: 'I am most grateful to you. I hereby acknowledge receipt of your Report which, you may rest assured, will be forwarded as from you via the usual channels.'

  'Oh, fair enough,' he admitted. 'Bloody Cameroon nig-nogs! Why don't they all just die of their sleeping-sickness and have done with it!

  Listless and moodily surrendering to his thoughts, he rolled his eyes and let his head sag to one side over his desk. He opened and closed the malignant file several times, and each time he swore violently. Finally, he straightened up, reread the paragraph he had to rewrite, and groaned. Right. OK. He'd do it at once.

  'At once,' he yawned.

  He got to his feet, made for the safe haven of the gents, a legitimate procrastination. To justify his presence there, at the streaming china stall, he tried and then merely pretended to go. When he'd finished, he looked at himself in the tall mirror. With one hand on his hip, he admired himself. This suit, light brown with small checks, really looked a treat, and the jacket emphasized his waist neatly.

  'Adrien Deume, man of fashion,' he confided once again to the mirror, while he tenderly combed his hair which he lovingly and expensively washed every morning with eau-de-quinine.

  Then he sallied forth with warlike tread. As he passed van Vries's office, he made a point of informing his hierarchical superior, though in a whisper and in terms totally lacking in refinement, that he was a bastard and his mother was a tart. Pleased with himself, he gave a schoolboy snigger which was his next-best thing to a laugh, a boiled-down, symbolic laugh which he managed by shutting his eyes and clearing the back of his throat. Then, as he had done yesterday, he stepped into one of the paternosters, which are doorless lifts that go endlessly up and down and are an invaluable expedient for bored civil servants. When he reached the fifth floor, he got out and stepped into the lift that was going down. On the ground floor, looking extremely busy, he jumped out and got into the lift that was going up.

  Back in his coop once more, he decided to make up for lost
time. To put himself in the mood, he conscientiously worked through his breathing exercises. (Because he thought so much of himself, he was always on the lookout for new ways of making his own dearly beloved person healthier. He was a great believer in tonics and tried a steady stream of them, at intervals of a few weeks, the latest always being so much more effective that the one before was promptly discarded. He was currently ingurgitating an English variety which he said was wonderful. 'This Metatone is terrific,' he told his wife: 'I've been feeling like a new man since I started taking it.' A fortnight later, he would drop Metatone for a miraculous multivitamin preparation. Virtually unchanged, his verdict then became: 'This Vitaplex is terrific. I've been feeling like a new man since I started taking it.')

  'Perfect!' he said, as he exhaled for the twentieth and last time. 'Well done, old man. And now, to work!'

  But first, a glance at the Tribune, just to keep abreast of things. He had the old porter well trained, right enough: he brought him the Tribune and Paris-Soir every day at four on the dot! Oh yes, he was that type, knew how to get other people to do as they were told. He opened the Genevan evening paper and mumbled his way through the headlines. General election in Belgium, a new victory for the royalist party. Excellent. Degrelle was a marvellous man. Yes, he felt he could connect with Degrelle, who'd soon rid Belgium of the mafia of Jews and freemasons. A disruptive influence, Jews. And Freud, with his crackpot ideas, no one knew where they stood any more! Right then, now to work!

  He sat down at his desk, put petrol in his lighter, though, having been filled the day before, it did not need it, but he was fond of his little friend and liked taking good care of it. When he could not make this diversion last any longer, and needing to see a friendly face, he looked at himself again in his pocket mirror. He loved his round, childlike features, his earnest blue eyes behind the large horn-rimmed glasses, and he nodded approvingly at his small paintbrush moustache and his short, neat fringe of a beard, the beard not just of an intellectual but of an intellectual who was also an artist. Perfect. Was his tongue coated? No, all normal, as pink as could be wished for. Perfect.

  'Not bad, Lord Deume. A fine-looking man. His missus has got nothing to complain about there.'

  He put the mirror away in its crocodile-skin case and yawned. Tuesday today, a miserable day, a day without hope. Another three and a half days to get through. To console himself, he stared at his wrist-watch. In the privacy of these four walls, knowing he was not observed, he planted a small kiss on its face. 'Little pet,' he said. Then he thought of Ariane. Oh yes, he was the husband of a beautiful wife. He was in his rights if he wanted to touch any part of her, breasts, behind, as he wanted, whenever he wanted. A beautiful woman all to himself. Say what you will, marriage had its good points. Tonight, then, for sure. Still, for the time being, to work, since toil is the holy law. Where shall we start? O God, he had forgotten! The British Memorandum, of course! Comments needed, most urgent! That bastard VV! Always wanting things urgently! He riffled through the pages of the thick document. Two hundred pages, the swine! They seemed to have plenty of time to waste in the Colonial Office in London! What's the time? Nearly twenty past four. Just over an hour and forty minutes to go before six. He'd never have time to read two hundred single-spaced pages in an hour and a half, give or take a few minutes. What he liked was a fair stretch of time in front of him, at least four hours, so he could put in a good stint and know he could finish what he had started, that is, get some serious work done. Anyway, this rubbish had to be read straight through, so that he would have an overall view. And anyway, most urgent, even when underlined, didn't mean same day. God; two hundred pages! Perfidious Albion! Right, he'd read the stuff tomorrow morning, from start to finish!

  'Agreed, nem. con. Tomorrow morning without fail. Nine o'clock on the dot, just watch me! Oh yes, when this Deume cove puts his mind to it you'd better look out! He'll make the windows rattle!'

  He shut the British Memorandum. But its bulk dismayed him still. He pushed it into the Lazar House and then went tsk with his tongue. To round off the afternoon, he needed some lightish task, something refreshing. Now let's see. The Cameroon Acknowledgement? No, that was too small, since he still had a good hour to play out. Put the Cameroons to one side instead, it'll fill a gap some time or other. Yes, but the Cameroon Acknowledgement was urgent too. In that case, do it in a while.

  'Thassa ticket. In a bit,' he said in a funny accent to beguile the time, 'in a bit when we rin the proper framamind.'

  But now that the British Memorandum was shut away, he was quite capable of forgetting it existed! And it had a top-priority rating. Now let's not have any slip-ups! He opened the Lazar House and took out the Memorandum, placed it bravely in his urgent tray, and congratulated himself. There. A clear indication that he was ready to show willing, that his mind was quite made up to deal with it first thing in the morning. It wasn't long before he masked its baleful presence by covering it up with his Tribune de Genève.

  His mood brightened, he filled his pipe, lit up and drew on it. Excellent this Dutch mixture, highly aromatic, must send some to Vermeylen. Still sucking on the stem, he did some sums on a pad and amused himself by converting the gold-value of his salary into Belgian francs, then into French francs, in which it seemed enjoyably so much more. Amazing, really, what he earned! Ten times as many shekels as old Mozart ever did!

  (The snigger which followed calls for a word of explanation. Just before the start of his sick-leave, he had read a biography of Mozart and had been extremely taken with the chapter devoted to the small amounts of money earned by the composer, who had died in poverty and been buried in a common pauper's grave. After making enquiries in the Economics Section about the purchasing power of various European currencies between 1756 and 1791, he had arrived at the conclusion that he, Adrien Deume, earned ten times as much money as the composer of The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni.)

  'In short, old Wolfgang Amadeus wasn't much cop at fending for himself!' he sniggered again. 'He'd have never been able to afford a watch costing nine hundred Swiss francs!'

  Now launched on this tack, he did some more sums. The ceiling of someone on a grade A was sixteen times more than Mozart earned, a first embassy secretary ditto, a head of section twenty times more than Mozart, a minister with portfolio ditto, well more or less ditto, and an ambassador forty times more than Mozart! As for Sir John, hell's teeth, fifty times more than Mozart if you included the entertainment allowance! Or put it this way: the Secretary-General of the League of Nations was earning more than Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart put together! The League of Nations was some set-up! It certainly did things in style!

  Highly delighted, he began whistling a sublime theme by the non-self-fending pauper, one of whose symphonies had been given a respectful hearing the night before and had been vigorously applauded by the gaggle of self-fending grade Bs and grade As, heads of section, ministers and ambassadors, all of whom were music-mad but money-wise.

  'In short, my dear Mozart, you were had,' he concluded. 'Fine. Right. And now for a little thought about one's social life.'

  Yes, a phone call to dear Penelope, Kanakis's wife, an absolute must. According to the etiquette in these matters, one should always thank one's hosts the day after one's been to dinner. This he now did. When his call to Kanakis's wife was finished, he gave a sigh. Oh dear, why did Ariane have to make him say all that guff about migraine, all because she couldn't stand the Kanakises, though they were delightful friends. Now for a careful call to Madame Rasset, who wasn't just anybody but the daughter, no less, of the Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross! He had really got on awfully with her at the Kanakises last evening! Charm her? He had charmed her off her branch, anyone could have seen it a mile off. All the same, the Rassets hadn't been in touch with them for four months. And yet they'd been positively throwing invitations about for a couple of months now, having lots of interesting people round, even a princess according to Kanakis. And al
l because, of course, they had not reciprocated for the dinner they'd been to. Hence the reprisals. Though it was fair enough really. If the Deumes stopped introducing them to interesting people, why should they introduce interesting people to the Deumes? It was all Ariane's fault, who didn't care much for them either. But things would have to be patched up pretty smartly with the Rassets, who were money in the bank from a social point of view.

  He dialled the number, cleared his throat, and got ready to put on his best cut-glass accent.

  'Madame Rasset? (Then, in a hushed, muted, transmuted, confidential, ecclesiastical, circumspect, careful, winning, oily voice, which he imagined was the acme of social charm, he announced himself:) Adrien Deume here. (He was inexplicably proud of his name.) My dear Madame Rasset, how are you? I trust you got home safely last night. (This with a flirtatious edge:) Did you have sweet dreams? Was I in them?' (He poked out his tapering tongue and then retracted it sharply as he was in the habit of doing whenever he was giving his impression of a witty, sophisticated man of the world.)

  Et cetera. He put the phone down, stood up, buttoned his jacket, and rubbed his hands. Whacko! The Rassets booked for dinner on Tuesday 22 May! Capital, capital. Oh yes, everything was coming along swimmingly on the social front! Rising like a rocket, old bean! The Rassets are frightfully well connected! 'Adrian Deume, star of the social scene!' he exclaimed and, for joy, he drew himself up to his full height, twirled round and round, clapped his performance, acknowledged the applause with a bow, and sat down again. Delighted with himself, he repeated for his own benefit the clever, cultivated morsels he had served up for la Rasset, and again his tongue darted out like pink lightning only to disappear at once after a quick wipe of his upper lip.