by Anne H
Wandering from café to café, breathing in the fresh smell of the rain, Julien waits for the arrival of the day, the hour, for the concert at the Salle Pleyel.
If at times Aline’s image forces itself on him, at a café counter or the corner of a street, it is in red shoes and a flowered dress that she appears, impalpable and transformed. When that happens Julien may reread one of her letters, conscientiously, as if reviewing a lesson, while he is surrounded by cigarette smoke and the jingling cash register and pinball machine.
Don’t catch cold. Don’t drink too much black coffee. And most of all don’t forget your sweetheart who hugs you and kisses you and sends you all her love.
Aline
With Aline’s letter slipped inside his wallet, between the oversized banknotes, Julien sometimes catches himself murmuring: How tiresome are the demands of the beloved heart and the beloved body.
Julien readies himself for the concert, carefully dresses in evening clothes, dons a starched white shirt, a black bow tie as if he was in mourning. His thoughts about his mother have been quiet now for some time.
✦✦✦
She insisted on paying for her ticket and now she has taken a seat next to him, on the threadbare velvet bench. Their two profiles stand out, somewhat solemn and overlapping slightly, like royal profiles on a postage stamp. He keeps brushing against her with his knee and shoulder. The music absorbs them and exempts them from any movement, any word. Their deepest complicity comes from their twofold living warmth, perceived through their garments that touch each other in the muggy darkness of the concert hall.
Her hand, burning hot, somewhat limp and relaxed among the folds of her skirt, the smooth cold ring on the fourth finger. Julien has brushed against that hand, has felt the hard ring under his fingers. From that moment on, he became less attentive to the concert, as if irritated by a sudden dissonance, shocked by a false note that reverberates and echoes all through the hall.
Several times she has looked at her watch and now, barely seated across the table from him on the terrace of a café, she announces that friends are expecting her, that she promised them long ago . . .
Julien says:
“That ring you’re wearing?”
But the ring is no longer on her finger, for she dropped it into her bag as soon as the concert was over. Her hands are perfectly bare now, long and smooth. She shrugs.
“I wore it for the concert, that’s all. Afterwards it’s too much trouble. I have no need of jewellery, since I’m sober and austere by nature — and divorced into the bargain.”
She speaks quickly. Seems anxious to provide whatever information he may request.
“What are your friends like?”
“Young, happy, a little crazy. I have lots of fun with them.”
“And with me?”
“With you? It’s rather the opposite. Aside from your eccentricities, which intrigue me, I wonder what it is about you I find amusing. Unless your dear bewildered face secretly makes me swoon?”
Everything she says is murmured very softly, in a sweet voice filled with laughter and tender irony.
He has only a little time to be with her. At any moment she may disappear, taken up by her hidden life. And then Julien’s loneliness in Paris risks becoming very great. He questions her like a judge who persists in trying to compromise someone who is slipping away. How long has she been divorced? Does she play a musical instrument?
“I play the piano sometimes.”
She becomes impatient, leans across the table towards him.
“You spoil everything with your questions. I am the way I am, just as you see me here, across from you, only passing through, with no past or future.”
She rises, both hands pressed against the table.
“My name is Camille Jouve. I’m thirty years old. My double life is none of your business. Imagine whatever you want. Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, if you want.”
With every word she laughs and mocks him. Her teeth are very white, her mouth red. He wishes she’d stop talking and leave, right now. All he wants to do is finish his coffee in peace and think quietly about what astonishing things are happening to him with this woman. He stands up, too, waving his hand as if to dismiss her. She moves closer to him.
“Will you be at the bar in your hotel around five tomorrow? I’ll be waiting for you.”
She dives into a taxi which starts up right away then disappears into the stream of cars.
Julien sips the rest of his coffee, which is getting cold. He is glad that her name is Camille Jouve. It’s a beautiful name. He repeats it to himself like a litany. He scrutinizes everyone who walks past along the sidewalk in the hope of recognizing Camille Jouve’s friends, of calling to them, of intercepting them then and there, of reducing them to nothingness before they can catch up to her somewhere in Paris and dine with her in a restaurant he doesn’t know.
✦✦✦
With shutters closed and curtains drawn Julien detaches himself from the city for the night. He piles his clothes on a chair. The bedside lamp lights the carefully made-up bed. It is a banal hotel room, good for rest or for love. Julien is alone and naked in the room while Paris rumbles and roars beneath his windows. Would it be so hard then to bring Camille Jouve up to his room, to sleep with her, then throw her back into the heart of the city and forget even her name? Julien would have nothing to do then but depart for the New World, where Aline is waiting, round and without mystery and as fresh as fresh cream.
But now he is tormenting himself and life isn’t quite so simple. The light has scarcely been extinguished, the darkness scarcely settled in the room, and he is like a traveller stubbornly trying to read a city map in the gloom. Paris is open before him like an atlas. He thinks about the streets he knows and even more about the ones he doesn’t know. He imagines deep avenues lined with trees, then smaller streets that hide in the shade, public squares, famous or obscure, neighbourhood cafés or those on the grands boulevards, restaurants filled with people. He is trying to discover the one, unique brasserie, sparkling with light and noise, the one out of all others where Camille Jouve has gone, is holding court surrounded by her friends. Barely an instant before giving in to sleep, he sees behind his closed eyelids the moleskin banquette where she sits, the white tablecloth on which her elbows rest, the freshly opened oysters in front of her, while uncertain men lean towards her across the table, their unattractive features almost touching her pretty face with its pale cheeks, her dark hair.
At dawn, only barely awake, Julien is exasperated that there are still so many hours ahead of him before he meets Camille Jouve at the bar on the Quai Voltaire.
He gets up, stretches at the open window, looks at the Seine flowing by and at the still-sleeping Louvre. An unopened letter from Aline lies waiting on the tray with the crumbs from his breakfast.
Heat haze rises from the water. Rare strollers appear and disappear into the morning. On the quay the booksellers’ closed boxes look like great green padlocked crates in a railway station.
Julien reads Aline’s letter. A scant few lines in a childish hand, as if she’s written them along a ruler line.
Oh how I long for you. I want you to know, staying in the old country so long is a strange thing to do. The weather here is fine. I’m counting the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes you’ve been gone. I think about you all the time. I am pregnant.
Love,
Aline
✦✦✦
Without taking time to shave or knot his tie, Julien is outside, cast out onto the street. He does not know where to go, wants to find under his feet as soon as possible the noisiest, busiest promenade, crowded with people and cars, wants to be swallowed up by it body and soul. There is too much tumult within him, too many contradictory ideas jostling one another.
Delivery trucks unload their go
ods, obstruct sidewalks and streets. Passersby hurry through the fog that is lifting now. The day will be muggy and hot. High summer. People are going wherever obligations or desires push or pull them. Julien follows close behind them. Eyes fixed on the shoulders of the person immediately ahead of him, Julien matches his pace, tries to lose himself in the wake of this total stranger so he can stop being a bachelor who is caught in a trap, and who is expecting a child. How can it be? What ruse of Aline’s? What carelessness of his own? A child, a child . . . He tells himself again that he has a rendezvous with Camille Jouve and that he’s as free as the air. A whole day still to get through, the sun’s journey from its beginning to its end at five p.m. in the bar on the Quai Voltaire.
Across the Atlantic, blind life is following the course of its thoughts in the belly of Aline Boudreau, secretly taking root. Now Julien need only match his steps to those of a stranger along boulevard Saint-Michel to savour the beauty of this day that is settling in all around him.
Successive waves of men, of women, break one against the other, mingle inextricably then come apart, touching as they pass. Julien catches here or there a word, a glance, a fleeting smile that lights an unknown face, he delights in this living anthill, says “Bonjour” and “Salut,” as if he knows everyone in the world.
He is outside from morning to night, eating and drinking while he stands or walks (sandwiches and bottles), tirelessly crisscrossing the city, having left behind him closed rooms and the heel of the mother who crushed him. He is like a snake that has escaped from under a rock. Presently, noon. Flurries of bells soar into the warm air over Julien’s head. A festival of bells at high noon. Again and again he says “Bonjour” and “Bonne journée.” He speaks to anyone who will listen, anyone who will reply. A dialogue has been opened between the city and Julien. Street vendors, a budding grove. The world is torn open from top to bottom like a piece of fabric ripped in two. Between other men and Julien what has changed is this: he is going to be the father of one of them.
At Place Furstenberg he wonders if it would be good to live inside this perfect square, with its four trees and a lamppost. He would bring his round-bellied wife there and their twofold existence, now made one, would be priceless. On rue de Buci, flowers tumble freely onto the cobblestones, from sidewalk to street, in a tide of colours and scents. Julien buys a nosegay of violets for the woman who awaits him in the bar on the Quai Voltaire.
For the first time he has the impression he is making his way through a city that belongs to him, a city that is visible and palpable and coming from all sides around him. He is the mature man who measures his power on both sides of the Atlantic at once. Across the world, in the darkness of his sweetheart, Aline, a child is slowly growing, while Lydie’s shadow soars above the country, like a kite scarcely visible, high in the world of dream. On the Old Continent, in a nearby city with uneven cobblestones he can feel beneath his feet, a woman in a black dress waits for Julien a few streets away, at the bar on the Quai Voltaire, and the muted light of her body is secretly aflame.
✦✦✦
The bar, faintly lit as if by a lantern, dark silhouettes, muffled murmurs, ice cubes clinking in glasses.
Julien stands in the doorway, dishevelled, unshaven, his shirt unbuttoned and no longer fresh, utterly weary.
Elbows resting on the bar, a man and a woman perched on high stools are deep in conversation. Their faces are visible, reflected in the mirror above the counter among the rows of bottles.
Julien has a rendezvous with this woman. Holding a small bouquet of faded violets, he stands, unmoving, back pressed against the glass door, and stares fixedly at her in the mirror, wanting her to turn her head without his having to call her.
Now she swivels on her stool until she faces Julien. Briefly he glances at her superb legs, crossed high. She stands and comes to him. Her earrings tinkle when she moves her head. Without smiling, all black and erect, she says, “Julien.” Now the man at the bar spins around. He looks at the man and woman in the doorway. Jiggles the ice in his glass.
Julien has gripped the women’s wrists in both his hands. He says very quietly, all at once, without catching his breath:
“I’m leaving tomorrow. I won’t see you again. I’m getting married. I’m going to have a child. We won’t see one another again.”
She straightens the gilt chain of her purse on her shoulder. She stands and waits at the door, her hand on the knob. Julien takes two steps in the direction of the bar. Tosses the violets onto the counter in front of the man who is shaking the ice cubes in his empty glass.
He returns to Camille Jouve. Steps aside to let her pass. The old staircase carpeted in red velvet with brass rods is right there, in the hallway.
✦✦✦
Julien lies on the unmade bed. He looks out between his lashes at the woman putting her clothes back on.
She has plucked her dress from the floor where she had tossed it. For a moment she holds it at arm’s length above her head. Let her pull the black garment over her head, over her face, without delay, then let her disappear forever. As a dark cloth is dropped over a bird cage at nightfall. The woman is only the stuff of dreams: What is she doing in Julien’s bed?
They have done what is necessary to slake desire and to let separation come. She has moaned till she could moan no more against him, concerned for her pleasure alone. He has barely emerged from between her thighs when already he resents her, for she is more beautiful than Aline and should never have been born.
And so much for their brief encounter. Now they have separated as if they’d never met.
She picks up the garments scattered on the floor and shakes them. Half huddled against one wall of the room where this woman is taking forever to dress, Julien thinks of the offence to Aline.
It was just a way to mark the end of bachelorhood, he keeps telling himself while she approaches softly to bid him farewell. At peace and free once more she leans over him. He feels her warm breath on his face. He is feigning sleep even as his whole being rushes towards her to take her in his arms one last time.
For a long moment he persists in lying there in the dark, tries to put his thoughts in order, pleads in vain for sleep, desires with all his might that deep oblivion, that solid mooring in the depths of night. The sleep of a dumb beast. His whole life is jostled every which way in his mind, holds him spellbound.
As the night slips away, Julien lies with eyes wide open on the disorder of this room with its drawn curtains and can think of just one thing: to inquire about the Homeric’s next departure. Reserve his ticket as soon as he can. He gets up and performs his toilette. His journey to the Old Country is over.
Camille Jouve continues to exist, beyond Julien’s reach. Now she is sitting again at the bar on the Quai Voltaire, crossing her legs, applying lipstick. She hasn’t redone her chignon. Her heavy hair falls to her shoulders. She noticed immediately the absence of the man with the ice cubes. Orders herself a scotch, neat.
All that remains now is to leave again, cross the sea the way he came. Travel across the ocean a second time. The promised land shifts now to the other shore. He has only to make the crossing in the opposite direction. The Atlantic again, as far as the eye can see. Julien imagines long days watching the sea till land appears, half liquid and barely emerged from the water. Aline is that dark land on the horizon, trembling with its fruit. Aline is the source and the beginning. Julien has a rendezvous with her. Once again, dreams are before him.
He has not lifted the curtain or looked out the window. His eyes have not followed the woman who is moving away with tiny steps along the sidewalk of the Quai Voltaire. No foreboding tightens his throat at the thought of an unknown man moving in the shadows, through the city’s streets — a dark silhouette that stands out from all the rest, as solitary and idle as Camille Jouve, of the same evanescent race, walking towards her while she senses him in the distan
ce, hopes for his company, for a few hours only, until the end of night.
AURÉLIEN, CLARA,
MADEMOISELLE, AND THE ENGLISH LIEUTENANT
I
It happened abruptly, in lightning fashion. A sort of savage illumination struck Aurélien Laroche. In that harsh glare nothing of his old beliefs survived. Suddenly everything within him was devastated, like a field of grass delivered to the fire. Present, future, past, eternity — at one stroke all were abolished. Neither Christ nor the Church nor redemption nor the resurrection of the flesh: Aurélien had lost his faith the way a person loses the key to his house and can never go home again.
Aurélien was standing at the edge of the freshly filled-in grave, wearing his black suit for weddings and funerals, hat in his hand. It was July. The sun was beating down on his lowered eyelids. At his feet, flowers dusted with sand marked the place where his wife now rested, in the cemetery, next to the river.
The separation was now complete. All that remained was for Aurélien to trot back home at the leisurely pace of his old horse. At all costs he must avoid having all those people clustered behind him extend their hands and offer their condolences. His youthful face with its dried tears is no longer to be looked upon here until its final state of dead stone.
A house built of poorly squared planks, on the bank of the river. All around it, a sort of cage of thin grass. Obscure outbuildings, half-collapsed. Fields running close by the edge of the forest. From the road could be heard now and then the crying of Aurélien’s child. In vain the village women offered to help: Aurélien chose to take care by himself of the small creature who had emerged from between the thighs of her dying mother in a fountain of blood.
Sometimes at night when Clara was asleep in her wooden cradle, a sort of evil shadow that did not belong to the night would circle the house, enter it, and make its way into Aurélien’s chest, gripping his heart in a vise. He told himself then that he was locked within injustice, as if in a prison from which he would never be able to escape.
