by Marvin Kaye
had put her right, the westering glow pouring in sideways to paint the face in her
mirror, on its slim, long throat. She found, too, she had shoulders, and
cheekbones. Hands, whose tendons flexed in fans. With the knowledge of beauty,
Antoinette began to hope for something. Armed with her beauty she began to fall
madly in love—with young officers in the army, with figures encountered in
dreams.
One evening at a parochial ball, the two situations became confused.
The glamorous young man led Antoinelle out into a summer garden. It was a
garden of Europe, with tall dense trees of twisted trunks, foliage massed on a lilac
northern sky.
Antoinelle gave herself. That is, not only was she prepared to give of herself
sexually, but to give herself up to this male person, of whom she knew no more
than that he was beautiful.
Some scruple—solely for himself, the possible consequences—made him
check at last.
"No—no—" she cried softly, as he forcibly released her and stood back,
angrily panting.
The beautiful young man concluded (officially to himself) that Antoinelle was
"loose," and therefore valueless. She was not rich enough to marry, and besides,
he despised her family.
Presently he told his brother officers all about this girl, and her "looseness."
"She would have done anything," he said.
"She's a whore," said another, and smiled.
Fastidiously, Antoinelle's lover remarked, "No, worse than a whore. A whore
does it honestly, for money. It's her work. This one simply does it."
Antoinelle's reputation was soon in tatters, which blew about that little town of
trees and societal pillars, like the torn flag of a destroyed regiment.
She was sent in disgrace to her aunt's house in the country.
No one spoke to Antoinelle in that house. Literally, no one. The aunt would
not, and she had instructed her servants, who were afraid of her. Even the maid
who attended Antoinelle would not speak, in the privacy of the evening chamber,
preparing the girl for the silent evening supper below, or the lumpy three mattressed bed.
The aunt's rather unpleasant lapdog, when Antoinelle had attempted,
unwatched, to feed it a marzipan fruit, had only turned its ratlike head away. (At
everyone else, save the aunt, it growled.)
Antoinelle, when alone, sobbed. At first in shame—her family had already seen
to that, very ably, in the town. Next in frustrated rage. At last out of sheer despair.
She was like a lunatic in a cruel, cool asylum. They fed her, made her observe
all the proper rituals. She had shelter and a place to sleep, and people to relieve
some of her physical wants. There were even books in the library, and a garden to
walk in on sunny days. But language— sound—they took away from her. And
language is one of the six senses. It was as bad perhaps as blindfolding her.
Additionally, they did not even speak to each other, beyond the absolute
minimum, when she was by—coarse-aproned girls on the stair stifled their giggles,
and passed with mask faces. And in much the same way, too, Antoinelle was not
permitted to play the aunt's piano.
Three months of this, hard, polished months, like stone mirrors which reflected
nothing.
Antoinelle grew thinner, more pale. Her young eyes had hollows under them.
She was like a nun.
The name of the aunt who did all this was Clemence—which means, of course,
clemency—mild, merciful. (And the name of the young man in the town who had
almost fucked Antoinelle, forced himself not to for his own sake, and then fucked
instead her reputation, which was to say, her life … his name was Justus.)
On a morning early in the fourth month, a new thing happened.
Antoinelle opened her eyes, and saw the aunt sailing into her room. And the
aunt, glittering with rings like knives, spoke to Antoinette.
"Very well, there's been enough of all this. Yes, yes. You may get up quickly
and come down to breakfast, Patice will see to your dress and hair. Make sure
you look your best."
Antoinelle lay there, on her back in the horrible bed, staring like the dead newly
awakened.
"Come along," said Aunt Clemence, holding the awful little dog untidily
scrunched, "make haste now. What a child!" As if Antoinelle were the strange
creature, the curiosity.
While, as the aunt swept out, the dog craned back and chattered its dirty teeth
at Antoinelle.
And then, the third wonder, Patice was chattering, breaking like a happy stream
at thaw, and shaking out a dress.
Antoinelle got up, and let Patice see to her, all the paraphernalia of the toilette,
finishing with a light pollen of powder, even a fingertip of rouge for the matte pale
lips, making them moist and rosy.
"Why?" asked Antoinelle at last, in a whisper.
"There is a visitor," chattered Patice, brimming with joy.
Antoinelle took two steps, then caught her breath and dropped as if dead on
the carpet.
But Patice was also brisk; she brought Antoinelle round, crushing a vicious
clove of lemon oil under her nostrils, slapping the young face lightly. Exactly as
one would expect in this efficiently cruel lunatic asylum.
Presently Antoinelle drifted down the stairs, light -headed, rose-lipped and
shadow-eyed. She had never looked more lovely or known it less.
The breakfast was a ghastly provincial show-off thing. There were dishes and
dishes, hot and cold, of kidneys, eggs, of cheeses and hams, hot breads in
napkins, brioches, and chocolate. (It was a wonder Antoinelle was not sick at
once.) All this set on crisp linen with flashing silver, and the fine china normally
kept in a cupboard.
The servants flurried round in their awful, stupid (secondhand) joy. The aunt
sat in her chair and Antoinelle in hers, and the man in his, across the round table.
Antoinelle had been afraid it was going to be Justus. She did not know why he
would be there—to castigate her again, to apologise—either way, such a boiling of
fear—or something—had gone through Antoinette that she had fainted.
But it was not Justus. This was someone she did not know.
He had stood up as she came into the room. The morning was clear and well
lit, and Antoinelle had seen, with a dreary sagging of relief, that he was old. Quite
old. She went on thinking this as he took her hand in his large one and shook it as
if carelessly playing with something, very delicately. But his hand was manicured,
the nails clean and white-edged. There was one ring, with a dull colourless stone in
it.
Antoinelle still thought he was quite old, perhaps not so old as she had
thought.
When they were seated, and the servants had doled out to them some food and
drink, and gone away, Antoinelle came to herself rather more.
His hair was not grey but a mass of silvery blond. A lot of hair, very thick,
shining, which fell, as was the fashion then, just to his shoulders. He was thickset,
not slender, but seemed immensely strong. One saw this in ordinary, apparently
unrelated things—for example, the niceness with which he helped himself now
from the coffeepot. Indeed, the d
angerous playfulness of his handshake with a
woman; he could easily crush the hands of his fellow men.
Perhaps he was not an old man, really. In his forties (which would be the
contemporary age of fifty-five or -six). He was losing his figure, as many human
beings do at that age, becoming either too big or too thin. But if his middle had
spread, he was yet a presence, sprawled there in his immaculately white ruffled
shirt, the broad-cut coat, his feet in boots of Spanish leather propped under the
table. And to his face, not much really had happened. The forehead was both wide
and high, scarcely lined, the nose aquiline as a bird's beak, scarcely thickened, the
chin undoubted and jutting, the mouth narrow and well shaped. His eyes, set in the
slightest rouching of skin, were large, a cold, clear blue. He might actually be only
just forty (that is, fifty). A fraction less.
Antoinelle was not to know, in his youth, the heads of women had turned for
Gregers Vonderjan like tulips before a gale. Or that, frankly, now and then they
still did so.
The talk, what was that about all this while? Obsequious pleasantries from the
aunt, odd anecdotes he gave, to do with ships, land, slaves, and money. Antoinelle
had been so long without hearing the speech of others, she had become nearly
word-deaf, so that most of what he said had no meaning for her, and what the aunt
said even less.
Finally the aunt remembered an urgent errand, and left them.
They sat, with the sun blazing through the windows. Then Vonderjan looked
right at her, at Antoinelle, and suddenly her face, her whole body, was suffused by
a savage burning blush.
"Did she tell you why I called here?" he asked, almost indifferently.
Antoinelle, her eyes lowered, murmured childishly, thoughtlessly, "No—she—
she hasn't been speaking to me—"
"Hasn't she? Why not? Oh," he said, "that little business in the town."
Antoinelle, to her shock, began to cry. This should have horrified her—she had
lost control—the worst sin, as her family had convinced her, they thought.
He knew, this man. He knew. She was ashamed, and yet unable to stop crying,
or to get up and leave the room.
She heard his chair pushed back, and then he was standing over her. To her
slightness, he seemed vast and overpowering. He was clean, and smelled of
French soap, of tobacco, and some other nuance of masculinity, which Antoinelle
at once intuitively liked. She had scented it before.
"Well, you won't mind leaving her, then," he said, and he lifted her up out of
her chair, and there she was in his grip, her head drooping back, staring almost
mindlessly into his large, handsome face. It was easy to let go. She did so. She
had in fact learnt nothing, been taught nothing by the whips and stings of her
wicked relations. "I called here to ask you," he said, "to be my wife."
"But…" faintly, "I don't know you."
"There's nothing to know. Here I am. Exactly what you see. Will that do?"
"But…" more faintly still, "why would you want me?"
"You're just what I want. And I thought you would be."
"But," nearly inaudible, "I was—disgraced."
"We'll see about that. And the old she-cunt won't talk to you, you say?"
Antoinette, innocently, not even knowing this important word (which any way
he referred to in a foreign argot), only shivered. "No. Not till today."
"Now she does because I've bid for you. You'd better come with me. Did the
other one, the soldier-boy, have you? It doesn't matter, but tell me now."
Antoinelle threw herself on the stranger's chest—she had not been told, or
heard his name. "No—no—" she cried, just as she had when Justus pushed her
off.
"I must go slowly with you then," said this man. But nevertheless, he moved
her about and, leaning over, kissed her.
Vonderjan was an expert lover. Besides, he had a peculiar quality, which had
stood him, and stands those like him, in very good stead. With what he wanted in
the sexual way, providing they were not unwilling to begin with, he could
spontaneously communicate some telepathic echo of his needs, making them
theirs. This Antoinelle felt at once, as his warm lips moved on hers, his hot tongue
pierced her mouth, and the fingers of the hand which did not hold her tight, firefeathered her breasts.
In seconds her ready flames burst up. Business-like, Vonderjan at once sat
down, and holding her on his lap, placed his hand, making nothing of her dress, to
crush her centre in an inexorable rhythmic grasp, until she came in gasping spasms
against him, wept, and wilted there in his arms, his property.
When the inclement aunt returned with a servant, having left, she felt, sufficient
time for Vonderjan to ask, and Antoinelle sensibly to acquiesce, she found her
niece tcarstained and dead white in a chair, and Vonderjan drinking his coffee, and
smoking a cigar, letting the ash fall as it wished onto the table linen.
"Well then," said the aunt, uncertainly.
Vonderjan cast her one look, as if amused by something about her.
"Am I to presume—may I—is everything—"
Vonderjan took another puff and a gout of charred stuff hit the cloth, before he
mashed out the burning butt of the cigar on a china plate.
"Antoinelle," exclaimed the aunt, "what have you to say?"
Vonderjan spoke, not to the aunt, but to his betrothed. "Get up, Anna. You're
going with me now." Then, looking at the servant (a look the woman said after
was like that of a basilisk), "Out, you, and put some things together, all the lady
will need for the drive. I'll supply the rest. Be quick."
Scarlet, the aunt shouted, "Now sir, this isn't how to go on."
Vonderjan drew Antoinelle up, by his hand on her elbow. He had control of
her now, and she need bother with nothing. She turned her drooping head, like a
tired flower, looking only at his boots.
The aunt was ranting. Vonderjan, with Antoinelle in one arm, went up to her.
Though not a small woman, nor slight like her niece, he dwarfed her, made of her
a pygmy.
"Sir—there is her father to be approached—you must have a care—"
Then she stopped speaking. She stopped because, like Antoinelle, she had
been given no choice. Gregers Vonderjan had clapped his hand over her mouth,
and rather more than that. He held her by the bones and flesh of her face, unable
to pull away, beating at him with her hands, making noises but unable to do more,
and soon breathing with difficulty.
While he kept her like this, he did not bother to look at her, his broad body
only disturbed vaguely by her flailing, weak blows. He had turned again to
Antoinelle, and asked her if there was anything she wished particularly to bring
away from the house.
Antoinelle did not have the courage to glance at her struggling and apoplectic
aunt. She shook her head against his shoulder, and after a little shake of his own
(at the aunt's face) he let the woman go. He and the girl walked out of the room
and out of the house, to his carriage, leaving the aunt to progress from her partial
asphyxia to hysterics.
He had got them married in three days by pulling such strings as money
gener
ally will. The ceremony did not take place in the town, but all the town heard
of it. Afterwards Vonderjan went back there, without his wife, to throw a lavish
dinner party, limited to the male gender, which no person invited dared not attend,
including the bride's father, who was trying to smile off, as does the death's-head,
the state it has been put into.
At this dinner, too, was Justus. He sat with a number of his friends, all of them
astonished to be there. But like the rest, they had not been able, or prepared, to
evade the occasion.
Vonderjan treated them all alike, with courtesy. The food was of a high
standard—a cook had been brought from the city—and there were extravagant
wines, with all of which Gregers Vonderjan was evidently familiar. The men got
drunk, that is, all the men but for Vonderjan, who was an established drinker, and
consumed several bottles of wine, also brandy and schnapps, without much
effect.
At last Vonderjan said he would be going. To the bowing and fawning of his
wife's relatives he paid no attention. It was Justus he took aside, near the door,
with two of his friends. The young men were all in full uniform, smart as polish,
only their bright hair tousled, and faces flushed by liquor.
"You mustn't think my wife holds any rancour against you," Vonderjan
announced, not loudly, but in a penetrating tone. Justus was too drunk to catch
himself up, and only idiotically nodded. "She said, I should wish you a speedy
end to your trouble."
"What trouble's that?" asked Justus, still idiotically.
"He has no troubles," added the first of his brother officers, "since you took
that girl off his hands."
The other officer (the most sober, which was not saying much—or perhaps the
most drunk, drunk enough to have gained the virtue of distance) said, "Shut your
trap, you fool. Herr Vonderjan doesn't want to hear that silly kind of talk."
Vonderjan was grave. "It's nothing to me. But I'm sorry for your Justus,
naturally. I shouldn't, as no man would, like to be in his shoes."
"What shoes are they?" Justus belatedly frowned.
"I can recommend to you," said Vonderjan, "an excellent doctor in the city.
They say he is discreet."
"What?"
"What is he saying—"
"The disease, I believe they say, is often curable, in its earliest stages."
