The Vatard Sisters

by Joris-karl Huysmans

  Then began a long series of convoluted arrangements, ingenious schemes in order to get from one end of Paris to the other, cheaply and in as little time as possible. Auguste applied himself to tram routes, bought a timetable at the bus office, but this mysterious tome, with its bold letters in brackets and rows of dots, told them nothing. They strained their eyes over it but were unable to unravel the complicated skein of connections and correspondences. Tired of squinting her eyes and following the lines with her finger, Désirée said to her lover, not without reason, that once installed in his new quarter he could see which buses ran there and then tell her the colours of the ones she needed to take. Auguste provided her with all the necessary information, but as buses and trams were invariably full whenever it rained, they decided not to use these modes of transport which, with all their detours and their stops, would leave them barely enough time to kiss before they had to part again. They came to an understanding that each would go halfway on foot: she’d try, for her part, to go as far as the Halle aux Vins on the Quai Saint-Bernard, and he’d wait for her there by the parapet or by the iron railings.

  If they now had less time to be together, on the other hand they had an extra day on which to meet: Sunday. For a long time workers had been doing a half day on Sunday mornings, but the boss had noticed that their eagerness to come and work boiled down simply to this: that having exhausted all their credit in the quarter where they lived and having still managed to preserve some in the area around the workshop, they came only to drink without having to pay a sou, doing no useful work while they were there, just gossiping out in the courtyard or snoozing behind bundles of paper, and so he’d decided not to open his premises on Sundays anymore. Spared from having to set up the press on these mornings, Auguste could now meet Désirée at about nine o’clock.

  Their meetings continued. The weather remained cold, but it no longer rained. At first, Désirée didn’t mind passing beyond the limits of the Montrouge district. It was a change for her, the Rue du Cotentin was beginning to get on her nerves with its perpetually dreary air of a deserted street; she experienced, at least for the first few days, the pleasure of crossing boulevards and streets she normally only went down once or twice a year.

  Having reached the Boulevard Saint-Michel she would walk down it slowly, if she wasn’t late, window-shopping in front of shoe shops, going into raptures over shiny green and puce coloured ankle-boots, over small low-cut shoes with high heels and rosettes, over boots of coarse-grained leather, dyed bright green, blue or red, with gold-coloured trimmings and laces, looking to see what sort of women were actually buying them, thinking that no one would dare wear them openly in the street; then she would gaze at the sparkling facades of the cafés, at the women in heavy make-up fidgeting at their tables, at the seafood stalls and the flower vendors, at the fat woman vaunting her wares, at the idiotic groups of braying students, at beggar-women carting orphans about and staring in bewilderment at the gilded mirrors.

  All this movement, all this noise, distracted her; she would dawdle along, eyes open wide, not really walking seriously again until she reached the iron railings of the Cluny gardens, where she always felt sorry for the guard on sentry duty beneath the dark vault of the old Roman baths.

  One evening she was followed by some young men who, probably not having enough money to go drinking, fell in step behind her and started to make suggestive comments. She quickened her pace and refrained from responding to them; as soon as they caught sight of Auguste, standing forlornly at the corner of the embankment, they withdrew, but Désirée, who deep down, like all girls, wasn’t really angry at being followed, was even less so this time. Auguste would at least see that other young men thought she was pretty enough to want to seduce. But Auguste, grumbling under his breath, saw it differently, feeling that she should have told them where to go, that she wasn’t annoyed enough by their advances.

  But she just laughed, giving him a little slap on the wrist and murmuring: ‘How silly you are, I obviously couldn’t care less about them since I’m here!’ And, pleased that he seemed jealous, she told him off, then hung caressingly on his arm, leaning forward with her face tilted up towards his, so as to look into his eyes.

  But the time passed quickly, so they slowly walked back as far as the Boulevard du Montparnasse. One day, they noticed a nice little tavern standing on its own, and they drank some cider. This seemed to them to be the tavern of their dreams: a small room garlanded with roses, wooden tables, a jolly fat lady snoring at the counter, her arms crossed, a waiter yawning in the doorway, a garrulous landlord smoking behind his newspaper. ‘Well here’s a place that’s useful to know about,’ said Auguste, ‘instead of going all the way down to the embankment, you can stop here when it’s raining. I’m not afraid of getting wet. I’ll lose out on the time it takes us to walk here, since you won’t be with me, but it’s better than letting you get soaked to the skin and falling ill again.’

  It was just as well they discovered this quiet spot because a succession of evenings followed, uninterrupted by any bright spells, in which the streets and skies turned the colour of sludge, windows were covered in drizzle, and shoes were caked in greasy muck. When the time came to go out, Désirée, snuggled up by the grate of the coal fire, feeling sluggish, her eyelids growing heavy, would say to herself: ‘I’ve got to go.’ And then gave herself five minutes more and stayed where she was. She would reproach herself for her laziness, telling herself she was weak, feeling sorry for Auguste who didn’t hesitate to splash through the rain for her, and eventually she would jump to her feet, shake herself, put on her hood, and make her way hurriedly to the tavern.

  Moreover certain days of the month, those days on which a woman becomes irritable and bemoans these reminders of her sex, left her in a state of lethargy. On days such as these she would debate with herself whether to go or not, groaning: ‘I’m not feeling very well, I’m tired, if I don’t go, I’ll tell him tomorrow that I was ill.’ She would look at herself in the mirror, would imagine she had dark rings round her eyes and a pallid complexion, she longed to be in bed, would attempt to cough, thinking she was done for. She would say to herself: ‘Now come on, buck yourself up!’ And she’d hope the doorbell would ring, a visit of some kind that would justify her not going out, allow her to believe that she couldn’t have done anything else but stay at home. But no one would come, so she’d open the door, go downstairs, look up and down the road, and when no one she knew appeared, she would finally decide to set off.

  On those evenings, inevitably, she’d be in an irritable mood, barely letting herself be kissed, replying to her lover, who seeing her so careworn and pale would ask: ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?’ with a sullen ‘No’, then she’d get angry if he insisted: ‘But I’ve just told you, there’s nothing wrong with me!’ And then ten minutes later, shivering, she’d complain about being cold, and even though he’d order her a hot drink to revive her, she would just sit there silently, distracted, and when, worried at seeing her like this, Auguste suggested he take her home she didn’t insist on staying.

  After having left her he would return home feeling empty. He would have liked to be returning to a warm bedroom, to a wife who’d rouse from her sleep with a gentle and affectionate query; he’d have liked, on lighting a candle, to see the woman who’d fallen asleep waiting for him smile at his arrival; he recalled, word for word, the image of well-being, of happiness, that Céline had evoked the day she urged him to marry her sister. When he passed some belated stragglers walking briskly along the Boulevard de Mazas, he envied them thinking: ‘They’re going back to a comfortable house, they’ll be able to recount all they’ve seen, all they’ve done to those waiting for them.’ He longed for the tranquillity of domestic life, the peaceful union of two people whose thoughts and interests are sometimes the same.

  At night especially, when he was in bed and the room was dark, all his melancholy thoughts obsessed him, and even though he closed his eyes firmly he c
ouldn’t sleep. Sometimes he tried to cast off his sorrows, saying to himself: ‘But after all, I’ve nothing to complain about, I’m happy here with my good mother.’ Nevertheless, he had to admit that this placid affection, these lukewarm embraces from an old woman, left him feeling annoyed and unmoved; at times he was horrified with himself, fearing that he loved his mother less.

  Then the image of Désirée would haunt him again and he’d waste his time in useless regrets, repeating to himself: ‘Oh, if I hadn’t joined the army I’d now be earning eight francs a day carving pipes, I could afford to get married.’ And he sought to console himself, reminding himself that if he’d practised a different trade, he’d never have gone to Débonnaire & Co. and met Désirée. He daydreamed about changing his profession, adopting one that would pay more, but had to admit that he didn’t know how to do anything else, that he at least earned a modest living at the bindery, that it would be madness to throw himself into the uncertainties of another profession.

  As for Désirée, her thoughts were less tormented and less bitter, she was gradually slipping into a sort of listless apathy. The Boulevard Saint-Michel, which had diverted her at first with its luxurious shop windows and its noisy crowds, now bored her. The frisson given to their meetings by Vatard’s ill will no longer spurred her on; now that he allowed her to go out, she felt the cold more, was sensitive to the wind, was vague about the times of her rendezvous, sometimes going there too early, gripped by a sudden impatience and a need to walk, but more often arriving too late, as if she were fulfilling some onerous duty.

  On rain-sodden days, as they had agreed, she didn’t go any further than the tavern, but even on days when the streets were dry, when a brisk wind invited long walks, she no longer went to find Auguste down by the embankment.

  Two weeks went by, two weeks during which, hour by hour, one could follow the progressive stages of her weakening resolve; one day she only went halfway down the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the next she didn’t go any further than the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Michel; as each evening passed she ventured correspondingly less and less far. She finally reached the point where, no matter what the weather was like, she would meet him only in the front room of the tavern.

  XVI

  When Céline had finished her dress and tried it on she was as happy as a madwoman, she danced around her bedroom, cricked her neck trying to look at it from the back, found it gave her a ravishing figure, a certain elegance even. Cyprien was less enthusiastic when, rushing into his studio, she plonked herself in front of him in search of compliments. He limited himself to making the observation that the dress didn’t show off her waist, that the old one, threadbare though it was, fitted her better, made her look more curvy and more sinuous.

  These remarks, expressed with such conviction, had an effect on Céline like a couple of slaps. She was stunned for a moment, then she launched into a bitter retort. As he wasn’t in the mood to argue, he confined himself to saying that he was teasing her. At which her good mood returned and she strutted around again with a satisfied air in front of the mirror.

  This dress became the subject of perpetual arguments and affronts.

  Céline would arrive on Sunday morning saying: ‘I’ve come for a stroll.’ He, keeping up the pretext of having too much work and having already determined not to go, did everything he could not to accompany her. So then she’d stretch out on the sofa, grumbling and fidgeting until he lost patience with these ruses and finally consented to take her out.

  She wanted to walk through fancy areas, the Tuileries, the Champs-Elysées, somewhere where she could show off her new dress. He’d resist and propose instead going to the Moulin de la Galette, to Montmartre, down the Boulevard d’Italie or to the Gobelins, somewhere more easygoing where he could smoke his pipe.

  ‘It wasn’t worth my while putting on a new dress to visit places like that,’ Céline would complain.

  He’d reply: ‘Then why didn’t you wear your ordinary dress?’

  ‘Thanks a lot! When else am I supposed to put on my new dress then if not on a Sunday?’

  He tried to make her understand that there was no reason to dress better on a Sunday than on any other day of the week. But it was like banging his head against a brick wall.

  One afternoon he nevertheless decided to drag her along to the Champs-Elysées. He made her sit on a dusty bench, her back to the road, and they watched that merry-go-round of fools who prance about in their new clothes, between the Place de la Concorde and the Cirque d’Été. He felt sick at seeing this herd of idiots surge past. As for her, she gazed wide-eyed, imagining that they were admiring her dress, her bearing, her charms.

  He swore never again to take her to that carnival of glad rags, and he hauled her off on the Bateaux-Mouches as far as Bercy, led her to a spot near the Place Pinel, behind the abattoir, where, without her even realising he was making fun of her, he praised the funereal hideousness of its boulevards, the dilapidated depravity of its streets.

  All this did little to cheer her up; she didn’t need a well-heeled lover in order to go and see sordid quarters like those. Certainly, it was difficult for them to see eye to eye. She was becoming very critical of his artistic whims, and he had the urge to leave her whenever, with that common way she had, she’d say she couldn’t bear gentlemen who sported monocles, or she’d examine the fingers of every woman sitting next to a man to see if they were wearing a ring and then whisper to Cyprien: ‘She’s not married, you know.’

  And yet, on other days, he was tormented by remorse. He’d resolve to be kinder to Céline and he’d take her in his arms when she arrived, playing with her like a puppy, he’d smoke a cigarette with her, each of them taking a drag in turn, and, as they sat by the stove, he’d let her tell stories about her family, or the quarrels she’d had with her friends.

  Sometimes she’d give vent to a terrible sadness, crying with little sobs, and Cyprien, in spite of his resolution to be more gentle, would end up hurting her with his barbed comments. One time, when he begged her to save her tears for days when she didn’t come to see him, she replied: ‘Who do you want me to tell my problems to if not to you?’

  But where their love really began to crack was on those tempestuous days when the painter was getting dressed to go out to a soirée or a ball. To her, a salon was just a kind of high-class joint where you picked up women. It was no use him saying to her: ‘But it’s not like that at all.’ She’d shake her head with a mistrustful air, and the working-class woman’s hatred for those in the middle class would burst out in a stream of crude words. With a heavy heart she’d help her lover to get ready, prowling round him, admiring his white tie and tailcoat suit, gazing respectfully at his opera-hat, making it expand and flatten, going into raptures over its black silk lining, over the gold letters that were stitched onto it.

  On such evenings she wanted to sleep at his place at all costs, in order to be sure that he would come back, and she couldn’t understand the irritableness of the painter who, feeling obliged to go to people’s houses because they might buy one of his canvases, would swear like a cabdriver as he struggled with his starched shirt and with the buttons on his gloves. She would say to him: ‘So don’t go. You’ll see, we’ll have fun here.’ And Cyprien, exasperated, would shout: ‘What the devil! Do you think it’s for my own amusement that I’m having to spend two francs for a cab and be bored to death in some bourgeois household?’ But she’d retort: ‘Oh, just go then, I know you’re really going there to find a woman.’ And the painter would end up replying: ‘Well, I’d prefer it if I was!’ Then she’d slap him angrily; he’d get annoyed because she was rumpling his shirt, and he would finally leave, overwhelmed at the prospect of standing by a doorway for the next two or three hours without being able to smoke.

  He would neither dance nor play cards, would stand there like an imbecile, part of that lamentable group of men who contemplate the ceiling and, in order to mask their embarrassment, check if their cravats are straight every ten
minutes. Generally, he’d take refuge in the cardroom, where other men, strangers like him to the pleasures of playing cards and dancing, would sigh, regretting their slippers and their place by the fire at home, imagining that they’d no longer be able to hail a cab at this hour and would have to escort some tired and irritated woman on their arms to some distant quarter.

  He’d slink away as soon as possible and return home, but no matter how careful he was Céline would wake up and angrily interrogate him.

  ‘You smell of powder! You’ve had enough of me, I know it!’ And she’d shout: ‘Go on then, go off to your society tarts! Oh yes, they’re all so posh, that goes without saying. Pretty little carcasses with their stuck up airs, and nothing but skin and bone on ’em! That’s a nice thing to look at when you wake up in the morning, that’s what’s under all that fine taffeta, coughing and whining, gulping down codliver oil and going on about how healthy it is!’

  And when he tried to interrupt this deluge of insults, she’d fling back even more angrily:

  ‘I know what I’m talking about, look you bloody idiot, look at me, it’s not fancy clothes and trinkets that make a woman. If they were here in their nightgowns, like me, oh that’d be a right sight. Then you’d see. They’re nothing compared to me. No, without all their finery they’re nothing compared to me, do you hear?’And she’d pat her alluring breasts and shout: ‘Here, this is better than anything they’ve got!’ gesticulating in bed, her eyes smouldering, her hair tumbling like a sheaf of straw round her bare shoulders.