by Jean Rhys
I have bought a Berlitz book and follow it blindly. Farcical, these lessons, except the Russian's. He is determined to get value for his ten francs, and he does.
'Would you tell me, please, if I have the "th" correctly ?' The, this, that, these, those - all correct.
He brings along a collected edition of Oscar Wilde's works and says he wants to read them through. 'Will you stop me, please, if I mispronounce a word?.... I think Oscar Wilde is the greatest of English writers. Do you agree?'
Well....'
'Ah, you do not agree.'
'But I do like him. I think he is very - sympathique.'
He makes a little speech about English hypocrisy. Preaching to the converted.
The streets, blazing hot, and eating peaches. The long, lovely, blue days that lasted for ever, that still are....
At the corner of the street, the chemist's shop with the advertisement of the Abbe Something's Elixir - it cures this, it cures that, it cures the sickness of pregnant women. Would it cure mine? I wonder.
My face is pretty, my stomach is huge. Last time we ate at the Algerian restaurant I had to rush away and be sick....People are very kind to me. They get up and give me their seats in buses. Passe, femme sacree....Not exactly like that, but still - it seemed to me that they were kind. All the same, I'm not so mad now about going out, and I spend long hours by myself.
There is a bookshop next door, which advertises second hand English novels. The assistant is a Hindu. I want a long, calm book about people with large incomes - a book like a lat green meadow and the sheep feeding in it. But he insists upon selling me lurid stories of the white slave traffic. 'This is a very good book, very beautiful, most true.'
But gradually I get some books that I do like. I read most of the time and I am happy.
In and out of the room - Lise, Paulette, Jean, Alfred the Turk. I watch them, and I never quite know them, but I love Lise.
She is a brodeuse - or she has been a brodeuse. Now she sings English songs in a cheap cabaret in the Rue Cujas - Roses of Picardy and Love, Here is My Heart. She can't speak English at all. She is twenty two years old, three years younger than I am.
Everything about Lise surprises me - her gentleness, her extreme sentimentality, so different from what I had been led to expect in a French girl. Airs from Manon, pink garters with little silk roses on them, Gyraldose....'Is it true that English women never use a douche? Myself, I use one twice a day....And all my underclothes made by hand. Yes, every stitch.'
She has black, curly hair, a very pretty face and - unfortunately - thick ankles....'I love Gounod's Ave Maria. The music is like a prayer, don't you think?....' She often comes in and eats with us.
One night I am in the room with Lise. We have just had a fine meal - spaghetti cooked on the lamme bleue and a bottle of Asti Spumante. I am feeling rather good.
She says: 'I wish there'd be another war.'
'Oh, Lise, don't say that.'
'Yes, I do. I might have a bit of luck. I might get killed. I don't want to live any more, me.'
Then she's off. She has nobody. She doesn't think anybody likes her. The engagement in the Rue Cujas is finished. She can't get another. She will once more have to try for a job as a brodeuse. 'And the light in the workrooms isn't so good. Sometimes your eyes hurt so much that you can hardly open them.' She is going to have to go back to live with her mother, who keeps a grocer's shop at Clamart. She is afraid of her mother. When she was a little girl her mother beat her. 'For anything, for nothing. You don't know. And all the time she says bad things to me. She likes to make me cry. She hates me, my mother. I have no one. Soon I shall have to wear spectacles. Soon I shall be old.'
'My God, Lise, you've got a few more years, surely. Cheer up.'
'Non, j'en ai assez,' she says. 'Already. I've had enough.'
'Lise, don't cry,'
'Non, non, j'en ai assez.'
I also start to cry. No, life is too sad; it's quite impossible.
Sitting in front of the lamme bleue, arms round each other's waists, crying. No, life is too sad....My tears fall on her thick hair, which always smells so nice.
Enno, coming in with another bottle of Asti Spumante, says: 'Oh, my God, this is gay,' and laughs loudly. Lise and I look at each other and start laughing too. Soon we are all rolling, helpless with laughter. It's too much, I can't any more, it's too much....
'Poor little Lise,' Enno says, 'she's a nice little girl, but too sentimental.'
Paulette is a very different matter. She is a gay, saucy wench, a great friend of Enno's. I admire and try to copy her and am jealous of her.
She reads us extracts from letters written to her by a lover in the provinces. ' "Tu es belle et tu sens bon." Well, what about it? And listen to this: "Your breasts fulfil the promise of your eyes." He's original, isn't he? And the two thousand francs I asked you for - where are they, vieux con? Never mind, he'll part before I've done with him. Wait a bit. Attends, mon salaud.'
One day they came back, Enno and Paulette, with a steak for me. They had had dinner out. I hadn't gone with them because I felt so sick, but that was over and I was hungry. Paulette cooked the steak over the lamme bleue and I ate it all up. 'Did you like it?' she said. 'Yes, I did.' 'You didn't notice anything about it?' 'I noticed it was a bit tough,' I said. 'Otherwise I liked it all right.' 'It was horse steak,' she said. 'Oh, was it?' They were both watching me with narrowed eyes, expecting me to do the Anglaise stuff.
But later I said: 'Oh, was it?' their mouths, that were wide open to laugh, went small again. After that I think Paulette knew I wasn't one of the comfortable ones, and never had been, and hadn't had such a grand time as all that. Afterwards she liked me better.
In the romantic tradition, Paulette. Long, yellow hair, soft, brown eyes, a bowl of violets in her room. When she looks at herself in the glass, naked, she's as proud as Lucifer. In the romantic tradition, and very generous. She brings me presents of silk stockings. She turns up with several pairs of socks for Enno. 'I've snaffled them,' she says. 'He won't know - he has too many.'
She tells us that one of her lovers, the Count of so - and - so, wants to marry her, but his family is shocked and horrified. 'Voila,' says Paulette, 'je ne joue pas du piano, moi.' She is not bitter - she is regretful, fatalistic.
Besides, she has such bad luck - it's Fate. For instance, the other day the mother was actually persuaded to lunch with her. And what happened as they were walking out of the restaurant? Paulette's drawers fell of.
Do I believe this? Well, I believe that bit anyway, because exactly the same thing has happened to me.
Chuckling madly, on the bed in the hotel in the Rue Lamartine, and thinking of when that man said to me: 'Can you resist it?' 'Yes, I can,' I said, very coldly. I can resist it, just plain and Nordic like that, I certainly can. 'You must be mad,' he said, 'mad.' (Where is this happening? In Kensington.) The next thing he says is that he will see me to my bus. 'Stupid, stupid girl,' he says, doing up buttons, and he takes me to the bus stop. We are standing by a lamp-post, in dead silence, waiting for the bus, and what happens? My drawers fall of. I look down at them, step out of them neatly, pick them up, roll them into a little parcel and put them into my handbag. What else is there to do? He stares into vacancy, shocked beyond measure. The bus comes up. He lifts his hat with a flourish and walks away.
Next morning I realize that it is I who have lost ground. Decidedly. I feel awful about everything. I go to the nearest telephone and ring him up. 'Are you vexed with me about last night?' He answers: 'Yes, I am vexed, I am very vexed....I'll send you a box of Turkish Delight, ' he says, and rings off.
Well now, what is it, this Turkish Delight? Is it a comment, is it irony, is it compensation, is it apology, or what ? I'll throw it out of the window, whatever it is.
Now snow is falling. There is the reflection of snow in the room. The light makes everything seem strange. The mound of my stomach is hidden under the bedclothes. So calm I feel, watching myself in the
glass opposite. My hair hangs down on my shoulders. It is curly again and the corners of my mouth turn up. I like myself today. I am never sick now. I am very well and very happy. I never think of what it will be like to have this baby or, if I think, it's as if a door shuts in my head. Awful, terrible! And then a door shuts in your head.
I hardly ever think about money either, or that when it happens I may be alone. If the tea job comes off it won't do to risk losing it. So I may be in Paris alone. But it's all arranged. As soon as it starts I am to get into a taxi and go of to the sage femme. My room is booked - it's all arranged. It's nothing to make a fuss about, everybody says.
We are friendly with the patronne. She will keep an eye on me while Enno is away. I'll be all right.
The Russian for his lesson. I gave Enno a note putting him of - he must have forgotten to post it.
He looks surprised to find me in bed, the Russian - surprised, then cynical. Does he think it's all arranged, this being in bed? Does he think I want him to make love to me? But surely he can't think that. I believe he does, though.
The corners of his mouth go down when he says 'femme'. (Hatred or fear?) Les femmes - he doesn't trust them, they are capable of anything.
So calm I feel, amused as God, with the huge mound of my stomach safe under the bedclothes....It's no use arguing. As he's here, let's get on with it.
'I'm afraid this will have to be the last lesson,' I say.
The light makes everything seem strange. He kisses my hand, and I watch my hand as he kisses it - white, with red, varnished nails.
We are reading Lady Windermere's Fan.
"The laughter, the horrible laughter of the world - a thing more tragic than all the tears the world has ever shed...." Will you stop me, please, if I mispronounce a word?'
The English conversation....He tells me about the Russian princess who was shut up in the prison of Peter and Paul to be eaten by rats, because she was a revolutionary. 'She screamed for ten days, and then there was silence. And then they let one day pass, and went into the cell. And there was nothing let of her but her hair. She had long and beautiful black hair.'
His conversation is nearly always about pain and torture.
He is going to join his family in London and then he is going up to Oxford. They have been very lucky. They have escaped with a good deal of money. The, this, that, these and those are all correct.
'Do you think English people will like me?'
'Yes, I'm certain they will....'(I've only got to look at you to know that they'll like you in England.)
'And my English?'
'But you speak English perfectly.'
He is pleased at this. He smirks. 'I try to keep in constant practice,' he says. He gives me the ten francs, kisses my hand again, bows from the waist and goes. Goodbye, dear sir, goodbye....
I put the ten francs under the pillow. I put the light out. While I can sleep, let me sleep. A boat rocking on a river, a smooth, green river. Outside, the secret streets. The man who sings 'J'ai perdu la lumiere...'
....The house in the Boulevard Magenta.
The sage femme has very white hands and clear, slant ing eyes and when she looks at you the world stops rocking about. The clouds are clouds, trees are trees, people are people, and that's that. Don't mix them up again. No, I won't.
And there's always the tisane of orange-lower water.
But my heart, heavy as lead, heavy as a stone.
He has a ticket tied round his wrist because he died.
Lying so cold and still with a ticket round his wrist because he died.
Not to think. Only to watch the branches of that tree and the pattern they make standing out against a cold sky. Above all, not to think....
When we got back to the hotel I felt very tired. I sat on the bed and looked down at the carpet. Except that I was tired I felt all night. But I kept thinking of the dress he had on - so pretty. It'll get all spoiled, I thought. Everything all spoiled.
'God is very cruel,' I said, 'very cruel. A devil, of course. That accounts for everything - the only possible explanation.'
'I'm going out,' Enno said. 'I can't stay in here. I must go out.'
I stayed there, looking down at the dark red, dirty carpet and seeing a dark wall in the hot sun - the wall so hot it burned your hand when you touched it - and the red and yellow lowers and the time of day when every thing stands still.
Now the lights are red, dusky red, haggard red, cruel red. Strings plucked softly by a man with a long, thin nose and sharp, blue eyes.
Our luck has changed and the lights are red.
There we all are - Lise, Alfred, Jean....A fat man is shouting: 'La brune et la blonde, la brune et la blonde.'
The cork of a champagne bottle pops. Why worry? Our luck has changed. The fat man and I are in a corner by ourselves.
He says: 'Life is too awful. Do you know that story about the man who loved a woman who was married to somebody else, and she fell ill? And he didn't dare go and ask about her because the husband suspected her and hated him. So he just hung about the house and watched. And all the time he couldn't make up his mind whether he'd be a coward if he went and asked to see her or whether he'd be a coward if he didn't. And then one day he went and asked, and she was dead. Doesn't that make you laugh? She was dead, you see, and he had never sent one word. And he loved her and she was dying and he knew she was dying and he never sent one word. That's an old story, but doesn't it make you laugh? It might be true, that story, mightn't it?'
(Pourquoi etes-vous tiste, madame? II ne faut pas Stre triste, madame. You mustn't be sad; you must laugh, you must dance....)
The fat man is still talking away.
'My partner has a very pretty wife and for some reason she was unhappy and so she went into the Bois de Boulogne and she walked a long way and got under a big tree. And there she put a revolver to her breast and pulled the trigger. Did she die ? Of course not. Not a bit of it. If you really want to die you must put it into your mouth - up to the roof of your mouth. Well, she's still in the hospital....And just at first this made a great impression on my partner. He was in an awful state, thinking how unhappy she must have been to try to kill herself. But that was a week ago, and now he's just made up his mind that it's all a nuisance and that she made a fool of herself, and he's stopped being sorry for her. Isn't life droll?'
Well, there you are. It's not that these things happen or even that one survives them, but what makes life strange is that they are forgotten. Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is for gotten and dies. This is what makes life so droll - the way you forget, and every day is a new day, and there's hope for everybody, hooray....
Now our luck has changed and the lights are red.
A room? A nice room? A beautiful room? A beautiful room with bath? Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro....This happened and that happened....
And then the days came when I was alone.
'I'll write,' he said. 'I'll try to send you some money.'
But I knew it was finished. From the stat I had known that one day this would happen -- that we would say goodbye.
He leant out of the carriage window. I looked up at him and wondered if it were tears that made his eyes so bight. He wasn't one of those men who cry easily, Enno.
When the train had gone I had coffee in a bar near the Gare du Nord and looked through the window at the dark world and wide.
It's only for a time. We'll be together again when things go better. Knowing in myself that it was finished....
Did I love Enno at the end? Did he ever love me? I don't know. Only, it was later that that I began to go to pieces. Not all at once, of course. First this happened, and then that happened....
I go to an hotel near the Place de la Madeleine. There are a lot of flies in this room. They torment me. I kill one. I didn't know flies have blood just like you or me. Well, there it lies, with its wings still and its legs turned up. You won't dance again....
I
write to England, to try and borrow some money. They keep me waiting a long time for an answer and I start eating at a convent near by, where the nuns supply very cheap meals for destitute girls. She is kind, the old nun in charge, or she seems to me not unkind. The room where we eat looks on to a large stone courtyard. You can get a quarter of wine for a few sous.
But there's an English valet de chambre at the hotel who tells the patron that whatever I call myself now he had known me very well in London and that I had come to Paris with a great friend of his, a jockey, and that I had treated his fiend very badly and that I was the dirtiest bitch he had ever struck, which was saying something. Useless to deny all this - quite useless....Was it hysteria, or a case of hate at first sight, or did he really mistake me for this other girl ? I shall never know.
But he makes life hell for me, this valet de chambre.
At last the money comes from England. 'We can't go on doing this,' they say.
'You insisted on it against everybody's advice.' And so on....All right, I won't ask you again. A Spartan lot, they are.
I leave the hotel, I leave the quarter. For the last time I have washed my knife, fork and spoon and put them away in the locker. No more meals with the destitute girls.
But, after all, those were still the days when I went into a cafe to drink coffee, when I could feel gay on half a bottle of wine, when this happened and that happened.
But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can't it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.
Now, money, for the night is coming. Money for my hair, money for my teeth, money for shoes that won't deform my feet (it's not so easy now to walk around in cheap shoes with very high heels), money for good clothes, money, money. The night is coming.
That's always when there isn't any. Just when you need it there's no money. No money. It gets you down.
Is it true that I am moche? God, no. I bet it was a woman said that. No, it wasn't. It was a man said it. Am I moche ? No, no, you're young, you're beautiful.