Jezebel

by Irene Nemirovsky

  Gladys started pleading again. ‘All right then, it’s what you want; he’s yours and you have the right … But don’t you owe anything to me? To yourself? To me,’ she said again in despair. ‘Can you imagine the scandal …’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ said Marie-Thérèse, smiling slightly.

  ‘So you don’t have any pity for me?’ said Gladys hopelessly. ‘What have I ever done to you? It isn’t my fault … Could I possibly have foreseen the war? It happens every day that parents oppose a marriage that isn’t suitable. What else have I done?’

  ‘Other parents mistakenly believe they’re doing the best thing. Their children might suffer, but they don’t have the right to hold their mistakes against them. But you, you thought only about yourself. You didn’t want to have a married daughter. You didn’t want to be “the mother of the young Madame Beauchamp”,’ she murmured, sobbing hoarsely. ‘You wanted to snatch away a part of my life, my share of happiness, the way you always have.’

  ‘That isn’t true,’ said Gladys. ‘I’ve always loved you.’

  ‘Yes, when I was a child, when I was a good excuse to make people think well of you,’ said Marie-Thérèse bitterly. ‘You sat me on your knee and let people admire you. And I, idiot that I was, loved you so much; I admired you so much; I thought you were so beautiful! I used to talk to you as if you were the child, I, your daughter, as if you were my child. Now I hate you; I hate your blonde hair and your face that looks younger than mine. What right do you have to be beautiful, happy and loved, while I …’

  ‘That’s not my fault …’

  ‘Yes it is,’ shouted Marie-Thérèse. ‘You should have been thinking of me and only me, the way that I think only of him,’ she said, wrapping her weak arms round her body. ‘Leave me alone! Go away; get out!’

  ‘You will not keep this child, Marie-Thérèse. He’ll live, he’ll be well looked after, I’ll give him all the money he needs, but you will not keep him, not that … you won’t show him off. That’s impossible. Oh, I can tell very well what you want, you know. You want me to suffer, don’t you? If I ever hear you say the word “grandmother”, I’ll want to kill myself,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m in pain! You can’t understand that. You think I’m a monster. But I’m right, I am, because I see life as it truly is, so short, so sad without love, without men desiring you, with its long, horrible old age! But you, you’re young. You’ll forget your Olivier. I wasn’t asking for an eternity, you know! Just two or three more years. But no, you’d fix things so that everyone would know the truth, so that at every moment I’d be expecting someone to look at me oddly or whisper with pity, “Is it possible? She seems so young, but …” And what about all the women? The way other women, my enemies, my friends would laugh at me? Just wait a while, wait two or three years and you’ll see, you’ll see, I’ll be a good mother, you’ll have nothing to complain about, and as for the child, well, perhaps I’ll even love him then. So tell me you won’t keep this child?’

  ‘I will keep him, I will know him, I will bring him up,’ Marie-Thérèse said harshly. ‘Now get out.’

  She threw herself back on to the bed and lay there without moving, without a word, without a tear. Gladys kept talking to her for a long time, but she bit into the sheets and remained silent. Finally, Gladys left.

  10

  Gladys forced herself to accept that the child would be born; she resigned herself to it but life had a bitter taste. Whenever she saw a man smile as a pretty young woman passed by, she felt her heart being ripped apart. Sometimes, the man would look at her first, but that had no effect on her, she was used to that. What she couldn’t bear was that he looked away, looked at someone else …

  One evening, at Lily’s house, she met a woman who was blonde, like her, and whose fragile, triumphant beauty was similar to hers, but she was young … she was young … Gladys smiled at her, spoke to her, but the woman’s flawless skin, her youthful eyes were a living insult to her. For weeks she avoided going back to Lily’s, so as not to see her rival again.

  Sometimes she would leave Nice, but she carried within her a kind of repressed anguish that would wake her up in the middle of the night. She would get out of bed, take off her nightdress and walk naked over to the mirror. She would study her face, her body and, for just a moment, she would feel calmer. She knew very well that she was beautiful. It was dawn, the time of day when the last fires were put out in the hotel fireplaces, when some stranger sighed and dreamed in the next room. She would slowly stroke the light wrinkles that insomnia had drawn across her brow, but which would be gone in an hour. That was nothing, meant nothing. It was something every woman worried about. It had nothing to do with the mysterious pain she was feeling, the shameful jealousy that filled her heart with venom.

  ‘I mustn’t think of myself. I must forget about myself,’ she thought. ‘There’s Marie-Thérèse. Her poor child … The war … And here I am, a weak, miserable creature who is thinking about my beauty, my youth. But I want to be wiser, I want to be better …’

  George Canning had joined the army and been at the front since January. Everything was changing all around her. Everything was cold and sad. At Sans-Souci there were no more parties, not a soul. She had kept on only her chambermaid and a young lad from the village to replace the gardeners who had left. Marie-Thérèse rested in her bedroom or in the garden, by herself, all day long. In the evening they sat opposite each other, each of them thinking about the child. Sometimes Gladys, as if suddenly awakening from a dream, would see her daughter’s face and notice how thin it was, how worn out with waiting for the child to come. Then she would look at her with pity. She was worried that she was so pale, so sad.

  ‘Come on, now, eat something; you’ll never be able to bear it if you don’t eat, if you don’t build up your strength. What can you do? It’s a terrible thing, but you must be brave, darling. You’re so young. Everything passes, is forgotten. Olivier …’

  ‘I’m not thinking about Olivier, Mama. You don’t understand. I’ll think about Olivier after the child is born. Now, all I want is to see that the child, that his life …’

  ‘The child … the child … If you didn’t have this child you could have the most wonderful life; you could forget, get married, be happy …’

  ‘But I am having the child, Mama.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ whispered Gladys with hatred.

  When the birth was near, Marie-Thérèse would go to Carmen Gonzales, who would deliver the baby. Carmen was worldly and nothing shocked her. She would take the child, keep it and look after it, do as she was told.

  ‘Why are you worried?’ she asked Gladys. ‘You’re rich, aren’t you? You have money? Well, with money, life is all roses. Come on, now, come on, you’re not the first person this has happened to.’

  ‘Mama,’ said Marie-Thérèse one evening, ‘I don’t want to go to that woman’s house. I find her repugnant, and she frightens me. I want to go to a hospital, in Paris or Marseilles, anywhere, but not to her.’

  ‘She’s the only one I trust to be absolutely discreet,’ said Gladys.

  ‘The whole world can know, as far as I’m concerned; why should that matter to me?’

  ‘I know! You’ve said that already, more than once, shouted it out. But I don’t want anyone to know. Do you hear me? I’m begging you, begging you, stop talking about this child, let me forget. What difference would that make to you? Why talk about it before he’s even born?’

  But Marie-Thérèse loved this child that did not yet exist with passionate tenderness, this child to whom she alone gave reality, a face, a name … With each passing day she grew heavier and more tired. She could only walk with difficulty now, only just managed to get out of the house. She despaired at how weak she felt. Her mother would never let her keep this child, never. She was only nineteen. She had nothing that belonged only to her. For two more years she would be at the mercy of this woman who was blinded by her own desires, who cared about nothing but herself and the fact that she would soo
n be getting old. Sometimes she wanted to talk to her, to beg her not to abandon the child if she herself were to die, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. She saw the way her mother looked at her pregnancy and turned away in hatred. The child … How vividly she felt him alive within her. She slowly stroked her body and felt as if she could feel him tremble, moving beneath her fingers. She imagined her child’s body, voice, eyes, his smile. She dreamed about him. She knew what colour eyes he would have. Every so often she forgot Olivier. Olivier was dead. He was now no more than a partially decomposed corpse dressed in rags, in no man’s land. She could do nothing for him. But the child, the child had to live. She wrapped her arms round her warm, pulsating womb where the child lived, moved. She was afraid of Gladys, afraid of Carmen … especially of Carmen, afraid of her fat little hands, her voice, the muffled sound of her felt shoes …

  ‘They’ll take him away from me,’ she thought, ‘while I’m too weak to fight for him. He’ll be badly looked after, badly fed, poor and alone, all alone … my baby, my child …’

  She remembered a story she had heard in the past, she couldn’t remember when, or where … a vague story she’d heard a servant tell, about a child, born in the middle of the night, on an isolated farm, and whose grandparents had taken him and buried him alive. In the morning, when she woke up, his mother had found him gone.

  She clasped her trembling hands tightly together. ‘Never, I’ll never leave you, my baby …’

  Baby … It was the sweetest word she could think of, the only word … She adored him. He had only her and his life depended on her alone. At night she talked to him softly, reassuring him, saying, ‘There now, don’t be afraid of anything. We’ll be happy …’

  When she realised the child would soon be born she thought, ‘I won’t call for anyone. I’ll wait until the child is either born or I die. And once he’s born, no one in the world will be strong enough to take him away from me. I’ll hold on to him so tightly, I’ll hold him so close to me, so close to my heart, that no one will be able to take him away from me. And if I die, he’ll die with me.’

  11

  Gladys was alone in her room, sitting in front of the fire. Marie-Thérèse lived far away from her, in another wing of the house, separated from hers by an entire floor. She couldn’t hear the low groans that her daughter was hiding beneath her blankets.

  It was a calm night, without a hint of a breeze; the leaves on the palm trees barely rustled in the wind; the sea, lit up by the moon, was as white and creamy as milk. Cool air wafted up from the tiled floors. The chambermaid had lit a fire in the fireplace and Gladys was absent-mindedly poking at it, tilting her long neck: it was so supple, so soft, so white … She couldn’t bring herself to go to bed.

  ‘When this is all over,’ she thought, ‘I’ll take Marie-Thérèse away from here and we’ll never come back. She’ll forget. She’s still only a child. It’s a terrible thing, but she’ll forget. There will just be one more useless little creature in the world. Why didn’t she listen to me? How I want this all to be over. What a nightmare …’

  She stood up, sighed, went out into the garden, slowly walked through the cedar trees, made her way down to the sea, came back up and threw some little stones against Marie-Thérèse’s dark windows, quietly calling out her name. Marie-Thérèse was doubtless asleep. Poor child … What a sad start to life.

  ‘But she’s young,’ she thought, with bitter jealousy, ‘there’s no unhappiness that doesn’t fade with time. She knows nothing, understands nothing yet. Ah, I would have gladly traded places with her. None of this matters when you’re twenty. I would have accepted all the sadness, all the suffering, if only I could have been young again.’

  She went back inside. The house was silent. Her chambermaid had turned down the bed and set out her long lace nightdress. She got undressed and took off her rings. Then she went to sit in front of the fire again, counting the months that had passed since the beginning of the war, since Olivier had gone. The child would soon be born.

  ‘The child …’

  She couldn’t say the words ‘my grandson’, not even to herself.

  ‘Never,’ she thought, ‘I’ll never let her keep him. Whatever she says, however much she cries, it will make no difference. He will be happy, well cared for, he’ll want for nothing, but I’ll never see him, never know his name. But even then, just knowing he exists, that he’s alive, will be enough to poison my life.’

  Her heart was heavy. From now on, to Marie-Thérèse, she would be the enemy and she knew it. That caused her pain. She needed to be loved.

  ‘Well, it’s all over now,’ she thought, trying to mock herself. ‘There’s no way around it, I’ll be an old woman. Even if I look young and remain beautiful, in my heart I’ll know I’m an old woman. Marie-Thérèse wants to keep her child. Poor innocent girl. What is a child? Someone to take our place, to push us to our death, someone who keeps on saying, “Get going now, go away, it’s all mine now. Give up your piece of the cake. You’ve eaten it? Have you had enough now? Well, then, go away!” That’s what a child, even the best child, thinks of us. “Have you had enough now?” But it’s never enough, never.’

  She felt an overpowering wish to die.

  ‘That would be the best thing, and in her hard, virtuous heart, Marie-Thérèse might think, “This is my punishment.” Does she really have a hard heart? She used to love me. But is it my fault that Olivier died? Could I have foreseen the war? But it’s not Olivier she won’t forgive me, it’s the child. Never to see her child, never to hear his cry!’ she whispered.

  She moved closer to the fire, heard the chambermaid walking in the next room and called her in.

  ‘Did you light a fire in Mademoiselle’s room, Jeanne?’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ Jeanne replied.

  ‘Did you see her? Did she need anything?’

  ‘I knocked on her door, about an hour ago,’ said Jeanne, coming into the room. ‘She said everything was fine and that she was about to go to bed.’

  They looked at each other and sighed.

  ‘This is so terrible,’ said Gladys, looking away, ‘you know, my poor Jeanne, so terrible …’

  ‘As long as no one finds out,’ said Jeanne quietly, ‘and Mademoiselle has her mother. How many girls are all alone when the same thing happens and they have to hide from the very people who are the only ones who could help them. It’s a great blessing to have your mother with you.’

  ‘I can’t forgive her,’ said Gladys with difficulty.

  ‘I know, but that’s understandable, it brings dishonour,’ said Jeanne, shaking her head. ‘But, Madame, you must take pity on her.’

  Jeanne had been in the service of the Eysenachs for several years. She was a woman of forty, with a full, tanned face and small, dark, lively eyes. Her hair was beginning to go grey. She had had the simplest of lives; she had always been a chambermaid. She knew nothing apart from her profession, could barely read and write, just knew how to mend lace, iron the clothes and get passionately involved in the lives of her masters. She enjoyed debts that needed to be hidden, love letters she had to deliver. She was never as happy as when there was a sick person to tend, a child less loved than the others to take care of, a woman neglected by her husband. When it came to the love life of her employers, she had an extraordinary gift of clairvoyance that was almost prophetic, the kind that only servants or children possess. Gladys had not even attempted to hide Marie-Thérèse’s pregnancy from her: she knew only too well it would be utterly pointless; but she knew also that Jeanne would say nothing, that Jeanne felt keenly the shame of this illegitimate birth: she had the utmost regard for bourgeois respectability. Thanks to her, no one knew about Marie-Thérèse’s condition: Jeanne herself had requested that the other servants be sent away: no one came into the house; no one saw Marie-Thérèse.

  ‘No one has any idea, Madame,’ she said again.

  Gladys didn’t reply. Jeanne picked up the clothes that Gladys had thrown on to the
floor and left.

  Gladys looked at her bed and sighed. She would have liked to drown her sorrows, go dancing and drinking, but it was wartime. Nice was as austere and gloomy as the rest of France. All her friends had gone. All her lively, frivolous little social circle had fled. All the villas were shut up.

  ‘The day will come when the war will be over, and everything will be delightful and happy, the way it used to be, and I … Oh, how am I to bear it? How can I live with the knowledge that one day I’ll be old? Everyone knows they’re going to die. But it’s funny, I’m not afraid of death. I would be afraid if I believed that death wouldn’t be the end of everything. But I know very well that it is the end.’

  She recalled Richard’s pale face as he slept in her arms; he looked so peaceful …

  ‘He wasn’t afraid of death either, but he wouldn’t have been able to put up with destitution. He wouldn’t have been able to stand being poor or losing his power. Well, for me, for a woman, it’s the same thing, exactly the same thing. I want a life that’s worth living, otherwise, what’s the point of living at all? What will life have to offer when I’m no longer attractive? What will become of me? I’ll be an old woman plastered in make-up. I’ll pay for lovers. Oh, it’s horrible, horrible! I’d rather throw a stone round my neck and sink to the bottom of the ocean. Can anyone see in my face that I’m going to be a grandmother?’

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Angrily she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do, nothing …’

  She shuddered and watched the flames rising in the fireplace. It was so quiet. Only the sound of croaking frogs filled the night. The sea was shimmering. What was Marie-Thérèse doing?

  ‘Does she really deserve to be pitied? That’s life, after all … One day she’ll probably regret having suffered in the past. One day, when she’s loved and happy. Will she be happier than me?’