Jezebel

by Irene Nemirovsky

  She wanted to crush her rival who was weaker but more beautiful, and Gladys, pale and determined, accepted the challenge. If she saw Jeannine was drinking, she drank. If she saw Jeannine dancing, she danced, even though it had become painful for her even to stand. Jealousy tormented her heart. She would have died just to have Monti smile at her or look at her with desire. She felt an almost visceral thrill when she looked at Jeannine. She thought of the gun she had bought: it was still in her handbag, within reach. She talked, laughed, willed herself to be beautiful, the way you whip a tired animal, and Monti felt cruel pleasure as he alternated between the two women, holding first one, then the other close to him and feeling them tremble in his arms.

  It had been a long time since Gladys had danced this way, hour after hour, tirelessly, amid the smoke, in the darkness, with faces whirling around her. Her body felt as if it were made of thousands of painful little bones.

  ‘Keep going,’ she thought in a rage, ‘dance, smile! You have to look carefree, beautiful, young! You have to be attractive, more attractive. Attractive to all these men, so he can see it, so he gets jealous.’

  That night she, who had never worn any jewellery apart from a long strand of pearls, had covered her arms and neck in diamonds, for Jeannine didn’t own anything as beautiful. She had to be noticed at all costs and it wouldn’t occur to her lover to wonder why every man’s eyes were on her, whether they were admiring her jewels or herself.

  She had to look beautiful, even at five o’clock in the morning, she had to make sure her wrinkles didn’t show through her make-up, nor the death mask that lies beneath the heavily made-up faces of old women. Never a moment of relaxation or weariness. Never admit to being weaker. Dance, drink, dance some more. Force the legs and body of a sixty-year-old to keep going and refuse to grow weary. Hold your back straight: it was bare, smooth, powdered a pale ochre colour, as soft as satin, but each and every muscle screamed in pain. Resist shivering when a cold gust of wind rushed in through the door or an open window.

  The two women squared up to each other, smiling.

  ‘Darling, do be careful. You’ll catch cold …’

  ‘How ridiculous! I never get ill or tired.’

  ‘That’s true, isn’t it?’ Jeannine said quietly. ‘You must find my generation quite pathetic.’

  Gladys could feel her knees shaking; she stood up straighter and thought, ‘Keep going, come on, move, you old carcass. Do as I say.’

  She smiled and listened in terror to the wheezing from her heavy heart.

  Then, by sheer force of will, she ended up not only winning over herself, but triumphing over Jeannine as well; her legs found their former lightness, rhythm and speed; her breathing grew calmer. She now danced with the divine ease she’d had when she was twenty. She smiled, partly opening her beautiful lips. She looked in the mirrors to see the reflection of her white dress, her dyed hair, which she had plaited and wound round the top of her head like a crown, just as she had in the past.

  Four o’clock, five o’clock in the morning … Bernard waited in the rain. Gladys danced.

  But then a group of young men and women came in, slightly drunk and noisy. The young women wore their hair down, loose and flowing; their make-up, so exquisite on their young faces, seemed to merge with their fresh, smooth skin. Secretly, Gladys looked at herself in the mirror and could see her ravaged features peering through her mask of make-up. But she got up, danced again, pressed herself against Monti. Her tired eyes, burning with weariness, closed, in spite of herself.

  Jeannine, too, was beginning to show signs of weariness. She was thirty years younger, but not so well protected by her beauty, which was not as perfect as Gladys’s. Around them people laughed, keeping score. A battle.

  Gladys looked happy and triumphant in the end, but she was obsessed by one thought. Everything reminded her of how old she was; everything brought back memories of the past. She talked and smiled, but deep inside, her obsession slithered through her as slowly as a snake. She wouldn’t give up the fight, though; her whole body trembled with the kind of nervous tension that takes hold of people whose will to live is too strong: ravaged, barely breathing, they refuse to die. For Gladys it was tragically impossible to admit defeat.

  The other people in the room saw only a woman whose age was impossible to tell, like all the women in Paris who were over forty. Beneath the lights, with her make-up and jewellery, she looked beautiful, but it was a fragile kind of beauty, anxious and pathetic, and standing in the doorway in the early morning light, she seemed to drop her mask, just like all the other older women.

  All her effort, all her weariness, her battles, anguish and triumphs came down to a single question asked by one indifferent young man to another as he started up his car: ‘Gladys Eysenach? She still looks good. Is she easy?’

  22

  Bernard waited. He didn’t mind the cold. He took pleasure in feeling the wind bite at his cheeks. Paris was filled with the damp, dank smell of marsh water. His mind was a blank. He stared at Gladys’s dark windows in the empty street.

  Finally he saw the car. It was lit up inside and he recognised Gladys’s delicate, blonde little head and her ermine coat.

  Her existence aroused a feeling of outrage in Bernard. ‘She’s laughing,’ he thought, clenching his teeth. ‘She’s dancing and having a good time. But why? She’s old, that’s what she is, and she doesn’t have the right to anything any more …’

  Bernard reached for the car door, then slipped back into the shadows. Either Monti didn’t see him or thought he was some beggar wandering about, hoping for a handout.

  But Gladys recognised him at once. Bernard saw her lean in towards Monti; he heard her tell her lover he wasn’t to get out. Bernard followed Gladys to her door. She looked at him for a moment without saying a word, terrified by the wave of hatred she felt rushing from her heart. ‘Go away!’ she whispered at last.

  ‘I want to talk to you. Let me come in.’

  ‘You’re mad! Go away!’

  The hatred she had tried to stifle, to disguise in all sorts of ways, had risen to the surface, pure and crystal clear; she detested Bernard’s voice, the hungry look in his eyes, his sarcastic little laugh; she felt the kind of hatred towards him that you only feel as completely, blindly, cruelly as when it is aimed at a member of your own family.

  ‘I advise you to let me come in,’ he said, grabbing her hand.

  ‘Let go of me, stop it! The servants are inside …’

  Nevertheless, he went in after her. The entrance hall was empty. Bernard looked at the painted walls; a lamp lit up the staircase. He followed Gladys into a dark room. She sat down; her legs were shaking and she held her head like horses do at the end of a race; her entire body was overcome by the excessive stiffness that is a result of terrible over-exertion.

  She switched on a lamp draped in pink cloth that sat on her dressing table and automatically raised the collar of her coat to hide the damage to her features caused by her long night. He walked towards her hesitantly; he felt drunk and half asleep, as if in a waking nightmare. They stared at each other for a moment without speaking, both terrified and full of hatred, and for the two of them their intoxication and exhaustion formed a kind of fog, the suffocating stupor you feel in dreams.

  Finally she spoke, forcing her voice to sound quiet and sweet, devoid of any hint of aversion or anxiety. ‘What’s wrong, my boy? What is it you want from me?’

  ‘I called you the day before yesterday. I called you yesterday. I wrote to you. It seems to me that you’re not afraid of me any more, Grandmother dear.’

  He felt joy at seeing her go white again and stiffen, as if she were being whipped.

  She looked at him nervously. ‘You’re drunk. Why have you come to torment me? I’ve helped you as best I could. I’ve done everything I could to show my sympathy for you.’

  ‘Sympathy?’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Fear, yes, but then again, it’s probably better this way. I don’t need you
r sympathy.’

  ‘I know,’ she said with strange bitterness, ‘all you need is my money.’

  ‘Are you reproaching me for not having found you out of a need for affection? That would really be the height of hypocrisy.’

  Wearily she closed her eyes. ‘What do you want from me? Just tell me and go away! What do you want from me?’ she said again, stamping her foot on the parquet floor in one of her sudden angry fits of temper that erupted only rarely and contorted her pale, anxious face. ‘You want money, of course? Fine, just tell me how much and then go away.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t need your money any more. Did you think that all you had to do was throw money at me and I’d keep quiet, be subdued, taken in by you? How right people are when they say you never really know your family!’

  ‘Well, then, what do you want?’ she murmured. ‘To make me suffer, I assume, simply to make me suffer? That’s it, isn’t it?’

  They looked at each other for a long time without speaking.

  ‘Yes,’ he finally admitted, looking away; his voice was low and passionate. ‘Listen, I don’t want to live the way I do any more. I want you to use your contacts, your reputation, your friends, to make up a little for the monstrous injustice you have done me. I don’t want to remain the son of Martial Martin. I’m not Bernard Martin. Or, at least, if I keep the name Bernard Martin, I don’t want it associated with some penniless waif. I’m willing to work, I’m strong and intelligent. Listen: this is what I want from you. You will give me a letter of recommendation right now for your friend Percier, so that he gives me a job, the lowliest little clerical job he likes, I don’t care. I need help getting started, do you understand?’

  Gladys looked at him with the kind of panic and fear that clouds reason: the confusion in her heart was so great that she barely heard the last thing Bernard said. Percier … Jeannine’s husband … What if Jeannine found out, my God!

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t. Not Percier. Besides, he wouldn’t listen to me. This isn’t the right time to discuss business,’ she whispered, terrified. ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s impossible!’

  ‘So you’re refusing?’ he shouted, sensing in the way she resisted that he had found some secret weakness, some wound he could open, deepen, make bleed at will.

  ‘Bernard, that’s enough. Go away! We’ll talk tomorrow.’

  ‘Why? I’ve waited for you long enough. I’ve suffered long enough. Now it’s your turn. Are you expecting someone, perhaps? Well, can you imagine anything funnier than us meeting like this? Could anything be more wonderful? More unexpected? More comical? What do you think?’ he said again in a rage. ‘The door opens and the lover enters. “Madame! Who is this young man? Your lover, without a doubt?” No, not her lover, her grandson!’ Oh, how exquisite. Your face. Just look at yourself in the mirror! Now you really do look like a grandmother. You couldn’t hide your age if you tried. Look, look,’ he said, holding a mirror in front of her face. ‘Look at the bags under your eyes that show through the make-up. You’re old! You’re an old, old woman,’ he said again and again, beside himself. ‘How I hate you!’

  She grabbed the mirror from his trembling hands, studied her face for a long time, opening wide her despairing eyes. ‘Bernard, sometimes I think you hate me less for the past than for the present. Why? What harm can it do you that I’m still a real woman, that I have a lover?’

  ‘It disgusts me,’ he murmured.

  ‘Why? Bernard, why? You’re young. You love your mistress. How can you not understand that I am in love, that I’d give my life to be loved? You look at my dresses, my furs, my jewellery and you want to take them away from me and give them to Laurette. I’d happily give them away. If you only knew how much I’ve suffered today! My lover …’

  ‘Shut up! There are certain words you have no right to say. They’re monstrous coming from your mouth … unnatural. You’re sixty years old, you’re an old woman. Love, lovers, happiness, such things are not meant for you. You old people should be content with the things we can’t take away from you,’ he said in a fury, thinking of Laure’s mother. ‘Keep your money, keep your status, keep your reputation, but those other things, those at least were meant for us. They were ours, ours! Who gave you the right to take them? You, in love? You’re a poor old woman who’s mad,’ he said with a bitter laugh, ‘but then, if that’s the way it is, if you have the right to love and be loved, why are you and women like you so afraid of having anyone know how old you are? You’d be less ashamed if you’d committed some crime. You’d happily see me dead if that could help you hide your age. I hate you because you’re old and I’m young, and because you’re the one who’s happy, you, while I’m the one who should have been happy, because I’m young. You’ve stolen that from me. Besides, you hate me too. But you don’t have the courage to say it to my face. You call me “my boy”. You smile grotesquely with a mouth that would actually prefer to snap at me!’

  ‘Why should I love you?’ said Gladys quietly. ‘What are you to me? I’m not the one who brought you into this world. You’re not my son. It doesn’t make any difference to me that we’re related. That’s the kind of thing men consider important. I don’t know you. You’re a stranger to me. There’s only one thing that matters to me and that’s my lover.’

  ‘That makes me want to die laughing,’ said Bernard.

  But she continued without listening to him, ‘He means everything in the world to me, because if he left me there would be no one left in my life, and a life in which no one loves you, no one desires you, is cold, dead, the life of an old woman, and when all is said and done, to me, it’s worse than death.’

  ‘How dare you speak of love? A woman’s love? While I, your child …’

  What am I saying, he thought in despair, but he sensed that he was right.

  ‘You think you’ve triumphed over age. But it’s there, within you. You might show off your supple body and a back that looks like a young woman’s, you can dye your hair, go out dancing, but your soul is old. It’s worse than that. It’s corrupt. There’s the foul scent of death about you.’

  ‘Shut up! Leave me alone! You’re either drunk or mad. What did I ever do to you? I’m not taking anything away from you. Every human being wants his share of happiness. What have I done that’s so wrong? I’m free. My life …’

  ‘Your life … But why should your life be important? You’ve had your share of life! You’re the one who’s always been happy, and I … Oh, how I want to make you suffer. I can’t understand why I don’t just kill you. Would anyone blame me? Yes, of course they would, of course. I’d have committed matricide, but it would be the only time I’d be allowed to say I was related to you and that you were my grandmother. No, no, it would be more satisfying if I just told the truth to your lover …’

  ‘Listen to me. What good would it do you to tell the truth? Well? You would have killed me, that’s true. But you’d have no more support, no more money.’

  ‘What difference do you think your money makes to me? Laure died yesterday. And as for your support, as you call it, I know only too well that you’ll never give me any. Well, then? At least I would have the satisfaction of taking away your illusions, Grandmother! For now it’s your turn to listen to me, because I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. I’m going to tell your lover that you’re an old woman, that you’re sixty,’ he said, savouring the words, ‘and he’ll stay with you. He’ll take it all on. Because it’s not you he loves, it’s your money. And that way, you poor madwoman, that way, you’ll see …’

  He stopped short. The telephone was ringing. He laughed quietly.

  ‘Is that him? Is that your crazy lover? Well, well, this is going to be fun.’

  ‘No, Bernard!’

  ‘But yes! I couldn’t have dreamed of anything better! “Is that Count Monti? This is Bernard Martin.” A man at his mistress’s house! At this hour? “Oh, no
t really a man. A boy. Almost your child. Her grand …” ’

  ‘Bernard!’ She lunged at him.

  He blocked the telephone with his body, spoke softly, lovingly, choosing his words. “The grandson of your mistress! The grandson of the beautiful Gladys Eysenach!” ’

  ‘Bernard, don’t answer it! Bernard, don’t tell him! I haven’t done anything to you! Please … Please forgive me, Bernard! Forgive me! You’ll see, you’ll be rich, happy,’ she shouted, trying to drown out the sound of the telephone that kept on ringing and that Bernard was holding in his hands. ‘Put the phone down!’

  He started to reach for the receiver. Then she pulled out the gun, the gun she had thought of every night for the past month.

  He looked at her with a strange, scornful twitching of his lips. She fired. He dropped the telephone; his face had suddenly changed: it was soft and surprised. He fell to the floor, dragging the insistent telephone with him.

  She saw the bewildered, silent look of death spread over his features. Before crying out, before calling for help, before feeling any remorse or despair, a sensation of utter peace filled her heart. The telephone had stopped ringing.