Another taxi drew up in front of mine. A young woman got out, looked round in vain for a porter — there is never one to be had when it is raining — and finally, carrying her two heavy-looking suitcases herself, made a dash for the station.
We were to meet again a few moments later, one behind the other, in front of the ticket window.
‘La Roche-sur-Yon, second class, single …’
Taller than she, I could see, by looking over her shoulder, the inside of her handbag lined with moiré silk — a handkerchief, a compact, a cigarette lighter, letters, and keys. I had only to repeat what she had just said:
‘La Roche-sur-Yon, second class, single.’
I gathered up all my little packages. I ran. A station attendant opened a glass door, and when I reached the platform the train was just pulling out; with my ridiculous cargo it was impossible for me to jump on to the step of the moving train. One of my friends, Deltour, the garage owner, standing in the doorway of one of the compartments, waved to me. It is unbelievable how long it takes a train you have just missed to leave. The cars seem to continue to move interminably along the platform.
As I turned I noticed, standing close beside me, the young woman of the two suitcases.
‘We’ve missed it,’ she said.
In fact, your Honour, those were the very first words Martine said to me. They strike me for the first time as I write them.
‘We’ve missed it …’
Don’t you find that extraordinary?
I wasn’t too sure that she was addressing me. She did not seem too much put out.
‘Do you know what time there’s another train?’
‘At ten twelve …’
And I looked at my watch, which was idiotic since there was an enormous luminous clock facing the platform.
‘Well, the only thing to do in the meantime is to put our baggage in the cloakroom,’ she said, and again I couldn’t be sure whether she was talking to herself or trying to start a conversation.
Although the platform was covered, large drops were leaking through the glass roof on to the rails. A station is like a tunnel; except that, contrary to tunnels, the interior is light and the darkness at both ends, with a chill wind blowing towards you.
Mechanically I followed her. She had not actually suggested it. Being sufficiently loaded down myself, I could not help her with her bags, and it was I who had to stop twice to pick up the packages I appeared to be juggling.
Alone, I would not have thought of the cloakroom. It never occurs to me. I am more inclined to pile up my things beside me in some familiar café or restaurant. I should undoubtedly have had dinner at the buffet in the station and read the papers in my corner until time for the next train.
‘You live at La Roche-sur-Yon?’
I said yes.
‘Do you know M. Boquet?’
‘Of the Galleries?’
‘Yes. He is the proprietor of a department store.’
‘I know him.’
She opened her bag again, took out a cigarette and lighted it. I was struck by the way she held her cigarette, I can’t tell you why. She had a way all her own of holding a cigarette. She gave a little shiver.
It was December, your Honour. A little less than a year ago. One week before Christmas, which explains all my little packages.
I had gone to Nantes with one of my patients who required an emergency operation. I had made the trip in the ambulance, and that is why I was without my car. Gaillard, the surgeon, had taken me home with him when we left the hospital and given me some raspberry brandy which had been sent to him from Alsace by one of his former patients.
‘You are dining with us this evening. But of course you are. My wife is out and if she comes home and doesn’t find you here she will be furious with me for having let you go.’
I explained that I absolutely had to catch the six-fifty train, that I had two patients coming the same evening, and that Armande had given me a whole list of things to buy.
That was fatal. I spent two good hours running round the shops. I lost I don’t know how much time matching buttons she could probably have found just as well at La Roche. I bought a few toys and other little things for the children. It had been raining all day, and each time I went from one shop to another I would pass through a curtain of driving rain.
Now I found myself in the station beside a young woman I didn’t know, and whom I had barely even looked at. We were the only persons at the baggage counter in the middle of a vast empty space. The attendant thought we were together. If it hadn’t been for that enveloping space, which gave us a false air of solidarity, I should probably have walked away with as much nonchalance as I could muster.
I didn’t quite dare. I noticed that she was cold, that she was wearing a dark tailored suit, very chic, but much too light for the season. She had on a curious little hat, a sort of flower made of satin which she wore over one eye.
She looked pale under her make-up. She shivered again and said:
‘I’m going to get something to drink to warm me up …’
‘At the buffet?’
‘No. You can’t get anything decent at a buffet. I think I saw an American bar not far from here …’
‘You don’t know Nantes?’
‘I arrived this morning …’
‘Are you going to stay long at La Roche?’
‘Perhaps for years, perhaps for ever. That will depend on your friend M. Boquet.’
We were walking towards one of the doors, which I now held open for her.
‘If you will allow me …’
She did not bother to reply. Quite naturally we crossed the square together in the downpour, avoiding cars, hunching our shoulders, hastening our steps.
‘Wait a minute; I arrived from this direction, didn’t I? … Then it’s on the left … near the corner of a street … There’s a big sign in green lights …’
I could have gone back to the Gaillards for dinner, or to a dozen other friends who complained every time I came through Nantes without stopping to see them. I was not familiar with the bar she took me to, which was new: a narrow room, dimly lighted, with dark woodwork and high stools in front of the bar. It was the kind of place which did not yet exist in the provinces when I was a student, and I have never quite got used to them.
‘Barman, a martini, please …’
I’d much rather not talk about her as I saw her that evening, your Honour, but then you wouldn’t understand, and my letter would be useless. It is difficult, I assure you, especially now.
Isn’t it true, Martine, that it is difficult?
Because, you see, she was such a banal little thing. She was already perched on one of the stools, and one felt that she was at home there, that it was an old habit, that together with the more or less luxurious setting it formed a part of her conception of life.
The cigarette too. She had hardly finished the first one when she lighted another, once more staining it with her lipstick, and turned to the barman, half closing her eyes because of the smoke (I have always hated women who made faces when they smoked).
‘Not too much gin for me …’
She asked for olives. She munched a clove. She had hardly closed her bag when she opened it again to take out her compact and lipstick.
I was irritated and resigned at the same time. Here’s something else that will help you to understand. I love big dogs that are strong and conscious, quietly conscious, of their strength. I have a horror of those little dogs that are never still, that run around after their own tails and insist on attention all the time. Well, that evening she made me think of one of those little dogs.
She lived to be looked at. She must have thought herself very attractive. She did think so. I almost forgot that she herself told me so a little later.
‘Is your friend Boquet the kind of man who sleeps with his secretary? I only met him once, by chance, and I didn’t have time to ask him …’
I don’t know what I answered. It was so
stupid! Besides, she never waited for an answer. It was only what she said that interested her.
‘I wonder what makes every man run after me. It isn’t because I’m beautiful, because I’m not. It must be some kind of charm …’
A charm which in any case did not work with me. Our glasses were empty, and I must have ordered fresh drinks unless the barman served us of his own accord.
She was thin, and I don’t like thin women. She was very dark, and I have a preference for blondes. And she looked like a cover girl.
‘Is La Roche nice?’
You see the kind of question.
‘Is it boring?’
‘Possibly …’
There were a few customers, not many, all habitués, as is always the case in places of that sort. And I have noticed that, in no matter what city, they are always the same physical type, dress alike and make use of the same vocabulary.
She looked at them, one after the other, and you felt that she could not live without being noticed.
‘No really — he’s getting on my nerves, that old codger.’
‘Which one?’
‘Over there in the left-hand corner. The one in that very light sport suit. In the first place, when you’re his age you don’t wear a pale green suit! Especially at this time of day and at this season of the year! For the last ten minutes he hasn’t stopped smirking at me. If he continues I shall go over and ask him what he wants …’
Then a few moments later:
‘Let’s go! Or I’ll slap his face.’
We went out and it was still raining. Like the evening of the little red hat in Caen. But at the moment, I never once thought of Caen.
‘Perhaps we’d better go and have dinner,’ she said.
A taxi was passing. I hailed it and we found ourselves together in the damp darkness of the back seat. It occurred to me that it was the first time I had been in a taxi with a strange woman. I could see indistinctly the milky blur of her face, the red light of her cigarette, and two slim silk-stockinged legs. I could smell the odour of her cigarette, of her clothes, and of her wet hair.
If I felt anything — and it was very vague — it was that odour of wet hair.
‘I don’t know whether we’ll find a table at Francis’s at this hour, but that’s where we’re likely to get the best food.’
One of the best restaurants in France! There are three floors of quiet little dining-rooms without any useless luxury, where the maîtres d’hôtels and the wine stewards all look like ancestors, having been with the restaurant since it first opened.
We got a table on the mezzanine, near a half-moon window from which we looked down on the umbrellas passing at our feet. A rather curious effect, in fact.
‘A bottle of muscadet to begin with, Doctor?’ Joseph, who had known me for a long time, suggested.
And she:
‘So you’re a doctor …’
You don’t go to Francis’s to stuff yourself but to enjoy good food. With chevreuil aux morilles, an old burgundy was indicated. After dinner we were served a special cognac in brandy glasses. She talked all the time, she talked about herself, about the people she knew and who, as though by chance, were all important persons.
‘When I was in Geneva …’
‘Last year at the Negresco, in Nice …’
I knew her first name, Martine. I also knew that she had met Raoul Boquet by chance in some bar in Paris — Raoul is a pillar of bars — and that at one o’clock in the morning he had engaged her as his secretary.
‘The idea of living in a little provincial city intrigued me … Do you believe that? … Can you understand that? … As for your friend, I warned him that I would not go to bed with him …’
At three o’clock that morning, your Honour, I was the one who was in bed with her, loving her furiously, so furiously that she could not help at times giving me a surreptitious glance, in which there was not only curiosity and amazement but real terror as well.
I don’t know what came over me. Never had I worked myself into such a frenzy before.
You have just seen how stupid our meeting was. And what happened after that was even stupider.
There was a moment, perhaps several, when I must certainly have been drunk. For example, I have only a blurred recollection of leaving Chez Francis. Before then, with the excuse that it was there I had celebrated my doctor’s degree, I insisted — talking much too loudly and gesticulating — that old Francis should come in person to drink with us. Then I seized upon one of the chairs like all the other chairs in the house and swore that I recognized it as the very chair I had sat upon that famous evening.
‘I tell you this is the one, and I can prove it — that nick there on the second rung … Gaillard was there … Gaillard, that jerk! … He’ll be angry with me for not dining at his house tonight … You won’t tell him I was here, will you, Francis? … Word of honour? …’
We walked. It was I who insisted on strolling in the rain. The streets were almost empty, with puddles of water, puddles of light, and enormous drops falling from the cornices and balconies.
She had some difficulty walking because of her high heels and clung to my arm; from time to time she would have to stop to put on her shoe, which kept coming off.
‘I don’t know if it still exists, but there used to be a little bistro in this neighbourhood, run by an enormously fat woman … It isn’t far from here …’
Obstinately, I persisted in trying to find it. We kept on paddling through the wet. And when finally, with our shoulders dripping with rain, we entered a little café which was perhaps the one I was looking for and perhaps not, the clock over the bar said a quarter past ten.
‘Is your clock right?’
‘It’s five minutes slow.’
Then we looked at each other and after a second we both burst out laughing.
‘What are you going to say to Armande?’
I must have been talking about Armande. I don’t know exactly what I could have said, but I have a vague idea that I tried to be witty at her expense.
In fact, it was in this little café, where there wasn’t another soul, where a cat was curled up on a chair near a big iron stove — it was in this café, as I say, that I first realized that we were saying tu to each other.
She announced as though it were a choice entertainment:
‘We must telephone Armande … Have you a telephone, Madame?’
‘In the hall, to the left …’
A narrow hall with walls painted a sickly green led to the lavatories and was impregnated with their smell. The telephone was attached to the wall. There were two receivers, and Martine took possession of one of them. We were touching each other, or at least our wet clothes were touching, and our breath smelled of the calvados we had just drunk at the bar.
‘Hello, give me 12-51, please … Will I have to wait long? …’
We were told to stay on the wire. I don’t know why we were laughing, but I remember that I was obliged to hold my hand over the mouthpiece. We heard the operators calling each other.
‘Give me 12-51, dear … Is it raining as hard there as it is here? … What time are you through? … Hello! … Is this 12-51? … One moment … Nantes calling … Hello, Nantes … go ahead …’
And all this amused us, God knows why — it all seemed excruciatingly funny.
‘Hello … Is that you, Armande?’
‘Charles? … Are you still in Nantes?’
Martine poked me with her elbow.
‘I’ve been detained — there were complications. I had to go back to the hospital to see my patient …’
‘Did you have dinner with the Gaillards?’
‘That is …’
Martine was leaning against me. I was afraid she was going to burst out laughing again. I wasn’t very proud of myself, as you may imagine …
‘No … I didn’t want to bother them … I had shopping to do …’
‘Did you find my buttons?’
‘Yes �
� and the toys for the children …’
‘Are you at the Gaillards’ now?’
‘No … I’m still in town … I’ve just left the hospital …’
‘Will you spend the night with them?’
‘I wonder … I’d almost rather go to the hotel … I am tired and with Gaillard it will mean staying up till one o’clock in the morning again …’
Silence. All this seemed odd to my wife. I swallowed hard when she asked:
‘You’re alone?’
‘Yes …’
‘You’re telephoning from a café?’
‘I’m going to a hotel …’
‘To the Duc de Bretagne?’
‘Probably. If they have a room.’
‘What have you done with the packages?’
‘I have them here with me …’
‘Well, don’t lose them … By the way, Mme Gringuois came this evening … She said she had an appointment for nine o’clock … She still has pain and insisted on waiting …’
‘I’ll see her tomorrow morning.’
‘You’ll take the first train?’
What else could I do? The six thirty-two, in the dark, in the cold, in the rain! And very often, as I knew, the carriages weren’t heated.
‘Until tomorrow …’
I repeated:
‘Until tomorrow …’
I had hardly hung up when Martine exclaimed:
‘She didn’t believe you … It was what you said about the packages she didn’t swallow …’
We drank another calvados at the bar and plunged once more into the wet darkness of the streets. We were in the gay stage of intoxication. Everything made us laugh. We made fun of the few people we passed in the street. We made fun of Armande, of my patient, Mme Gringuois, whom I must have told her about.
Music coming from behind a façade brightly illuminated with neon lights attracted us, and we found ourselves in a little night club, narrow and red all over. The lights were red, red the velvet covering of the benches, red the walls on which nude figures were painted, red the soiled dinner-jackets of the five musicians who made up the orchestra.
Martine wanted to dance and I danced with her. That was when I noticed the nape of her neck, very close and very white, with skin so fine that the blue veins showed, and little tendrils of wet hair.
Act of Passion Page 9