‘If you want a secretary who doesn’t know Machoul, take me …’
I understood a lot of things, your Honour, I can tell you. And first of all, knowing Boquet as I do, I could picture the scene. He must have talked as crudely as possible, on principle.
‘You’re broke, I suppose.’
And he undoubtedly asked her with a false air of innocence if she’d been working in an office or en maison.
‘Well, come along to La Roche if you like, we can always try it.’
He made her drink, that is certain. One of the reasons I always keep away from the bar where he hangs out is that he gets furious if anyone has the misfortune to refuse to drink with him.
Anyhow, she came to La Roche, your Honour. She started out, with her two suitcases, for a little city entirely unknown to her.
‘Why did you come by way of Nantes and why did you break your journey there?’
‘Because I knew a girl who works at the Belgian Consulate, a friend of mine. I had just enough money left to pay for my railway ticket and I didn’t want to ask my new boss for money the minute I arrived.’
Our train stopped at every little station along the line. Each time the brakes were put on we would both give a little start at the same time and then wait in anguish for more jolts as the train moved again. The windows grew pale. Men shouted the names of the stations, rushed up and down, opened and closed the train doors, piled up the mail bags and express packages on hand-carts.
A funny atmosphere, your Honour, in which to say shamefacedly, after hesitating for I don’t know how many kilometres:
‘You’re not going to sleep with him?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Even if he asks you to? Even if he insists?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Not with him or anyone else?’
Again that agonizing pain which my patients who suffer from angina pectoris have so often tried to describe to me. You think you are dying. You feel death at hand. You are as though suspended to life by a thread. And yet, I do not have angina pectoris.
‘Not with him or anybody else?’
‘I promise,’ she replied, smiling at me.
We had not mentioned love. We did not mention it then. We were two miserable bedraggled dogs in the unrelieved greyness of that second-class compartment in December, while the day, for want of sun, was slow in rising.
Yet, I believed her, and she believed me.
We were not sitting on the same bench, but opposite each other, for we had to be very careful of our movements to avoid being sick and, at each jolt of the train, bells clanged inside our skulls.
We looked at each other as if we had known each other all our lives. Without coquetry, thank God. It was only shortly before we reached La Roche when she saw me gather my packages together, that she began powdering and putting on lipstick; then she tried lighting a cigarette.
It wasn’t on my account, your Honour. For me, she knew that all that was unnecessary. For other people? I wonder. Out of habit, more likely. Or rather, so as not to feel so naked, for we both of us felt almost as naked as in our hotel room.
‘Listen, Martine. It is too early to telephone Boquet and the Galleries don’t open until nine. I’ll leave you at the Hotel de l’Europe. It would be better for you to sleep for a few hours.’
It was evident that she wanted to ask a question and had been hesitating about it for some time and I, I don’t know why — I wanted to avoid it, I was afraid of it. She looked at me, resigned and obedient — you hear that, obedient — and she simply said:
‘Very well.’
‘I’ll telephone you before noon, or I’ll come to see you … Wait … no … I can’t come because I have office hours then … You come to see me … Anyone can come to a doctor’s office …’
‘But Armande?’
‘Just come straight to the waiting-room like any patient …’
Ridiculous, isn’t it? But I was so afraid of losing her! I didn’t want her to see Boquet, no matter what happened. I was already unwilling for her to see anyone. I didn’t yet know it myself. On the back of an old envelope I drew a plan of part of the city, showing her how to get from the hotel to my house.
At the station I hailed a porter I knew, and I was suddenly very proud of being known.
‘Find us a taxi, Prosper, will you?’
I walked behind her, I walked in front of her. I trotted all round her like a shepherd dog. And for a few minutes, I swear, I even forgot my hangover.
In the taxi, although the driver knew me, I held Martine’s hand, I was leaning over her like a man in love, and I was not ashamed.
‘Above all, don’t go out, don’t telephone anyone until you’ve seen me … It is eight o’clock … Say you sleep until eleven, or even eleven thirty … Wednesdays, my office hours are until one o’clock … You must promise that you won’t see anyone, that you won’t telephone anyone … Promise me, Martine …’
I wonder if she was aware that something extraordinary was happening to her.
‘I promise.’
We didn’t kiss each other. The Place Napoleon was empty when the taxi stopped in front of the Hotel de l’Europe. I went to find Angèle, the owner, in the kitchen where she was giving the chef orders for the day.
‘I want a nice room for a young woman who is very tired and who has been recommended to me by one of my Paris colleagues.’
‘Certainly, Doctor …’
I did not go up with her. When I had gone down a couple of steps towards the street I turned to look back. Through the glass of the front door, its brasses dulled by the dampness, I saw her standing on the red carpet of the hall talking to Angèle and pointing out her two suitcases to the bell-boy. I saw her, but she did not see me. She was speaking, and I did not hear her voice. For a second, not more, I imagined her mouth open, as I had seen it, you know, the night before, and the idea of leaving her even for such a short time was so intolerable — fear struck me so forcibly — that I almost went back to take her along with me.
When I was alone in the taxi, all my fatigue and all my aches returned — the shooting pains in my temples and that racking sensation in my chest.
‘Shall I take you home, Doctor?’
Home, yes. Of course. Home. And the seat was piled with little packages, including the famous buttons for a jacket Armande was having made from her own design by the best dressmaker in La Roche-sur-Yon.
Home, since this man said so! Besides there was my name on the brass plate attached to the gate. Babette, our latest maid, came running out to take my packages from the driver, and a curtain stirred on the second floor in my daughters’ room.
‘You’re not too tired, sir? I hope you’ll have some breakfast first. Mme Alavoine has already sent down twice to ask if you were back. That train was late again, wasn’t it? That’s just what I told her!’
The hall with its creamy white walls and, on the hat rack, coats of mine, my hats, my cane. The voice of my youngest child upstairs:
‘Is that you, Papa? Did you see Santa Claus?’
I asked Babette:
‘Are there many patients already?’
Because at poor people’s doctors patients have to wait their turn and come early. The smell of coffee. That morning it nauseated me. I took off my wet shoes and there was a large hole in one of my socks.
‘Why, your feet are soaking, sir!’
‘Hush, Babette …’
I went up the white staircase with its rose-red carpet held in place by brass rods. I kissed my oldest daughter who was leaving for school. Armande was supervising the other little girl’s bath.
‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t spend the night at Gaillard’s as usual … When you telephoned me last night you didn’t seem quite yourself … You’re not ill, are you? … Has anything upset you?’
‘No, everything’s all right … I did all the shopping.’
‘I’ll look at the things when I come downstairs … Mme Gringuois te
lephoned again this morning and insisted that you go to see her the moment you get back … She can’t come to the office … She waited for two hours last night in the drawing-room, entertaining me with all her troubles …’
‘I’ll change and go right away.’
At the door I turned, like a dolt.
‘By the way …’
‘What?’
‘Nothing … I’ll see you later …’
I had been on the point of blurting out that someone was coming for luncheon, someone I had met by chance, the daughter of a friend, I don’t know what, I was ready to invent anything at all. It was childish, clumsy. But I had just decided that Martine was going to lunch at the house. I felt that she must take her first meal at La Roche in the intimacy of my home and even, you may think what you like of me, that she must meet Armande, about whom I had talked so much.
I took my bath, I shaved, I got my car out of the garage and I went to see my old lady, who lives alone in a little house at the other end of town. Twice, I made a point of passing in front of the Hotel de l’Europe to look up at the windows. Angèle had said she was giving Martine number 78. I had no idea where the room was, but there was one corner room on the second floor where the curtains were drawn and I gazed up at it with emotion.
I went into the Poker-Bar, your Honour, the place I told you about, where I almost never set foot; and that morning I drank a glass of white wine, which — I had had nothing to eat — seemed to burn a hole in my stomach.
‘Boquet hasn’t been in yet?’
‘After the night they spent, he and his gang, there’s not a chance of his appearing before five or six o’clock this evening. They were still here when the first Paris train left …’
When I got home, Armande was telephoning the dressmaker to announce that she had the buttons and to make an appointment. I didn’t see my mother. I was able to reach my office and sluice out my patients one after the other.
More and more, as the time passed, I had the impression that I was wasting my life. The day was grey, joyless. The window of the little office in which I write out prescriptions overlooks the garden, where the dark shrubs were quietly dripping. As for the window in my consulting room it was of ground glass and the electric light had to be kept on all day.
Little by little an idea was taking root in my mind which at first had seemed to me absurd, but which became less so as time passed, as patient succeeded patient. Didn’t I have two colleagues right here in La Roche-sur-Yon, with no larger clientele than mine, who had a nurse to assist them? Without counting the specialists, like my friend Dambois, all of whom had nurses.
I had begun to detest Raoul Boquet and yet, your Honour, I can truly say — for a doctor is in a position to know such things — that as a man I had no cause to envy him. Quite the contrary! And just because he is rotten with physical taints, I got all the more furious at the thought of any kind of intimacy between him and Martine.
Eleven o’clock, you understand? Eleven thirty. A poor kid — I can still see him — with mumps and an enormous bandage around his head. Then a whitlow to be lanced. Others. There were always others who took the place of the preceding ones on the benches.
She would not come. It was impossible to believe that she would come. And why, will you tell me, should she come?
A work casualty was brought to me in a small truck because I am doctor for the insurance company. With a swagger, the man pointed to his crushed thumb, saying:
‘Chop it off, for Christ’s sake! Go ahead, chop it off! I bet you haven’t the guts to chop it off. Am I going to have to do it myself?’
When I saw him out, sweat was pouring over my eyes so that I could hardly see and I almost called the next patient before I noticed her, dressed in the same dark tailored suit she had worn the day before, with the same hat, sitting at the very end of the benches.
God, how stupid to have to use the same words which have served so long to express banalities! My throat contracted. As tight as an artery tied with catgut. What else can I say, how else describe it?
My throat in a knot, I crossed the room instead of standing as I always did with one hand holding the door open.
She told me later that I was terrifying. It is possible. I had been so afraid. And, I promise you, I didn’t worry at that moment about what the five or six patients who were waiting their turn, perhaps for hours, would think.
I planted myself in front of her. This also I learned from her. I no longer tried to control myself, I said, my teeth clenched, almost menacingly:
‘Come in …’
Could I really have looked so terrifying? I was too frightened for that. I had been too frightened. I did not yet feel reassured. I had to wait for her to go through the door, and to close it.
Then, it seems, I heaved a sigh as hoarse as a groan and letting my arms, grown lifeless, fall to my sides, I articulated:
‘You came …’
At the trial, what I was most severely blamed for was having brought a woman, having brought my mistress into our home. I think in their eyes that was my greatest crime and that they would even, at a pinch, have forgiven my having committed murder. But bringing Martine face to face with Armande, that made them so indignant that they were at a loss to qualify my conduct.
What would you have done, your Honour? Could I have gone away then and there? Would that have seemed more normal? Just like that, the very first day, without giving it a thought?
Did I even know where we were headed? There was only one thing I knew, just one, and that was that I could not live without her and that I felt a physical pain, as violent as that of my most afflicted patients, the moment she was not near me, the moment I no longer saw her, no longer heard her.
It was suddenly a total vacuum.
Is this so very extraordinary? Am I the only man to have been caught in this vortex?
Am I the first man to have hated as I hated anyone who might approach her in my absence?
One might have thought so to hear those gentlemen of the law, who sometimes looked at me with indignation, sometimes with pity. More often with indignation.
Note that when I saw her in the light of my office, I was almost disillusioned. She had again the brittle look of the girl of the previous day, the look she had had before. Perhaps because she was nervous, ill at ease, she affected her old assurance of a habitué of smart bars.
I sought some trace of what had happened to us and found none.
No matter. Even that way, I was not going to let her go. I would not be free for another hour at least. I could have asked her to come back later. But I didn’t want her to go away from the house. I didn’t even want to leave her alone in my house. Someone must guard her.
‘Listen … you are going to lunch here at the house … Yes, you are … No need to mention that we met yesterday, for Armande is naturally suspicious and my mother even more so … For both of them, you came to me this morning with a letter of introduction from Dr Artari of Paris, whom I know slightly and whom my wife does not know …’
She was not convinced, but she felt that it was not the moment to cross me.
‘You can talk about Boquet … that would even be wiser … But you should imply that you have been working for a doctor — Dr Artari, for instance …’
I was in such a hurry to arrange all this that my hand was already on the knob of the door leading to the house.
‘My name is Englebert,’ she said, ‘Martine Englebert … I am Belgian — from Liège …’
She smiled. It was true, I did not know her family name and that would have been embarrassing when I introduced her.
‘You’ll see … Leave everything to me …’
I was wild. I’m sorry if you find it ridiculous, your Honour. I had brought her to my home. It was almost a trap. I felt a little as if I were appropriating her and it wouldn’t have taken much for the idea of locking her up to have occurred to me. I could hear one of my patients coughing in the waiting-room.
‘C
ome …’
Lightly, I touched my lips to her lips. I went ahead. We were in my front hall, the drawing-room on the left; the smell that floated in the air was the smell of my house and she was in my house.
I caught sight of Mama in the drawing-room and I rushed over to her.
‘Listen, Mama … I want to introduce a young girl who was sent to me by Dr Artari, a physician I know in Paris … She has come to work in La Roche where she doesn’t know a soul … I have invited her to have lunch with us …’
Mama, as she rose, dropped her ball of wool.
‘I entrust her to your care. I must return to my patients … Tell Babette to be sure to give us a good luncheon …’
Was I on the point of singing when I left? I wonder if I wasn’t actually humming when I closed the door of my office. I had the impression of having won such a victory, and, to tell the truth, I was proud of my cunning! Think of it, she was under Mama’s protection. No man could talk to her while they were together. And Martine, whether she wanted to or not, would continue to live in my atmosphere.
Even if Armande came downstairs. I didn’t know whether she had gone out or not, but it would not be long before they found themselves face to face.
All right! Armande would guard her for me too. In high spirits, with a feeling of relief I had never known before, I opened the door into the waiting-room.
Next! And, once more, next! Open your mouth. Cough. Breathe. Don’t breathe.
She was there, not ten yards away from me. When I went near the little door at the back I could hear the murmur of voices. It was too confused for me to recognize her voice, but she was nevertheless there.
I think you were in court when the prosecutor, raising his arms to heaven, addressed, not me, but some mysterious power:
‘What could this man have hoped for?’
I smiled. My hideous smile, you know! I smiled and I said very low, but distinctly enough so that one of my two guards heard me:
Act of Passion Page 11