The Beauties and Furies

by Christina Stead

  ‘Does the second come in here?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Marpurgo kept nodding his head like a mage.

  ‘I must wait and see,’ said Oliver nervously.

  ‘She needs you,’ said Marpurgo. ‘Physically she can get along with Paul—a great, morbid, introverted lump of flesh; spiritually speaking, she needs you: you alone can save her.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘Bourgeois sloth, the slough of despond, aesthetic inanition, intellectual sterility.’

  ‘Should I lose the whole world to save one woman?’ asked Oliver.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ exclaimed Marpurgo, with an enthusiasm as apparently false as a Guy Fawkes mask. ‘If you meet a woman with her own rationally selfish sangfroid, you’ll escape scot-free. You young people are admirable! You suffer less and you have the same pleasure. It’s a perfectly modern love-affair…Only it assorts strangely with ogival learning, perpendicular degrees, medicated ogees—but I forgot, you’re a student of economics, you’re a Stalinist, altogether a man of your epoch.’ He became confidential. ‘You ought to go into business really, Oliver—I understand, by the way, you have made some steps in that direction: Georges told me he took you to dinner—you’d succeed: you’re hard as granite inside.’ He clasped his small restless hands. ‘I wish I had been.’ He leaned forward to Oliver intimately. ‘I met my wife in a café with other nihilist students; she was a beauty then—and seventeen, brilliant eyes, thick bushy hair, red cheeks, a red silk blouse with Russian embroidery. I said to myself, Why drag through Dostoievskian torture for the sake of the thing? I went up to her, introduced myself, and the next day we were married. I didn’t wait in the putting on any more than you wait in the putting off. In that we are alike.’

  ‘You are making a mistake,’ replied Oliver.

  ‘You’ll win, you’ll win,’ cried Marpurgo, like a witch now. ‘Only show that you can be firm: she needs someone to direct her. Shadowy beauty steeped in quiescence needing lifelong slumber, whose name on the tomb will be the most blatant fact in her history.’ He shook his head to himself.

  ‘I need a guide too,’ said Oliver.

  ‘What would you do if she went back to Paul?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I’d known women earlier. In a sense this is a tangle. Marpurgo, where are they staying—the Madison? Why do I have to sit here and wait? Surely it concerns me. She came to live with me! Am I a leper, a pariah, that they can’t talk to me? I’ve heard about that brother of hers: he horns into everything, and out of the pulp of other people’s sufferings makes up his book of expenses. And my child! I am surprised at Elvira. She is always so delicate, good-mannered and thoughtful. She has prehensile senses for my feelings. It’s really unexpected.’

  ‘She’s a child,’ murmured Marpurgo. ‘She has never had to face life before. It’s taken her unawares.’

  Oliver heard the melodramatic phrases with impatience. He said good-bye to Marpurgo and left the café, to walk about the streets until supper-time.

  Marpurgo left immediately after. He walked down the rue de Tournon and across the sketchy antique Square de Furstemberg. The laces, bronzes and old silver had been rearranged in the shop of the antiquary Paindebled according to his own suggestion.

  There was a flounce of machine-made cotton Chantilly and a point-de-Flandre doyley, both exquisitely fine and made in Calais in 1886. When he had first seen them in the window he had known he was going to like Paindebled. But Paindebled had many friends, all amateurs, aesthetes, old-timers. Marpurgo walked along the street to look at the yellowed, dirty old laces he knew were displayed in other small black-painted shops, a charming Feodora and some fine old imitation Bruges, a filthy valance trimmed with a good example of a lace he nevertheless disliked, Valenciennes-platt. He turned then, looking up at the old houses, the former family mansions, the portals and walls. The sky had clouded over. The long rue de l’Université stretched for half a mile behind him, leading to the Invalides. He tapped back, with philosophic stoop, past the shops to the first one with its Chantilly. After staring disconnectedly at some crude old revolutionary prints and Daumiers, he entered the dark shop which stretched back over the space of two rooms. A person who had been sitting behind a Chinese robe stretched over a lantern rose out of the gloom and came forward; a tall, handsome man of sixty, slender, his moustache, vandyke beard and thick hair still chiefly black, with candid brilliant dark eyes and delicate cherry mouth. He said:

  ‘Good evening, Mr. Marpurgo. You came at last. I thought you had forgotten your promise. And Monsieur Georges Fuseaux—never been near me! You are busy, I suppose. Mine is a spider’s business—waiting: a secular business. I shouldn’t be open. I was just going to close the shop. But since you’re so interested and I promised it to you the other day, I must keep my promise. Here’s an old print, by the way, of an early machine. Since you’re a buyer, perhaps you know the date or place of manufacture? I’ve searched for years and haven’t been able to place it. It simply has the name, Thos. Leavers, and the date. Look, some old bonnets. If you’d come earlier, you could have seen my whole range: I have some fine ones. That’s a Norman bonnet; the women wear them on Sundays and for marriages. Notice the handwork. Now, if you’ll come upstairs into my salon I can show you something remarkable which I’ve just received and haven’t had time to display properly: a black lace umbrella-cover, hand-made on machine-made tulle. It’s priceless: its value is incalculable: it’s been in the family of Mme de B. for two hundred years. I used to value and take care of her laces for her, and she left me this with the proviso that I must give it to a museum when I die. Would I sell such a thing? Who could buy it? No one. It must be given away. So dear that it must be given away, eh?’

  The lace umbrella-cover was a yard in diameter, with a deep Chantilly design executed by hand. It was in a case, stretched on white paper. The umbrella which had last carried it, an umbrella with an ivory handle and ivory silk cover, lay underneath. The owner let Marpurgo examine passionately its texture and workmanship and the dreamlike beauty of its design, while he discoursed on a dozen other questions of lace. His head was packed with them. It shuttled back and forward, regularly, winding out its tissue like a reel unwinding cotton.

  Marpurgo, quite pale, looked at the owner. ‘I can hardly believe it exists. I could contemplate it all the days of my life. It is so perfect that you are cheerful because man can contrive such things.’

  ‘I am glad you have seen the lace towns—Lyon, Calais, Nottingham, Plauen, Saint-Gall,’ said the tall man. ‘I have seen them all. I was born in Saint-Pierre, the second half of the town of Calais, in 1870, that black year for the French. In that year there was much talk of the union of the two towns Calais and Saint-Pierre, which were, of course, the same town. Some seriously advised Calais to turn her attention to fishing and give up all projects of lace-making. But I was in Saint-Pierre. My father went to the war with the Saint-Pierre contingent, and alas, never returned. My mother, left with a new-born child, went into a factory there and became a winder: she wound the cotton on to a drum. In 1882, at the age of twelve, I entered the same factory and got five francs a week. At the same time a school of decorative art was definitely organised, and I went to it at the time I entered the designing studio of the firm. In due course I became chief designer of the foremost firm, from the point of view of fine and original laces, of Calais. The lace business had declined since the war, as you must know. Can I take you to have an apéritif? In the meantime, the métier Leavers: if you remember having seen one like it, do tell me. I cannot place it. An early one.’

  They came downstairs again, and the shopkeeper, saying all the time, ‘I really can’t stay to show you now, I have a rendezvous, but I must just show you this,’ opened some shutters and showed Marpurgo a blonde de Bayeux, a point-de-Flandre and a point-d’Angleterre insertion which he looked at with desire: he was on fire with passion when they came back into the front of the shop. Marpurgo shook hands with the designer an
d promised to return to see his laces the next day at ten.

  Someone came running down the stairs, saying, ‘Papa, papa, you are late already.’ At the bottom of the dark stairway, blond as a hank of twisted silk, long, undulating, stood a young woman. Marpurgo lifted his head. She looked round the shop as if to see that the pieces of furniture and bric-à-brac were in place, and, without noticing Marpurgo, ran upstairs again.

  ‘My daughter,’ said the shopkeeper, ‘Coromandel: a fine designer, but there is no place in the lace industry for her nowadays. She designs for bookbinders: her room is a forest of designs: she gets up in the night to do them. The last several nights, for example, she has been working every night: she can live without sleeping when the mood is on. I’ll show you some too, to-morrow. She likes showing her work. Well, good-night, sir. I am obliged to you for calling in. I am busy now; I have a rendezvous, or I would show you what I have now. It is fortunate you caught me then. If you have any colleagues who have your interests, tell them to come. They will not receive the cold shoulder: tell them they will receive a hot plate of welcome: tell them I don’t roll pebbles in my mouth, my tongue is hot with information. Tell them I have treasures. Good, now I must go. Good-night.’ He came out with Marpurgo and started putting up the shutters.

  Marpurgo took off his hat with an Italian flourish. He stood on the opposite side of the street to see the man putting up his shutters. On the third storey, under the attic, Coromandel was standing. She had on a dress of embroidered yellow Swiss muslin. Her hair was down, rolled in two strands, one round the other, like a hank of silk, round her neck and down her back again. She stood looking down on him without making a gesture, shining on high like a yellow moon in the scented sweaty evening.

  Marpurgo went along the street slowly. The father went in and shut his door. Marpurgo looked back and saw Coromandel still standing there. She went from the window, and he stood there, meditating. A small piece of paper blew off the window-sill. He picked it up. It was a pencil design for a courtyard lantern. In the corner was a sketch of it hanging over a grille in an archway. The legends were written in different scripts. ‘I am a lamp and gate’; ‘I light dusty feet home’; ‘My flame’s the same to rich and poor.’ They were all crossed out. She had signed her name underneath, Coromandel.

  He looked up to see if she was there again, but the window yawned. He folded the drawing into his pocket-book and walked off, his bright inquisitive eyes far away, up the shining dust-blue rue de l’Université, his small heart beating steadily. He returned, without thinking, by the Square de Furstemberg, and saw the standard lamp standing among the four trees. He stood at the entrance to the square, leaning on his stick. ‘A lamp,’ he said. He went on, feeling that a lamp had been lighted in his breast-pocket where the drawing was, folded.

  He saw Oliver, Elvira, Western and Cinips on the terrace of the Deux Magots. They sat talking quietly, like old friends. Adam looked rapidly once or twice, sideways, at Paul.

  ‘Larder-rat,’ whispered Marpurgo to himself.

  They saw Marpurgo come stepping across the wide end of the rue de Rennes, across the façade of the abbey church. Oliver said something to Elvira. Elvira beckoned him. Paul turned his bowed head and nodded to him. Marpurgo made to go on and then retraced his steps.

  He saw that the group which appeared so quiet was half-frozen with constraint. Elvira was enjoying herself. Her words came dripping rarely, white and sweet, like sugar-cane shreds, from her sensually swollen lips. She kept smoking cigarettes and swinging her silk-clad legs. When she had finished all her own, Oliver and Paul offered theirs. She took Paul’s. Marpurgo explained his national status to them all again. Adam judged the time opportune to relate that he had married an Italian wife when he was eighteen, and that they had left each other to go and live with other loves ten months after. Elvira said:

  ‘But all Adam’s loves were economic. His next girl kept him for two years.’

  ‘She was a syndicalist and sculptress, a tigress,’ affirmed Adam. ‘Her husband believed in Robert Owen and taught Hebrew. It was the nine days’ wonder of Birmingham. She still writes to me.’

  ‘Adam is shade-matcher in a dyeing firm in Luton at present,’ put in Paul, with mortification.

  Adam began to explain rapidly:

  ‘I spent three years at Leeds University, having a taste for chemistry and colours and finding I was a rotten painter. I got a position as chief dyer in a dye-works belonging to a felt hat-making firm. We dyed straws, felt hoods and grosgrain ribbons. I found the first day I wasn’t capable of handling it. Turning out big ranges of goods when you’re costed down is a different proposition. I felt like committing suicide. I was messed up with Theresa—that’s the sculptress—at the time. I went and looked at headstones and thought of the obituaries in the papers. I’ve always had a lot of pride. Instead, I asked the manager to take back my contract or put it off for some years. He put it off for three years. I went to work in the factory as a learner. That’s two years I’m there.’

  Elvira laughed.

  ‘You’ve been sacked four times already.’

  Adam grinned.

  ‘Oh, I tell the foreman off from time to time. He can’t stand me: they all know I’m going to be chief presently. I experiment, and he has to show me all their secrets. Petty secrets, but how they cherish them. When you see how they hug some poor little process to their breasts, and at the same time can’t adopt modern improvements, on account of cost, obstinacy, patent law or something, you pray for socialism.’ He threw back his leonine black hair.

  ‘That’s true,’ exclaimed Oliver, and plunged into a discussion with Adam. They both bragged.

  Adam’s eye twinkled: he kept throwing provoking young-buck glances at Paul. Elvira pretended to sleep, but her eyes lighted up and she was slightly flushed, stirred more than usual by the combat taking place over her. She appreciated every realignment of enemies and allies. In this mood she was desirable, fresh, younger than ever. She was not the languid young woman Marpurgo had seen on the train. Marpurgo turned an enquiring eye on Oliver.

  Elvira murmured:

  ‘Oliver came and picked us up at the hotel. Thanks for giving the message.’

  At last they spoke of having dinner. Making a shot in the dark, Marpurgo asked Paul and Adam if they knew Paris. If not, he would take them to dinner and to a show, or to drive.

  ‘You are an associate,’ he smiled to Adam. ‘Unquestionably, since you’re in the dyeing business. I’ll put you down on the expense account as “Business dinner, Cinips-consultation” and so forth.’

  ‘I am so forth,’ said Paul.

  Marpurgo had arranged the invitation, with a sweep of the hand, to include or exclude the lovers. Oliver was now helping Elvira on with her coat: Paul had her gloves, bag and cigarettes. She took them from him with a grimace. She had a bunch of violets which Marpurgo could see had been given by Adam. He fingered them and smelled them. Paul, who had changed his collar and handkerchief and been shaved since his train-trip, looked at them all diagnostically with his yellow-shot agate eyes, grandly at a disadvantage, like a heavyweight among flies.

  Elvira and Oliver went off to supper: half-way across the boulevard Oliver took her arm. Adam grumbled, stretching his plump white body, and letting his dark eyes smoke.

  ‘His head comes up to your tiepin, Paul. I bet you anything you like that if you two fought for her she’d be back home in Mecklenburgh, happy and content, like a shot. She’s tired of it all now, but she can’t climb down. Do you think I don’t know my sister? Women are primitive. What stands in place of their minds is swayed by a neat uppercut. And, mind you, I love Elvira: she’s got brains, of a sort.’

  Paul laughed a little in his dark voice.

  ‘It’s quite possible that you’re right, Adam, but what can I do? I’m not a cave-man, and Elvira’s not a cave-woman. I know her too; you forget that.’

  Marpurgo wagged his head.

  ‘Well, well, though I agree with Adam, about t
he logic of pugilism in general, I don’t think the present situation can be resolved by force. Mrs. Western’s is an incredibly complex, subtle nature—chiefly latent, though, so that her will only appears in common rational-mystic form known to dream doctors and psychiatrists. There is mental potency, inflexible will at the bottom of erstwhile apparent drifting.’

  Paul gave Marpurgo’s fur-felted head a glance of gratitude. He put himself into Marpurgo’s hands like a child, and, while Adam vainly cavorted, snorted and whinnied outside the charmed fluid stream of their intercourse, Paul came to tell Marpurgo about his work, his friends, about that close, dear brother, Giles Gaunt, with whom he had gone to college, and even (when Adam had gone to the men’s room once) how he had met, loved, courted and married Elvira, how faithful and loving she had been to him, thinking only of him, anticipating what would give him pain. Marpurgo smoked one expensive cigar after another, putting his lips to the end as if it were a bubble-pipe.

  ‘You are an angel,’ said Marpurgo definitely. ‘Nothing less. You are a really good man, and, of course, you suffer. Everyone in the world has a better attorney than you: you take everyone’s part against yourself.’

  ‘No, no,’ protested Paul. ‘I am not a good man. I have many faults. I have done harm to people. That’s why I go gingerly. I know my own shortcomings.’ He smiled at Marpurgo. ‘I love my wife, that is all. I know her; she is self-willed, she must be led. She is a—child. Despite her self-possession and polished manners, her cool air and way of uttering opinions—like Portia.’ He laughed. ‘Really, she is just Viola, loving, a little self-deprecating, self-subduing, a little masochistic. I could not believe that she had gone off by herself. This—boy—told her he needed her. We had been unhappy. No children, a declining income. I spoiled her. I should have given her a profession: made her a doctor, or a laboratory assistant. I stole her life and gave her nothing in return. I kept her like a specimen in a test-tube. She said this afternoon, “Like a foetus in alcohol. I was pickled, an exhibit.” ’