The Beauties and Furies

by Christina Stead

  He sighed. ‘When I got home, at four in the morning, I found that Elvira was ill in bed: she had got up suddenly: she suddenly made up her mind, that day. Inapposite decision! She either makes none or the most inexpeditious ones! Poor Elvira. You know those northern days in spring, a few gleams at dawn, a spot of blue, clouds, grey, gleam, wind, a drop of rain, a moment of fire at sunset, a grey evening, and suddenly, at midnight, a pure clear vault, with a few lovely puffs of cloud, and timid, tremulous stars by the thousand? Elvira! When my fuscous cloudy beauty clears, how long and deeply and tenderly you can look into her smoothly-rolling but reasonless universe! Marpurgo,’ he continued, leaning forward ardently and taking Marpurgo’s hand, careless of the few curious glances directed at them; ‘don’t hate me: I am young.’ His voice shook with drama and pity. ‘I am brilliant but indiscreet. Give me a chance. You see I am not thinking of letting Elvira down.’

  Marpurgo withdrew his hand pettishly.

  ‘I know this young lady, Mlle Coromandel Paindebled: she is the daughter of a friend of mine, an antiquary.’

  ‘I know the old man, too. Marvellous piece of lace, marvellous statue he has in the living-room. Queer old woman the mother, isn’t she? Oh, I often go there. I’m persona grata with everyone from the cat up. I have tea with the dear old crazy girl. She thinks I’m aspiring to Coro’s hand. I’m not. Coro never thinks of such a thing. She’s a jolly inspiring girl.’

  ‘She must be a dear friend of Elvira’s.’

  ‘Oh, you nasty thing! Well, well, Marpurgo! I keep my girls apart. I’m a wise man. And I don’t do harm to either. I’m going to England soon, too—unless a little affair turns out well here, but I don’t think I’ll be bothered with it.’

  ‘A job?’

  ‘Oh, maybe. But what do you think of Coro, eh? Isn’t she an extraordinary woman, full of harmony, although out of drawing? She whips me up to do something. And dear Elvira, much as I love her, and although she is my woman, Elvira has not that quality. Elvira’s function is to put you to sleep. I say, I’m drunk, aren’t I? Why don’t you stop me talking? I’m talking rot, aren’t I?’

  ‘No, you’re just getting sensible. Go on.’

  ‘I like to sleep, and that’s why I like her.’ He shook his plump shoulders, blew out his plump cheeks. ‘An Oedipus situation. You’re a Freudian, aren’t you?’

  ‘And I am Laius, I suppose?’

  Oliver simpered, pretending to be amused, but was really confused.

  ‘Laius was the father of Oedipus, and he slew him,’ said Marpurgo cuttingly. ‘But you’re a scholar.’

  Oliver said:

  ‘Of course…’ He stared at Marpurgo and his eye brightened. ‘I say, that’s rather acute of you. There is something in it…twisted…but…Marpurgo, you know you’re a damned clever man, a damned clever man. I am quite sure you’ve never lived up to your genius-capacity.’

  Marpurgo was flattered, and allowed a wrinkle of good-humour to appear round his mouth.

  Someone walked across and stood beside Oliver, saying: ‘Hullo, Olivair: and where is the darling?’

  Blanche was introduced to Marpurgo, whom she was dying to know. She asked after Elvira minutely in a tone of the oldest friendship, and got the conversation on to common friendly matters and easy political comments, as if they were all at home. Oliver mentioned that Marpurgo had invited them both to the Bois, because he was leaving the city. Blanche was excited.

  ‘Oh, did you? Oh, that is lovely of you. Elvira would have been so happy. The Bois is exquisite on a night like this. And poor dear, she has been so sick and so lonely, but she would send Olivair to his work. She is a good wife.’

  Marpurgo took them both to the Bois and promised to go the next afternoon to see Blanche’s act. He would taxi her to her night-club to-night too. They came back from the Bois, dropped Oliver and went to the nightclub. Marpurgo drank one glass of champagne and took Blanche to a café afterwards. She had an omelette and beer. He drank a Grand Marnier and watched her with delight.

  Blanche d’Anizy began to flatter Marpurgo, and talked about some old lace that her family had kept for generations: she had it off pat, but made the mistake of talking pseudo-technicalities to a technician. Marpurgo looked at her with salty amusement, letting her run on and inducing her to drink two fines. He was in his element, making an easy survey of human frailty. He sent the waiter for cigars of a special kind. Blanche, feeling that her lace-talk may have been at fault, named the various personalities sitting round the café, took an interest in Italian politics, supposing Marpurgo to be an Italian, mentioned her political informant, Lemesurier. Marpurgo took a pleasure in pretending to be her meat now, talked with her in a low voice, making satirical remarks, catty innuendoes, leaving his sentences half-uttered and finishing on mots à double entente. Blanche was in her element, and began to swim along with easy strokes: she was half-drunk, too drunk at any rate to see that Marpurgo was amusing himself. She began to tell dirty stories. She detailed the whole story of Oliver and Elvira, as she had seen or guessed it from the beginning, giving it the most scabrous turn: she told him how they all laughed at them in the café: how she kept her friends, the ‘personalities,’ au fait with this poor little romance, and how they had made bets about its possible termination. Marpurgo laughed wickedly to himself. She then told Marpurgo that Oliver had syphilis and had made love to her in a taxi last week, but she had repulsed him with indignation, because of dear Elvira and because of the syphilis. Marpurgo grinned more widely. Blanche, finishing her second fine, ordered a beer and boasted childishly about how she could mix her drinks. She became melancholy then, and began to tell Marpurgo, as to a father, the pitiful story of her life. It was not identical with the stories told to Elvira and Oliver, but more pathetic: she seemed to have been the baseball of fate, everyone scoring runs and she scoring smacks. She described all her friends with melancholy bitterness. The more she meditated on her insecurity, the more characterless, frail and vicious her friends seemed to her. She leaned on her hand, her fine drunken eyes in shadow, and foretold the short end of the affair of that ‘black-eyed flabby-dabby’ Oliver and Elvira, ‘that commonplace little housewife whose only trick is to talk slow and childish to make them come to her.’ Her life was wasted on Lemesurier, who had deflowered her at sixteen, promised to marry her, married instead a large dot, so that in madness she had married the unfortunate Englishman. She picked up courage again, however, and began to sparkle, laughing herself at her malignant shrewd descriptions of her friends. At the end she was describing her present plight with amusement: Lemesurier was financially embarrassed at present, being an indiscreet speculator, her other friends had left her stranded, liked her company, but instead of the regulation cheque at Christmas, for instance, had sent her gloves and stockings. She had had to spend what she earned at the cabaret on stockings and a new dress (and she earned little, she worked there for the prestige and the hope of picking up some wealthy follower). She was flat broke. She asked Marpurgo for a loan. Marpurgo, who had been touched very frequently in life, had seen it coming, and now he smiled a curved, satiric smile, but pleasant withal.

  ‘Madame Blanche: I am not easily touched by life-stories—especially in cafés.’

  She smiled, sensing a bargain, a hardened, a gay, shameless borrower, who never had any intention of repaying, but who did not mind giving something in return, or doing some service, especially if it was a worthless or scandalous one. He smiled at her, in understanding.

  ‘You are a woman of charm, understanding and experience, and like some other women of your sort I have met, you know what life is like: you have no illusions—I should say you have the same view of life as a business-man. I don’t mind financing you—in a limited way, if you’ll do something for me. I want it done discreetly. I am fond of Elvira: I came over on the train with her when she was coming to meet Oliver, and I very soon found out their secret. She seems to me a helpless creature; she is a beauty and has charm, and she is as limp as an only chi
ld and has little confidence. She can keep Oliver, but she must not live in a fool’s paradise: she must learn the sort of man he is. The sooner she goes back to London the better. Now,’ he said, settling down to confidences, of which he was excessively fond, ‘Oliver has been taking walks with a very handsome and talented young French girl, with a dot and doting parents. The father and mother are friends of mine: I met the father in the lace-business. Oliver met the girl I don’t know how, by accident, because she lives in this quarter, I suppose. She does notknow about Elvira, of course: she thinks he is a student studying here in bachelor quarters. I surprised them one evening coming home late as I left the house, where I had been playing chess with the father. I said nothing, naturally, to my friends, both for their sakes and hers, but I have been wondering what should be done. I now see an opportunity: I will bring the young lady to this café, my privilege and pleasure as a friend of the family—besides, she is the age my daughter would have been, if I had had one!’—he laughed lightly, and a faint suspicion dawned in Blanche’s eyes—‘introduce her to you, and you will make an appointment with her for the next day here for an apéritif. She has been a student at the Sorbonne and is perfectly free to go about by herself, although they are a good old-fashioned family: you will invite Elvira here at the same time, introduce the two, make some introductory remark such as that “Madame’s husband is studying at the Archives” and so forth, and then leave them to find out the matter themselves. Thus, Elvira will be warned, and my friends will be spared any trouble.’

  Blanche considered this for a while.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘it would not be a bad idea—in my opinion—for Oliver to marry a young girl of family, with money: he wants to be a student and he is lazy: he will need some money for the next few years. What is she like? Pretty?’

  Marpurgo said: ‘Young and very fresh-looking, with the milky charm of young girls, you know. Her mother is a strangely handsome woman, with a sort of big-boned Flanders charm, sedate: the father is handsome, mercurial and must have been a most beautiful youth. There is a little of them both in the daughter. But she is witty, and has flashes of inspiration which would attract an intellectual strutter like Oliver,’ he laughed.

  Blanche’s feeling that Marpurgo was interested in the daughter and her dowry, deepened, but she went gingerly, to make sure.

  ‘If she is pretty, witty and wealthy—but poor dear Elvira! Of course,’ she said, leaning forward confidentially, ‘I have always thought it a foolish escapade. Imagine a married woman, with a husband in his position, running away, like a schoolgirl, with a student seven years younger than herself—and probably she has lied about her age: she would in those circumstances. I think,’ she said reflectively, ‘the best thing would be for you to write to the husband and tell him. Or no, that would not do. Wait, I will think of something.’

  Marpurgo smiled.

  ‘I like my idea best: aren’t you anxious to see what will come of it when both women find out?’

  Blanche brightened. ‘Yes, you are quite right: they will both be sore as hell. What will they do? Let us do that. After all, it amuses and it does no one any harm. Whichever one marries him had better look out for him—such a philanderer.’ She began to giggle. Then, with the warmest gesture of the evening, she held her slender hand with its polished opal-tinted nails to Marpurgo. ‘It’s a bargain: I do not know what your object is. I do not think it is what you told me, because you are a clever man: but I do not care. What do I care for them? Both honest women, and both will think I am a louse, nothing but a little louse, because I had hard luck and I earn my living by men—and what do they? Look at that lazy, torpid Elvira; so I do not care for them: they can both go to hell. You are helping me out, and so I will do what you say. Am I right? Besides,’ she twinkled, ‘we are of our sort: I know it: I spotted you the first moment, and that is why I came across to see Oliver this evening. Otherwise—no: he bores me: he is a frightful bore: I don’t give a damn for him. Now, how much can you lend me?’

  ‘How much do you want?’

  She looked at him straight.

  ‘At least a thousand francs for current expenses and past bills, that is to begin with.’

  He grinned.

  ‘Hold your horses! Here are two hundred francs down.’

  She laughed carelessly: ‘And you expect me to help you out?’

  ‘What good are you doing me? However, if the results are good, the recognition will be there.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, calmly putting away the two hundred francs and getting up, with her hand extended,’ I trust you. I have to, and if I don’t, what’s the odds? I am two hundred francs to the good. Good-bye.’ She smiled at him with all her charm. ‘When will you bring me the young lady?’

  ‘I can’t say: I must make arrangements, consult her: she is often out of the house altogether, at classes, parties, dances: I see her very little. Perhaps to-morrow.’

  She scribbled her address on her card, and left. Marpurgo said to himself: ‘Now I must act quickly. It must be soon, soon: I must get rid of that painted turnip of a student with his red cheeks and black hair.’

  He took Elvira out to lunch next day, and went for a long walk with her afterwards, praising her knowledge of Paris, looking in shop-windows with her: then went into a bookshop and bought her the Mercure de France, which flattered her.

  ‘How is Oliver getting on? He must be nearly finished now!’

  ‘I’m tired of asking him. He likes maundering in libraries; but he’s got to reach finality, soon.’

  Marpurgo’s lips curled as he heard a shadow of Oliver’s pompous phraseology: but he went on the more eagerly putting words into her mouth:

  ‘Philander philanders in mind, heart and body: he’s likely to turn out a liberal-fascist of the dazzling arriviste type, unless you guide him with your commonsense and sincerity. The instinct of youth for truth led him to you, the healthy instinct of cat for catnip, cow for cowlick, crapulent for purgative moved him before he became entirely identified with licking his own chops. You can save him, or no one. He has a natural taste for pornocracies, but by accident he met an honest woman: now you must rule. He’s a purple-patch type: let his brain-children be porphyrogenitous…’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Born to legitimate purple…’ he carried on with a sleeve-snicker.

  Elvira laughed, and said slowly, with catches in her voice:

  ‘A taste for pornocracy, but by accident he met an honest woman—dishonestly.’

  ‘If he meets another honest woman—honestly,’ continued Marpurgo brutally, ‘he’ll go flat out for her. Now, I wouldn’t want that to happen. I think too much of you, I respect you too much to see that happen.’

  She said coolly: ‘Do you have to let that bother you?’

  ‘Escapades are like jags in a temperature chart: taken together they give you the norm and you can’t get along normally without them. But a heat-wave is not a jag.’

  ‘So you sense a heat-wave? That’s very interesting. Who’s the woman?’

  ‘I know nothing,’ said Marpurgo smoothly. ‘I just saw him in the street walking very affectionately with a young girl. But I think he has an affectionate way with all women: doubtless it means nothing. No doubt he had a kind sister and mother.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip,’ said Elvira drily. ‘I’ll go and have a water-wave, and I’ll see about his heat-wave.’

  ‘Good,’ said Marpurgo with his habitual air of baffled plotter whose instruments must leave him to act, to his regret. He called a taxi and put her into it.

  ‘I admire you; you’re one of those feminine girls who know that Guerlain works better than H2SO4.’

  ‘What’s that? Arsenic?’

  ‘No—suicide? You’d never do that?’ he said with conviction and surprise.

  ‘Marpurgo, get into the taxi. I want to talk to you. To the Café d’Harcourt! Marpurgo, now tell me why you hang round us and torment us! I want to get to the bottom of this.’<
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  He looked at her insolently.

  ‘I’m a virtuoso in decadence, disintegration, mental necrosis: if I sit at home, I corrode myself: I can’t work in a vacuum. Out, I gather little eschatological flowers to meditate in the hectic nights of the bacillus of Koch. Each of your sorrows is for me an hour of nepenthe: in that hour I build up an endoped dome of misery and failure, doubt and dissolution, ridicule and insufficiency beyond inferno, Eblis, opium, Xanadu…’

  ‘Have you got a match, Marpurgo?’

  ‘I don’t smoke now—my lungs, you know. Wait!’ He knocked on the glass and stopped the taxi, jumped out and presently came back, smiling gently, coughing, with a box of matches. ‘And now, dear lady, let me leave you: you have your water-wave, scent behind your ears, eh?’ he gestured.

  ‘What’s her address? I’m going there,’ said Elvira.

  ‘I don’t know: I merely saw them in the street,’ he replied, meaning to appear insincere.

  ‘You’re as slippery as a snake,’ she said, puffing out smoke. ‘I’ll get the secret out of you yet. Come and see me to-morrow, Marpurgo. I’ll be at home at three-thirty.’

  ‘The ladies’ hour: you should see Oliver then, not me.’

  She shrugged. ‘To attract Oliver is no diploma: you’re different.’

  ‘Even my enraged lymphocytes can’t conquer my enraged virtue; with me it’s perpetual Ramadan: strict fasting till sunset.’

  She drawled insultingly: ‘I wonder you never married, then.’

  ‘Fantasy’s my copulative.’