The Beauties and Furies

by Christina Stead

  ‘It’s very vulgar in many senses,’ said Elvira, ‘and many foreigners don’t like the approximate, dispersed way of talking. Others find it amusing.’

  ‘You don’t like England?’ said Coro curiously. ‘It’s strange, I think there are many lovers of France among the English.’

  Elvira, who had been making a great effort to impress the forward stranger, was chilled by this.

  ‘Certainly, we all have the same verbal pattern,’ she replied. Coro smiled.

  ‘No Englishman likes England,’ Elvira cast into the basket of scraps further.

  ‘Not even the beggar in the Strand?’

  ‘You mean the “Lord of India,”’ responded Elvira, curiously hoping to mystify her.

  ‘Yes.’ To relieve a slight hostility Coro noticed, she continued: ‘That reminds me of an amusing story, sentimental, that I heard: A friend of a friend saw a beggar in the Strand, and being sorry for him, and a poet, composed a sonnet upon his condition, which he sent to a provincial paper. He vowed if he was paid for it, he would give half the money paid to the beggar. Alas—you guess the conclusion?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elvira, faintly mocking. ‘Students are poor, his sentiments had no better coin. He received say thirty shillings for the sonnet, and gave the beggar—alas—none. And next day passed him with commiseration.’

  ‘You pity everyone?’ said Coro.

  ‘Only myself,’ said Elvira. ‘I only know myself, and I cannot get outside myself. It is a sickening wrench for me to think about other people. I wasn’t made that way. I cannot, for instance, bear to have people tell me their troubles.’

  ‘Perhaps you have had many.’

  ‘We all have problems of adjustment and self-expression.’ Coro listened to her glib abstractions in surprise. ‘If I had a function I could organise my life better,’ continued Elvira.

  ‘You can easily get one,’ said Coro, laughing. Nothing could be quainter than Elvira talking over her idleness in the dryasdust scholastic idiom she had picked up from the men she had lived with.

  ‘Perhaps so, but I have no energy for co-ordination. I am too oppressed, I think, by my coldness and isolation in the world; the isolation of a person with no self-confidence. I envy those who are creative. I often wish I could create. Do you think music or literature is more satisfactory?’

  ‘I don’t know: musicians are rare,’ said Coro.

  ‘If you have a function you avoid subjective relationships,’ continued Elvira dismally: ‘you are not negatively suggestible to your environment.’

  Coromondel laughed. Elvira took umbrage:

  ‘I suppose I seem a defeatist to you. You have your career. I’ve been over-protected—isn’t that the latest way of saying you’ve never had to meet the issue?’

  ‘I think it likely,’ said Coro.

  ‘All women are alone.’

  ‘But you are married?’

  ‘Yes, but a man is—wrapped up in his own comforts; you have to coddle him or he runs off after the next warm breast; men are children. I have no children, but I think it is as well; I have had two husbands, and it is lonely.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Coro, ‘but I cannot feel lonely even alone.’

  ‘You cannot know till you are married. A woman sleeps until she marries: no one can judge a priori. You’re not lonely till you’re married. After that, if you’re alone you feel as miserable as a baby feels who is hungry for the breast.’

  Coromandel smiled at Elvira’s shrinking, sombre, nuggety little passion.

  ‘No doubt you are right. I will find out, as you say, Madame!’

  ‘You want to get married? I thought you were too intellectual. Do you want to give up your independence for a man?’

  ‘I never thought of it that way.’

  ‘Perhaps you will be lucky. Some are. I was always different, a stranger in my world; even at the age of twelve—I was very pretty and good, but I could not display affection to other children and teachers. I only wanted to display good manners; I wrote in my exercise book to make them think me strange—“I am an anarchist; in anarchism the government will be blown up.” I was kept in for that.’

  Coro looked at the oval face, similar to the refined, practical, melancholy faces of China beauties in Chinese actor-dolls.

  ‘You had passionate instincts.’

  Elvira was offended at the laugh, but she drawled on, eager to talk on that pathetic subject of her lonely heart.

  ‘I was not passionate: I was rather negatively passionate. I immediately gave up: I am a defeatist in passionism. I never had a great passion, only an immense but quite lifeless passion for my own troubles; melancholy I am.’

  Coro said maternally: ‘They should have called you something sweet and mournful, like—I don’t know—Melanchtha! I heard of someone called that somewhere. Perhaps in a book.’

  ‘That’s a strange name!’

  ‘When I was a young girl, very young, I first fell in love with Philipp Melanchthon. But Melanchtha is beautiful—it is mellow, dark live water, it suggests the antre.’

  ‘I think it hideous,’ said Elvira briefly. ‘Since you’re applying it to me.’

  Coro, encountering an inferior will and girlish character in a nature instinctively subtle, sombre and critical, was unruffled by differences. She pursued the conversation in curiosity. Some strange consonances, or consonant echoes, had come to her ear from that instrument. She was unaware of the reason for her interest, but she found the question guiltily seductive; wrong to interpellate, sweet to discover.

  ‘You need women friends perhaps?’

  ‘A husband saves me from the distressing necessity.’

  ‘You don’t like women,’ said Coro compassionately.

  ‘Tamed, muddled, muddy, fleshly, man-engrossed,’ was the rhyme and reason of Elvira’s objections. ‘I suppose’ (with a pleasant gleam of white teeth and her sweet smile) ‘you will say what everyone does, a woman is judged by the opinion of her sisters.’

  Coromandel laughed outright.

  ‘Oh, I think you’ve been injured by women friends some time.’

  ‘Only men have done me harm.’

  ‘That surprises me, really. You are very charming.’

  ‘Well, I should say that Mr. Marpurgo who has just left us, although grossly deceitful, is my only true man-friend.’

  ‘And your husband, of course!’

  ‘One can never trust a husband: one can only manage him.’

  Coro took in her suggestive, mournful, bovine, breeding look. It burdened her, seemed to creep on to her shoulders with the assumption of squaws’ burdens, little household fights, venal bargaining. Coromandel rested from the conversation, which had become a passage-at-arms. Elvira noted the look and was glad to find offence in Coromandel. She sank back against the seat and tapped a cigarette.

  ‘By the way, where did you meet Blanche d’Anizy? I suppose you’re old friends? She dances beautifully, doesn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know she was a dancer. To tell the truth I only met her yesterday, through Marpurgo.’

  ‘I thought you were old friends.’

  Coro noted the lady’s great, soft, perplexed eyes, confined in the bloodless orbit of the face, ill-weighted by her smooth but irregular forehead. What mystery did she face? Why was she forced to go on with this conversation? She said with an effort to appear bland:

  ‘What do you do in the afternoons? You study?’

  ‘I generally wait here for my husband to come from the Archives, where he is finishing a thesis.’

  Coromandel felt suddenly she worshipped this woman: she had a strange desire to cry and kiss her forehead. She felt like a chimney, some understanding of the lady was rushing through her, and yet she hardly knew what she understood. She looked on Elvira as one looks on a simple, foolish, dirty, lustful dove in a compliant green forest. Elvira rebuffed her with aversion and fatigue:

  ‘But if you must get back to your work, don’t let me detain you. I just sit
here and ponder. You couldn’t spend an afternoon like that, could you? I suppose work is a great consolation. I wish I had talent like you, I shouldn’t be bored.’

  ‘I have no talent, indeed.’

  ‘Oh, yes you have. Anyone can see it, in the way you walk, the way you talk. Only people who are sure of making their way are like that. But I have no talent. I’m just empty, an earthenware bowl: you’re—’

  ‘You’re a pot of basil,’ said Coromandel. ‘I can’t bear to hear you talking like that. Why do you try to convert yourself to your own worthlessness?’

  Elvira looked obstinately down.

  ‘I don’t know why I bored you with myself. I’m not worth talking about. Do you want any coffee?’

  ‘Come home with me and have tea. I’ll make it myself. I know there are some delicious cakes at home. Won’t you come? I have a very pretty studio. Do you like fabrics? There is a rolling glass roof which lets in the light. Come, and I’ll show you my drawings. Will you let me make a sketch of you?’

  ‘I’m superstitious: it’s unlucky,’ protested Elvira. ‘I’ve never had a photograph taken either except for passports. Thank you very much indeed, but my husband may be early from the Archives to-day because Mr. Marpurgo is leaving for England to-night. They are friends.’

  ‘Another day, then: I’m just near here—Paindebled, the antiquary in the rue Jacob. Perhaps you know it.’

  ‘No, we never walk in that quarter. But if we meet again, I’ll be glad to accept your invitation.’

  ‘Bring your husband too, if he is free.’

  ‘Oh, Oliver, that’s my husband, will be free all day soon. You come here sometimes, don’t you? Let’s put it off till we meet again. I—I think we’re moving to another apartment. You don’t mind, do you?’

  She was worried by Coro’s look of astonishment: the French are very formal—perhaps she had been too offhand. What did it matter? This young girl would be a bore with her drawings. They were going to England soon. She apologised:

  ‘I am so sorry: it sounds so abrupt. But—our plans are rather formless. He’s like that. So am I. I suppose that’s why we get on. Oliver is a natural I.W.W., he says.’

  She had regained all her self-confidence, without knowing why: perhaps because this highbrow young girl seemed to be getting ready to go. Elvira bridled with professional manners: she would go home before she met her husband. They left together. The little woman parted from Coromandel outside the café and went straight ahead, slightly bowed over her stomach, her broad hips swaying, looking neither around nor behind. Coromandel bought an evening paper at the kiosk, acting automatically and without any feeling at all. She watched Elvira’s progress down the street, while thinking to herself…

  ‘But I’m mad: her name is Mrs. Western. It’s simply an astounding coincidence! All the same, I wish her husband’s name had been Roland instead.’

  Elvira ascended the Boulevard St. Michel. Coromandel walked slowly after her, then faster and faster, as she kept disappearing in the crowd. She turned into the rue du Panthéon. The splendidly serried façades of the old houses swept round too, like engraved battlements. Elvira turned down the rue Thouin and entered an old house there containing furnished apartments. Coromandel knew that Oliver’s ‘bachelor’ apartment was in the rue Thouin.

  ‘No, this is too much: it is the same, it must be. Well, well! Damme if he’s not making a complete fool of me! And of her. That cherub face! I’m going to have some fun.’ But she was furiously excited. When she got home she could not settle down to work at all. She polished all the copper and silver work in the place, old balm for tired hearts.

  Immediately after leaving them, Marpurgo, exhausted, had sunk down on the nearest bistrot terrace to compose himself and think out his plans. Would he go to England to-night or not? Would he wait and fight Oliver on his own ground? The whole thing was ridiculous. Oliver was not a danger, but the unknown buyer that Georges had picked up. He went once more through the list of possibles. He ordered a Grand-Marnier and wrote three letters, one to Antoine Fuseaux at Vichy, one to Severin at Nancy, whither he had gone for financing, one to Paul Western, describing Oliver’s double treachery, denouncing his character and picturing Elvira’s tragic plight. He would be in England to-morrow, the letter said, and he would call immediately on Paul. Paul was not to act, telephone, telegraph or write to Elvira before that. He must lay all the facts before him. He, Marpurgo, was out of a job on his account; he had an invalid wife coming to live with him in Paris: the shock of learning his financial misfortunes would affect her gravely. All Elvira needed was firm persuasion, and no brothers, cousins, friends, lovers—only her understanding husband. She herself had said only yesterday that no one would ever be as near to her as Paul. And so forth.

  His decks cleared, Marpurgo finished his second cigar, and decided not to go to the Fuseaux’ office but to seek out Oliver. The accustomed intoxication of the cigar carried him off cheerfully. He called for Oliver at the Archives and took him out.

  ‘Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone send me for you,’ he lisped to Oliver, ‘Orestes—or should I say, orexis?—I left school at fourteen. I can never understand how a man of twenty-three can sit out a sunny day on his coccyx.’

  Oliver, plump, ruddy, drowsy, blinked good-humouredly at him.

  ‘Let’s have a drink. I’m dry as a bone. I feel like a silverfish. Why don’t you get me a position in business, Marpurgo?’

  Marpurgo’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Why don’t you get yourself one? Anything would be better than this…coprophagy.’

  Oliver yawned.

  ‘The scarab ate dung and was sacred: I belong to the sacred dung-eaters myself: the State supports me.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t support and propitiate your three furies on your stipend, can you?’ asked Marpurgo.

  ‘What three furies?’ Oliver awakened and looked curiously at his interlocutor.

  ‘Elvira, Coromandel, the occasional whore.’

  Oliver yelped cheerfully: ‘You bitter old Puritan! I believe you’re in love with Elvira.’

  ‘I despise women, all women: I never write about them, think about them, speak about them. I only court them and make tools of them.’

  ‘You’re a fearful ascetic, Marpurgo. Ergo bibamus! What’ll you have, brandy? I can’t drink those sweet French drinks: we drank nothing but rum, rye, gin and slivovitz at college. Garçon! Two fines maison!’

  ‘For me, just spa-water: quart-Perrier, garçon.’

  ‘Oui, monsieur.’

  ‘It’s marvellous to be out of doors this lovely weather. I ought to go and take Elvira out. I suppose she’s at home. She’s a lone girl. I don’t give her enough attention.’

  ‘She’s not a girl, but a woman,’ answered Marpurgo. ‘You must beware of her. She’s an intake girl: she’ll absorb your life entirely if you’re not careful. You’re an easy giver: you’d give anything rather than fight about it.’

  ‘That’s true: it’s funny too, because I think I’d do well in business. I’ve got a good business-head and I’m hard underneath.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re not an annexation-type: you’d make money for others. You’re not constipated, are you?’

  Oliver laughed.

  ‘No, and yet I’m not a spendthrift. I don’t like to think about money. I’d like to go into business just to make money easily, you know: so as not to know where it comes from. In scholarship, you’ve got to strain over every penny so that your whole life is absorbed by money. You can’t buy a car, you can’t have tailor-made clothes, you can’t have children, you can’t buy the books and pictures business-men buy, your wife’s dressed like a frump—and you’re the aesthete! What a contradiction! It goes without saying business-men are more cultivated than we are: they have the money. Now I reckon with my background and my love of material comfort, I could get somewhere in business. I’ve been thinking it out. Then, look at Elvira: she loves goods. It’s a pity we weren’t born in the merchant ages: we’d make a
wonderful couple in a cloth-house.’

  Marpurgo looked suggestively at his eyes and at the emptied brandy-glass.

  ‘Why aren’t you working to-day: are you pensioned off now?’ cried Oliver.

  ‘No, I still produce sales for a living,’ said Marpurgo. ‘I’m not in the hocuspocus business yet, although I could do it better than anyone. In fact, when I was fourteen I deliberately left school because I saw I was going to do too well at it: I knew their game. I didn’t want to be chief flamen to some paper Jove.’

  ‘You could have done research,’ said Oliver.

  ‘If the clear call isn’t there, the rest is a shadow-dance,’ said Marpurgo. ‘And with me—I could have done it, but I could never get into that state of self-intoxication when my little ciphering seemed of world-shaking importance.’

  ‘I don’t take it seriously like that—I’d like to do a good job, that’s all,’ said Oliver seriously. ‘Whatever I do, I’ll do a good job: while I’m doing it I think it’s really valuable, I can get quite earnest about it, but afterwards I realise it’s just one among many. There are lots of jobs in life. Of course, I realise that isn’t the point of view of a fanatic, and I’d rather like to be able to be a fanatic at times: it helps. I get rather blue at times: I feel something of a squudge. I’ve a good mind to go away down south with Elvira when I’ve finished this, before I go back home, just to recreate something of the romantic atmosphere we started out with—or rather, I started out with. She’s very happy and faithful, you know, if you give her a direction. That’s all she needs. She needs to believe in one. Left to herself, she just goes spinning darkly on on her own pivot. She groans at night, asleep, and I wake her up, asking her what she was dreaming about: she often says, “I dreamed I was alone in a howling wilderness with no one and no lights”: or she dreams she’s on the edge of a precipice, and can’t make up her mind to fall over or go away.’

  ‘Naturally a man in love sees a woman different from others, and in a sense creates her differently: we create our mistresses.’