When I had left this horrible woman and her curious shop (where in any case I hadn’t been able to match my silk), I thought despairingly of everything she had told me about my employers. It was drizzling, and the sky was as foul as the soul of this scandalmonger. I slipped on the muddy pavement and, furious with her and with my employers, furious with myself, furious with this provincial sky, with the mud in which I felt that my heart as well as my feet were immersed, furious with the incurable sadness of this little town, I kept repeating to myself: ‘Oh well, so this is where you have landed up! This is really the last straw! Hell!’
Yes, I had made a proper mess of things. But there was worse to come. Madame dresses herself and does her own hair. She locks herself into her dressing-room, and even I am scarcely allowed in. God knows what she does there for hours and hours. This evening, unable to stand it any longer, I peremptorily knocked at the door and the following conversation ensued between her ladyship and myself:
‘Knock, knock.’
‘Who’s there?’
Oh, that shrill, yapping voice … I’d like to shove it down her throat with my fist.
‘It’s me, Madame.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I was going to do the dressing-room.’
‘It’s been done. Go away, and don’t come back until I ring for you.’
Which means that I’m not even a chambermaid here … I don’t know what I am, or what I’m supposed to do. Dressing and undressing them, and doing their hair is the only part of the job I enjoy. I love laying out their nightdresses and playing with the frills and ribbons, fiddling about with their underclothes, their hats and lace and furs; rubbing them down after a bath, helping them to dry, powdering them, pumice-stoning their feet, perfuming their breasts—in short, getting to know them from top to toe, seeing them in all their nakedness. Like that, they cease to be just your mistress, and become almost your friend or accomplice, often your slave. Inevitably, in all sorts of ways, you become the confidante of all their sorrows and vices, of their disappointments in love, of the most intimate secrets of their married life, of their illnesses … not to mention the fact that, if you are clever enough, you acquire a hold over them in a thousand little ways that they don’t even suspect. And there’s much more to it than that: it can be profitable as well as entertaining. That’s my idea of a chambermaid’s duties. You would never imagine how many of them are—how shall I put it?—how many of them are really crazily indecent in their private lives, even those who, in society, are regarded as being most circumspect and severe in their behaviour, most inaccessibly virtuous. But in their dressing-rooms, when they let their masks fall, even the most impressive facades reveal themselves as cracked and crumbling.
I remember one woman I used to work for who had the most curious habit. Every morning before putting on her chemise, and every evening after taking it off, she used to stand naked for a quarter of an hour at a time, minutely examining herself in front of the mirror. Then, thrusting out her bosom and stretching back her neck, she would throw her arms in the air to make as much as possible of her flabby drooping breasts, and say: ‘Look Célestine, they’re still quite firm, aren’t they?’
It was difficult not to laugh especially as Madame’s body was really the most pathetic sight. By the time she had taken off her corsets, brassière and girdle and stepped out of her chemise, you almost expected it to dissolve all over the carpet. Belly, rump, breasts were like deflated wineskins, sacks that had been emptied, leaving nothing but fat, flabby folds of skin; and her buttocks were as shapeless and pockmarked as an old sponge. And yet, from all this formless ruin one pathetic element of charm survived, the charm, now little more than a memory, of a woman who had once been beautiful, and whose whole life had been devoted to the pursuit of love. Thanks to the providential blindness to which most ageing creatures are subject, she refused to accept the inevitable eclipse of her beauty. In a last appeal to love, she relied more and more upon expensive remedies and all the refinements of coquetry … And love responded … But what kind of love? That was the tragedy!
Sometimes she would arrive home just before dinner, out of breath and thoroughly embarrassed.
‘Quick, quick … I’m late … Help me to change.’
Where could she have been, with that face so drawn with fatigue and those dark rings under her eyes, and so exhausted that all she could do was to fall like a log on the sofa in her dressing-room? … And the state of her underclothes! … Her chemise crumpled and dirty, her petticoat hurriedly fastened, her stays all unlaced, her suspenders undone, and her stockings in corkscrews … In her uncurled, hurriedly pinned-up hair there were sometimes bits of fluff from a sheet or a feather from a pillow, and the thick makeup of her lips and cheeks smeared by kisses, so that the wrinkles in her face stood out like cruel wounds …
In an attempt to allay suspicion, she would moan: ‘I don’t know what came over me … But I fainted … suddenly, while I was at the dressmaker’s … They had to undress me … I’m still feeling terrible.’
Often, out of pity for her, I pretended to be taken in by these stupid explanations.
One morning while I was attending her the bell rang, and, as the footman was out, I went to open the door. It was a young man, a shady-looking specimen, gloomy and vicious, half worker, half layabout … one of those doubtful characters one sometimes runs into at the dance halls, who get their living from murdering people or from love … He had a very pale face, with a thin black moustache and a red tie. His shoulders were hunched up in a jacket too big for him, and he had the classical swaggering walk of his kind. With an air of troubled surprise he began by inspecting the luxurious furnishing of the hall, the carpets, mirrors, pictures and hangings … Then he handed me a letter for the mistress and, in an oily, drawling voice that was nevertheless a command, said:
‘And see I get an answer …’
Had he come to settle an account, or was he only a messenger? I ruled out the second hypothesis—if he was here on behalf of someone else he would scarcely have such an air of authority.
‘I’ll see if Madame is at home,’ I replied cautiously, twisting the letter in my hands.
‘She’s at home all right,’ he said. ‘I happen to know … So none of your monkey tricks. It’s urgent.’
As she read the letter Madame turned almost livid and, forgetting herself in her sudden terror, muttered, stammered:
‘He’s here in the house? … You left him alone in the hall? … How ever did he find out my address? …’
Then, quickly pulling herself together and speaking as casually as possible: ‘It’s nothing … I scarcely know him … He’s just a poor fellow, a very deserving case … His mother is dying.’
She hurriedly opened her desk, and with a trembling hand took out a 100-franc note: ‘Give him this … Quick, quick, poor fellow!’
‘Swine!’ I couldn’t help muttering under my breath. ‘Madame is very generous today … Some poor people are lucky.’
And I stressed the word ‘some’ as bitterly as I could.
‘Get along with you, quick,’ she ordered, scarcely able to stand still …
When I got back, Madame, who is not very tidy and often leaves her things lying about all over the room, had torn up the letter, and the last scraps of it were already burning in the fireplace. I never knew for certain just who this fellow was, and I did not see him again. But what I do know, for I saw it with my own eyes, is that that morning Madame didn’t stand looking at herself naked in the glass, nor did she want to know whether I thought her miserable breasts were still firm. She spent the rest of the day at home, restless and nervous, and obviously very scared …
From that moment, whenever Madame came in late in the evening, I was always terrified lest she’d been murdered in some brothel. And when I sometimes used to mention my fears in the servants’ hall, the butler, a cynical, very ugly old man, with a birthmark on his forehead, used to growl:
‘Well, so what? Of co
urse that’s how she’ll end up sooner or later. What do you expect? Instead of chasing off after pimps, why doesn’t the old cow stay at home and fix things up with a man she can trust, someone she can count on?’
‘With you maybe?’ I sniggered.
To which, as everyone burst out laughing, the butler, puffing out his chest, replied: ‘And why not? I’d fix her all right… provided she paid me properly.’
He was really priceless, that man …
With my last mistress but one it had been a very different story … Oh, how we used to laugh about her, sitting round the table after the evening meal was finished. Nowadays I can see how wrong this was, for Madame was not really at all a bad sort. She was kind, generous and very unhappy … And she was always giving me presents … Sometimes, I must admit, we were really too beastly about her, but it’s always those who treat us best that suffer most for it.
This woman’s husband, a kind of scientist and member of some Academy or other, used to neglect her terribly. Not that she was ugly; on the contrary, she was extremely pretty. Nor that he ran after other women; in this respect his behavior was exemplary. But being no longer young, and presumably not very keen on lovemaking—maybe it didn’t even interest him—he used to let month after month go by without thinking of sleeping with his wife. She was in despair. Night after night I used to help her get ready for him … Transparent nightdresses … simply wonderful perfumes … everything. She used to say to me: ‘Perhaps this evening he might come, Célestine? Have you any idea what he’s doing?’
‘The master is in the library … working.’
And with the same despondent gesture she would sigh: ‘The library … always in the library! Still, perhaps he will come all the same …’
I used to finish titivating her, and proud of this sensual loveliness for which I was partly responsible, would look at her admiringly:
‘Well, if he doesn’t, all I can say is he’ll be making a big mistake. Why, just to look at you this evening, Madame, would be enough to make him forget all his worries!’
‘Oh, be quiet, be quiet!’ she shuddered.
And the next day it would be the same old thing all over again … nothing but tears and groans.
‘Oh, Célestine, he never came after all. I was waiting for him all night. I don’t think he’ll ever come.’
I did my best to console her: ‘Oh, I expect he was worn out with work. These scholars, you know what they are … their heads are so full of other things they never have time for love. Have you ever thought of trying him with pictures ma’am? I’ve heard you can get some lovely ones … even the coldest fish couldn’t resist them!’
‘No, no, what’s the use?’
‘Well, suppose you tried changing the menu for dinner, ma’am? If you were to order highly spiced dishes, for instance, lobsters and that sort of thing?’
‘No, no,’ she would say, shaking her head sadly. ‘It’s nothing to do with that. It’s simply that he doesn’t love me any longer.’
Then, shyly, looking at me not with hatred but imploringly, she would ask: ‘Célestine, I want you to be quite frank with me … Has the master ever tried to get you in a corner? Has he ever kissed you? Has he ever …’
‘What an idea!…’
‘But tell me, Célestine, be honest with me.’
‘Certainly not, ma’am,’ I exclaimed. ‘The master has no time for such things! Besides, do you really think, ma’am, that I would do anything to harm you?’
‘But you must tell me,’ she begged. ‘You’re so beautiful, your eyes are so full of love, you must have such a lovely body.’
Then she would make me feel her breasts, her arms, her thighs, her legs, comparing every part of our two bodies so completely shamelessly that, blushing with embarrassment, I began to wonder whether this was not just a trick on her part, whether behind the grief of a deserted woman she had not been concealing a desire for me. And all the time she kept on murmuring: ‘Oh God, God, it’s not as though I was an old woman. I’m not ugly, I’m not fat, my flesh is still soft and firm. Oh, if you only knew. I feel so much love. My heart’s full of love!’
Often she would burst into tears, and throwing herself on to the sofa, her head buried in a cushion to stifle her tears, would stammer: ‘Oh, never love anyone, Célestine, never love anyone. It will only bring you unhappiness.’
Once, when she was crying more pitifully than usual, I said to her sharply: ‘If I were in your place, ma’am, I’d go and find myself a lover. Madame is too beautiful to be left like this …’
My words seemed to terrify her:
‘Be quiet, oh, will you be quiet!’ she exclaimed.
I insisted: ‘But all Madame’s friends have lovers …’
‘Will you be quiet. Don’t speak to me of such things.’
‘But if Madame feels so loving …’ and with calm impertinence I mentioned the name of a very elegant young man who often visited her: ‘Oh, he’s a duck of a man! Why you have only to look at him to see how skilful and considerate he’d be with a woman!’
‘No, be quiet. You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘As you wish, ma’am. I was only thinking of your good.’
And persisting in her dream, while the master still sat in the library adding up figures and drawing circles, she would repeat: ‘But maybe tonight he will come.’
Every morning, over breakfast in the servants’ hall, this was the sole subject of conversation. They would ask me for the latest news, and the answer was always the same: ‘Nothing doing!’
You can just imagine what an opportunity it was for all kinds of coarse jokes and obscene allusions. They even used to lay bets as to when the master would pay her a visit.
It was after one of these futile discussions with the mistress, in which I always seemed to be in the wrong, that I gave her notice. I did it in a disgusting way, throwing up in her face, her poor bewildered face, all the poor little stories, all the intimate misfortunes, all the confidences, through which she had exposed her heart to me, her charming, plaintive, babyish little heart, so hungry with desire. Yes, everything. It was like throwing mud at her. Worse than that, I accused her of the filthiest kinds of debauchery, of every sort of ignoble passion. I really behaved horribly.
I don’t know how it is, but there are times when I suddenly feel within myself a kind of need, a mania, to behave outrageously … A perversity, that drives me to turn the simplest things into irreparable wrongs. I can’t help it … even when I am aware that I am acting against my own interests, that I shall only do myself harm. On this occasion I went much further. A few days after leaving Madame’s service, I bought a postcard, and so that everybody in the house would be able to read it I wrote the following charming message. Yes, I actually had the nerve to say: ‘This is to inform you, Madame, that I am returning to you, carriage paid, all the so-called presents that you have given me. I am only a poor woman, but I have too much self-respect, too much regard for decency, to keep all the filthy rags that you got rid of by passing on to me instead of throwing them into the gutter, which is all they were fit for. You need not imagine that, just because I am penniless, I am prepared to wear your disgusting petticoats, all stained with yellow where you’ve pissed yourself. I have the honour to be, Yours faithfully …’
So that was that. But it was stupid, and all the more so because, as I’ve said already, Madame had always been generous to me. In fact, only the next day I was able to sell the clothes she had given me—which, of course, I had never had any intention of returning to her—for 400 francs to a second-hand clothes dealer.
What probably made me do this was that I was furious with myself for having left an unusually agreeable job, the kind that we aren’t often lucky enough to find, in a house that was run on lavish lines and where we were treated like lords. But hang it all, there’s not always time to be fair to our employers. And if the decent ones have to suffer for the bad ones, so much the worse for them.
But, after all
this, what am I going to do here? Stuck in the country with an old cat like Madame Lanlaire, it’s no good dreaming of another such windfall, nor hoping for anything as entertaining. Here, it’s going to be nothing but boring housework—and sewing, which I simply can’t stand. Oh, when I think of the places I have had, it makes my position here seem even more dreary, unbearably dreary. I’ve a good mind to clear out, to make my final bow to this country of savages.
Just now I passed Monsieur Lanlaire on the stairs. He was going shooting. He looked at me roguishly and once again wanted to know whether ‘I was settling down all right.’ It’s definitely a mania with him.
I replied: ‘It’s too early to say sir.’ And added, saucily: ‘And what about you sir? Have you settled down?’
He burst out laughing. Really, he’s a good sort and knows how to take a joke.
‘You must settle down, Célestine. You simply must settle down.’
Feeling in the mood to take liberties, I answered again: ‘I’ll do my best sir … with your help sir!’
From the sparkle in his eye I think he was on the point of making a pretty cheeky retort. But at that moment Madame Lanlaire appeared at the top of the staircase, so we made off in different directions. Pity!
That evening, through the drawing-room door, I heard Madame saying to him in the tone of voice you would expect: ‘I disapprove of any familiarity with my servants.’
The Diary of a Chambermaid Page 5