I was sitting on a stool in a corner of the saddle room. Joseph was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, occasionally knocking the harness or the wooden partition with his elbow … We had stopped talking. I was feeling horribly ill at ease, wishing I had never come, while Joseph was obviously worried by something he still wanted to tell me. After a few minutes he made up his mind:
‘There’s something else I ought to tell you, Célestine … I come from Cherbourg, and Cherbourg’s a pretty tough place, full of soldiers and sailors, and those damned lascars, always ready for a bit of fun. But it’s a good place for business. Well, I happen to know that at this moment there’s a pretty good opening at Cherbourg … a small café, in the best possible position, near the port … The soldiers are drinking a lot these days … all the patriots are out on the streets … shouting and bawling, and getting up a thirst … This would be just the time to set up there. I reckon anyone could make money hand over fist … The only thing is you’d need a woman … a nice, sensible sort of woman … a woman that knew how to doll herself up a bit and could take a joke … You know what they’re like, these army blokes … easy going, always ready for a laugh and a bit of fun .. . getting tight whenever they can . .. fond of a bit of sex and ready to pay for it … Well, what do you think about it, Célestine?’
‘Me?’ I exclaimed, completely bewildered.
‘Yes, you. How do you fancy the proposition?’
‘Me?’
I hardly understood what he was getting at, and was so everwhelmed with surprise that I couldn’t think of anything else to say. But he insisted:
‘Well, of course you … Who else do you think would do for the café You’re a sensible woman … You know how to run things .. . You’re not one of those stuck-up dames that can never take a joke … and you’re a true patriot! Besides, you’re pretty and charming … Your eyes are enough to drive the whole Cherbourg garrison crazy. That’s true, isn’t it? Ever since I got to know you properly and realized all the things you could do, the idea has continually been running in my head.’
‘And what about you?’
‘Me as well, naturally … We’d get married on a proper friendly basis …’
‘So that’s it,’ I exclaimed indignantly. ‘You want me to become a whore so as to earn money for you?’
Joseph merely shrugged his shoulders, and replied quite calmly:
‘Everything would be absolutely on the level, Célestine … You know that, surely?’
Then he came over to me, seized me by the hands, squeezing them so hard that I could have screamed with pain, and murmured:
‘I’m crazy to have you there, Célestine, in the café. Don’t you realize, you’ve got right under my skin?’
And, seeing that I was nonplussed and rather frightened by this outburst and could neither move nor speak, he continued:
‘Besides, maybe it’s more than 15,000 francs … more like 18,000, I wouldn’t wonder. No one knows how much the capital has increased. And then think of all the other things you could have … jewels and such-like. Mark my words, you could be really happy in that little café.’
He took me in his arms and held me like a vice. I could feel his body against mine, trembling with desire. If he had wanted to, he could have taken me there and then, and I wouldn’t have made the least effort to resist. But he went on telling me about his dream:
‘A pretty little café, nice and clean, everything shining … There would be a great big mirror, and in front of it a fine-looking woman serving at the bar, dressed in Alsatian costume, with a silk blouse and broad velvet ribbons … Well, Célestine? . .. Just you think about it, and we’ll discuss it again, some other time … We’ll discuss it again.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say … It was something I’d never dreamt of. And yet I didn’t feel the least hatred for the man, or horror at his cynicism, though he was talking to me with the same lips that had kissed little Clara’s bloody wounds, and was holding me to him with the same hands that had embraced and strangled her in the forest.
‘We’ll talk about it again some other time … I know I’m old and ugly, but when it comes to fixing a woman, Célestine, you mark my words, I know what I’m up to … But well talk about it again.’
Fixing a woman indeed! A pretty sinister way of putting it … Is it a threat or a promise, I wonder?
Today Joseph has remained as silent as usual. You’d never imagine there had been anything between us last night. He comes and goes, works, eats, reads his paper, just as though nothing had happened. I look at him and wish I could detest him … wish I could see his ugliness for what it is … Wish I could feel such profound disgust for him that I’d never go near him again. But it just isn’t like that. No, the funny thing is that this man makes me shudder and yet he doesn’t disgust me … And this is terrible, because I know it was he who killed little Clara in the forest, and raped her.
3 NOVEMBER
Nothing delights me so much as coming across the name of someone I’ve worked for in the papers. I experienced this pleasure as keenly as ever this morning when I read in Le Petit Journal that Victor Charrigaud has just published a new book, that it is a great success and that everyone is talking about it. It is called From Five to Seven, and it is causing a scandal … in the proper sense of the word. According to the article, it is a collection of studies of society, brilliant and slashing, which, beneath their lightness of touch, hide a profound philosophy … Of course they were bound to say that! And it goes on to praise Charrigaud, not simply for his talent, but especially because of his elegance, his distinguished connections and his salon … Oh, but I could tell you something about that salon of his. I was parlour-maid at the Charrigaud’s for eighteen months and, God knows, I don’t think I ever came across such a bunch of rotters!
Everyone knows Victor Charrigaud by name. He has already published a series of best sellers. He is extremely witty and extremely talented, but he had the misfortune to achieve success too early, and, with it, a fortune. His early work showed great promise. Everyone was struck by his powers of observation, his considerable satirical gift, and the relentless irony that enables him to unmask human folly. He was looked upon as one of those lively, unfettered minds for whom the social conventions represent nothing but cowardly evasions; a shrewd and generous spirit, who, instead of stooping to the humiliating level of prejudice, boldly aspired to the purest and noblest ideals. At least, this is what one of his friends used to tell me about him, a painter who had fallen for me and whom I sometimes used to visit. It is to him I owe, not only the foregoing opinion, but also the details that follow about the writings and life of this illustrious man.
Of all the human follies so mercilessly exposed by Charrigaud, the one he particularly concentrated on was snobbishness. In his lively, well-informed conversation, even more than in his books, he exposed this form of moral cowardice, and the intellectual sterility that lies behind it, with a savagely picturesque precision, a rough and ready philosophy, and brilliantly scathing witticisms which, as they rapidly passed from mouth to mouth, at once became classics … A whole amazing psychology of snobbishness could have been elaborated from the closely observed sketches, and the brilliant, curiously living portraits that his prodigious originality poured out in an inexhaustible stream … Thus one would have thought that if anyone was to escape this moral influenza, which has such a powerful grip on society, it would have been Victor Charrigaud, for who else was so effectively protected from the contagion by that admirable antiseptic—irony … But human nature is a continual surprise, compounded as it is of contradictions and folly …
Scarcely had he got over the first enchantments of success, than the snobbishness that existed within him—and this was why he had been able to depict it so forcibly—revealed itself, exploded, so to speak, like a motor car engine when the ignition is switched on … He began by dropping those of his friends whom he found to be tiresome or compromising and only retained those who, either
because they were already recognized or because of their position in the newspaper world, could be useful to him and could further his youthful success by persistent acclamation. At the same time, he became intensely preoccupied with his clothes. He began wearing the most daring frock-coats, exaggerated eighteen-thirtyish collars and neckerchiefs, tight-waisted velvet waistcoats and showy jewellery, and would produce expensive gold-tipped cigarettes from a metal case encrusted with pretentiously valuable gems. Yet, in spite of all this, with his heavy movements and common pronunciation, he still retained the massive solidity of the Auvergne peasants amongst whom he had been born. Having so recently arrived in a world of elegance where he was out of his element, it was no use his studying the most perfect models of Parisian fashion: he could never attain the easy manner, the slender, upright carriage, that he so much admired—and so bitterly envied—in the young dandies who frequented the clubs and racecourses, the theatres and restaurants. And his failure was a continual source of bewilderment and dismay to him. For, after all, didn’t he go to the best shops and most famous tailors? Weren’t his boots and shirts made for him by the most outstanding masters of their craft? Yet when he looked at himself in the mirror, he could only curse himself despairingly.
‘However much I doll myself up in silks and satins, I still only manage to look like an outsider. It just doesn’t look natural!’
As for Madame Charrigaud, having hitherto dressed simply and discreetly, she also now took to wearing the most elaborate and showy get-up. Her hair was dyed too deep a red, her jewels were too big, her silks too rich, with the result that she looked like the queen of the costermongers, in all her imperial majesty at a Shrove Tuesday carnival… People often made fun of them, sometimes cruelly. Their friends, humiliated by so much luxury and bad taste, though also enjoying it, avenged themselves by saying:
‘Really, for a man who prides himself on his irony, he doesn’t have much luck!’
Thanks to one or two fortunate encounters, incessant diplomacy and even more incessant sycophancy, they began to be accepted in what they chose to regard as society, the world of Jewish bankers, Venezuelan dukes, archdukes on the run and elderly ladies crazy about literature, white slavery and the Academy … It became their one aim in life to cultivate and develop these new connections, with a view to achieving others even more enviable and exclusive, and so on and so on, in a continual ascent.
One day, in order to get out of an invitation that he had rashly accepted from an undistinguished acquaintance whom he did not want to break with completely, Charrigaud wrote him the following note:
My dear fellow, We are most terribly sorry, but we simply must ask you to excuse us for Monday next. The fact is, we have just received, for that very evening, an invitation to dine with the Rothschilds, and as it is the first time we’ve been asked, you will understand that it is impossible for us to refuse. It would be absolutely disastrous. It’s a good thing we know each other so well, since I’m sure that, far from being angry with us, you will share in our happiness and pride.
On another occasion, describing how he had bought a villa at Deauville, he said:
‘As a matter of fact, I don’t know who these people thought we were … Maybe they thought we were just journalists, Bohemians … but I pointed out to them that I had a lawyer …’
Gradually they managed to throw off all their old friends, people whose mere presence in their house was a constant and unpleasant reminder of the past, an admission that they were tainted with that mark of social inferiority—writing for a living. Charrigaud was also at considerable pains to quench the flame of intelligence that still occasionally lit up his mind, to stifle once and for all that damnable wit, which he thought had died a natural death, but which now and again terrified him by showing signs of reviving. He was now no longer satisfied to be invited by other people, but was determined to play the host; and a house-warming for a place he had just bought at Auteuil was to be the pretext for a dinner-party.
It was just about then that I started working for them … The dinner was not to be one of those intimate affairs, gay and unpretentious, which in the past had made their house a centre of attraction, but a really elegant, really solemn occasion, all starch and ice—in short, a select dinner-party, to which they would ceremoniously invite, in addition to one or two literary and artistic celebrities, a number of society people, not too fussy or conventional, yet sufficiently distinguished to reflect some of their lustre upon their hosts.
‘It’s perfectly simple just to invite people to a meal at a restaurant,’ Charrigaud pointed out. ‘The real test is to give a dinner-party in one’s own home …’
Having considered the project for a considerable time, he finally made up his mind.
‘The point is,’ he decided, ‘I don’t think we ought to start by having nothing but divorced women and their lovers. But we must make a beginning, and there are some divorcees who are perfectly acceptable … even the strictest Catholic papers treat them respectfully … Later on, when our connections are more extensive and we are in a position to please ourselves, we can invite as many as we like.’
‘You are right,’ Madame Charrigaud agreed. ‘For the present, the important thing is to restrict ourselves only to the most distinguished ones … After all, whatever people may say, divorce does present certain difficulties …’
‘At least it has the merit of avoiding adultery,’ scoffed Charrigaud. ‘Adultery is such old hat … The only person who believes in it any more is friend Bourget. Christian adultery, of course, with all the appropriate English trappings …’
‘What a bore you are with your malicious cracks,’ Madame Charrigaud replied in a tone of nervous irritation. ‘If you don’t take care your witticisms are going to put an end to any chance of our having a proper salon.’ And she added: ‘If you really want to cut a figure in society, you had better make up your mind straight away, either to become an imbecile or to keep your mouth shut.’
After a number of attempts to draw up a list of guests, finally, as the result of a series of laborious combinations, they arrived at the following:
The divorced countess Fergus, and her friend, the economist and Deputy, Joseph Brigard; Baroness Henri Gogsthein, also divorced, and her friend, the poet, Theo Crampp; Baroness Otto Butzinghen and her friend, Viscount Lahyrais, well-known clubman, sportsman, gambler and cheat; Madame de Rambure, another divorcee, and her friend, Madame Tiercelet, who was in process of getting her divorce; Sir Harry Kimberly, symbolist composer and ardent pederast, and his golden-haired boy-friend, Lucien Sartorys, as pretty as a woman, supple as a suede glove and slim as a cigar; the two Academicians, Joseph Dupont de la Brie, a numismatist noted for his collection of obscene medallions, and Isidore Durand de la Marne, in private life a well-known retailer of other people’s love affairs, but at the Institute an unimpeachable sinologist; the portrait painter, Jacques Rigaud; the psychological novelist, Maurice Fernancourt; and the society gossip-writer, Poult d’Essoy.
The invitations were sent out and, as by means of energetic negotiations, were all accepted … Only the countess Fergus showed some hesitation:
‘Who are these Charrigauds?’ she asked. ‘Are they really possible? Wasn’t he at one time involved in all sorts of business in Montmartre? I’ve heard it said that he used to sell obscene photographs that he had posed for himself … As for his wife, the same sort of unpleasant stories were going around about her. Before they were married she seems to have been engaged in similarly sordid adventures. Why, I have even heard she used to be a model at one time, and pose in the nude. What a creature! … exposing herself stark naked in front of a lot of men … and not even her lovers, at that!’
Eventually, however, having been assured that Madame Charrigaud had only sat for her portrait, that Charrigaud was so vindictive that he was quite capable of putting her in one of his books, and that Kimberly would be there, she accepted … Oh, of course, if Kimberly had promised to come … Such a perfect gentleman, s
o refined, so utterly charming!
Though the Charrigauds were fully informed about these reservations and scruples, far from taking umbrage at them they congratulated themselves that they had been successfully overcome. Now all that remained was to watch their step and, as Madame Charrigaud put it, behave like genuine society people … This dinner-party, so marvellously prepared and organized, so skilfully arranged, was to be their first appearance in the latest avatar of their destiny … It therefore had to be an outstanding success.
During the preceding week the whole house was turned upside down. Somehow or other everything had to be smartened up so that nothing should let them down. To avoid embarrassment at the last moment, they tried out various combinations of lighting and table decorations—a matter on which the two Charrigauds quarrelled like fishwives, for they had completely different ideas and tastes, she being inclined to sentimentality, he insisting that everything should be severe and ‘artistic’.
‘But that’s perfectly ridiculous,’ shouted Charrigaud. ‘It looks like some little tart’s place … We should never hear the last of it!’
‘You’re the one to talk,’ retorted Madame Charrigaud, on the point of a nervous breakdown. ‘You haven’t changed at all … just the same lousy bar-room loafer … I’ve had as much as I can stand … I’m fed up to the teeth!’
‘Oh, so that’s how it is. Then what about getting divorced, my love? Yes, let’s get divorced. At least we should then fit into the picture and not make our guests feel uncomfortable!’
There was a shortage of everything—silver, cutlery, plates, glasses … Well, they’d just have to hire some … Oh, and some chairs … there were only fifteen, and even those didn’t match … In the end they decided to order the meal from one of the well-known restaurants on the boulevard.
‘I want everything to be ultra smart,’ Madame Charrigaud insisted, ‘so that no one will recognize what it is they are eating. Minced prawns, cutlets of foie gras, game served to look like ham, ham like cakes, truffle mousse, cherries in cubes and peaches in spirals … In short, everything must be absolutely the last word!’
The Diary of a Chambermaid Page 18