Belle De Jour

by Joseph Kessel

  Though Hippolyte continued to stare at some secret spot beyond the room, he noticed the three girls’ uneasy fear. He didn’t bother to comment on it, but said in a lazy voice loaded with scorn:

  “Everything O.K., kids?”

  Then he was silent. It was clear he didn’t like talking; silence—that dead water intolerable to most—didn’t worry him in the least. But Charlotte had to break it.

  “And how are you, Monsieur Hippolyte?” she asked with false gaiety. “It’s been months since we’ve seen you.”

  He didn’t answer, but took a drag at his cigarette.

  “Why don’t you take off your clothes, it’s hot in here,” suggested Mathilde, who was also bothered by his silence.

  Hippolyte made a short sign and she went and helped him off with his jacket. His shirt was of heavy silk; the muscles of his arms, shoulders and chest showed under it. They might have been of cast iron, designed for some immense labor.

  “I brought someone with me,” said Hippolyte. “My friend.”

  The tone in which he spoke the last word was noticeably at variance with the man’s superb nonchalance. Solemn and sonorous, that word seemed to be the only one that mattered, for Hippolyte, in the whole human vocabulary.

  Séverine turned to look at the young man, who stood a little behind Hippolyte, as if shrunk into his shadow. She saw a pair of deep-set, glowing eyes fixed on her; but her attention was once more magnetized by the colossus, who was saying:

  “We don’t have much time. I’ll pay for drinks some other day. Come here, you—the new one.”

  Séverine started toward him but was stopped short by a hot drawl. “Let me have her,” said the younger man.

  Charlotte and Mathilde stirred uneasily—it seemed to them so completely forbidden to try to oppose Hippolyte’s desires. But Hippolyte gave a massive, gentle smile, put his enormous hand on his companion’s shoulder—which, for all its seeming fragility, bore the burden lightly—and said:

  “O.K., kid—have a ball. She’s your age.”

  Séverine was attracted to Hippolyte; so she was surprised to realize that this cynical exchange didn’t relieve her excitement. For, in fact, the thin young man attracted her even more.

  “I must like you pretty well to take you off my friend,” he said when she’d taken him to her room.

  Ordinarily, a remark like that would have been enough to deaden Séverine’s senses: what they required was silence, haste, and rage. But she was amazed to find that this man’s patient desire disturbed her. She took a second look at the person to whom the immovable Hippolyte had surrendered her. His hair shone with thick pomade. His tie was expensive but very loud, his clothes were much too tightly cut, and a large diamond sparkled on his ring finger. There was something suspect about the whole ensemble, just as there was in the tough, tight skin of the man’s face, and in the eyes, at once anxious and inflexible. Séverine remembered how those narrow shoulders had remained unflinching under Hippolyte’s hand. A keen emotion took her in its grip.

  “I’m telling you I like you,” the youth repeated without opening his mouth.

  Séverine realized that what he said wasn’t simply a compliment; it was a kind of gift, and he was annoyed that she was not more grateful for it. She moved toward him, her lips half-parted. He pressed his mouth against hers with calculated intensity. Then he carried Séverine to the bed. She felt herself so light in those undeveloped arms! Hippolyte’s friend had only the appearance of weakness. She moaned with pain when he gripped her between his thin legs, and already an ecstasy more violent than she had ever known was invading her.

  The young man took out an expensive cigarette-case, lit a cigarette, and inquired:

  “What’s your name?”

  “Belle de Jour.”

  “What’s the rest?”

  “That’s all.”

  His lips creased with ironic indifference.

  “Think I’m a cop or something?”

  “And what’s your name, honey?” Séverine asked him, feeling a sensual pleasure at using the intimacy for the first time.

  “I don’t have any secrets. They call me Marcel. Also the Angel.”

  Séverine felt a slight thrill; the dubious nickname was just right for the cynical face sunk in the pillow beside her.

  “And sometimes,” Marcel continued hesitantly, “well, they call me … let’s not be formal … they call me Gold Mouth.”

  “Why?”

  “Look.”

  Only then did Séverine realize that he’d managed to keep his lower lip held close to the gum. He pulled it forward now, and she saw that all his front teeth were made of gold.

  “All at one blow,” snickered Marcel, “and then, too.…”

  He didn’t finish, for which Séverine was grateful. The sudden glimpse of that mouth had frightened her. Marcel dressed hastily.

  “You’re going already?” she asked despite herself.

  “Sure, I have to. I’ve got a friend.…”

  He cut himself short with a sudden surprised irritation, and added, “Get that! I was going to make excuses to you.”

  He left without bothering to look at her, but he returned alone the following day. Séverine was busy. Charlotte and Mathilde offered themselves.

  “Get lost,” Marcel said. “I want Belle de Jour.”

  He waited patiently. Time wasn’t measured in the ordinary way for him, or for Hippolyte. Marcel had an animal’s ability to relax and think with his body. What went on inside his head couldn’t be dignified by the name of thought.

  Séverine’s footsteps banished this watchful torpor in an instant. She went to him radiantly, but he stopped her with a harsh gesture.

  “Well, finally.”

  “It was hardly my fault if you had to wait.”

  He just managed not to shrug his shoulders. Had to wait! But how could he explain to this woman the cause of an anger he refused to admit to himself in the first place.

  “O.K.,” he said roughly. “I’m not asking any questions.”

  He kissed her lips. Since he didn’t bother to cover his gold jaw, Séverine felt both the heat of his mouth and the cold of the metal. She was never to forget the taste of that contrast.

  Marcel stayed with Belle de Jour quite a while. He seemed to want to slake at a draught a disturbing thirst. And Séverine felt a sickening fear at the center of her soul: she enjoyed his embraces altogether too much, she felt much too contented beside him. More than once she had to resist the desire to stroke Marcel’s body, invisible in the twilight. Finally she could repress herself no longer, and brushed his shoulder. She withdrew her hand at once: she’d touched what seemed to be a sort of gap in his skin. Marcel gave a hiss of scorn.

  “Not used to buttonholes? You’ll have to be soon.”

  Taking Séverine’s wrist he led her fingers along his body. He was covered with scars: on the arms, thighs, back, belly.

  Séverine exclaimed, “But how …?”

  “You want to see my police record? Don’t ask questions.”

  The sententious severity of his own voice acted on him like a signal.

  “With which, good-night,” he said.

  She didn’t watch him dress. She didn’t want to reckon up his scars in a look; it was as if she were afraid that the sight of all those virile and mysterious wounds might further tighten a knot she felt was already only too well tied.

  She learned just how strong the bond was in the next few days; Marcel didn’t appear. She could measure how much she missed him by her constant anxiety and the strange, starved languor that spread through her. She was terrified of his not wanting her any more, and she worried that he hadn’t enough to pay Mme Anaïs and was staying away for that reason.

  So when after a week she finally saw his welcome face, tautened in an evil grimace, she suggested, “Look, if you don’t have enough money, I could.…”

  “Shut up,” he told her.

  His breath came quicker, then with insulting conceit he said,
“I know if I wanted to … any time … I’ve already got three of them supporting me, see … but you, that’s different. And that’s how it is … money, money, money here!”

  He tossed a rumpled packet on the table. Hundred franc notes were mixed with smaller bills.

  “I don’t even know how much there is,” he muttered scornfully. “And when that lot’s gone there’ll always be more somewhere.”

  “So?” Séverine whispered.

  “So what?”

  “What’s kept you away?”

  Once again, he had the sharp reaction which any question from Séverine seemed to cause him; he retorted, “That’s enough. I didn’t come here to talk.”

  But there was a faint tremor in his voice.

  From then on Marcel never missed a day. Fidgety at first, and taciturn, he gradually relaxed, as if no longer trying to fight a seduction stronger than himself. Each day he sank deeper into Séverine’s senses, each day she found it harder to shake off his image. So much so that the rampart which had till then so rigorously separated her two lives crumbled bit by bit. No doubt this breach had begun some time before she noticed it, but the following circumstances made Séverine realize what had happened to her:

  Marcel had just left, and in her infatuation for him, she had lost all sense of time. Suddenly she remembered that she had to dine out with Pierre and friends, and realized that Pierre had undoubtedly got home by now and was probably worrying about her. But still broken and burning from Marcel’s kisses, she felt too indolent to accept the idea of going home. She dressed very slowly in order to turn her lateness into a definite obstacle, then telephoned Pierre to say she’d been kept longer than expected by a fitting and that she’d meet him at the restaurant. It would tire her less than rushing home, and in any case it was to be an informal evening and an afternoon dress would do.

  So for the first time Séverine went without transition from the world of Mme Anaïs, of her girls and their customers, into her own respectable society. She felt a little inner shock when the waiting men rose as they saw her; in her mind’s eye she had a fleeting but intense vision of Mathilde taking off Hippolyte’s jacket.

  The Sérizys had been asked out by two young surgeons. The darker of the two had the reputation of being quite a Don Juan. He moved with controlled sensuality, and the expression on his face was alternately tender and tough, which women found extremely attractive. Séverine was aware of this; the thought only made her feel ironically safe when he asked her for a tango. This friend of Pierre’s had always treated her respectfully, but this evening he must have sensed some strange aura about her, for throughout the dance he held her boldly close. Far from disturbing her, this audacity produced only an involuntary disdain on Séverine’s features. How polite seemed the desire of this individual celebrated for his bluntness! How pathetically bloodless he appeared beside the man to whom Belle de Jour now submitted daily! There was more despotic suggestiveness in a single one of Marcel’s spontaneous gestures, in one squeeze of those steel-hard hands, then in all the efforts of this rich-woman’s Casanova put together. No matter how he tried, he’d never attain the ingenuous savagery of a Marcel, laced with scars and with the price of love haughtily folded in his pocket.

  At that moment Séverine was closer to the impure angel with the golden mouth than to the people around her. On her lips, intended for her dance-partner, lay the words she had one evening of obscure prescience hurled at Husson—“I’m afraid you weren’t cut out for rape.”

  All that evening Marcel’s image refused to leave her. She was still bound to him by the dress she was wearing, and which he’d taken off; by the skin he’d caressed and which she’d had no time to purify. Séverine felt very beautiful that night, and she experienced a perverse intoxication at mixing the two women she now was. As they left the restaurant she kissed Pierre with a warmth not wholly meant for him.

  But when she saw him start, and noticed during the drive back that something heavy and unexpressed separated them, Séverine was horrified. A second of thoughtlessness had compromised all her careful work. Once again she had hurt Pierre.

  Séverine only fully realized the strength of her love for him at such moments of emotion or peril; but in those moments she felt it to the point of pain. She now recognized suddenly that she was no longer going to Mme Anaïs’ in search of an anonymous lust, but for Marcel. She knew then that her secret life, which had been so well contained within the walls of the rue Viréne, was overflowing into her other world which was dedicated to Pierre; and she knew too that she risked losing everything in that corrupt flood. She had to dam up the dike at all costs. The routine she’d gotten into with Marcel was what had caused this dangerous situation. She’d have to forget him. It would mean a sacrifice, but one she looked forward to as she contemplated Pierre’s solemn face in the darkness. She decided to set straight the course of destiny.

  Mme Anaïs greeted Séverine’s resolution with a satisfaction in which there was an admixture of anxiety.

  “Sure, I know how you feel, honey, you don’t want to see any more of him,” she said. “I don’t know anything about that guy, but frankly he’s someone I’d rather not see in my place. The only thing is, how’s he going to take it? One of Hippolyte’s friends, you know … well, I’ll tell him you’re sick. He’ll get tired of waiting.”

  Four days later when Séverine left the house a figure barred her path. She knew who it was before she made out his features: that body was so massive it seemed to shut out the evening light.

  “I’ll walk you to the end of the road,” Hippolyte said quietly.

  Séverine was paralyzed with terror, at first. But once past the rue Virène—Mme Anaïs’ antichamber—and onto the square of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, a cry rose within her. What was she doing! Here she was out in that world where she represented only virtue, health —where she was Pierre’s wife—with a man from Anaïs’ house. And what a specimen! She’d given up the most vivid passion of her secret, cloistered life in order to keep her two worlds separate; and here was that life stretching its tentacles toward her quite literally, with none other than Hippolyte for its agent.

  Her trembling terror arose not so much from her present situation as from a realization that fate, which she had thought she could bend to desires, was utterly out of her control. Then her fright gave way to an instinct of self-perservation. Rigid, ready to shriek for help, Séverine ran toward a passing cab. She made no more than a sort of stumble: Hippolyte’s hand fell on her and Séverine knew the dull shock of a convict taking his first step at the end of a chain. The weight of that hand drained all her strength.

  “No hurry,” said Hippolyte without raising his voice. “I want to talk with you. Somewhere quiet O.K.? Come on.”

  He walked toward a small wine-store on the square. Although he’d let go of her, in fact wasn’t even looking at her, Séverine followed him.

  The tiny room was empty. There was just one workman downing a glass of wine at the stained counter. He did so with such relish, however, that he gave Hippolyte the idea. He waited till his drink had been brought before turning toward Séverine.

  “Listen to me,” he said, “because I don’t want to say this again. And if you want to know how I keep my word, ask around in Montmartre or Les Halles about Hippolyte the Syrian. What I’m saying is, if you don’t want any trouble”—the mildness of his expression sent a shiver through Séverine—“then don’t play around with Marcel.”

  Slowly he drank his wine, and reflected, for it was clearly an effort for him to develop an idea.

  “Now you, you seem to be a nice kid, a good kid,” he went on, “so maybe I better tell you how it is. See, Marcel’s a guy once saved Hippolyte’s life. Get that straight. That’s more than if he were my son, I mean. Only thing, he has one weakness—women. Last year, for instance, without telling me … well, I don’t have to tell you all that. I never thought he was going to start all over again when he picked you out—but you never know. In the beg
inning he kept himself going pretty good … he’s a man even when he’s acting like a damn fool. And then … see, he’s so simple, he lets them take him. But, you don’t really think he swallowed that story you were sick, do you? If I didn’t stop him it’d be Marcel you were seeing tonight, kid. But I didn’t want that. No. He gets too excited.”

  Hippolyte seemed to lose himself in a heavy reverie. For a second Séverine thought he’d forgotten her.

  “What I mean is,” he said eventually, “I think you’ve got the idea.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder again, gave her the full stare of his immobile eyes, and said, “Fix it up. Only fast, see. It’s giving me a headache.”

  From the other side of the window Séverine saw the huge, blurred shadow slumped in front of an empty glass. And though she was free again she turned her head away sharply. That shadow fascinated her. She had to do something right away, every one of her maddened nerves told her that. One more day and she’d be completely in the power of that pair; she didn’t know which of the two scared her most. And behind them she sensed other dangerous men, ready to obey them. She returned quickly to the rue Virène.

  “I’m going away,” she told Mme Anaïs.

  “Had a talk with your friend, is that it, dear? He’s taking you off on a vacation?” A total break with the house was incomprehensible to the madame.

  “Yes, yes, that’s right,” Séverine said, to avoid having to explain.