“That’s all I’m doing!”
“Bravo! Show me your hand?”
She held out her hand, palm up.
“No, the left hand.”
He bent over it. Simone smiled. Léo, indifferent, lit a cigarette and threw the match out the car window.
“Primo: you will live to be very old,” said Kaminsky after a long moment, “Secundo: you’ll never go crazy.”
A pause.
“You know I’m not actually seeing anything?” he said, raising his eyes.
“Keep going anyway.”
“Date of birth?”
“August 1899.”
“August: great men and great murderers. You’ll succeed in your endeavors.”
“In murder as well?” she asked, bursting into laughter.
He didn’t answer, but approached her open palm with his lips, placing a kiss there.
“Will I have money?”
“More than you’ll know what to do with. In sum, everything looks good. August 1899—that means you’re a little over eighteen today. Not much of a wait, but it’s time. You only get one roll of the dice—”
She knew it.
“Well, then it’s understood,” Kaminsky continued. “After lunch, Léo will take you to the cottage, with Marcelle. At five, we’ll join you with Bacchiochi. Then we’ll go have tea with Madame de Villa-plane. Ok?”
“Why do we need to go to Madame de Villaplane’s?”3
“It will give her so much pleasure!” Kaminsky replied with a bitter smile.
“Ok, fine then.”
“Settled,” said Léo.
“Drive slowly—”
Léo braked. The notary’s house appeared, at the end of a grassy lane.
“Incredible, isn’t it, how this house resembles a piggy bank,” said Kaminsky. “Doors, windows, chimneys, skylights, crevices, everything looks like a coin slot. Who’d they steal this little shack from?”
“Two old ladies.”
“Dead?”
“They became dead. He even nabbed their parakeet, which he had stuffed and put on the mantelpiece. You don’t know my father! Here’s good, Léo—stop!” He pulled over to the sidewalk.
“See you here in an hour.”
“I know it.” She slipped out of the car. The two men looked at each other and smiled.
“Eh?” said Kaminsky, with a wink.
“I get it.”
“She’s a determined woman. She’ll do just what she wants.”
“That’s rare.”
“Very rare. And at eighteen, no less. But that, my dear Léo, is like talent—you have it or you don’t. And when it’s there, you notice right away. Later on, you can perfect technique—”
Léo put the car in gear.
“And prettier and prettier besides,” Kaminsky continued. “Go ahead, she’s gone inside.”
A little acceleration.
“Not my type,” said Léo. “Too brunette for me. Legs too long. Eyes too dark. Not much chest. Me, I like a blond with blue eyes—” He sped up. More pressure on the accelerator. “Some meat on her bones—”
•
Simone went upstairs to her room. She threw her coat on the bed and thought for a moment. Then she went back out, leaned over the banister and yelled, “Rose!”
No response.
Of course, Maman had taken up all Rose’s time once again without thinking of anyone else, without asking if—
From below her mother’s dry voice replied,“Is that you, Simone?”
“Yes, it’s me.” She’d recognized her voice, hadn’t she?
“Who are you calling?”
“The chambermaid, Maman.”
“Why—what do you need her for?”
“Tell her to come up.”
“But—what for?”
“Oh!”
Simone gripped the banister, shaking with rage. It was murder, this mania her mother had of always getting into everything, of asking endless questions about the simplest things.
Her mother, at the bottom of the stairs, spoke standing up, without raising her head, her face to the wall. Simone caught sight of her pointed bun, her thin shoulders.
“Tell Rose to come up and make me a fire, ok?” After all, this was the last time she’d have to participate in one of these never-ending, exasperating exchanges—
“Are you cold?”
Simone gritted her teeth. “Listen, Mother—why don’t you just tell Rose to come upstairs.”
“But I don’t know where Rose is!”
Simone went back into her room and violently slammed the door. She couldn’t possibly have told her right away that she didn’t know where Rose was! That would have killed her, wouldn’t it? And to think it was like that every day from morning to night—she’ll drive me insane—
She opened her little desk, took out some papers and put them on the table. All that needs to be burned. It would have been smarter to look at each paper, one at a time—that’s what she would have done if she’d had a fire. But what for, were they really so important—letters from boys, photos—she’d burn it in bulk.
She grabbed a scarf and hung it from the doorknob, covering the keyhole. That way, her mother could peek as much as she liked. Then she went back to her papers, emptied out all of her drawers, made a pile of everything that needed to be burned, and sat on the floor. A match. Big flames roared up the chimney. Why did I even get angry? Once again, she’d been forced to march to their tune. But it was always like that. Not a day went by in that house without angering her. But that’s it. I’m burning everything. I won’t bring anything but money, if I can get some, in a minute.
She looked at the fire and smiled.
When he thought about Simone, Kaminsky felt an immense self-satisfaction at the remarkable progress of his student, which he attributed to his experience and his energy, forgetting that he had given her Lamiel to read. This attribute of her mentor hadn’t escaped Simone, but she was careful not to let it show, and she even encouraged him to take all the credit for what he called “a revelation.” She did this out of sincere recognition and because she had resolved a long time ago to use him in getting around the last, most difficult obstacles which still barred the way to freedom and riches. If he would only bring her to Paris! She wouldn’t ask for more than a few months of support from him once they arrived in the capital—another word to eliminate from her vocabulary! The rest was her business.
She’d been careful not to breathe the slightest word about this plan to anyone. A strong instinct warned her to keep silent until the moment came, and this was it. When it came to outfits, manners, things you could learn, she left Kaminsky the flattering thought that she’d gotten it all from him. But as for her understanding, she’d always been very careful to keep quiet, and Kaminsky—deep thinker, subtle intellect that he chalked himself up to be—he hadn’t suspected anything.
In such a vulgar scene, where ambition itself was vulgar when it existed, Simone had been on her own growing up, and it had taken so long to recognize the dangers around her that she’d been close to letting herself be engaged to the son of one of her father’s colleagues, as if the idea of becoming the notary’s lady wife in her turn, being a faithful spouse and a good mother to her family, had given her any happiness. That mistake hadn’t lasted long. The suffering brought on by the engagement was a wake-up call, causing her to break off the deal and wait until she could cut the anchor. She’d soon understood what it would mean—they’d started talking to her about happiness and everything else their immense hypocrisy used to cover up the dead, more than half of whom had been murdered. Yes, they knew very well how to kill, and they didn’t need daggers or poison to do it—their methods were subtler. What she owed to Kaminsky was the discovery of certain things that she would have otherwise discovered much later, probably too late. He’d given her a ten-year head start, which meant she could have a life. She wouldn’t be a victim. From the moment she made that resolution, she’d never stopped thinking ab
out her strategy, all the while remaining the provincial girl and continuing to go to mass. This way, hypocrisy had become a foundational concept for Simone, and it was on its way to becoming a science. She didn’t try to justify it. Among the remarkable lessons she had acquired from Kaminsky was the understanding that justifications were always weaknesses or mistakes, and that between working for hypocrisy (which was considered one of the fine arts) and the possibility of getting one’s throat slit, it would be shameful, crazy to hesitate, even for a second. When it came to the supposed “freedom” of young ladies during the war, what a joke! Just because it was easier to sleep with men—and was that even true?—didn’t mean they had suddenly become liberated. That wasn’t all there was to life. Simone’s progress was so great that she could no longer conceive of a freedom that depended on circumstances or even manners. She only wanted to keep it within her.
Nothing left to burn. In the fireplace the letters, the photos were now a little pile of ashes she stirred with a poker. Fine. They were welcome to sift through it when she was gone—that was all they’d get for their trouble. And anyway, what did she care?
“Isn’t it great to start a new life?” she said to herself, getting up. She looked around the room where for so long she’d been chewing on her leash. “It’s so easy! All you have to do is act and see your actions through.”
Action, for the moment, meant going upstairs.
The books. She took a luxurious edition of Dangerous Liaisons, a gift from Kaminsky, wrapped in a removable Moroccan leather cover. She lifted the book, put it on the table, and taking the cover, soundlessly left the room. The door barely squeaked. She paused to listen. Nothing. Rose, no doubt, was still nowhere to be found, and as for her mother, God knows what she could be up to!
Cautious all the same, Simone listened again. Then, sure that no one would catch her, she tiptoed upstairs.
The rug muffled her steps. She was very calm.
A kind of anger came over her when she entered her father’s study. It was full of his smell, of his disgusting essence. Stale whiffs of tobacco, cheap cologne, other, unidentifiable sleaze. The ceiling was low in the room—a sort of attic turned into a study, with big windows covered in thick curtains, making it dim. Books, heavy furniture, paintings, leftovers from clients.
Resolved, she crossed to the desk. There was a drawer on the right, and within it, his money. Idiot! He hadn’t even bothered to lock it. All she had to do was pull—the bills were there, safer, he thought, than in his strongbox. They were all the same. They all took great precautions against thieves, without even thinking for a moment that their own children . . . She smiled scornfully as she took out two bunches of thousand-franc bills. Should she count them? Why not? She counted them calmly, checking that each wad contained fifty bills. She made a bundle of it all, which she tied up and hid in the book cover. Then she left the room just as calmly as she had entered, not without closing the drawer and first checking that there was no more money lying around.
Robbery! Was that all there was to it? She was surprised it had been so easy, and, when it came down to it, so—logical. Yes, there was logic to all this. After all, she thought, how could they imagine I’d arrive in Paris empty-handed and look for work?
“Simone!”
She ran to the railing. “Yes?”
“Lunch is served!”
“Already?” It was barely noon. For some bizarre reason, lunch was early today of all days.
She went downstairs, her book under her arm. Her mother and father were already seated. They greeted each other pretty rarely in that household.
They ate in silence—apart from the loud ticking of the old grandfather clock, inherited from some forgotten peasant of a great-uncle, and the sounds they made as they gulped, breathed, clinked their knives and forks, fidgeted, and moved their chairs around on the polished parquet. Monsieur Point read his newspaper, which he had propped on the bottle in front of him. Madame Point looked like someone playacting a picnic, swallowing tiny bits of meat she skewered with the point of her fork as if in protest, with the expression of a convict who knew her punishment and fought, with what little she had, against the usual prison schedule. Simone had put her “book” next to her plate and glanced at it from time to time and smiled, inwardly replaying, “N’est-ce plus ma main—”
What else could you possibly hum, when all you had to look at was the sideboard, that masterpiece of pure Henri II style, with its gleaming sculpted figures on the middle door, that young actor in short breeches and a lacy ruff who for an eternity had been holding out his hand to the leading lady in a long dress and also a ruff, but a low-cut one—oh là là!
N’est-ce plus ma main que cette main presse tout comme autrefois?
A head of white hair, speckled with dandruff, a big red forehead, and two bushy eyebrows peeked from behind the newspaper her father was reading. In his heavy, boxy hand, he held out a glass without looking up. Simone poured some wine into it. Glug, glug. Tick-tock.
Wasn’t it always this way in the notary’s cozy home?
•
With a prissy gesture, her mother dried her lips. Why? She’d certainly left nothing on them. What a joke, thought Simone. Every bite her mother swallowed must be neatly stacked in her stomach like the shirts in her closet—starch shelf, beef shelf. That’s my mother for you!
Gray, ash-colored hair, whitened as if with powder, and below her squished forehead, two yellow slits for eyes, two blotches of plaster for cheekbones, set on her brick cheeks. She had read, dear woman, in the correspondence section of Women’s Style Weekly, that combining one part glycerin with one part plain water was better for the face than the most reputable creams and a third of the price. Applied in the morning, with a coat of powder: set for the day. But she always put on too much, and the powder congealed like starch. Only fallen women knew the art of applying makeup, and she certainly didn’t envy them! Her economical little recipe and her baby powder—she didn’t allow herself anything more, and her wrinkly mouth had never known rouge, even in the long-ago days of her youth, when she must have been in love, when she must have thrown herself on the neck of that mister who was so profoundly absorbed in reading his paper, crying “my superb and gentle lion!” like in Hugo’s Hernani. Her shiny chin, hard as a polished pebble, joined the girders of her jawbones and the massive padlocks of her ears to make one block. As for the rest of her, Madame Point the notaress wore a black dress that went from her neck to the tips of her toes, which were invisible under the table. She was a thin and scampering person, mechanical, a little hunched, since her hand (which by some mistake was rather fine) was occupied just then with endlessly sliding a gold pendant the size of a lapel-pin back and forth across her flabby chicken’s neck. The notaress’s character had one quirk, which was perhaps quite rare—that her silences were as considered as her chatter, which made Simone think not only Maman is quiet but Maman is working on quietness, or even Maman is counting. In fact, when the notaress was quiet, as she was just then, her face immediately looked like that of a child who is determined to count to ten thousand before taking a sip and really doesn’t want to be interrupted. It was impossible to get a word out of her—not by joking, not by surprise. She responded to everything said to her with a stony glance, haughty and reproving, the same look she’d use to bury any impudent person who whispered a vulgar suggestion in her ear. The Pope, whom she adored, would have lost his seat.
Tick-tock—
Simone’s hand found its way to her book, and rested on top—the feverish touch of a believer on her relic, the superstitious on her charm for conjuring hate.
A recent memory: her mother, in the kitchen, with her back turned. She was drinking a glass of milk. Simone came closer. Her mother hadn’t turned around. On the table—basically in her hand—an enormous knife. A ten-inch, triangular blade. In a momentary flash, Simone had seen the place to strike, between the shoulders.
How could she escape from that? How do you avoid chance? Sim
one came to herself in her room a minute later, trembling at the idea that she could have ruined everything that way.
She raised her eyes, peeling an orange at the same time, and gestured as if to say something. Her mother must be in the two thousands at least; her father in the classifieds.
Enough of this!
“Father?”
He lowered his paper, and gave his daughter a slanting look from only one eye. He closed the other as if the light were bothering him. She smiled, impish as Lili, at that barren face. He looked like the mayor. An illegitimate brother? It wasn’t impossible. You never could guess how they arranged their beds, and it was true that in town, you started to notice certain strange resemblances when you knew people well. Everything would be clear fifty years down the line—
“What do you want now?”
Oh! That snout! Puffed up and bloated—a real balloon. A red piece of beef with white bags under the eyes, the flesh of his neck puffing over the collar. Big, fat, pompous, decorated. That’s my father for you!
She scratched the tablecloth with the tip of her index finger, head bent, absorbed. Her father! A fat man in a bad mood she saw at noon and at seven. Get to the table, eat everything, and drink, smoke his cigar, read his paper, write anonymous letters, steal from his clients—he hoped it would last a long time, after which he’d make sure his corpse was as heavy as possible, just to burden the pallbearers. Usually, when he came home, he went to find his spouse and kissed her on the forehead. She’d give him one in return, on the cheek—an unspoken story. Once a week, without fail, Madame Point would shrink from the approach of her lion, roll her eyes like a maniac and cry, “I can still smell her on you!” He would shrug. All these years he’d been going to the brothel once a week, and though he might shuffle the day of his visit like a pack of cards, she never once guessed wrong. That’s my father!
“What do you want?” he asked, in the exasperated tone of a sick person, bothered just at the moment when he was about to rest.
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