O

by Steven Carroll

  When she feels ready, when her breathing and her hands are steady, she lets him go, steers the car out onto the street and, fast as she can, leaves the apartment behind.

  But as they drive to Gallimard in silence, Germaine’s window, through which she looks out onto the world in her bedridden state, haunts her. Not a ghost, and no longer silent. For she weeps. And however quiet her weeping, there will always be a part of Dominique that will now hear it.

  19.

  The drizzle falls quietly on the streets and rooftops. There is no urgency in this rain, it’s got all day to fall. Monday. There must be a natural law, she muses, that decrees on Mondays it will rain. The tabac window is frosted, and Dominique, her coffee long finished, sits waiting for Jean while watching smudged figures slowly passing along the footpath.

  It is not a familiar café, nor is it a pleasant one. There is an unemptied ashtray on her table which nobody has bothered to clean. The smell of cheap brandy and the astringent odour of nicotine come off the damp, hunched bodies all around her. It is more like a railway cafeteria than a café, nobody lingering more than a few minutes except for Dominique.

  As unpleasant as the place is, it is convenient. For directly opposite is the grey, slightly ornate façade of the police station. Jean has been there for an hour, summoned by the vice squad, as was the publisher of her book: a small publishing house owned by a dapper young man with the imposing name of Jean-Jacques Pauvert. It is the name of some grand eighteenth-century philosopher, not a small publisher with a reputation for publishing books that nearly always land him in the company of the vice squad. The game of who Pauline Réage may be, which was amusing at first when played in cafés, parks and restaurants across the city, has taken a disturbing turn. The police are now playing.

  Her secret is safe for the time being. Only two people know at the moment: Jean and her. Not even her publisher. And Jean will never tell. She trusts him absolutely, but she is fidgety and anxious all the same, for people are speculating openly now and her name is being mentioned. They are closing in, at least that’s how it feels. And as she stares out onto the sodden street she’s wishing she’d never agreed to publish the thing at all. She’s also anxious for Jean, who’s in there being questioned. Pressured, coerced, maybe. Who is the author of this filth? He wrote the accompanying essay to this smut – therefore he must know! She can imagine the scene, and she can’t. They may be bungling cops or skilled inquisitors. She conjures up images of the latter: lean faces, cruel eyes. A glimpse of the medieval living on in the modern world.

  And it is while she is lost in this vision of medieval inquisition that she sees him step out through the doorway of the police station, pull his coat collar up and dash across the street towards her, his face obscured by the rim of his hat. In those few moments of uncertainty as he makes his way towards her, her anxiety rises and she nearly springs from her chair when he enters the tabac.

  ‘Well?’

  He grins, almost jovial. ‘Well, what?’

  ‘You know exactly well what.’

  He sits and takes her hand. ‘Calm down. It was all very civilised. Amusing sometimes.’

  ‘Amusing?’

  ‘They ask who is the author – do I know? I say yes. They say who is it then? I say the author has taken me into his or her confidence and I will not betray that confidence. They regroup and ask the question again, differently. I give the same answer. They threaten all sorts of things, but I can see they don’t mean it.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He squeezes her hand. ‘And so it went, a sort of verbal gymnastic competition. A kind of game.’ He looks round the tabac with clear distaste. ‘Let’s get out of this place.’

  ‘You weren’t alarmed?’

  They rise and leave. ‘Alarmed?’ He shakes his head. ‘You forget, I’ve been questioned by the Germans.’

  He leaves it at that as they both, under an umbrella, make their way to another café for lunch, heads inclined towards each other, talking as they go.

  ‘They would dearly love to ban your book,’ he says, ‘or burn it.’

  ‘Or burn me.’

  ‘There is an official report from the Book Committee. I’ve never met any of them, but I can imagine them. Grey men, grey minds. Not an artistic atom in their bodies. The sort of people that aren’t born the usual way, but created by government bodies or government decree, brought into being by one committee or another . . . It is therefore the opinion of this body that legal action be taken—’

  ‘What?’ She stops, the very phrase legal action confirming her fears. What have they set in motion?

  He sees all this. ‘The police, and they were really very nice, read it out to me. What can they do, they’re just the police. But the people behind them are not going to give up. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve had us followed.’

  ‘Legal action be taken . . . Is that all? What else did it say?’ she asks, as they pause at the lights, rain dripping from the umbrella.

  ‘I wrote some of it down. But let’s wait till we get to a café.’ He takes her hand. ‘Don’t worry, they’re not the Gestapo.’

  No, they’re not, she tells herself. And in the end what can they do? Ban the book? So be it. Might be a blessing. Things can get back to normal. But, she asks herself, is that what she really wants? They move on, Dominique occasionally looking over her shoulder, the hint of a thrill passing through her as she registers she could get to like this game and the touch of danger it has acquired. They both could. Jean has a glint in his eye. They were both born for the clandestine life. And if Dominique’s little book has done anything, it has given that life back to them, and that sense of freedom that was never so keenly felt as when they were occupied. And she’s aware of that peculiar blend of anxiety and excitement that tells you you’re truly alive rising up in her.

  ‘Here?’ he says, pointing to a clean, inviting café.

  She nods. Inside they shake the rain from their coats and hang them up. It is late morning, before the lunch hour, and they have the place to themselves apart from a few students. Jean reaches into his trouser pockets, idly gazing through the window onto the shining boulevard, and pulls out a small sheet of paper.

  ‘Now, what else did it say?’ he asks himself, a touch of relish in his voice, then opens the sheet, spreading it out on the table in front of him. ‘Ah!’ he exclaims, like a schoolboy picking out the juicy bits of a novel. ‘Violently and wilfully immoral . . . scenes of debauchery . . .’ He looks up. ‘Look what you’ve done; our little grey men are all stirred up. There’s more. Shall I go on?’

  ‘Please do,’ she says, now intrigued more than offended or hurt or even scared. She is amused that he is amused, both of them with their heads together, drawn once again into huddled collusion.

  He holds the sheet up to the window, plucking the next phrase from his notes ‘A detestable and condemnable ferment . . . Ferment!’ he says, lingering on the word inquiringly, staring at Dominique, as if having found the key word that cracks a code. ‘Can’t you see it, can’t you just feel it?’

  ‘Their loathing?’

  ‘No,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘the opposite. Their longing. It’s the giveaway word. There’s always a giveaway word. They love it, in spite of themselves. Ferment, indeed. It’s what the book does to them! You’ve stirred up something in those grey little hearts, minds and trousers. They love it, so they must condemn it. It excites them, so they must distrust it. It rouses them in spite of themselves, so they must ban it. The puritan’s disgust!’

  ‘Is that all?’ she asks, pointing to the sheet of paper.

  ‘No,’ he says, lifting his eyebrows and looking back to his notes as if to say isn’t that enough? He hums as he scans the sheet, his eyes lighting on another juicy phrase: ‘An assault on decency and public morals . . .’

  He puts the sheet down on the table. At some point during the recitation their coffee arrived, but neither of them noticed. ‘A delightful lit
tle report, isn’t it?’

  She is impassive, silently absorbing it all. He waits for her response. When she answers it is with a detached, abstracted air. ‘Violently and wilfully immoral is going a bit too far. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Not for them.’

  She is silent for a moment, contemplating the Book Committee’s judgement. ‘I feel like writing back, you know.’

  ‘Saying?’

  ‘Saying . . .’ She ponders this for a moment, then goes on. ‘Saying, Dear Sirs, I thank the committee for its consideration . . .’ She pauses, an imaginary pen poised above imaginary paper. ‘But, in all humility and honesty, I feel I am deserving of no such honour nor such condemnation. Yours,’ she finishes, ‘The Author.’

  She stops, only now aware that her voice has risen and some passionate anger that she wasn’t conscious of has risen with her voice.

  They lean back in their chairs, Jean taking in the same sodden boulevard, Dominique picking up her coffee – cold, she tells herself, like the stare of the puritan. She shrugs. Or the libertine. They are the two faces of the one coin, are they not?

  She looks about the café, slowly beginning to fill, eyeing this man and that woman, asking herself over again the same question. You scare them. You unnerve them. But why? Oh, she knows and she doesn’t know. Knows what is happening, but is also mystified by the sheer intensity of it all. And even as she watches the café fill, posing the question to herself, she feels something unnerving in the very presence of these people. Any people. As though her own race, her species even, were somehow foreign now. Perhaps it always has been and she’s only just properly realised. Perhaps she and Jean really are forest creatures after all.

  ‘They would dearly love to rip the mask from you,’ he says, lowering his voice, his tone serious as he too eyes the café filling up.

  ‘A public humiliation?’

  ‘That’s what they want. They have their suspicions about who the author of this obscenity is and your name is apparently on their list. The press will join in.’

  Dominique is contemplating the simple word list, which has never felt so chilling. The Germans kept lists, Stalin, and now the grey gentlemen of the Book Committee. She looks around the café, at the street, and tells herself, with an air of both wonder and incomprehension, that somewhere out there somebody is compiling a list of names. And she is on it.

  ‘Of course,’ Jean goes on, ‘they can suspect all they like. A few have guessed. They’ve kept it to themselves, until now. But . . .’

  ‘You mean somebody could . . . what? Denounce us? Denounce me? Are we back there again?’

  ‘Why not? We were more than ready to denounce our own to the Germans.’

  It’s not a word she has used for a few years now, but it is a sudden reminder of when nobody really knew just who to trust. A time when it was a national habit, when neighbours denounced neighbours. And a reminder that old habits are hard to shake.

  He leans forward conspiratorially. ‘We need to put an end to it.’

  ‘The speculation?’

  ‘That and the legal threat. These things have a way of getting out of hand,’ he says, clearly implying that even he, who always said it was one of those books that shakes things up and must be published, did not expect anything like this. The suggestion is that, unless they act, things may slip from their control and their creation turn on them. ‘Best to put an end to this now.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you have a friend, do you not, who lives with the Minister of Justice?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How clever of you.’

  She shakes her head. ‘It isn’t cleverness. We . . .’ She lingers, a playfully confessional tone to her voice. ‘We were lovers, now we’re friends.’

  He stares at her for a moment, silent, a look that seems to say you, Dominique, are a woman of many sides and all of them fascinating. But he says nothing. ‘She was,’ Dominique adds, to answer whatever uncertainties or unasked questions he may be entertaining, ‘my first lover.’

  The sound of talk all around them rises, and as much as they both agree that this may well be a conversation worth pursuing, there are more pressing matters.

  ‘Well,’ he leans forward, his lips inches from hers, ‘it might be time to take your friend into your confidence and ask a favour.’

  ‘What kind of favour?’

  ‘A big one.’

  She frowns, suspecting where this is leading.

  He continues, the jovial tone now completely gone. ‘The police don’t really care. If they had their way they would leave us alone. They have far more urgent things to do. But there are grey figures behind the scenes who won’t leave us alone until either the book is banned or you are unmasked – or both. I’ve never, in all my time in publishing, seen anything like it.’

  Almost furtively they rise and leave. From under the umbrella out on the street she looks around her, people walking swiftly to wherever they are going, except for one man standing in the cover of an arched entrance of a small apartment block. He could be anybody, waiting for someone. But there is something in the way he is standing there, a sort of practised nonchalance, that catches her attention. It could be something, it could be nothing. And as she weighs it up she is aware of that old familiar thrill and that whiff of danger, of the secret life lost in the humdrum of peace.

  She squeezes Jean’s hand, he returns the squeeze. They stop. He kisses her, a long slow kiss under the blessing of a black umbrella. Yes, yes. They have it back. That old desire. Older, true. But a little wiser, a little more precious for having been away. The man under the arched doorway calmly observes them: the cold stare of the puritan, or the libertine.

  * * *

  There is a knock on the front door, not loud, but somehow official in its directness. Dominique’s head swings round; she closes the book she is reading. It is late, near midnight. Who could this be, at this hour? The knock is respectful, but also like a knock in dreams or nightmares. This is when the Germans always came. Dragging their prey out in the dead of night – children, wives, husbands, parents never seeing their loved ones again. It is the combination of hour and knock that they all lived in fear of.

  Once again the knuckles of the visitor rap on the door and she rises. Some neighbour with a request or complaint? Then she hears the word Police called from the landing outside.

  She opens the door, her mother’s bedroom door opening at the same time, and sees two dark-suited men, one squat, one tall, on the landing.

  ‘Madame Aury?’ the squat one says.

  Dominique says nothing.

  ‘Madame Dominique Aury?’

  She nods, in full understanding of the reason for the visit. ‘Yes, I am Madame Dominique Aury.’

  ‘May we come in?’

  They are polite, almost apologetic. As much as she should be alarmed or tense – the hour, the knock, the police – she isn’t. And it’s not their politeness – no barging in; they’re respectful of her domain – that leaves her feeling . . . collected. It’s the sudden conviction that she knows them or, rather, knows their type. The type who just get on and do their job. Precisely the type who would have made calls like this during the war, doing the Germans’ dirty work for them. And just a bit too efficiently. All apologies and politeness as they led someone away. Insisting it was just a formality. No need to be alarmed. Just come with us. The type who took away Jews, resistants and anybody who sheltered them; the neighbours who denounced them hiding behind their anonymous letters. Yes, she knows the type. Men without qualities.

  The certainty of the conviction steadies her and she stares at them, nerves calmed, heartbeat slowing to normal – to all appearances, poised and ready.

  ‘Madame Aury,’ the shorter policeman says, his voice low and respectful, ‘do you know a certain book called Story of O?’

  She weighs the matter. ‘I may.’

  He stares back at her. ‘You may?’

  She shrugs. ‘In m
y work – I work for a publisher – I come across a lot of books. You wouldn’t believe how many there are out there. And I can’t be expected to remember them all.’

  ‘Quite,’ he says, detecting the glint of the playful in her eyes. ‘But this is no ordinary book, you must know that.’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘Of course. It is a scandal.’

  ‘Ah,’ she says, ‘but there are so many scandals and I can’t be expected to remember them all either.’

  ‘But this book,’ says the other policeman, whose frustration suddenly has the better of him, ‘this book has been condemned as immoral.’

  ‘Indecent.’

  ‘Smut.’

  ‘Really?’ she says. ‘By whom?’

  ‘By whom?’ The squat policeman has clearly never thought about this. ‘By . . . those who know about these things.’

  ‘And do they?’

  ‘This is getting us nowhere,’ says the other, whose patience is disappearing and whose politeness is falling from him – a social grace, a manner, she suspects, that never sat well on him anyway. ‘We have reason to believe,’ he continues, ‘that you are the author of this book deemed to be an attack on public morality. On public decency. Are you?’

  ‘Are you,’ the other policeman adds, creating a kind of chorus, ‘Pauline Réage?’

  She waits for a moment, a slight woman, small, but somehow taller than her inquisitors. ‘I can say in all honesty, gentlemen, that Pauline Réage is a complete mystery to me.’

  ‘You are not her?’

  ‘I don’t know who she is.’

  ‘That is not an answer.’

  ‘It’s the best I can offer.’

  ‘We have it, on the best of authority, that you, Madame Aury, are, in fact, Pauline Réage.’

  ‘I don’t know her.’

  ‘We’re not asking if you know her. Are you her?’