O
Page 21
They both sit in silence, Pauline taking in the food on the table, abstracted, thoughts somewhere else. She looks up at Dominique with a wry smile.
‘You seem to be my confessor.’
‘We are old friends.’
‘I didn’t imagine things turning out like this. Not quite why I came.’
‘Perhaps it is.’
She shrugs. ‘Perhaps. Sometimes we’re the last ones to know what we’re really thinking or why we do something.’
‘Sometimes.’
Pauline studies her, weighing up the proposition. ‘Do you believe that?’
‘Why not? We’re the accumulation, after all, of everything we know and don’t know that has gone before. How often do we do things, say things, and ask ourselves afterwards why? We’re a mystery to ourselves.’
Dominique senses that whatever reason Pauline has for coming here, they haven’t got to it yet. ‘After the tears and the joy . . .’ she prompts her.
‘We married, of course. Settled down in Marburg. He’s a philosophy lecturer.’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘A student of Heidegger. Knew Hannah Arendt. The whole bunch.’ She eyes Dominique, possibly gauging the extent to which she may or may not be impressed, then goes on. ‘And once we got to know each other again, or got to know each other for the first time, we had two children. A boy and a girl.’ She grins. ‘A model family. A post-war German miracle. And you, did you marry?’
‘I married once, before the war.’
‘And?’ Pauline asks, sensing something vaguely ominous in Dominique’s tone.
‘It was unhappy. A mistake.’
‘Did he beat you?’
Dominique looks back at her, stunned. ‘How did you know?’
‘I’m psychic,’ Pauline says, no hint of irony. ‘How awful.’ She sits back in her chair. ‘Children?’
‘I have a son.’
‘A lover?’
All these questions. But they are asked in the manner that suggests: you’ve heard my story, what of yours? Haven’t I that right? Dominique is wondering how or if to answer when she decides that she probably does. Besides, who’s listening?
‘He died,’ Dominique eventually says matter-of-factly. ‘I lived for him. Then he died, and after that I stopped living.’ She gives a slight flick of the eyebrows. ‘There’s nothing more to tell.’
Dominique doesn’t mention the lover who came after Jean, the woman she worked with and whom she slowly seduced, for the huntress in her, Jean or no Jean, hadn’t stopped living at all. Pauline, possibly concluding that there’s always more to tell, scans the mantelpiece above the stove and comes to rest on a pair of spectacles.
‘Are they his?’ she asks.
Dominique gazes at the glasses, imagining Jean’s astonished eyes behind them, and nods.
‘That’s all I’ve got.’
‘He was married?’
‘Yes.’
Pauline asks nothing more, now gazing through the window, the spaces in her picture of Dominique seemingly filled in sufficiently. The sun shines on a nearby farm steeple, the moss in the guttering glows green and yellow, a giant jet-black crow sits at the top of the steeple, surveying the countryside.
Pauline suddenly turns back to Dominique. ‘Shall we walk?’
‘If you wish. But it’s been raining. It’s muddy out there.’
‘I come from Germany; don’t talk to me about mud.’
Outside, Dominique having changed into trousers and boots, they stroll down the road that runs through the hamlet. No cars, no people. Neither of them speaking. Then, just as they pass through a gate leading onto an open field, Pauline announces, ‘I’ve read our book . . . twice.’
Again, Dominique notes the our – just like Jean, towards the end. Of course she’s being playful, but Dominique feels that lurking beneath the playfulness is something else. Like those people who say something cutting, then tell you it’s only a joke. ‘And?’ Dominique inquires. ‘You were shocked?’
‘No.’
‘Outraged? Offended?’
‘No. None of that,’ Pauline says, as they make their way across the field, the occasional cow looking up and Dominique noting that Pauline has quite a practised country stride, her legs long and athletic under the blue jeans. ‘Oh, I heard about the scandal. Long after.’ She looks at Dominique. ‘Must have been a very French thing.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then again, I was bringing up two children. Your world . . .’ she says, pausing, ‘becomes very . . . concentrated.’
‘I know.’
The ground in the part of the field they are crossing is suddenly sodden. Their progress slows. Pauline stops, taking in the sky, the clouds and Dominique.
‘Besides, it’s hard to be offended with your own story.’
Was she waiting for this, or expecting it? Yes and no. Even so, the words jolt Dominique and, for the moment, all she can do is remain silent.
‘I know, I know,’ Pauline adds, as they start walking again. ‘You dressed it up.’ She smiles ruefully. ‘Or undressed it up. You changed things around. But it’s my story, or it felt that way. “The Memoirs of a Courtesan Spy” by Pauline Réage. But all jumbled up. Transported into another time. Into fairy-tale land. And no war. No history. Cleansed of all that. Oh, the details are different, but not the essentials.’
It is all said with a kind of casual presumption, a frankness that further knocks Dominique off guard, as though they were, indeed, old friends. Even intimate. But, of course, it is her alias on the book, and she has clearly long concluded that it is her story. And she has every right to say what she wants. In spite of this, Dominique has a creeping sense of what she can only call invasion, or intrusion – of somebody taking over what is hers, or thought was hers. And all as if the matter were already decided. What’s more, Dominique has got to say, she doesn’t like it. She may not have ever wanted her book to be published and may have passed the book on to Jean to do what he liked with. It was, after all, written for him. But, gradually, she became possessive about it. It was hers, after all: her brat progeny, conjured up in the dark hours before dawn in her bedroom in her parents’ apartment. And when Jean eventually came to jokingly call it our book, she took no offence. It aroused no possessive passion. But this is different. This is too much. This woman strides back into her life – and who is she anyway? – and is casually, presumptuously, talking about the book as if it’s hers. And though Dominique is on the point of saying your alias might be on the book, but you are not the author, she doesn’t.
They come to a gate at the end of the field and Pauline unlatches it, Dominique eyeing her warily as they step through. In front of them, not far off in a small grove, is a chapel. Pauline looks at Dominique, seemingly oblivious of the effect she is having.
‘Shall we go inside?’
Dominique shrugs, impatience dressed up as indifference. ‘Why not?’
‘You don’t mind my saying this?’
‘No,’ Dominique says, lying. ‘Why should I mind?’
‘Exactly. That’s what I say. Why should you?’
Again, that casual presumption. And with it, Dominique is asking herself just who this woman really is. Or who she thinks she is. And for a moment that whole story of finding her German, of Heidegger, Arendt, marriage and children, is all sounding just a little bit . . . what? Concocted. Neat. The kind of story that somebody gives themselves to make up for the one that life did give them. Feeling nothing indeed! She would have fallen to her knees in a blathering heap. At least, Dominique would have. And as she is contemplating all of this she finds herself revisiting the parlour and café game from the days of the scandal and asking herself the question: Who is Pauline Réage? After all, they only ever knew each other for the briefest time. And this whole visit is beginning to feel like an intrusion. Not so much a meeting as an encounter.
They enter the chapel and sit on a pew at the front, the Virgin Mary, heavenly eyes and radiant, pure heart, gazing down upon them.
‘No,’ Dominique says. ‘What did you find most interesting?’
‘Well,’ Pauline begins, showing no sign of having caught the irony in Dominique’s question, ‘it was the way the same words kept popping up. It’s really quite striking,’ she adds, pleased with herself, like some sort of amateur sleuth. ‘Would you like to hear them?’
‘Tell me. Which words?’
‘The same words. Again and again. I counted them. Surrender, submission, defeat – all through the book. Again and again. Outside power, masters, foreign force and words like them – the same. Not to mention prostituted, invasion, shame.’ She pauses, that sense of being pleased with herself giving way to something more knowing. Suggestive, even. ‘Humiliation, captive, prisoner, and liberation,’ she adds, lingering on the words, ‘again all through the book. Along with the odd occupied. Not so frequent, but it didn’t have to be. Did it?’
The air inside the chapel is cold. The afternoon chill is settling in and they can both see the condensation of their breath. Dominique stares at her, as if under some spell.
Pauline continues. ‘That’s what it was all about, in the end, wasn’t it?’ She lets the question sink in, and when she speaks again it is as though the word is expelled from her. ‘Occupation,’ she almost stammers. ‘O for occupation. The thing that nobody wants to talk about, remember or be reminded of. France the whore who rolls over and surrenders, submits herself willingly to her masters. Pétain the pimp who hands her over – the whole country a brothel!’
Dominique glares at her, tossed between slapping her face for her sheer presumption and actually taking it seriously. Pauline seizes upon her silence, continuing.
‘It wasn’t all the debauchery and the dirty doings and goings on in the château that shocked everyone, that caused the scandal. Offended everybody’s precious morals. We both know that wasn’t it.’ She speaks with a knowing look. ‘There’s always something more. You hit a raw nerve all right, but it wasn’t all that juicy sex – it was the very thing everybody was desperate to forget, and which the book dragged up, that rocked them and forced them to look back on what they never wanted to look upon again. Even if they didn’t know it, they sensed it: surrender, foreign force, masters, defeat, humiliation, submission, captivity, liberation . . . the list goes on. It was my story. It was your story. It was ours. It was the whole fucking country’s!’
For a moment Dominique is not so much struck by what she is saying as the fact that she just said fucking. She has no objection to the word. In fact she’s always thought fuck had a solid, medieval roundness to it. Like something from Chaucer. But coming from Pauline’s mouth, the word has never sounded so obscene, so pornographic.
Pauline sniffs and rubs her nose, those claustrophobic, occupied years all coming back. Eyes glassy, she looks directly at Dominique. ‘When I read the story I felt like . . .’ She stops, not so much summoning the words as waiting for the composure to deliver them. ‘Like I was being handed over and prostituted all over again. Taking on shame and humiliation all over again And then falling in love all over again – with the very thing I was never meant to fall in love with. The enemy!’ Her voice has risen, echoing around the chapel, and she comes to a sudden stop, slowly calming down, her breathing becoming more regular. ‘Oh,’ she eventually murmurs, ‘you changed things around, but the essentials are all there, with the history taken out.’
She rubs her eyes, red from heaving up the past, then looks back at Dominique. ‘Believe what you will,’ she adds, her body and voice wilting, ‘but I had to tell you.’
There’s always something more. Isn’t that what Jean always said? Dominique, not sure what to think or what to believe any more, sits gazing into the chilly space of the chapel. Stunned, as if a bomb has just dropped on her. There’s always something more . . . And could this really be that something more? Pauline is looking down at the chapel floor. Wrung out. Finished. And it’s not so much what she has said as the intensity with which she has said it that leaves part of Dominique believing her. Could she be right?
They rise, neither speaking, and leave the chapel. Outside, a hawk hovers in the air and Dominique is struck by the majesty of the thing. Its solitariness. And its indifference, as it looks down on all the comings and goings below.
Together, they cross the same field and make their way back to Dominique’s house. At one point Dominique swings round to her companion and says, ‘You used to smoke.’
‘I stopped,’ she says bluntly.
‘Why?’
‘Stefan hates smoking.’
‘Oh,’ Dominique says, puzzled, ‘but didn’t you always—’
‘That was then,’ Pauline says, anticipating the question. ‘I married a different man. He also hates your book.’
‘He’s read it?’
‘A few pages. Enough to call it filth, smut – you name it.’
Dominique looks down as she treads between the cow-pats. ‘You never let on . . . ?’
‘No.’ Pauline half laughs, half stammers. ‘How could I?’
The talking done, or so it seems, they walk on in silence. At the house, Pauline, now calmer, more collected, but with eyes that are still red, gathers her things, leaving the food and champagne. They stop at her car.
‘Did you really come all this way to tell me?’
‘Is that so hard to believe? I knew there was only ever one person in the world I could talk to. I’ve been meaning to for some time. It took me back, you see. It took me back to a time I didn’t want to go back to, remember or be reminded of. Like the whole fucking country.’ Her tone is emotionless now. ‘You know how some writers are yours and yours alone, and everybody else just reads them?’
Dominique nods. ‘Yes.’
‘Well . . .’ Pauline weighs her words. ‘Some books are like that. Yours!’
They embrace before Pauline slides into her car. It is a brief embrace, one that says our business is done. I have said what I came to say. Pauline, your true reader. We need not trouble each other again. Once, we might have known each other better, but that time has long passed.
Pauline sits at the wheel, the engine rumbles into life then purrs. Barely audible. Not so much a car as a creature. As the car pulls out onto the road she turns and smiles at Dominique: a fragile smile under the tan and the sporty clothes. Then she’s gone. And Dominique, who stands in her front yard for some time afterwards, is left shaken, and cold, not knowing what to think. She walks back to the house, asking herself if Pauline could be right, could she really be right after all? And could she, Dominique, not have realised? Not seen the pattern in the carpet, hiding in plain sight.
She closes the kitchen door behind her, the cat slipping through the window at the same time. The afternoon chill has fallen, the fire is low. She prods it, sparks it into life, then adds new logs and watches the flames leap as she sits warming herself. The cat brushes her shin, then sprawls on the carpet before the fire. There are questions within questions to ponder, one in particular occupying her all through the evening, and the next and the next. Indeed, who is Pauline Réage?
‘The author of Story of O,’ she casually tells the ghost of Camus, as if it were perfectly obvious. But who is that? Who is this stranger, this part of her known as Pauline Réage, who is both her and not her, known and unknown, a fragment, a self among selves, all forever changing, mingling, scattering and coming back together, the same and not the same, to the point that she finds it harder and harder to tell any of them apart. Not that she cares.
She leaves the fire, and taking down a packet of English tea spoons it into a pot. The cat is unmoved. The kettle boils as she gazes blankly out of the kitchen window. Evening is closing in; her reflection is forming in the glass. The kettle’s whistle blows like trains past, drawing her
away from the mirror image in the window as she concentrates on filling the pot with steaming water. She waits for it to brew. When it is done, she pours the tea into a cup, the scent of bergamot rising with the steam, slices a lemon, drops it in, takes a biscuit from a tin (a visitante she baked the day before), then sits by the fire dipping the biscuit into the tea, savouring the bitter-sweetness of both.
The story is told. A fairy tale, a fantasy, written in another time that may well have reflected that time in ways she never imagined. Are we ever in control of these things? Or did this strange, even hideous, progeny of hers have a life of its own from the moment Dominique heaved it into the world?
She prods some logs on the fire. Be that as it may. The lover for whom the love letter was written is gone. That world has passed. This one is not hers any more. The writer has retreated to the country. The fire to warm her, the cat for company. And, all around, this enveloping country silence, into which she would now like to disappear.
Epilogue
Boissise-la-Bertrand, 1998
The kitchen is lit up, a rich, yellow glow; the surrounding hamlet and the flat country beyond it lie in darkness. It could almost be a stage set. A play, for the most part without words, just a few thoughts given air every now and then, the actor completely unaware of anybody watching.
An old woman, white-haired, a loose cardigan thrown over her, shuffles about her kitchen preparing her evening meal: frozen food from the supermarket. She looks upon the packet, struck by a thought or stopped by a memory, indifferent to the dinner; the same indifference with which she approaches every meal, now that the hunger for living has gone.
She lingers for a long time, the skull almost visible beneath the skin, stretched tight over her cheeks. Then she slowly removes the wrapping from the meal, shuffles to the microwave and puts the dinner in. A television plays softly in the background, figures – a prime minister, a president possibly, and a call girl – come and go, their moment passing quickly, but she pays little attention. The word scandal is spoken by the newsreader. Then again. The cat watches her, the meal turns round and round on the carousel until it is done, the beep-beep of the microwave piercing the relative quiet. She takes the dinner from the oven and places it on the table, an air about her of ‘what now?’.