by Jean Rhys
Papa Dom was by no means crushed. Next week he replied with dignity as follows:
‘My attention has been called to your characteristic letter. I accept your correction though I understand that in the mind of the best authorities there are grave doubts, very grave doubts indeed, as to the authorship of the lines, and indeed the other works of the immortal Swan of Avon. However, as I do not write with works of reference in front of me, as you most certainly do, I will not dispute the point.
‘The conduct of an English gentleman who stoops to acts of tyranny and abuse cannot be described as gentle or perfect. I fail to see that it matters whether it is Shakespeare, Chaucer or the Marquis of Montrose who administers from down the ages the much-needed reminder and rebuke.’
I wonder if I shall ever again read the Dominica Herald and Leeward Islands Gazette.
Hunger
Last night I took an enormous dose of valerian to make me sleep. I have awakened this morning very calm and rested, but with shaky hands.
It doesn’t matter. I am not hungry either: that’s a good thing as there is not the slightest prospect of my having anything to eat. I could of course buy a loaf, but we have been living on bread and nothing else for a long time. It gets monotonous. Also, it’s damned salt . . .
Starvation – or rather semi-starvation – coffee in the morning, bread at midday, is exactly like everything else. It has its compensations, but they do not come at once . . . To begin with it is a frankly awful business.
For the first twelve hours one is just astonished. No money: nothing to eat . . . Nothing! . . . But that’s farcical. There must be something one can do. Full of practical common sense you rush about; you search for the elusive ‘something’. At night you have long dreams about food.
On the second day you have a bad headache. You feel pugnacious. You argue all day with an invisible and sceptical listener.
I tell you it is not my fault . . . It happened suddenly, and I have been ill. I had no time to make plans. Can you not see that one needs money to fight? Even with a hundred francs clear one could make plans.
I said clear . . . A few hundred francs clear. There is the hotel to pay. Sell my clothes? . . . You cannot get any money for women’s clothes in Paris. I tried for a place as a gouvernante yesterday. Of course I’m nervous and silly. So’d you be if . . .
Oh God! leave me alone. I don’t care what you think; I don’t.
On the third day one feels sick: on the fourth, one starts crying very easily . . . A bad habit that; it sticks.
On the fifth day . . .
You awaken with a feeling of detachment; you are calm and godlike. It is to attain to that state that religious people fast.
Lying in bed, my arms over my eyes, I despise, utterly, my futile struggles of the last two years. What on earth have I been making such a fuss about? What does it matter, anyway? Women are always ridiculous when they struggle.
It is like being suspended over a precipice. You cling for dear life with people walking on your fingers. Women do not only walk: they stamp.
Primitive beings, most women.
But I have clung and made huge efforts to pull myself up. Three times I have . . . acquired resources. Means? Has she means? She has means. I have been a mannequin. I have been . . . no: not what you think . . .
No good, any of it.
Well, you are doomed.
Once down you will never get up. Did anyone – did anybody, I wonder, ever get up . . . once down?
Every few months there is bound to be a crisis. Every crisis will find you weaker.
If I were Russian I should long ago have accepted Fate: had I been French I should long ago have discovered and taken the back door out. I mean no disrespect to the French. They are logical. Had I been . . . Sensible I should have hung on to being a mannequin with what it implies. As it is, I have struggled on, not cleverly. Almost against my own will. Don’t I belong to the land of Lost Causes . . . England . . .
If I had a glass of wine I would drink to that: the best of toasts:
To a Lost Cause: to All Lost Causes . . .
Oh! the relief of letting go: tumbling comfortably into the abyss . . .
Not such a terrible place after all. One day, no doubt, one will grow used to it. Lots of jolly people, here . . .
No more effort.
Retrospection is a waste of the Fifth Day.
The best way is to spend it dreaming over some book like Dash or . . . oh, Dash, again . . .
Especially Dash number one . . . There are words and sentences one can dream over for hours . . .
Luckily we have both books: too torn to be worth selling.
I love her most before she has become too vicious.
It is as if your nerves were strung tight. Like violin strings. Anything: lovely words, or the sound of a concertina from the street: even a badly played piano can make one cry. Not with hunger or sadness. No!
But with the extraordinary beauty of life.
I have never gone without food for longer than five days, so I cannot amuse you any longer.
Discourse of a Lady Standing a Dinner to a Down-and-Out Friend
Darling, I think you are simply wonderful. I always say, if I were in your place I’d go crazy . . . Have some more soup . . . Soup is so nourishing.
(It is all very well, but she has not forgotten to rouge her lips.)
Of course, I always say one cannot judge by appearances. I mean that lots of people who look all right are starving, and all that, I suppose.
What did you say? . . . You cannot buy special clothes to starve in. Naturally not. But it is a question of what people think, is it not?
(Now she is not pleased. But is it my fault? A woman supposed to be starving ought not to go about in silk stockings and quite expensive shoes.)
I was with Anna at the Galerie yesterday and I saw the sweetest hat. Not hard. I bought it to wear with my velvet. But they don’t go together. It’s awful, getting clothes to go together.
(She does look a bit thin. I ought to ask her to tea to-morrow . . . No. To-morrow Albert is coming. I dare say she is all right, and she is not his type. But these people with not enough to eat. You can’t trust them with men . . . Another day . . .)
Shall we have some more wine . . . I wish I could help you. Let me think. I know somebody at Neuilly who wants a mother’s help.
(She does not like that. I knew it. It is dreadful to try to help poor people. They will not help themselves.)
It is a friend of Anna’s really. We were talking about you the other day. I may tell you that she is not in the least annoyed with you. Indeed she admits that she was a little rude. But . . . darling . . . you can’t afford to lose your temper like that, can you? You see, Anna and yourself have such very different . . . let us say, temperaments. She is so independent . . . And Peter really was annoying that day . . . He flirts so automatically . . . Such a good-looking fellow: but what an irritating husband . . . Poor Anna! It was not your fault . . . But one must adapt oneself a little, mustn’t one? . . . Because you are poor you are not necessarily a . . . What? What did you say? No! I never used that word . . . You must not look at life in that way. You are too suspicious. I will ring up the woman in Neuilly. I should not do that, should I, if I did not trust you? . . . Cheer up. You will be as happy as possible . . . (I believe she is going to cry. She irritates me. And there is that man opposite making eyes at her. Quite a good-looking man. Well, if she is that sort . . . Well, why doesn’t she?)
Of course one has to be something in this world, hasn’t one? I mean . . . There you are . . . Either one thing or the other . . . You will have a liqueur? Deux Kümmel, garçon.
(I rather hate myself!)
Do you really think this hat suits me? . . . With just a tack in the ribbon, here, perhaps . . . No? . . . Now don’t look so sad. I will ring up Anna’s friend at Neuilly to-morrow. We will fix you up. I assure you we will fix you up. They pay 150 francs a month. And keep, naturally . . . Imagine.
One hundred and fifty francs . . . Thirty shillings . . . Just for pocket money . . . Good-bye, then, till you hear from Neuilly . . .
(Poor little devil. Of course it is her own fault. There is one comfort. It is always people’s own fault . . . They lack . . . Oh, Balance. When people lack Balance there’s really nothing to be done.)
A Night
One shuts one’s eyes and sees it written: red letters on a black ground:
Le Saut dans l’Inconnu . . . Le Saut . . .
Stupidly I think: But why in French? Of course it must be a phrase I have read somewhere. Idiotic.
I screw up my eyes wildly to get rid of it: next moment it is back again.
Red letters on a black ground.
One lies staring at the exact shape of the S.
Dreadfully tired I am too, now this beastly thing won’t let me sleep. And because I can’t sleep I start to think very slowly and painfully, for I have cried myself into a state of stupor.
No money: rotten. And ill and frightened to death . . . Worse!
But worst of all is the way I hate people: it is as if something in me is shivering right away from humanity. Their eyes are mean and cruel, especially when they laugh.
They are always laughing, too: always grinning. When they say something especially rotten they grin. Then, just for a second, that funny little animal, the Real Person, looks out and slinks away again . . . Furtive.
I don’t belong here. I don’t belong here. I must get out – must get out.
Le Saut . . . Le Saut dans l’Inconnu.
One lies very still – staring.
Well, then . . . what?
Make a hole in the water?
In a minute I am sitting up in bed, gasping. I have imagined myself sinking, suffocating, the pain in the lungs horrible. Horrible.
Shoot oneself? . . . I begin again mechanically to plan what would happen. The revolver is in the pawnshop. For twenty francs I could . . .
I’d sit down. No: lie down. And open my mouth . . . That’s the place: against the roof of one’s mouth. How rum it would feel. And pull the trigger.
And then?
L’Inconnu: black, awful. One would fall, down, down, down for ever and ever. Falling.
Frightened. Coward. Do it when you hardly know. Drink perhaps first half a bottle of Cognac.
No: I cannot put up a better fight than that . . . Be ashamed of me.
If I had something to hold on to. Or somebody.
One friend . . . One!
You know I can’t be alone. I can’t.
God, send me a friend . . .
How ridiculous I am. How primitive . . .
Sneering at myself I start on childishnesses.
I imagine the man I could love. His hands, eyes and voice.
Hullo, he’ll say, what’s all this fuss about?
– Because I’m hurt and spoilt, and you too late . . .
– What rot . . . What rot!
He will buy me roses and carnations and chocolates and a pair of pink silk pyjamas and heaps of books.
He will laugh and say – but nicely:
Finished! What rot!
Just like that.
Saying the Litany to the Blessed Virgin which I learnt at the Convent and have never forgotten.
Mater Dolorosa: Mother most sorrowful. Pray for us, Star of the Sea. Mother most pitiful, pray for us.
Ripping words.
I wonder if I dare shut my eyes now.
Ridiculous all this. Lord, I am tired . . .
A devil of a business . . .
In the Rue de l’Arrivée
Halfway up the Boulevard Montparnasse is a little café called the Zanzi-Bar. It is not one of these popular places swarming with the shingled and long-legged and their partners, who all wear picturesque collars and an incredibly contemptuous expression. No, it is small, half-empty, cheapish. Coffee costs five centimes less than in the Rotonde, for instance. It is a place to know of. It is not gay, except on the rare occasions when some festive soul asks the patron for the Valencia record and puts a ten centimes piece into the gramophone slot.
Here, one evening at eleven o’clock, sat a Lady drinking her fourth fine à l’eau and thinking how much she disliked human beings in general and those who pitied her in particular. For it was her deplorable habit, when she felt very blue indeed, to proceed slowly up the right-hand side of the Boulevard, taking a fine à l’eau – that is to say a brandy and soda – at every second café she passed. There are so many cafés that the desired effect could be obtained without walking very far, and by thus moving from one to the other she managed to avoid both the curious stares of the waiters and the disadvantage of not accurately knowing just how drunk she was . . .
From which it will be very easily gathered that the Lady was an Anglo-Saxon . . . That she was down on her luck . . . That she lacked strength of character and was doomed to the fate of the feeble who have not found a protector. She rested her elbows on the top of the table to look at the picture of Leda and the Swan hanging opposite her. The walls of the café were covered with the canvases of hopeful artists, numbered and priced, waiting for the possible buyer. An effect of warm reds and greens and yellows and of large numbers of ladies with enormous thighs, well-developed calves and huge feet; the upper part of their bodies very slim and willowy, the faces thin and ascetic with small prim mouths.
But she was a simple soul, so her eyes strayed, puzzled and unsatisfied over these symbols of a point of view and came back to gaze steadily at the red-haired Leda, the curves of her throat and the long, white neck of the Swan lying between her breasts.
Into her vague dream of jade-green water and gently gliding birds with golden beaks, came a disagreeable twinge of loneliness and unhappiness. She sighed heavily, instinctively, as a dog sighs, and ordered another fine. As she waited for it, she took a little mirror out of her bag and observed herself critically. From the small, blurred glass her eyes stared back at her, darkly circled, the whites slightly bloodshot, the clear look of youth going – gone.
Miss Dufreyne, for such was the Lady’s name, was a weak, sentimental, very lazy, entirely harmless creature, pathetically incapable of lies or intrigue or even of self-defence – till it was too late. She was also sensual, curious, reckless, and had all her life roused a strong curiosity in men. So much for her.
Inevitably her career had been a series of jerks, very violent and very sudden, and the suddenness of the jerks – even more than their violence – had ended by exhausting her.
Nevertheless, there was still no end to her pathetic and charming illusions. She believed that Gentlemen were Different and to be trusted, that Ladies must not make a Fuss – even when drunk – and that the Lower Classes were the Lower Classes. She believed that Montparnasse, that stronghold of the British and American middle classes, was a devil of a place and what Montmartre used to be. She believed that one day she would rise to fame as a fashion artist, be rescued from her present haphazard existence and restored to a life when afternoon tea, punctually at five, toast, cakes, maid, rattle of cups in saucers would be a commonplace. Such was Miss Dufreyne’s strange and secret idea of bliss.
But there she was stony-broke and with a hand that was rapidly losing its cunning, seeking oblivion in a cheap Montparnasse café. A bad stage to have reached, useless to disguise it.
Miss Dufreyne drank hastily her fifth fine.
She sat drooping a little on the dark red leather bench, huddled in her black coat with its somewhat ragged fur collar, to all outer appearance calm, respectable, and mistress of her fate.
But over the unseen, the real Dorothy Dufreyne, a tiny shrinking thing in a vast, empty space, flowed red waves of despair, black waves of fatigue, as the brandy crept warmly and treacherously to her brain. Waves from a tremendous, booming sea. And each one would submerge her and then retreat, leaving her dazed, and as it were, gasping.
Sharp urgings to some violent deed, some inevitable fated end, and craven fear of life, and utt
er helpless, childish loneliness. Never before had drink, which usually warmed and uplifted her, had this effect on her. Perhaps it was because that afternoon she had passed a gentleman whom she knew intimately – very intimately indeed – and behold the gentleman had turned his head aside, and coughing nervously, pretended not to see her . . . ‘If I want to walk at all straight,’ she thought suddenly, ‘I’d better go now.’
She left money on the table, got up and went out in careful and dignified fashion.
Miss Dufreyne (Dolly to her friends when she had any) stepped out on to the Boulevard into the soft autumn night, and the night put out a gentle, cunning hand to squeeze her heart.
As soon as she turned up the side street behind the railway station which led to her hotel, she began to walk as quickly as she could. She hated that street.
It was full of cheap and very dirty hotels, of cheaper restaurants where the food smelt of oil and sweat, of coiffeurs’ shops haunted by very dark men with five days’ blue growth of beard. Never a pretty lady. Not the ghost of a pretty lady in these coiffeurs’ shops.
Even the pharmacy at the corner looked sinister and unholy. During the day the waxen head of a gentleman with hollow eyes, thin lips and a tortured and evil expression was exhibited in the window in a little box. A legend on a card under the head read:
‘I suffered from diseases of the stomach, liver, kidneys, from neurasthenia, anæmia and loss of vitality before taking the Elixir of Abbé Pierre . . .’
A street of sordid dramas and horrible men who walked softly behind one for several steps before they spoke.
The Lady sped along, cursing the Paris pavements, almost sobered by her intense wish to get home quickly, and suddenly was aware that she was being followed.
A man was slinking up not quite alongside, a little behind her, cap pulled low over his eyes, crimson scarf knotted round his throat, hands in pockets. His silhouette looked small, almost frail, but as if he would be very quick and active like a cat. Graceful too – like a cat.
He was going to speak to her, and she felt that that night she could not bear it. ‘Mademoiselle,’ said the man, ‘are you walking alone so late?’