The Collected Short Stories

by Jean Rhys

  ‘Allez-vous en!’ she said fiercely, adding without dignity and in a voice that was almost a sob: ‘Idiot!’

  Then braced herself up for the inevitable, muttered insult.

  But the man, now level with her, only looked with curious, kindly, extremely intelligent eyes and passed on.

  She heard him say softly, as if meditatively: ‘Pauvre petite, va.’

  And because of the tone of his voice and the glance of his eyes, Miss Dufreyne felt sure that this passer-by in a sordid street knew all about her to the core of her heart and the soul of her soul – the exact meaning of the tears in her eyes and the droop of her head.

  It was as if those wary eyes had watched hundreds of women scold and sulk and sob and finally cry themselves into a beaten silence.

  Hundreds – all precisely alike – and as if that man himself had become indifferent as Fate – but very wise and infinitely tolerant.

  And instead of resenting his knowledge she felt suddenly soothed and calmed. The back of his cap and his supple slouching walk seemed to say: ‘Tout s’arrangera, va!’

  And the sympathy which would have maddened her from the happy, the fortunate or the respectable, she strangely and silently accepted coming from someone more degraded than she was, more ignorant, more despised . . .

  She climbed the stairs of the hotel holding tightly to the banisters, and undressed weeping gently but not unhappily.

  Her intense desire for revenge on all humanity had given place to an extraordinary clear-sightedness.

  For the first time she had dimly realized that only the hopeless are starkly sincere and that only the unhappy can either give or take sympathy – even some of the bitter and dangerous voluptuousness of misery.

  That night Dorothy Dufreyne dreamt that she was dead and that a tall, bright angel dressed in a shabby suit and crimson scarf was bearing her to hell.

  But what if it were heaven when one got there?

  Learning to Be a Mother

  There was a large brass plate on the outside of the door:

  Madame Laboriau

  Sage-femme des Hôpitaux.

  Consultations 12 à 4.

  and, when one got past the concierge’s loge, a steep flight of stairs . . . Interminable, those stairs, as one mounted them, clinging to the banisters, racked with pain. Then there was another door with a smaller plate: Sage-femme.

  Inside there was a turmoil – loud voices, mewing of babies, a warm smell of blankets, a woman moaning. For Madame Laboriau, being a qualified maternity nurse, must, according to the law, keep one large room for overflowings from the hospitals . . . I see the women as I pass the open door – three of them, one already crazy with pain, the others watching her with white, curious faces. I turn away my head quickly.

  A long passage and I am in my own room. Fortunate me! I have been able to buy the right to moan in privacy.

  It is extraordinary how that electric light hurts one. If only I could get them to put it out. Painfully I try to remember the French for light . . . ‘Lumière . . . Éteindre la lumière.’ They do not understand and I begin to cry weakly.

  Madame Laboriau sponges my forehead, looks at me with an expert eye. I look up at her and say again:

  ‘Anesthésique . . . On m’a promis . . .’

  She smiles and pats my hand.

  ‘La la la la,’ she says as she hurries away.

  I am alone again with the light – yellow and cruel. But now there are two of them, elongated, and round them a quivering halo.

  I watch the halo as the giant pain takes me up and squeezes me tighter, tighter, tighter.

  ‘Regardez,’ says Mme. Laboriau, ‘comme il est beau votre fils . . .’ Look how beautiful is your son!

  I look and think weakly: Poor hideous little thing!

  Oh do take it away, I say fretfully, and then: Thirsty!

  Colette came as soon as I could see visitors, laden of course with flowers and grapes. She had been a friend of my husband and visited me when I first came to Paris, I think out of polite inquisitiveness . . . But we were curious about each other, so we had gradually become intimate . . . She had all the qualities. She was beautiful, gay – and she read Tolstoi. Only to put herself to sleep it is true – still she read him. I spent a night at her flat once and actually saw her doing it.

  She was more than a Parisienne: she was a Montmartroise, which is a Parisienne raised to the nth power.

  And generous . . . She was contemplating marriage, but, I believe, with misgivings.

  Well, she came to see the baby and to coo at it. I had to account for my lack of enthusiasm by saying that I had wanted a girl . . .

  ‘Ah, mais, non, par exemple!’ she said decidedly. ‘A man, a son! that is something. But a woman . . . another pauvre miserable . . . Michel? Is he not proud? And pleased?’

  I told her: yes. Very pleased. Very proud.

  And his name, the poor little cabbage?

  ‘Robert,’ I said rather shamefacedly.

  ‘Robayre, bon. But I thought it was to be Michel!’

  I had meant to call him Michael. Robert had slipped out.

  It had been like this:

  A couple of days after he was born a little, wizened, dried-up man had come to see me – somebody connected with the Mairie. He was smiling and courteous at first.

  Was I married – Yes.

  My husband’s name?

  I read carefully from my marriage lines which I had under my pillow: Michel Ivan . . .

  Astonishing to see how suddenly the smile left his face.

  ‘Ivan . . . then . . . Your husband is a Russian. A Bolshevik, no doubt!’

  I said that my husband was French though born in Russia.

  ‘Ivan . . . Ivan . . . c’est Bolshevik, ça,’ he muttered unconvincedly.

  Then sharply: ‘The name of this child, Madame?’

  I stared at him, not being prepared for this.

  ‘The child’s name, Madame?’ he asked even more sharply.

  And, thoroughly frightened, I stammered the first name that came into my head: ‘Robert!’

  Alone with my son I said to him remorsefully:

  ‘At first I don’t like you and now I’ve been and called you Robert. You poor little devil.’

  There it was. I did not like him. I had been too much hurt. I was too tired.

  I kept my feelings a profound secret, but with all my efforts I could not bring myself to kiss him . . . I was thankful that he slept nearly all the time. I spent the days sleeping, reading a book called Saadha la Marocaine, talking to Mme. Laboriau whenever she had time to sit with me.

  I had grown to admire her. It was impossible not to admire anyone so calm, so efficient, so entirely mistress of herself and of her work . . . She was fat, with steady, clever, blue eyes, and, underneath her overalls, she wore brightly coloured dresses of velvet. Her hands were small, white, and extraordinarily deft . . .

  With one of them she would lift the baby up, catching him in the middle somewhere, and the little animal, recognizing the touch of the expert, would stop crying at once.

  She said with regard to my want of enthusiasm about him:

  ‘That is always so. That will come. That will come. You are still weak. Besides, one must learn.’

  She sat comfortably down and began to talk. Suddenly from the next rooms came moans and shrieks.

  ‘ça y est!’ she exclaimed, ‘the moment I sit down of course.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said timidly, ‘she is suffering very much.’

  ‘Bah . . . Like you: like me . . . But the less they pay the more noise they make. That is fated but it is extraordinary.’

  ‘Jésus! J’aaesus!’ screamed the woman in the next room. ‘Mon Dieu . . . Mon Dieu . . . Mon Dieu . . .’

  She moved towards the door, serene, unhurried, and I pulled the sheet over my head to shut out the shrieks.

  What lies people tell about maternity! Sacred Motherhood! La Femme Sacrée!

  Well, there is la Femme Sa
crée in the next room. Horrible world . . .

  So I must have slept.

  I woke up during the night to hear the little wail of Robert. Because it was a little wail I lifted him out of his crib and held him in my arms. He made a sad, complaining noise that almost stopped as I rocked him backwards and forwards. How warm the room was! How silent! Very far away a dog barking, the horn of a taxi.

  Suddenly I realized that I was happy.

  There was a nightlight burning. He opened his eyes and looked straight into mine. His were set slantwise, too, and I imagined they looked sad.

  He was tied up in the French way like a Red Indian papoose, only his head out of the bundle. I shall dress him differently when we get home.

  Little thing! I must kiss him.

  Perhaps that is why he looks sad – because his mother never has kissed him.

  The Blue Bird

  On that afternoon Carlo and I sat in the Café du Dôme drinking kümmel. The room was comparatively empty, for the weather being hot the Dômites were gathered on the terrace.

  There were the usual number of young gentlemen with high voices, carefully shabby trousers, jerseys, caressing gestures, undulating hips, and the usual number of the stony broke sitting haughtily behind cafés-crème. The bald waiter with the lecherous eyes trod to and fro, disdainful and flat-footed; the end of a gay scarf floated in the breeze; the high, sharp voice of a respectable English woman discoursed of her uncle the bishop and her hatred of hysteria.

  Most of the women were ugly that afternoon. The unpainted faces looked bald and unfinished, the painted – ochre powder, shadowed eyelids, purple lips – were like cruel stains in the sunlight.

  In the corner, to redeem humanity, sat one lovely creature, her face framed by a silver turban. Wisps of woolly hair peeped out from beneath it – a nigger – what a pity. Why a pity?

  One becomes impressionistic to excess after the third kümmel!

  ‘Another, Carlo?’

  ‘Horrible extravagance!’ said Carlo in her deep voice.

  Carlo is a mass of contradictions. Her voice is as deep as a man’s; her shoulders and hips narrow as those of a fragile schoolgirl, her eyes brown and faithful like a dog’s (hence her name). Her mouth is bitter and tormented. But for her mouth one would not guess that she is a failure, a tragedy, one of the tragedies of Montparnasse.

  Montparnasse is full of tragedy – all sorts – blatant, hidden, silent, voluble, quick, slow – even lucrative – A tragedy can be lucrative, I assure you.

  On any day of the week you may catch sight of the Sufferers, white-faced and tragic of eye – having a drink in the intervals of expressing themselves – pouring out their souls and exposing them hopefully for sale, that is to say.

  Everybody knows Carlo, and nobody blames her, and she is such a nice woman really and such a hopeless case.

  Poor soul, she loved a Bad Man – and there you are. Such a pity!

  I believe her real name is Margaret Tomkins and her birthplace doesn’t matter – London probably. But she left England ten years ago when she was about seventeen, and wandered all over Europe, first with the nondescript Greek whom she had married for some extraordinary reason, possibly because she was bored – and then with the Bad Man. She met the Bad Man first in Bucharest. They finally arrived in Paris where Carlo started a desultory career as an artist’s model, and came to live in Montparnasse. The Bad Man stayed over on the other side of the river, but he would swoop down and carry her off at intervals. People said he took all her money – regardless of how it was earned – but Carlo always swore solemnly that this wasn’t true.

  On the contrary, she said, he spent all his on her – recklessly.

  She had a very varied existence anyway, but has never lost the look of a country clergyman’s daughter – which I believe she is. She dresses unimaginatively, with occasional outbreaks into some too vivid colour. She wore that day a red straw hat and in its shadow her face looked very pale, her eyes so clearly brown that they were almost yellow.

  She said suddenly: ‘Oh, thank God, thank God, it’s hot. There are only about two hot days every year. This is one of them. Lovely!’

  I agreed without so much enthusiasm. I’ve never learned the art of sitting absolutely still, divinely lazy in the golden sun for hours at a time and dreaming vaguely.

  Carlo had it, but she had lived so long in hot places and wasn’t quite English to start with.

  She rested her chin on her hand and gazed at all the familiar faces outside without seeing them.

  *

  She said:

  ‘One night last summer when it was hot like this, I was happy. People say you are never utterly happy – but I was.’

  She spoke in a low voice.

  I was surprised.

  Carlo so seldom talked about herself, and never of her loves, which were necessarily many, poor dear. That alone made her unique in Montparnasse, unique amongst women, I think.

  She said:

  ‘You see, I hadn’t heard from Paul for several weeks, and I was awfully worried.’ (Paul was the Bad Man.) ‘And then I got a wire from him. He was at Barbizon and he asked me to come. You know Barbizon in Fontainebleau Forest?’

  I said: ‘Yes. Classical for lovers, my dear.’

  ‘Well,’ said Carlo, ‘and I went.’

  (Of course – you poor devil of a blind and infatuated creature – of course you went.)

  ‘And I got down towards evening and I took a cab from Melun to the hotel. I was simply miserable in the cab. Miserable! You know how one is. I’d such a horrible fear that I was never going to see Paul again – he was one of those people whom one adores and whom one is never sure of because they seem marked out . . . fated . . . do you know what I mean? No? Well, there are people like that.

  ‘The bedroom at the hotel was full of flowers and all the windows were open – so many windows. It was like being outside.

  ‘And Paul said:

  ‘“Carlo, don’t let’s talk now – after dinner, after dinner! Let’s be happy now. Let’s forget everything. Have you brought your little black dress? Put it on.”

  ‘So I shut my eyes and I kissed him and I didn’t ask a single question – not one, not even if he had money. After all, it didn’t matter, for I had some.’

  (I repressed a movement of indignation and drank some kümmel. Poor, poor Carlo!)

  She went on:

  ‘We had dinner outside on the terrace. The forest begins only a few yards away – the hotel is on the edge of it – and someone has stuck up a sort of shed where people shoot with little guns at something – I don’t know what – But we sat with our backs to that, of course.

  ‘I never even noticed the other people. I don’t know if the place was full or empty. We ate everything good and drank Sauternes, and I began to feel happy.

  ‘Paul said:

  ‘“Now, we’re going into the forest – and will talk, if you like . . .”

  ‘You know it’s extraordinary; the forest near Barbizon is absolutely empty at night. You’d think that all the people from the hotels would drift there after dinner, but they don’t. It’s empty and still and wonderful. We left the path after a while. The trees got thicker and everything was utterly silent. If I’d been alone I should have been afraid, for I think trees get strange at night, don’t you? I love them – but they’re strange. I’m sure they are more alive than people imagine . . .

  ‘And Paul said:

  ‘“We’re quite safe here. We’re absolutely alone – I’ll make a bed for you with my coat.”

  ‘He said:

  ‘“Carlo!”

  ‘Do you know how men’s eyes look sometimes, as if they were begging desperately and . . . and childishly somehow! . . .

  ‘You can’t think how white his face looked under the trees – And his eyes – they had little lamps in them.

  ‘I thought: Paul looks quite mad.

  ‘I kissed his eyes to make them peaceful.

  ‘And as I was doin
g that a nightingale began to sing – to sing and sing.

  ‘I was so happy – I’ve never felt like that before. I never will feel like that again.

  ‘I whispered to Paul: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to die now?” “Carlo, do you mean that? Have you the courage? I’d hold you tight – you wouldn’t feel anything.”

  ‘I sat up and looked at him and he said: “Have you the courage, Carlo? Tell me – have you?”

  ‘And somehow I was frightened of his eyes and I said: ‘There’s a mosquito – you said there weren’t many this year – but there’s one.”

  ‘It’s funny, sometimes a devil talks with one’s tongue!

  ‘I wanted to say: “Yes, kill me. It would be worth living to die like this!”

  ‘And instead I said that about the mosquitoes.

  ‘He helped me up and he said: “Let’s go back to the hotel.”

  ‘All the way home he only spoke once. He said: “Don’t worry about money. I’ve got enough to pay the bill with in my pocketbook.”

  ‘He . . .’

  Carlo stopped and suddenly began to cry. ‘Oh, God, what a fool I was – what a fool! To have been so close to a sweet death and to have pushed it away! Because I was frightened. And went on living – to be a wreck! And to grow old – and to be the butt of a lot of thick fools – I clung on to mean, silly life. Oh! God . . . That night, you know, when he got up to . . . to go and kill himself, he must have kissed me . . . In my sleep I felt him kiss me.’

  I gave her my handkerchief in sympathetic silence. Hers was so small . . .

  Poor Carlo! The first time I’d ever heard her version. The generally accepted one was that the Bad Man had been a Bad Man to the end – and being wanted by the police for something pretty serious he had shot himself one night at Barbizon, ‘having first carefully dragged that unfortunate girl into the business, couldn’t even kill himself decently.’

  Life is really unsatisfactory and puzzling – very.

  All Carlo’s friends thought – or pretended to think – that being finally quit of him she’d go up in the world like a skyrocket. And instead of that she went to pieces – absolutely to pieces. She resented fiercely all the well-meant efforts to rouse her to some sense of duty toward life.