by Jean Rhys
‘I hope you slept well last night, Madame; I hope you feel better this morning? Can I do anything for you?’
‘Yes, sit and talk to me,’ said Roseau. ‘I’m not getting up this morning.’
‘You are right,’ Fifi answered. ‘That reposes, a day in bed.’ She sat heavily down and beamed. ‘And then you must amuse yourself a little,’ she advised. ‘Distract yourself. If you wish I will show you all the places where one amuses oneself in Nice.’
But Roseau, who saw the ‘chic type’ lurking in Fifi’s eyes, changed the conversation. She said she wished she had something to read.
‘I will lend you a book,’ said Fifi at once. ‘I have many books.’
She went to her room and came back with a thin volume.
‘Oh, poetry!’ said Roseau. She had hoped for a good detective story. She did not feel in the mood for French poetry.
‘I adore poetry,’ said Fifi with sentiment. ‘Besides, this is very beautiful. You understand French perfectly? Then listen.’
She began to read:
‘Dans le chemin libre de mes années
Je marchais fière et je me suis arrêtée . . .
‘Thou hast bound my ankles with silken cords.
‘Que j’oublie les mots qui ne disent pas mon amour,
Les gestes qui ne doivent pas t’enlacer,
Que l’horizon se ferme à ton sourire . . .
‘Mais je t’en conjure, ô Sylvius, comme la plus humble des choses qui ont une place dans ta maison – garde-moi.’
In other words: you won’t be rotten – now. Will you, will you? I’ll do anything you like, but be kind to me, won’t you, won’t you?
Not that it didn’t sound better in French.
‘Now,’ read Fifi,
‘I can walk lightly, for I have laid my life in the hands of my lover.
‘Change, chante ma vie, aux mains de mon amant!’
And so on, and so on.
Roseau thought that it was horrible to hear this ruin of a woman voicing all her own moods, all her own thoughts. Horrible.
‘Sylvius, que feras-tu à travers les jours de cet
être que t’abandonne sa faiblesse?
Il peut vivre d’une sourire, mourir d’une parole.
Sylvius, qu’en feras-tu?’
‘Have you got any detective stories?’ Roseau interrupted suddenly. She felt that she could not bear any more.
Fifi was surprised but obliging. Yes – she had Arsène Lupin, several of Gaston Leroux; also she had ‘Shaerlock ’Olmes’.
Roseau chose Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, and when Fifi had left the room, stared for a long time at the same page:
‘Sylvius, qu’en feras-tu?’
Suddenly she started to laugh and she laughed long, and very loudly for Roseau, who had a small voice and the ghost of a laugh.
That afternoon Roseau met Sylvius, alias the gigolo, in the garden of the hotel.
She had made up her mind to detest him. What excuse for the gigolo? None – none whatever.
There he was with his mistress in Cannes and his mistress in Nice. And Fifi on the rack. Fifi, with groans, producing a billet de mille when the gigolo turned the screw. Horrible gigolo!
She scowled at him, carefully thinking out a gibe about the colour of his face powder. But that afternoon his face was unpowdered and reluctantly she was forced to see that the creature was handsome. There was nothing of the blond beast about the gigolo – he was dark, slim, beautiful as some Latin god. And how soft his eyes were, how sweet his mouth . . .
Horrible, horrible gigolo!
He did not persist, but looking rather surprised at her snub, went away with a polite murmur: ‘Alors, Madame.’
A week later he disappeared.
Fifi in ten days grew ten years older and she came no more to Roseau’s room to counsel rum and hot milk instead of veronal. But head up, she faced a hostile and sneering world.
‘Have you any news of Monsieur Rivière?’ the patronne of the hotel would ask with a little cruel female smile.
‘Oh, yes, he is very well,’ Fifi would answer airily, knowing perfectly well that the patronne had already examined her letters carefully. ‘His grandmother, alas! is much worse, poor woman.’
For the gigolo had chosen the illness of his grandmother as a pretext for his abrupt departure.
One day Fifi despatched by post a huge wreath of flowers – it appeared that the gigolo’s grandmother had departed this life.
Then silence. No thanks for the flowers.
Fifi’s laugh grew louder and hoarser, and she gave up Vichy for champagne.
She was no longer alone at her table – somehow she could collect men – and as she swam into the room like a big vessel with all sails set, three, four, five would follow in her wake, the party making a horrible noise.
‘That dreadful creature!’ said Peggy Olsen one night. ‘How does she get all those men together?’
Mark laughed and said: ‘Take care, she’s a pal of Roseau’s.’
‘Oh! is she?’ said Mrs Olsen. She disliked Roseau and thought the hotel with its clientèle of chauffeurs – and worse – beyond what an English gentlewoman should be called upon to put up with.
She was there that night because her husband had insisted on it.
‘The girl’s lonely – come on, Peggy – don’t be such a wet blanket.’
So Peggy had gone, her tongue well sharpened, ready for the fray.
‘The dear lady must be very rich,’ she remarked. ‘She’s certainly most hospitable.’
‘Oh, she isn’t the hostess,’ said Roseau, absurdly anxious that her friend’s triumph should be obvious. ‘The man with the beard is host, I’m sure. He adores Fifi.’
‘Extraordinary!’ said Mrs Olsen icily.
Roseau thought: ‘You sneering beast, you little sneering beast. Fifi’s worth fifty of you!’ – but she said nothing, contenting herself with one of those sideway smiles which made people think: ‘She’s a funny one.’
The electric light went out.
The thin, alert, fatigued-looking bonne brought candles. That long drab room looked ghostly in the flickering light – one had an oddly definite impression of something sinister and dangerous – all these heavy jowls and dark, close-set eyes, coarse hands, loud, quarrelsome voices. Fifi looked sinister too with her vital hair and ruined throat.
‘You know,’ Roseau said suddenly, ‘you’re right. My hotel is a rum place.’
‘Rum is a good word,’ said Mark Olsen. ‘You really oughtn’t to stay here.’
‘No, I’m going to leave. It’s just been sheer laziness to make the move and my room is rather charming. There’s a big mimosa tree just outside the window. But I will leave.’
As the electric light came on again they were discussing the prices of various hotels.
But next morning Roseau, lying in bed and staring at the mimosa tree, faced the thought of how much she would miss Fifi.
It was ridiculous, absurd, but there it was. Just the sound of that hoarse voice always comforted her; gave her the sensation of being protected, strengthened.
‘I must be dotty,’ said Roseau to herself. ‘Of course I would go and like violently someone like that – I must be dotty. No. I’m such a coward, so dead frightened of life, that I must hang on to some body – even Fif . . .’
Dead frightened of life was Roseau, suspended over a dark and terrible abyss – the abyss of absolute loss of self-control.
‘Fifi,’ said Roseau talking to herself, ‘is a pal. She cheers me up. On the other hand she’s a dreadful-looking old tart, and I oughtn’t to go about with her. It’ll be another good old Downward Step if I do.’
Fifi knocked.
She was radiant, bursting with some joyful tidings.
‘Pierrot is returning,’ she announced.
‘Oh!’ said Roseau interested.
‘Yes, I go to meet him at Nice this afternoon.’
‘I am glad!’ said Roseau.
It w
as impossible not to be glad in that large and beaming presence. Fifi wore a new black frock with lace at the neck and wrists and a new hat, a small one.
‘My hat?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Does it make me ridiculous? Is it too small? Does it make me look old?’
‘No,’ said Roseau, considering her carefully – ‘I like it, but put the little veil down.’
Fifi obeyed.
‘Ah, well,’ she sighed, ‘I was always ugly. When I was small my sister called me the devil’s doll. Yes – always the compliments like that are what I get. Now – alas! You are sure I am not ridiculous in that hat?’
‘No, no,’ Roseau told her. ‘You look very nice.’
Dinner that night was a triumph for Fifi – champagne flowed – three bottles of it. An enormous bunch of mimosa and carnations almost hid the table from view. The patronne looked sideways, half enviously; the patron chuckled, and the gigolo seemed pleased and affable.
Roseau drank her coffee and smoked a cigarette at the festive table, but refused to accompany them to Nice. They were going to a boîte de nuit, ‘all that was of the most chic’.
‘Ah, bah!’ said Fifi good-naturedly scornful, ‘she is droll the little one. She always wishes to hide in a corner like a little mouse.’
‘No one,’ thought Roseau, awakened at four in the morning, ‘could accuse Fifi of being a little mouse.’ Nothing of the mouse about Fifi.
‘I’m taking him to Monte Carlo,’ the lady announced next morning. She pronounced it Monte Carl’.
‘Monte Carlo – why?’
‘He wishes to go. Ah! la la – it will cost me something!’ She made a little rueful, clucking noise. ‘And Pierrot, who always gives such large tips to the waiters – if he knew as I do what salauds are the garçons de café—’
‘Well, enjoy yourself,’ Roseau said laughing. ‘Have a good time.’
The next morning she left the hotel early and did not return till dinner-time, late, preoccupied.
As she began her meal she noticed that some men in the restaurant were jabbering loudly in Italian – but they always jabbered.
The patron was not there – the patronne, looking haughty, was talking rapidly to her lingère.
But the bonne looked odd, Roseau thought, frightened but bursting with importance. As she reached the kitchen she called in a shrill voice to the cook: ‘It is in the Eclaireur. Have you seen?’
Roseau finished peeling her apple. Then she called out to the patronne – she felt impelled to do it.
‘What is it, Madame? Has anything happened?’
The patronne hesitated.
‘Madame Carly – Madame Fifi – has met with an accident,’ she answered briefly.
‘An accident? An automobile accident? Oh, I do hope it isn’t serious.’
‘It’s serious enough – assez grave,’ the patronne answered evasively.
Roseau asked no more questions. She took up the Éclaireur de Nice lying on the table and looked through it.
She was looking for the ‘Fatal Automobile Accident’.
She found the headline:
YET ANOTHER DRAMA OF JEALOUSY
‘Madame Francine Carly, aged 48, of 7 rue Notre Dame des Pleurs, Marseilles, was fatally stabbed last night at the hotel—, Monte Carlo, by her lover Pierre Rivière, aged 24, of rue Madame Tours. Questioned by the police he declared that he acted in self-defence as his mistress, who was of a very jealous temperament, had attacked him with a knife when told of his approaching marriage, and threatened to blind him. When the proprietor of the hotel, alarmed by the woman’s shrieks, entered the room accompanied by two policemen, Madame Carly was lying unconscious, blood streaming from the wounds in her throat. She was taken to the hospital, where she died without recovering consciousness.
‘The murderer has been arrested and taken to the Depôt.’
Roseau stared for a long time at the paper.
‘I must leave this hotel’, was her only thought, and she slept soundly that night without fear of ghosts.
A horrible, sordid business. Poor Fifi! Almost she hated herself for feeling so little regret.
But next morning while she was packing she opened the book of poems, slim, much handled, still lying on the table, and searched for the verse Fifi had read:
‘Maintenant je puis marcher légère,
J’ai mis toute ma vie aux mains de mon amant.
Chante, change ma vie aux mains de mon amant.’
Suddenly Roseau began to cry.
‘O poor Fifi! O poor Fifi!’
In that disordered room in the midst of her packing she cried bitterly, heartbroken.
Till, in the yellow sunshine that streamed into the room, she imagined that she saw her friend’s gay and childlike soul, freed from its gross body, mocking her gently for her sentimental tears.
‘Oh well!’ said Roseau.
She dried her eyes and went on with her packing.
Vienne
Funny how it’s slipped away, Vienna. Nothing left but a few snapshots.
Not a friend, not a pretty frock – nothing left of Vienna.
Hot sun, my black frock, a hat with roses, music, lots of music –
The little dancer at the Parisien with a Kirchner girl’s legs and a little faun’s face.
She was so exquisite that girl that it clutched at one, gave one pain that anything so lovely could ever grow old, or die, or do ugly things.
A fragile child’s body, a fluff of black skirt ending far above the knee. Silver straps over that beautiful back, the wonderful legs in black silk stockings and little satin shoes, short hair, cheeky little face.
She gave me the songe bleu. Four, five feet she could jump and come down on that wooden floor without a sound. Her partner, an unattractive individual in badly fitting trousers, could lift her with one hand, throw her in the air – catch her, swing her as one would a flower.
At the end she made an adorable little ‘gamine’s’ grimace.
Ugly humanity, I’d always thought. I saw people differently afterwards – because for once I’d met sheer loveliness with a flame inside, for there was ‘it’ – the spark, the flame in her dancing.
Pierre (a damn good judge) raved about her. André also, though cautiously, for he was afraid she would be too expensive.
All the French officers coveted her – night after night the place was packed.
Finally she disappeared. Went back to Budapest where afterwards we heard of her.
Married to a barber. Rum.
Pretty women, lots. How pretty women here are. Lovely food. Poverty gone, the dread of it – going.
‘I call them war material,’ said Colonel Ishima, giggling.
He meant women, the Viennese women. But when I asked him about the Geisha – I thought it might be amusing to hear about the Geisha first hand as it were, Europeans are so very contradictory about the subject – he pursed up his mouth and looked prim.
‘We don’t talk about these people – shameful people.’
However, he added after looking suspiciously at a dish of kidneys and asking what they were:
‘The Geisha were good people during the war, patriotic people. The Geisha served Nippon well.’
He meant the Russo-Japanese War. One had visions of big blond Russian officers and slant-eyed girls like exotic dolls stabbing them under the fifth rib, or stealing their papers when they were asleep . . .
Every fortnight the Japanese officers solemnly entertained their following at Sacher’s Hotel, and they were entertained one by one in return, because in a mass they were really rather overwhelming.
Of course, there it was – the Japanese had to have a following. To begin with, not one of them could speak the three necessary languages, English, German and French, properly. It meant perpetual translation and arguments. And they were dreadfully afraid of not being as tactful as an Asiatic power ought to be, or of voting with the minority instead of the majority, which would have been the end of them at Tokio.
Si
Ishima had his secretary and confidential adviser (that was Pierre) and Hato had his, and Matsjijiri had his, not to speak of three typists, a Hungarian interpreter and various other hangers-on.
Every fortnight they gave a dinner to the whole lot. It began with caviare and ended with Tokayer and Hato singing love songs, which was the funniest thing I ever heard.
He only had one eye, poor dear; the other disappeared during the Russo-Japanese War. He sang in a high bleat, holding tightly on to one foot and rocking backwards and forwards.
He was very vieux jeu, arrière, a Samurai or something, he wore a kimono whenever he could get into it and he loved making solemn proclamations to the delegation. He called them: Ordres du jour.
He made one to the typists, à propos of the temptation of Vienne, which began like this:
‘Vous êtes jeunes, vous êtes femmes, vous êtes faibles. Pour l’honneur du Nippon’, etc., etc.
Through some mistake this ordre du jour was solemnly brought to an elderly, moustached French general, whilst the Commission was having a meeting to decide some minor detail of the fate of the conquered country. He opened it and read: ‘Vous êtes jeunes, vous êtes femmes, vous êtes faibles.’
‘Merde, alors!’ said the general, ‘qu’ est-ce c’est que ca?’
Hato was a great joy. He despised Europeans heartily. They all did that, exception made in favour of Germany – for the Japanese thought a lot of the German Army and the German way of keeping women in their place. They twigged that at once. Not much they didn’t twig.
But they were all bursting with tact and Ishima, immediately after his remark about war material, paid me many flowery compliments. He hoped, he said, to see me one day in Japan. The Lord forbid!
After dinner we went to the Tabarin. He stared haughtily with boot-button eyes at a very pretty little girl, a girl like a wax doll, who was strolling aimlessly about, and who smiled at him very pitifully and entreatingly when she thought I was not looking.
I knew all about her. She had been Ishima’s friend, his acknowledged friend – en titre. She really was pretty and young. The odd thing is that the Japanese have such good taste in European women, whereas European taste in Japanese women is simply atrocious, or so the Japanese say.