by Jean Rhys
That journey to Prague was like a dream. Not a nightmare; running away can be exhilarating but endless as are certain dreams, and unreal.
While I dressed and finished packing my hands had trembled with fright and cold, but before we left Budapest behind us the hunted feeling had vanished.
There is no doubt that running away on a fresh, blue morning can be exhilarating.
I patted the quivering side of the car, gazed at Franzi’s stolid back, wondered if he guessed anything, and decided he probably did, sung ‘Mit ihrem roten Chapeau’. After all, when one is leaving respectability behind one may as well do it with an air.
The country stretched flatly into an infinite and melancholy distance, but it looked to me sunlit and full of promise, like the setting of a fairy tale.
About noon we passed through a little plage on the Danube; it must have been Balaton, and there were groups of men and girls walking about in short bathing-suits. Nice their brown legs and arms looked and the hair of the girls in the fierce sun.
Pierre called out: ‘Hungry?’
I said: ‘Yes.’
But I grew uneasy again when we stopped for lunch at some little village of which I was never to know the unpronounceable name.
Through the open door of the restaurant the village looked bleak in the sunlight and pervaded with melancholy; flocks of geese, countless proud geese, strolled about; several old women sat on a long, low stone bench under a lime tree, on another bench two or three old men. The old women were really alarming. Their brown, austere faces looked as though they were carved out of some hard wood, the wrinkles cut deep. They wore voluminous dark skirts, handkerchiefs tied round their heads, and they sat quite silent, nearly motionless. How pitiless they would be, those ancient ones, to a sinner of their own sex – say a thief – how fiercely they would punish her. Brrrrr! Let us not think of these things.
Pierre said: ‘What a life they must have, these people!’
I agreed: ‘Dreadful!’ looked away from the stone bench, drank my horrible coffee, and went outside. There was a girl, a maid of the inn perhaps, or a goose-girl, going in and out of the back door, carrying pails and tubs. She wore a white bodice so thin that one could plainly see the shape of her breasts, a dark skirt, her feet were bare, her head was small, set on a very long neck, her eyes slanted like Ishima’s – I watched her with an extraordinary pleasure because she was so slim and young and finely drawn. And because I imagined that when she glanced at me her eyes had the expression of some proud, wild thing – say a young lioness – instead of the usual stupid antagonism of one female looking at another.
I said to Pierre: ‘Oh, I do think that Hungarians can be lovely; they beat the Austrians hollow.’
He answered so indifferently: ‘Another type’, that I began to argue.
‘The Austrians are always trotting out their rotten old charm that everybody talks about. Hate people who do that. And they’re fat and female and rusé and all the rest.’
‘Oh!’ said Pierre, ‘and if you think that Hungarians aren’t rusé, my dear, zut! – they are the most rusé of the lot, except the Poles.’
I insisted: ‘In a different way . . . Now look at that girl; isn’t she lovely, lovely?’
‘Un beau corps,’ judged Pierre. ‘Come on, Francine, let’s get off if you are ready.’
I heard the apprehension in his voice and climbed into the car a little wearily. A grind . . . and we had left behind us that goose-girl out of a fairy tale against her background of blue distances quivering with heat.
I began to play my triumphant return to Hungary with money to pay Pierre’s debts. I saw myself sitting at the head of a long table handing little packets of notes to everyone concerned, with the stern countenance of a born business woman: ‘Will you sign this, please?’
Then I must have slept, and when I woke I’d begun to feel as if the flight had lasted for days, as though I could not remember a time when I hadn’t been sitting slightly cramped, a little sick, watching the country fly past and feeling the wind in my face.
Pierre turned and asked if I were tired or cold.
‘No, I’m all right . . . Are you going to drive? Well, don’t go too fast . . . don’t break our necks after all this.’
We left the flat country behind and there was a sheer drop on one side of the road. The darkness crept up, the wind was cold. Now I was perfectly sure that it was all a dream and could wait calmly for the moment of waking.
We flitted silently like ghosts between two rows of dark trees. I strained my eyes to see into the frightening mystery of the woods at night, then slept again and the car had stopped when I woke.
‘What is it?’
‘The frontier . . . keep still . . .’
An unexpected fuss at the frontier. There was a post. A number of men with rifles round a wood fire, an argument which became very loud and guttural. Our passports were produced: ‘Kommission – Kurrier.’
‘What is it, Pierre?’
He got out of the car without answering and followed one of the men into the shelter.
It was horrible waiting there in the night for what seemed hours, my eyes shut, wondering what jail would be like.
Then Pierre reappeared, still arguing, and got in beside me.
He muttered: ‘Je m’en fiche, mon vieux,’ and yelled to the chauffeur.
The car jumped forward like a spurred horse. I imagined for one thrilling moment that we would be fired on, and the nape of my neck curled itself up. But when I looked back over my shoulder I saw the knot of men by the light of the fire looking after us as if they were puzzled.
‘Frightened?’
‘No, only of being sent back. What was it? Had they been told to stop us?’
‘No, but nobody is supposed to pass. The frontier is shut, something has happened.’
I said: ‘What can it be, I wonder’, without the slightest interest.
‘Well,’ said Pierre, ‘here is Czechoslovakia, and good-bye Hungary!’
‘Good-bye, Hungary!’ Tears were in my eyes because I felt so tired, so deathly sick.
‘You’re awfully tired, aren’t you, Francine?’
‘A bit. I’d like to rest. Let’s stop soon. Where will we spend the night?’
‘At Presburg. We’re nearly there.’
I huddled into a corner of the car and shut my eyes.
It was late when we found a room in the Jewish quarter of the town. All the good hotels were full; and in the hardest, narrowest bed I have ever imagined I lay down and was instantly asleep.
Next morning something of the exhilaration had come back. We went out to breakfast and to buy maps. It had been decided that we would go to Prague and there sell the car, and then . . .
‘I want to go to Warsaw,’ announced Pierre.
I said dismayed: ‘Warsaw? but, my dear . . .’
The coffee was good, the rolls fresh; something in the air of the clean, German-looking little town had given me back my self-confidence.
I began to argue: ‘We must go to London . . . in London . . .’
‘Mon petit,’ said Pierre, lighting his pipe, ‘I don’t believe in your friends helping us. I know how naïve you are. Wait, and you will see what your famous friends are worth. You will be roulée from the beginning to the end. Let’s go to Warsaw. I believe I can arrange something from there; Francine, do what I say for once.’
I told him obstinately that I did not like Poles. He shrugged his shoulders.
We found the car and Franzi waiting at the hotel.
‘Off we go,’ said Pierre, cheerfully, ‘en route! Here’s the brandy flask.’
The road was vastly better, but I had no comforting sensation of speed, of showing a clean pair of heels. Now we seemed to be crawling, slowly and painfully, ant-like, across a flat, grey and menacing country. I pictured that dreary flatness stretching on and on for miles to the north of Russia, and shivered.
I kept repeating to myself: ‘I won’t go and be buried in Poland . . . I won’t go . . .
I don’t care . . . I will not . . .’
The wind was cold; it began to drizzle persistently.
‘Pierre we’re off the road, I’m sure. That woman put us wrong. This is only a cattle-track.’
It was. And time was wasted going backwards. Pierre cursed violently all the while. He had begun to be in a fever of anxiety to reach Prague.
The walls of the bedroom where we slept that night were covered with lurid pictures of Austrian soldiers dragging hapless Czechoslovakians into captivity. In the restaurant downstairs a pretty girl, wearing a black cape lined with vivid purple, sat talking to two loutish youths. She smoked cigarette after cigarette with pretty movements of her hands and arms and watched us with bright blue, curious eyes.
We drank a still wine, sweetish, at dinner. It went to my head and again I could tell myself that my existence was a dream. After all it mattered very little where we went. Warsaw, London . . . London, Warsaw . . . Words! Quite without the tremendous significance I had given them.
It was still raining when we reached Prague at last. We made the dreary round of the hotels; they were all full, there were beds in the bathrooms of the Hotel du Passage; it was an hour before we discovered a room in a small hotel in a dark, narrow street.
Pierre began to discuss the sudden return of King Karl to Hungary. We heard the news at the Passage.
That was the trouble at the frontier, of course.
I said indifferently – I was lying down – ‘Yes, probably.’
Karl – the Empress Zita – the Allies – Commission – the Whites – the Reds – Pierre himself . . . shadows! Marionnettes gesticulating on a badly lit stage, distracting me from the only reality in life . . . the terrible weight that bowed me down . . . the sickness that turned me cold and mounted up to cloud my brain.
Pierre advised me to have some strong coffee. He rang the bell and a short, fat waiter appeared who looked at me with that peculiar mixture of insolence, disdain, brutality and sentimentality only to be found amongst those of German extraction.
Then he departed to fetch the coffee.
It was an odd place, that hotel, full of stone passages and things. I lay vaguely wondering why Prague reminded me of witches . . . I read a book when I was a kid – The Witch of Prague. No. It reminded me of witches anyhow. Something dark, secret and grim.
‘I think Prague is a rum place,’ I told Pierre. ‘What’s that bell that keeps ringing next door?’
‘A cabaret, cinema perhaps . . . Listen, Frances, it’s just the best of luck for us, that business of Karl. Nobody will worry about me just now. Ishima will be far too busy voting with the majority . . . Sacré little Japanese!’
‘Probably,’ I agreed.
He asked me if I felt ill, suggested a doctor.
‘A Czech doctor, my God!’
I pulled the sheets over my head. I only wanted to be left alone, I told him.
‘Francine,’ said he gently, ‘don’t be a silly little girl. The doctors are good here if you want one.’
He put the rug over me: ‘Rest a bit while I go and see about the car. We’ll dine at the Passage and find a place for dancing afterwards. Yes?’
I emerged from under the sheets to smile because his voice sounded so wistful, poor Pierre.
About six that evening I felt suddenly better and began to dress.
Because I noticed at lunch that the grand chic at Prague seemed to be to wear black I groped in the trunk for something similar, powdered carefully, rouged my mouth, painted a beauty spot under my left eye.
I was looking at the result when Pierre came in.
‘My pretty Francine, wait a bit! I have something here to make you chic . . . but chic . . .’
He felt into his pocket, took out a long case, handed it to me.
‘Pierre!’
‘Nice hé?’
‘Where did you get them?’
He did not answer.
I looked from the pearls to his dark, amused face, and then I blushed – blushed terribly all over my face and neck. I shut the case and gave it back to him and said: ‘How much money have we got left?’ And he answered without looking at me: ‘Not much; the worst is this war-scare. Czechoslovakia is going to mobilize. It won’t be so easy to sell the car. We must sell it before we can move. Never mind, Francine.’
I said: ‘Never mind!’ Then I took the case, opened it, clasped the pearls round my neck. ‘If we’re going the whole hog, let’s go it. Come on.’
One has reactions, of course.
Difficult to go the whole hog, to leave respectability behind with an air, when one lies awake at four o’clock in the morning – thinking.
‘Francine, don’t cry . . . what is it?’
‘Nothing . . . Oh! do let me alone . . .’
When he tried to comfort me I turned away. He had suddenly become a dark stranger who was dragging me over the edge of a precipice . . .
It rained during the whole of the next week, and I spent most of the time in the hotel bedroom staring at the wallpaper. Towards evening I always felt better and would start to think with extraordinary lucidity of our future life in London or Paris – of unfortunate speculation and pearls – of a poker face and the affair of King Karl . . .
One day at the end of our second week in Prague Pierre arrived with two tickets which he threw on the bed: ‘There you are, to Liège, to London . . . I sold it and did not get much; I tell you.’ . . .
I spent an hour dressing for dinner that night. And it was a gay dinner.
‘Isn’t the chef d’orchestre like a penguin?’
‘Yes, ask him to play the Saltimbanques Valse.’
‘That old valse?’
‘Well, I like it . . . ask him . . . Listen, Pierre, have we still got the car?’
‘Till tomorrow.’
‘Well, go to the garage and get it. I’d like to drive like hell tonight . . . Wouldn’t you?’
He shrugged: ‘Why not?’
Once more and for the last time we were flying between two lines of dark trees, tops dancing madly in the high wind.
‘Faster! Faster! Make the damn thing go!’
We were doing a hundred.
I thought: he understands – began to choose the tree we would crash against and to scream with laughter at the old hag Fate because I was going to give her the slip.
‘Get on! . . . get on! . . .’
We slowed up.
‘You’re drunk, Frances,’ said Pierre severely.
I got out, stumbled, laughed stupidly – said: ‘Good-bye! Poor old car’, gathered up the last remnants of my dignity to walk into the hotel . . .
It was: ‘Nach London!’
Till September Petronella
There was a barrel organ playing at the corner of Torrington Square. It played ‘Destiny’ and ‘La Palome’ and ‘Le Rêve Passe’, all tunes I liked, and the wind was warm and kind not spiteful, which doesn’t often happen in London. I packed the striped dress that Estelle had helped me to choose, and the cheap white one that fitted well, and my best underclothes, feeling very happy while I was packing. A bit of a change, for that had not been one of my lucky summers.
I would tell myself it was the colour of the carpet or something about my room which was depressing me, but it wasn’t that. And it wasn’t anything to do with money either. I was making nearly five pounds a week – very good for me, and different from when I first started, when I was walking round trying to get work. No Hawkers, No Models, some of them put up, and you stand there, your hands cold and clammy, afraid to ring the bell. But I had got past that state; this depression had nothing to do with money.
I often wished I was like Estelle, this French girl who lived in the big room on the ground floor. She had everything so cut-and-dried, she walked the tightrope so beautifully, not even knowing she was walking it. I’d think about the talks we had, and her clothes and her scent and the way she did her hair, and that when I went into her room it didn’t seem like a Bloomsbury bed-sitting room –
and when it comes to Bloomsbury bed-sitting rooms I know what I’m talking about. No, it was like a room out of one of those long, romantic novels, six hundred and fifty pages of small print, translated from French or German or Hungarian or something – because few of the English ones have the exact feeling I mean. And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards – perhaps all your life, who knows? – surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies’ dresses and the gentlemen’s voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music, everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. ‘The house I was living in when I read that book,’ you think, or ‘This colour reminds me of that book.’
It was after Estelle left, telling me she was going to Paris and wasn’t sure whether she was coming back, that I struck a bad patch. Several of the people I was sitting to left London in June, but, instead of arranging for more work, I took long walks, zigzag, always the same way – Euston Road, Hampstead Road, Camden Town – though I hated those streets, which were like a grey nightmare in the sun. You saw so many old women, or women who seemed old, peering at the vegetables in the Camden Town market, looking at you with hatred, or blankly, as though they had forgotten your language, and talked another one. ‘My God,’ I would think, ‘I hope I never live to be old. Anyway, however old I get, I’ll never let my hair go grey. I’ll dye it black, red, any colour you like, but I’ll never let it go grey. I hate grey too much.’ Coming back from one of these walks the thought came to me suddenly, like a revelation, that I could kill myself any time I liked and so end it. After that I put a better face on things.
When Marston wrote and I told the landlord I was going away for a fortnight, he said ‘So there’s a good time coming for the ladies, is there? – a good time coming for the girls? About time too.’
Marston said, ‘You seem very perky, my dear. I hardly recognized you.’
I looked along the platform, but Julian had not come to meet me. There was only Marston, his long, white face and his pale-blue eyes, smiling.