by Jean Rhys
The second one said, ‘Very cold weather. Madam,’ he said, winking at the first one.
They went off and I started after them. They must be frozen. Shall I call to them and ask them in to have some coffee essence? They might warm the place.
But before they got to the garden gate – ‘Rolvenden’ is painted on it – I saw that they were shaking with laughter. Silent, smothered laughter – never, even with them, a good hearty shout or curse, just this silent, sly, shy laughter. I can imagine what they would have said about me if I had asked them indoors.
That’s an exaggeration. They don’t think or say anything that I would imagine they would think or say. Speak for yourself and no falsities. There are enough falsities; enough harm has been done.
For all that was left of the afternoon I carried scuttles of coal from the bin outside the kitchen to the garage, which can be locked, and the house watched me haughtily, seeing me as I really am. And once or twice I looked back at it and thought that maybe I too saw it as it really was. But it will certainly defeat me, for it has one great quality – it is very cunning. It knows how to hide its hate under a hypocrite’s mask – again a beige mask, of course – for all here is beige that can be beige, paint, carpets, curtains, upholstery, bedspreads. Everything wears this neutral mask – the village, the people, the sky, even the trees have not escaped.
But before I had half-emptied the bin I felt as tired as if I had walked fifty miles – tired and in utter despair. This bath will always be a ditch to me now and a dirty ditch at that. I was too tired to eat but went up to bed with a beer-bottle filled with hot water to keep me warm.
All the beds are cold, narrow and hard. There are three bedrooms. Photographs of Greek temples – I suppose they are temples, pillars anyway – decorate the wall of this one. There is a cheap dressing-table with a glass that won’t stay put, a wardrobe to match the dressing-table and a straightbacked chair. Here too I have put bolsters along the window-sills, because I remember how well they kept out the cold in Vienna. Slowly I grow calmer, and then quite calm. I know that the second stage of loneliness is over and the bad moment is past.
Looking at the bolsters and remembering the piles of yellow-white snow and that statue of the Holy Ghost. ‘Clouds in stone,’ said André. ‘Very German! Like the insides of a turkey.’ Another time he said ‘The legs are the most noble, beautiful, harmonious and interesting part of the human body.’ I said No, I didn’t agree. We argued sitting at a table in the Parisien with bottles of German champagne before us. But it was not chic to drink it. Now and again you foamed up your glass with one of those wooden instruments they had and then pretended to sip. I can see us sitting there and I can see my astrakhan coat and the dress I was wearing, but it is not myself inside it. Everything is sharp, bright, clear-cut – a little smaller than life, perhaps, and the voices coming from some way off, but very clear. It is ‘Rolvenden’ that is behind me in the mist.
In the bedroom of the flat in the Razumoffskygasse there were low coffee tables, Bohemian glass, a big picture of Franz Josef and smaller pictures on either side of General and Madame von Marken. Pierre came in and said ‘Bravo’ when he saw me in my new black dress. There was a smell of lilac when you got out into the street, of lilac, of drains and of the past. Yes, that’s what Vienna smelt of then . . .
2. The Sword Dance and the Love Dance
Every fortnight the officers of the Japanese Commission entertained their following at Sacher’s Hotel. The Japanese were very dependent on their following, for not one of them could speak all three of the necessary languages – French, English, German. There were perpetual arguments over the exact translation of documents. They were afraid of not being as tactful as the representatives of an Asiatic power ought to be, or of voting with the minority instead of the majority – that would have been the end of them in Tokyo. So Colonel Hato had his secretary and confidential adviser – that was André – and Lieutenant-Colonel Matsu had his – that was Pierre. Then there were four other officers (at first – the number increased by leaps and bounds later on), a naval attaché, the typists, who had been carefully chosen by Matsu in Paris and were all very easy on the eye though by no means all of them were efficient according to Pierre, a Hungarian interpreter, and various other hangers-on.
At the end of the long, elaborate meal some of the guests would leave and the rest of us would go into Matsu’s sitting-room next door – high, silk-curtained windows, gilt furniture, shining mirrors. Then bottles of Tokay and kümmel appeared and the Japanese mask dropped. Then photographs would be produced and handed round.
‘This is Madame Yoshi.’
‘How pretty she is!’
‘She’s wearing European clothes.’
‘Oh, doesn’t she look smiling and happy?’
‘Of course she is smiling,’ Captain Yoshi said – rather grimly, I thought – ‘Madame Yoshi is a most fortunate woman. Madame Yoshi knows that she is a most fortunate woman.’
Matsu’s photographs were of his little son and of his three daughters, whose names meant Early Rising, Order and Morning Sun. He had bought them each a typewriter as a present. He never told us the son’s name, or what present was destined for him. Too sacred?
Captain Oyazu had no photographs, but in next to no time he could transform the evening paper into a frog which looked as if it might start hopping at any moment, and he smiled in a pleased, childlike way when you admired it.
On this particular evening Colonel Hato and Oyazu left after the first glass of Tokay, and as soon as they had gone Yoshi began to dance.
Yoshi was the tallest, handsomest and best-dressed of the Japanese officers and he spoke French and German better than any of the others. First he danced the sword dance, using umbrellas instead of swords, and then what I suppose was a love dance, for, turning his feet out at right angles and holding an umbrella upright, he shuffled past us, looking at the women of the party very slanting-eyed and mocking.
But Simone, who was the prettiest of the typists and only eighteen years of age, answered that challenge at once. She danced opposite him with her hands on her hips, laughing, imitating exactly every step he made, and after a bit of this the strain and defiance went out of his face. He pulled her to him and began a clumsy foxtrot. André played ‘Dardanella’ for them on the piano.
When ‘Dardanella’ was finished Matsu announced, ‘I will now play you a Japanese song.’
He played it with one finger, striking the notes carefully and gently, with a sad, absorbed, intent expression.
He said – he was the one who spoke English – ‘That is a sleep song.’
Matsu had spent a fortnight in London and for a whole day of it he had been lost in the Inner Circle. ‘When I came out it was very dark and cold. I grew frightened and sad.’ (He was in London in November.)
After the lullaby he went off into a long, monotonous succession of notes, as if he were trying to make a pattern of the keys, black and white. There was music in him somewhere – he touched the piano so gently.
Yoshi and Simone were sitting at a table at the far end of the room. The others were gossiping about Hato. There was always a new story going about him. He was the one who loathed white people and said so, maintaining that contact with them would bring nothing but misfortune to Japan. He was the one who, safe in his bedroom, André said, would at once take off his European clothes, saying that they made him feel unclean, and put on a kimono and slippers with hisses of relief.
He was a small, thin man, much older than any of the others. Really very old, we thought, quite gaga. He had only one eye – he had lost the other in the Russo-Japanese War, and it had not been dolled up, either. On social occasions he would sit bolt upright, silent, staring into the distance.
‘What can he be thinking of, André?’
André said, ‘The poor devil is supposed to speak French. And he can’t. I should say that gives him enough to think about.’
But he, too, liked music. His favourite song was ‘Marjolaine�
�. ‘Encore “Marjolaine”,’ he would shout. (Si gracile, si fragile . . .) ‘Encore, encore “Marjolaine”.’
When they had finished with Hato, Odette, another of the typists, began to tell us what she thought about Viennese clothes. She said that they were pretty but they had no real chic. ‘When I went back to Paris on leave last month Maman told me, “You look like a little provincial.” Maman is thirty-nine but one would say twenty-five. She cried like a Magdalene when I left –’
André interrupted, ‘My God, what’s happening over there?’
Yoshi was sprawled on the floor, the table and the bottle of wine were upset. He got up and brushed his clothes down, though without smiling or looking at us. André rushed forward and picked up the table and the bottle. Simone said, ‘Oh, do excuse me. I’m such a clumsy girl. I’ve always been like that. You’ve no idea – the trouble I get into because –’
Soon afterwards we said good night and were out in the lilac-scented street. After we got round the first corner Simone began to laugh. She had held it in like a good one, but now it had to come out.
‘How did it happen, Simone?’ André said at last.
Simone said, ‘I don’t know how it happened. He was practising kissing the hand and I’d had enough of it and tried to pull away. He held on and crashed into the table, and down he went. I expect he’d had too much to drink. Oh, his face when he fell! Aren’t they funny? And those dances with the umbrellas!’
Off she went again.
Pierre said, ‘I hope he won’t bear you any malice Simone. I’d hate to be somebody the Japanese bore malice against.’
‘Not he,’ Simone said. ‘He won’t bear any malice against me, poor boy.’
None of us thought of taking cabs home that night. Perhaps there was a moon. Perhaps the streets were lovelier or more deserted than usual. Then there was that smell of lilac and of the past. Vienna still smelt very strongly of the past. We walked along, keeping rather close together.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he looked as if he were telling you all his secrets.’
‘He was,’ Simone said, ‘he was. Do you know what he was saying? He was saying how much he admires the Germans. He said they’ll soon have the best army in Europe, and that they’ll dominate it in a few years.’
‘No bouquet for the French?’ André asked, laughing. ‘And think how I sweat, translating their idiotic ideas into diplomatic language!’
Simone answered seriously, ‘But he did say something about the French. He said the French love women too much. He said only the Germans know how to treat women. The Germans and the English think the same way about women, he said, but the French think differently. He said the English and the French together won’t last another year, and that they are splitting up already.’
Pierre said, ‘Oh, he’s found that out, has he? Not much they don’t find out.’
We walked on.
Odette said in a sullen voice, ‘I’m not Anglophile, me. And why do all their songs sound like hymns?’
‘I like them,’ Simone said happily. ‘Oh, I like some of those boys. Their clothes are so chic and they can be very nice. I like them. I like everything – everybody.’ She spread her arms wide open.
‘And then you wake up,’ I thought.
‘What beautiful enthusiasm, Simone!’ said André.
Odette said, ‘It’s true that the English have droll ideas. The other day I was talking to Captain—. You know the one, the one with the long nose and the monocle. And he said, “I’ve just seen an amazingly pretty woman –” Then he stopped and went as red as fire. So out of spite I pretended I hadn’t heard; I made him repeat it. “I’ve just seen rather an attractive person,” he said, “in the Kärntnerstrasse.” Why should he have to blush like that, when he says the word woman? Is it a dirty word in English?’
‘Because he’s an idiot,’ Pierre said, ‘and so are you a little idiot, Odette.’
‘All the same,’ André said, ‘there’s something in it. “Ma femme”, you say; “Meine Frau”, you say. But what would happen if you said “May I introduce my woman, Mrs Colonel?”’
‘It depends on Mrs Colonel, but I shouldn’t risk it,’ I said.
‘I used to mix up the words myself when I first learnt English,’ André remarked. ‘That’s how I know the difference is very important. Also there’s lady and girl. Very complicated.’
Of course we all knew that there were a lot of sly jokes, misunderstandings, cartoons and so on, about the British in Vienna. It was not altogether their fault – they were severely handicapped. Love affairs with Viennese girls were very much discouraged, so when they occurred they were carried on cautiously and often ended brutally. On the other hand, ‘great friendships’ with boys were winked at – even with the boys who at one café were to be found heavily made up and dressed in women’s evening clothes. But everybody said that you ought to see them in Berlin; Vienna wasn’t their home town.
André said, ‘I bet if they knew in Tokyo what Yoshi told Simone there’d be trouble. They’re not orthodox, these confidences.’
‘No need for Tokyo,’ Pierre said. ‘You’ve only got to tell Hato. Then Yoshi would have to commit hara-kiri. Hato detests him.’
‘Wouldn’t that be a feather in Hato’s cap?’ I said.
And we all knew that not one of us would stick that feather in Hato’s cap. He hated us, so we hated him – it’s easy.
We had nearly reached the hotel where the girls were staying.
‘Did he really say that, Simone,’ asked André. ‘About the English and the French splitting up, and the next war?’
‘He did, I assure you,’ said Simone, ‘he did. He said he gave it ten to fifteen years, and after that Germany would probably dominate Europe. He said it would happen because the English and the French don’t trust each other and can’t stick together and that’s the only thing that might stop it.’
‘Ten to fifteen years is a long time,’ Odette said.
‘And Japan?’ said Pierre. ‘And beautiful Nippon? Banzai Nippon!’
‘He didn’t say anything about Japan,’ said Simone, ‘now I come to think of it. Not a word about Nippon.’
We said good night to the girls. We didn’t talk for a bit. Then André said, ‘The Japanese! They are not to be taken seriously. What can they possibly know about it?’
Yes, I can remember all my dresses, except the one on the chair beside me, the one I wore when I was walking on the cliffs yesterday. Yesterday – when was yesterday? . . .
I had a striped taffeta dress, with velvet flowers tucked into the tight waistband. (And the waistband was round the waist, whatever the English fashion was then.) I had a white satin dress, very slick and smooth, the prettiest of the lot but the cheapest. Round the throat there were coloured stones imitating a necklace. I had a black satin dress with three flounces bordered with green, hand-sewn. With this dress I had two sashes to wear, each as elaborate as a Japanese obi. One was black, boned so that it made my waist look very small; the other was green, to match the borders of the flounces. I had a white muslin dress that washed like a rag, and a blue one too, made just the same. Those were my favourites. Washed and ironed like rags, they did, and always came up as fresh as daisies. I had a dirndl, and a check dress. I had a blue serge dress, the bodice fitting closely but the skirt wide and full. Its sleeves were loose, embroidered in gay colours and finished with a tassel. I had a classic English tailleur, but I always hated that. I had a yellow and blue dress to wear when I wanted to lie down, when I was tired. It was long and loose, the neck and sleeves bordered with blue. It was like cornfields and the sky, and looking at it made you feel happy, made you feel free. And thinking of it I am free again, knowing that nobody can stop me thinking, thinking of my dresses, or mirrors and pictures, of stones and clouds and mountains and the days that wait for you round the corner to be lived again. Riding round and round the Inner Circle, but unlike Matsu I ride knowing that it will be dark and cold when I come out, that it will be Novembe
r, and that I shall be a savage person – a real Carib.
‘But Caribs live under different skies, by a different sea. ‘They run and hide when they see anybody,’ Nicholas said. Perhaps I shall do that too.
3. Carib Quarter
Nicholas was the overseer of Temps Perdi, an estate near the Carib Quarter. Temps Perdi is Creole patois and does not mean, poetically, lost or forgotten time, but, matter-of-factly, wasted time, lost labour. There are places which are supposed to be hostile to human beings and to know how to defend themselves. When I was a child it used to be said that this island was one of them. You are getting along fine and then a hurricane comes, or a disease of the crops that nobody can cure, and there you are – more West Indian ruins and labour lost. It has been going on for more than three hundred years – yes, it’s more than three hundred years ago that somebody carved ‘Temps Perdi’ on a tree near by, they say.
The estate house had been empty for so long that a centipede fell out of a book when I opened it. Everything had run wild, but there was still hibiscus growing by the stone garden walls and butterflies made love over the thorny bougainvillea. Every morning Myra, Nicholas’s daughter, put little earthenware bowls of fresh flowers along the low partition which separated the veranda from the sitting-room. From the veranda we could see Guadeloupe, the Saints and Marie Galante; sun on dark trees . . .
But the white-cedars at the end of the garden – the lowest about eighty feet high – had dropped their leaves and were covered with flowers, white flowers very faintly tinged with pink, so light and fragile that they fell with the first high wind and were blown away as soon as they fell. There used to be a famous Creole song about the white-cedar flowers but I can’t remember it. ‘Here today and gone tomorrow’ – something like that, it must be.
‘There is nothing to see in the Carib Quarter,’ Nicholas insisted. He had a handsome Negro face, a big chest, a deep, booming voice.
‘These people,’ he said, ‘don’t even live near together. Their houses are each far away from the other, and all hidden in the bush. There is nothing to see in Salybia. Besides, the new road only goes as far as the river. After that you’ll have to ride. It will take a couple of hours or so.’