She Who Was No More

by Pierre Boileau

  ‘Hand me that shoe.’

  As he took it, he had to choke a sob in the back of his throat. Lucienne put it back on Mireille’s foot.

  ‘The tub,’ she said. ‘It must be full enough.’

  Ravinel moved now like a sleepwalker. He turned off the taps and the sudden silence was abysmal. A distorted face was reflected back to him in the still rippling surface of the bath water. A bald head. Thick bushy eyebrows, slightly reddish. A little toothbrush mustache under a queer-shaped nose. An energetic face, almost brutal, which led people to think he was quite different from what he was. He had even been taken in by it himself. Only Lucienne had seen through it at the first glance.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she said.

  He started, and came back to her. Lucienne had pulled Mireille up into a sitting position and was trying to get off her coat. Mireille’s head wobbled from side to side.

  ‘Come and hold her.’

  Ravinel clenched his teeth and did as he was told, while Lucienne proceeded deftly to remove the coat.

  ‘Keep her upright.’

  Ravinel held his wife against him as though embracing her. It was ghastly. It was a relief when he was allowed to lay her back on the pillow again. He wiped his hands, breathing heavily. Lucienne folded the coat up carefully and took it into the dining room, putting it down by Mireille’s hat. Ravinel sat down. He had to.

  It was done. It was no longer possible to say to himself:

  ‘There’s still time to change our minds.’

  That thought had come to him several times. It had helped to hold him up. Perhaps… at the last moment… In fact, so long as it could be postponed it remained something merely imaginary. That was consoling. So long as it was merely imaginary it wasn’t true…

  It was true now.

  Lucienne came. She touched his hand.

  ‘I feel awful,’ he said. ‘I can’t help it. I’m doing my best.’

  ‘I’ll take her shoulders,’ she answered. ‘You take the legs.’

  He had to go through with it, or he’d never hold up his head again. Almost a matter of honor. He grasped Mireille’s ankles. And, as he lifted her, absurd phrases kept running through his head.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mireille. You won’t feel anything… You see, I can’t help myself… I swear I never wanted to do you any harm… For that matter, I’m a sick man myself, and it won’t be long before I’m carried off with a heart attack…’

  He was on the brink of tears. With her heel, Lucienne kicked open the bathroom door. She was as strong as any man. Besides, she was used to dealing with bodies.

  ‘Right. Lower her down. On the edge of the bath. You can leave the rest to me.’

  Ravinel drew back so precipitately that he bumped into the glass shelf and nearly knocked over the tumbler. Lucienne let Mireille’s legs slip into the water, then her whole body. Only a little water splashed onto the tiled floor.

  ‘Now for the andirons. Quick. The ones in the dining room fireplace.’

  Ravinel went off.

  ‘It’s over. It’s over. She’s dead…’

  The words kept throbbing inside his skull. He could no longer walk straight, and, in the dining room, he stopped to drink a large glass of wine. A locomotive whistled under the window. The slow train from Rennes, no doubt… A little soot had fallen on the andirons. Should he clean them?… No. No one would ever know…

  Carrying the andirons, he stopped in the bedroom, unable to take another step. Through the bathroom door he could see Lucienne stooping motionless over the bath. Her left arm was invisible, plunged in the water.

  ‘Put them down.’

  Ravinel could hardly recognize her voice. He dropped the andirons just inside the doorway and Lucienne stretched out with her free hand and took them. Upset as she undoubtedly was, she didn’t make a single useless movement.

  The andirons were to keep the body under the water. Ravinel lurched back into the bedroom and, burying his face in the pillow, gave vent to his pent-up feelings. Images kept coming up at him from the past: the first time he’d taken Mireille to see the little house at Enghien; the discussion as to where to put the wireless set; Mireille’s delight at the new Renault he had bought. Then other vaguer images—a motorboat at Antibes, a garden full of flowers, a palm tree…

  Lucienne had turned on the tap over the washbasin. Ravinel heard her put down the bottle of eau de cologne. She washed her hands and arms methodically as after an operation. She had been frightened all the same. Oh yes she had! Theories are all very well. It’s easy enough to hold human life cheap and talk cynically about the end justifying the means. But when it comes to the point… Death was death, just the same, even an easy, painless one, and you couldn’t laugh it off like that. No, he would never forget the look on Lucienne’s face when she’d turned round to pick up the andirons. An agonized look. A reassuring one—for him. For it brought her down to his level. They were partners now, accomplices, and she could never leave him. In a few months they could be married. Still there was plenty of time to think of that. They hadn’t yet worked out their plans for the future.

  Ravinel wiped his eyes, surprised that he could have wept so much. He sat up on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Lucienne.’

  ‘Yes? What is it?’

  She had recovered her normal everyday voice. He felt sure she was powdering her face and making up her mouth.

  ‘Suppose we went right through with it this evening?’

  Lucienne promptly appeared, her lipstick in her hand.

  ‘Suppose we—took her away?’ Ravinel went on.

  ‘Have you lost your head? After working everything out to the last detail—’

  ‘I’m longing to—to get it over.’

  Lucienne gave a last glance at the bathtub, switched off the light, and gently shut the door.

  ‘What about your alibi? You know very well the police may suspect you. Still more the insurance company. You’ve got to be seen, and by plenty of witnesses. Tonight, tomorrow, and the day after.’

  ‘I know,’ he said dejectedly.

  ‘Come on, darling. Pull yourself together. The worst’s over: you mustn’t give way now.’

  She stroked his cheek. Her fingers smelled of eau de cologne. He rose to his feet, leaning on her shoulder.

  ‘You’re right. So I shan’t be seeing you till—till Friday.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’ve got the hospital, you know. Besides, where could we meet? Not here!’

  ‘I should think not!’

  ‘And then—this isn’t the moment for us to be seen about together. It might spoil everything, and it would be childish to take a risk like that.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow, then. Eight o’clock?’

  ‘Eight o’clock on the Quai de l’Île Gloriette. As we arranged. And let’s hope it’s a nasty night like this one.’

  She went and fetched his things, his shoes, his tie, collar. Finally she helped him on with his overcoat.

  ‘What’ll you do with yourself during these two days, my poor Fernand?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must have some customers to see in the neighborhood.’

  ‘There are always customers to see.’

  ‘Is your bag in the car? Sure you’ve packed everything? Razor? Toothbrush?’

  ‘Yes. Everything.’

  ‘All right. Let’s go. You can drop me at the Place du Commerce.’

  She carefully closed the doors, double-locking the front door, while he got the car out of the garage. The street lights seemed to be shining through layers of gauze. The fog was tepid, with a muddy smell. From the direction of the river came the sound of a diesel engine which kept misfiring. Lucienne got into the car beside Ravinel. He jerked the gears in, backed out, and stopped by the curb. Then he went back to the garage, shut the sliding door, fumbled irritably with the lock. He looked at the house, turning up his coat collar.

  ‘We’re off.’

  The car moved forward slowly, pushi
ng its way through the fog, which floated away on either side in straggling yellow trails and which stuck to the windshield, despite the efforts of the indefatigable wiper. A locomotive went by, disappearing almost at once, but leaving a track from which the fog had for a moment been swept and in which the rails glistened brightly.

  In the Place du Commerce stood a row of lighted trolleys.

  ‘You can drop me here. Nobody’ll see me.’

  She leaned over and kissed him on the temple.

  ‘Now don’t do anything silly. Keep your head. You know it had to be done.’

  She slammed the door and disappeared into the fog. Ravinel was alone, his hands nervously clutching the steering wheel. He was convinced that this fog… It couldn’t be an accident. It had a precise meaning.

  There he was, he, Ravinel, sitting in a little metal box, and it was as though he were appearing before the Judgment Seat. He could see himself with his great bushy eyebrows. Fernand Ravinel. He wasn’t really a bad chap at bottom. But there he was with his hands stretched out in front of him groping like a blind man. Through existence. Through eternity—through an eternal fog, at any rate. Nothing to be seen anywhere except a few shadowy figures. Deceptive figures. Mireille’s, for instance.

  Fog. There was no end to it. The sun would never shine again. He was convinced of that. He was in a land which had no frontier and which he’d never get out of. He was made of the same stuff himself. A wandering soul, a phantom. He had often been tormented by that idea—that he was nothing more than a phantom…

  He let in the clutch and went round the Place du Commerce in bottom gear. Blurred figures were visible through the misty windows of the cafés. Lights. Lights everywhere. That’s what Ravinel needed—light, and lots of it, enough to fill his carcass which seemed to hang loosely about him. He drew up at the Brasserie de la Fosse and went through the revolving door on the heels of a fair-haired girl who was laughing. Inside, he found himself in another fog, that of pipe and cigarette smoke, which lay in wisps between the faces and eddied round a tray of bottles which a waiter was carrying shoulder high.

  The waiter was hailed on every side.

  ‘What about that brandy I ordered?’

  Coins clinked on the tables and on the cash desk, where a cash register worked incessantly. Someone ordered coffee for three.

  ‘Three filtres?’

  ‘Yes. Three.’

  Balls rolled across the billiard table, colliding gently, just audible above the din. What a din! But Ravinel needed that too, for it was the sound of life. He found a seat in a corner, sat down and relaxed.

  I’ve got here, he thought.

  His hands rested on the table in front of him. Beside him was a square ashtray on each side of which was the word Byrrh in brown letters. Just an advertisement. Reassuring, though. A solid, comforting, everyday thing, pleasant to touch.

  ‘Monsieur?’ The waiter bent down with a mixture of deference and friendliness. Ravinel had a sudden idea.

  ‘Some punch,’ he answered. ‘A large glass.’

  ‘Very good, Monsieur.’

  Little by little Ravinel forgot the night’s work and the house on the quay. He was warm here. He smoked a cigarette. It smelt nice. The waiter was busy mixing his drink. His movements were careful, expert. A little more rum. Sugar. And the next moment the liquid was ablaze. A beautiful flame seemed to come spontaneously out of the air and hover over the punch. First it was blue, then orange. It was a delight to the eye. It reminded him of a calendar whose gorgeous colors he had admired as a little boy.

  He drank, sip by sip, and the warm potent liquid went down his gullet like a river of gold. The sun rose again, banishing the shadows, the fears, the scruples, the horrors. After all he had a right to live a full, varied life, and he wasn’t accountable to anyone. He felt as if he had at last shaken off something which for a long time had been suffocating him. For the first time, he was able to look straight into the eyes of that other Ravinel, the one that looked back at him from the mirror. Thirty-eight. His face, however, looked old already. Yet he hadn’t really begun to live. Not really. Was it too late? Certainly not. Why should it be?

  ‘Waiter! The same again. And bring me a timetable.’

  Ravinel fished a postcard out of his pocket. Naturally it was Lucienne’s idea that he should send a line to Mireille. I’ll be returning Saturday morning… He shook his fountain pen. The waiter came back.

  ‘By the way, what’s the date?’

  ‘The fourth…’

  ‘Of course. How silly of me to forget. I’ve been writing it all day long. You wouldn’t have a stamp, I suppose?’

  The timetable was dirty and dog-eared, but Ravinel was beyond being disgusted by such things. He turned the pages over till he came to the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée line.

  Dijon, Lyon, the Rhône valley. The Riviera Express. His fingers moved down the list of stations. Antibes 7:44. This train went right up the coast to the Italian frontier and beyond. He turned over the pages. More trains to Italy. Through the Simplon or the Mont Cenis. He could almost see them as he gazed into his cigarette smoke—long trains with dark blue sleeping cars and dining cars. He could see them rumbling with a leisurely rhythm through a clear, bright, starry night, a night in which there was no shame…

  The punch left an aftertaste of caramel in his mouth. His mind was full of distant travel.

  ‘We’re closing now, Monsieur.’

  It was now Ravinel’s turn to throw some coins onto the table. He wouldn’t take the change. With a lordly sweep of his arm he brushed aside the waiter, brushed aside the past, and dived at the revolving doors, which for a moment caught him in their arms and discharged him on the pavement. There he stopped for a moment, leaning against the wall. His thoughts were in a turmoil. For no reason at all a word came to his lips. Tipperary. Something the English have a song about. What on earth would it mean?

  THREE

  Only a day and a half to wait. Only a day. And now only a matter of hours. Ravinel had expected the wait to be terrible, but it hadn’t been. Not in the least. Though, in a way, it had been worse—interminable and dreary. Time seemed to have lost its sense of proportion. Someone starting to do a five-year sentence might feel like that about time. And if it was a life sentence… But Ravinel banished the thought. Why should those words keep teasing him like an obstinate fly?

  He drank a lot. Not to attract attention. Nor to get drunk. Simply to make the time pass a bit quicker. It’s extraordinary how quickly an hour can slip away between two glasses of brandy. You don’t have to think of anything particularly interesting—with the most commonplace details it’s just the same. The hotel he’d stopped at last night, for instance. An awful bed. Still more awful the coffee in the morning. People coming and going all night long, and trains whistling. He ought to have left Nantes. Gone on a trip, to Redon for instance, or Anceny. He had been unable to leave, however. Each morning he had woken up in the wrong frame of mind. Everything seemed sharp and crystal clear—and utterly discouraging. Weighing his chances, they appeared so small that it simply wasn’t worth while putting up a struggle. It wasn’t till ten o’clock that confidence suddenly returned. A glow of light that made everything look different, the pros as well as the cons. By the time he barged into the Café Français, he was in a different mood altogether and could greet his friends breezily. There were always two or three of them there drinking coffee laced with rum.

  ‘Hallo, Fernand!’

  ‘I say! You’re looking queer…’

  So his looks betrayed something. Not much, though. It was easy to invent a reason. Toothache. A bad night.

  ‘I had one last year,’ said Tamisier. ‘A molar. God! What pain!… I could have thrown myself out of the window.’

  Ravinel listened gravely. Really, it was astonishingly easy to lie. You just said you had toothache, and the next minute you almost believed it yourself. With Mireille, for example, the other evening… Other evening indeed! Last night, to be exact! Impo
ssible! It seemed ages ago.

  No. It wasn’t merely a question of time. It was more complicated than that. You’d suddenly become another man leading another life. Like an actor. With this difference, that when the curtain falls the actor is back where he was. Whereas…

  ‘What’s this new reel of yours like? The Rotor. Is there anything in it? I saw an ad for it in the Pêche Illustrée.’

  ‘It’s not bad. Not bad at all. Particularly for sea fishing.’

  That was the day after. A November morning with wet pavements and a pallid sun trying to shine through the fog. From time to time a streetcar swept round the bend just outside the café, its wheels screeching against the rails. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound, however—at least not to Ravinel’s ear.

  ‘All well at home?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  Was that a lie? Not really. It all depended on who was speaking, the old man or the new.

  ‘Not much of a life,’ remarked Belloeil. ‘Always on the road. Haven’t you ever wanted to change to the Paris area?’

  ‘No. In any case it’s the territory of the most senior travelers. Besides, I get a much better turnover here.’

  ‘For my part,’ said Tamisier, ‘I’ve never been able to make out how you came to choose a job like that. With your education.’

  And he explained to Belloeil that Ravinel had taken a degree in law. But how could the latter explain something he’d never understood himself? Was it just that everything to do with water had an irresistible attraction for him?

  ‘Still hurting?’ asked Belloeil.

  ‘A jab now and again.’

  Water and poetry, yes. For there is poetry in instruments that are beautifully made, perfectly balanced and highly polished. A bit childish, no doubt. A sign that he’d never grown up. Perhaps he hadn’t. But why should he want to? To turn into a Belloeil, selling shirts and ties and steadily pickling himself in alcohol? Slowly and patiently. Without hope.

  So many people in the world! All anchored by invisible chains to their own particular hole and corner. Is there any point in telling them you despise them because you yourself belong to another race, because you’re a nomad, because you sell airy playthings, lovingly displaying your fishhooks and flies on your customer’s counter? It’s a job, of course, like everyone else’s. Only it’s different. It has affinities with painting and literature. Difficult to explain. But there’s no getting away from the fact that fishing is an escape.