She Who Was No More

by Pierre Boileau

  He shut his eyes for a second. There are thoughts which bring bad luck. The airplane flying the Atlantic—he’d no business to think of a thing like that… A red light. He was overtaking a huge truck that spat out a thick cloud of fumes. The driver didn’t leave him much room to pass, but Ravinel took a chance and accelerated. When he drew out in front of the truck, he suddenly realized he was right in the glare of the other’s headlights. From his cab, the driver might be able to see into the car. Ravinel put his foot down hard, but the car didn’t leap forward as it should have done. A bit of dirt in the feed line? It certainly seemed like it.

  Lucienne was quite unconscious of it all. She was dozing. In any case she never did react to the things that worried him. Strange how little feminine she was. Even when they made love… How had she ever become his mistress? Which of them had really chosen the other? At first she had taken no notice of him, behaved almost as if he wasn’t there. She had seemed only interested in Mireille and she had treated her more like a friend than a patient. They were the same age, those two.

  Had she sensed that their marriage stood on shaky foundations? Had she suddenly fallen for him? What had she found in him? He knew he wasn’t much to look at. Nor was he amusing. As a lover, he was no more than mediocre.

  On his side, he would never have dared touch her. She belonged to another world, refined, distinguished, cultured, the world which his father, the little black-coated provincial schoolmaster, had eyed from afar, with the respect of the poor. At first Ravinel had thought it no more than a woman’s caprice. A strange caprice. Brief, hasty intercourse, sometimes on a consultation room couch, within a yard of an enameled trolley on which stainless-steel instruments were laid out under a sheet of gauze. Sometimes she would take his blood pressure afterwards, as she was anxious about his heart. Anxious? No. Even that wasn’t certain by any means. For if at times she treated him as though she really minded, at others she dismissed his complaints quite casually, just brushing them aside with a smile. That was what was so maddening. She had him completely foxed. The most probable thing was…

  The most probable thing was that she’d had her eyes wide open right from the start. She had needed an accomplice, or rather a tool, perhaps, and had cast her net the moment she saw him. Love… That didn’t count. At least not what people ordinarily mean by the word. What had brought them together was not mutual attraction, but something residing in the deeper and darker recesses of the spirit. Was money the one thing that really mattered to her? No, it wasn’t money, not for its own sake, at all events. It was the power that went with it, the prestige, the right to command. She had to reign: it was an imperious necessity. And of course he had come under her sway at once.

  But that wasn’t all. There was also in Lucienne a sort of anxiety. Something so slight, so fugitive, that you could never put your finger on it. All the same, you knew it was there. The sense of insecurity that belongs to people who aren’t quite normal. Perhaps that’s what had drawn them together, for he wasn’t quite normal either, not normal in the sense others were—Larmingeat for instance. He lived like other men, he rubbed shoulders with other men, he even passed for a first-class traveler, but that was only an illusion…

  He was going up a steep hill, and the engine wouldn’t pull. No life in it at all. Certainly there was something wrong…

  What was he saying? Oh, yes—that he lived a bit to one side of things. Like an exile. He didn’t really belong. And she suffered from the same thing. Sometimes he even got the impression she was clinging to him, as though terrified. Was it possible they could ever live together? Did he really want it?

  He jammed on the brake, blinded by someone’s headlights. A car streaked by in a gust of air. Then the road was clear again, a yellow line running down the middle of it, the shoulders flanked by trees painted white head-high. Sometimes a falling leaf would look like a distant stone or hole in the road. Ravinel’s thoughts were going round and round in a circle. He had a cramp in his left foot and was longing for a cigarette.

  Lucienne crossed her legs, then carefully drew her coat over her knee. Ravinel had to make an effort to realize he had a dead body in the back of the car.

  ‘It would have been shorter by Tours.’

  Lucienne spoke without turning her head. He too looked straight ahead as he snapped back:

  ‘The road’s torn up between Angers and Tours. Besides, what difference does it make?’

  If she wanted an argument about it, she could have one! He was quite ready. She said nothing, however, merely pulling a map out of the glove compartment and studying it by the light from the dashboard. That irritated him too. Maps were a man’s province. Would he ever have thought of rummaging in her desk? As a matter of fact, he had never been to her flat. Somehow the opportunity seemed never to have presented itself. For that matter, they both led busy lives. In the daytime they might snatch an hour together at lunch, or he might call at the hospital and see her for a few minutes on the pretext of a consultation. Otherwise, it was she who came to the little house on the quay. It was there that they had worked out their plans.

  What did he really know about Lucienne? What did he know of her past? She didn’t open up easily. Once she had mentioned that her father had been a judge at Aix-en-Provence and that he had died during the war, unable to stand the hardships. Of her mother she had never spoken and, when he had tried to probe her the response had always been the same—a frown. Presumably she was still alive, but he was pretty certain Lucienne never saw her. Some family row, no doubt. At all events she never went back to Aix. Yet she obviously had some feeling for the South, since it was at Antibes that she wished to set up practice. No brothers or sisters. In her surgery there was a little photograph—at least there had been, but it had disappeared some time ago—the photograph of a very beautiful girl with fair hair and Scandinavian features. Later on he would inquire about her. After their marriage. How funny that sounded! Unreal. He simply couldn’t picture Lucienne and himself as a married couple. Come to think of it, they were both bachelor types. That was a queer thing to say, and he really couldn’t explain it. It was true all the same. They looked it. They both had the little fads and fancies that belong to a bachelor existence. And while he was extremely attached to his own, he hated hers. To start with, the perfume she used—some flower or other—which mingled badly with the animal smell of her skin. Her signet ring, which she fiddled with incessantly as she talked. It might have looked all right on a banker’s finger or a big industrialist’s. But on hers… Then there was the way she wolfed her food, and her always wanting her meat almost raw. Occasionally there was a touch of vulgarity in her movements or her speech. It didn’t often show through—she was too well brought up for that—but now and again she would come out with a coarse laugh or look at you with the effrontery of a fishwife. Even physically, there were things he found hard to put up with—her thick wrists and ankles, her flat chest. And when she was alone she smoked thin black cigarettes, a habit she’d picked up in Spain. And how they stank! By the way, what had she been doing in Spain, anyway? There was one thing you could say for Mireille: no mystery in her past…

  After La Flèche the country became more hilly. Sheets of mist lay in some of the hollows depositing fine droplets on the windshield. He had to take some of the hills in second. What filthy stuff it was, the mixture they sold nowadays as gas. No guts in it whatever, and it played hell with your engine.

  Half past ten…

  Not a soul stirring. They could have got out of the car and dug a grave by the side of the road—nobody would have stopped them… A dog in a ditch… No. He shouldn’t say a thing like that. It wasn’t fair to Mireille. She deserved better. With a sad tenderness he conjured up a picture of her. What a pity they hadn’t been of the same race. A little housewife so sure of herself, who loved frills and flounces, adored Technicolor films, and put cacti everywhere in tiny little pots. She thought herself superior to him, criticized his choice of ties and made fun of his bald
ness. She had never been able to make out why, on some days, he wandered gloomily about the house with a scowl on his face, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter with you, my precious?… Do you want to go to the movies?… If you’re bored here, you’ve only to say so.’

  No he wasn’t bored. It was something much worse than that. He was sick to death—that was the only way to put it. Sick of life, sick of everything. What’s more, he always would be. He knew that now. It was something fundamental, irremediable. Now that Mireille was dead, was anything changed?

  Perhaps… Perhaps later on, when they had settled down to a new life at Antibes…

  A vast plain stretched out on each side of the road. It made it seem as though the car were not advancing at all. With her gloved hand, Lucienne cleaned a patch of the window and gazed out at the monotonous landscape. Right in front, on the horizon, were the lights of Le Mans.

  ‘Cold?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  On the sexual side, things hadn’t gone any better with Mireille than with Lucienne. Possibly it was his own fault. Lack of experience. Or it had been his luck to come upon nothing but frigid women. Mireille had done her best to pretend, but he had never been taken in. She had remained completely unmoved, even when she had clutched at him with an ardor that was meant to be ecstatic. As for Lucienne, she had never bothered to pretend. Love-making left her cold, icy cold, if it didn’t positively irritate her. That was the difference between them. Mireille took her duties seriously, and it was a wife’s duty to respond in the flesh. Strange that she shouldn’t succeed. She was so feminine, so human, that there ought to have been a streak of sensuality in her somewhere.

  For his part, he could no longer take anything seriously. Or rather, what he could have taken seriously had no name: it was without form and void. Lucienne knew. He could tell that by the way she looked at him sometimes. And Mireille…

  Ravinel pulled himself up. After all he had killed Mireille. Or hadn’t he? That was just the point—he couldn’t bring himself to believe he had committed a crime. Crime had always seemed to him something monstrous. And it still did! To be a real criminal you had to be a savage, bloodthirsty brute. And he wasn’t in the least. He’d have been quite incapable of sticking a knife into anybody or even pressing a trigger. At Enghien there was a loaded revolver in his desk. It was the managing director, Davril, who had advised him to get one. When one’s constantly on the road, particularly at night… But at the end of a month he had slipped it into a drawer, where it had made grease spots on his papers. For he’d have been no more capable of using it than Mireille. Even less perhaps. As for shooting at her…

  No, his crime, if it was one, was negative, consisting of a whole chain of despicablenesses which he’d allowed himself to slide into through indifference. If a judge—a chap like Lucienne’s father—were to ask him what he’d done, he could in all good faith answer: nothing. And since he’d done nothing he regretted nothing. Repentance—that came to much the same thing. What was he to repent? Unless it was being made as he was, and that was meaningless. You can’t help the way you’re made.

  A signpost. Le Mans 1½ kilometers. Some big white buildings. Garages. Then the road passed under a steel bridge, after which it was flanked by low houses.

  ‘You’ll avoid the center, I suppose.’

  ‘No. That’s the shortest way.’

  It was nearly half past eleven, and people were pouring out of the movies. Wet pavements. Here and there a café still lit up. On the left, two policemen, wheeling their bicycles, were crossing a square. Then another suburb, whose streets were lit by gas. More low houses. Garages. Gas pumps. Leaving the cobblestones, they were once more out on the blacktop road. Another railway bridge, with a locomotive, shunting. A moving van passed, going in the opposite direction. Ravinel accelerated to seventy-five. In a few minutes they’d be in the Beauce. An easy road as far as Nogent-le-Rotrou.

  ‘There’s a car overtaking you,’ said Lucienne.

  ‘Yes. I’ve seen it.’

  The glare of its headlights seemed to fill the car with a golden dust, so thick that you were tempted to brush it aside with your hand. The car passed, cutting in too soon. A Peugeot. Half blinded, Ravinel swore. In no time the Peugeot had shot ahead growing visibly smaller every second. Then it rose up on the horizon, thrusting its two tusks of light into the sky. Couldn’t have been doing a kilometer less than a hundred and ten an hour. It was just at that moment that the engine spluttered, then faded out. Ravinel tried the starter, but it was no good. The car was still rolling and instinctively he drew across to the side of the road, put on the brake and switched off his headlights.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Lucienne asked aggressively.

  ‘Can’t you see? The engine’s conked out. Probably the carburetor.’

  ‘Clever of you!’

  As though he’d done it on purpose. And so close to Le Mans. At a place where there was quite a bit of traffic about even at this time of night. He got out of the car with a tight feeling in his chest. A sharp little breeze drifted through the leafless trees. Every sound carried with extraordinary distinctness. He could hear the buffers telescoping as the locomotive bumped into a line of trains, then its puffing as it slowly towed them away. A driver was hooting at every bend in the road. As he lifted the hood, Ravinel had the sensation of being hemmed in by people on every side.

  ‘Bring me the flashlight.’

  She brought it, peered under the hood at the hot engine smelling of oil and gasoline.

  ‘You’d better be quick.’

  But Ravinel had no need of advice. He got to work at once. He had to dismantle the carburetor—he felt sure that was where the trouble was. The important thing was not to lose the screws. They were small enough! And his and Lucienne’s whole future depended on them. Just one of those tiny bits of metal lost, and… Sweat broke out on his forehead and his eyes smarted. Sitting on the running board, he carefully laid the parts of the carburetor out in front of him. Lucienne paced up and down in the middle of the road.

  ‘You’d do better to help me.’

  ‘Perhaps I had. It might go a bit quicker. To think that—’

  ‘To think what?’

  ‘Don’t you realize that the first motorist who passes may ask what the trouble is?’

  ‘And if he does?’ He picked up the feed line.

  ‘He might want to lend a hand, and then…’

  He was busy blowing through the feed line to clear it. He blew so hard it made his temples throb, and that was all he could hear. When he stopped she was still speaking and he just caught the words:

  ‘…the police.’

  What the devil was she driveling about? Ravinel wiped his eyes and looked at her. She was afraid. Not the slightest doubt about it—she was scared stiff. She got her bag out of the car. He sprang to his feet and, with the feed line still between his lips, he mumbled:

  ‘Look here! You’re not going to clear out?’

  ‘Listen, you fool!’

  A car. Coming from Le Mans. It was on them before they knew where they were. In the glare of its headlights they felt absolutely naked.

  ‘In trouble?’ asked a cheery voice. ‘Anything serious?’

  They could just make out the outline of a large truck. The driver was leaning out of the cab, the glow of his cigarette plainly visible.

  ‘No,’ answered Ravinel. ‘It’s all right now, thanks.’

  ‘Because, if the little lady’d like a lift…’

  The man laughed and drove on. Lucienne slunk back into the car, racked by emotion. For his part Ravinel was so furious he’d almost forgotten his fear. She may often have treated him as though he were a boy, but that wasn’t the same thing as calling him a fool in that tone of voice.

  ‘You can keep a civil tongue in your head. In fact the best thing you can do is to keep your mouth shut altogether. If we’re in a tight spot it’s your doing just as much as mi
ne.’

  Had she really been intending to make off? To walk back to Le Mans, leaving him on the road? As though, by so doing, she could wash her hands of the whole affair!

  Lucienne said nothing. She was sulking. It was obvious from her attitude that she wasn’t going to lift a finger to help him. He could fend for himself. It wasn’t any too easy. To reassemble a carburetor in the dark, with only a flashlight which never threw the light quite where you wanted it. More than once he almost dropped a screw. But, strangely enough, his anger helped him. He had never felt so competent.

  At last he got back into his seat and pressed the starter. The engine started and turned over sweetly. He could have driven on then and there, but he didn’t. Out he got again, and, taking one of the cans out of the trunk he emptied it into the gas tank. Quite unnecessarily. It was only bravado. And he took his time about it too! With quite leisurely movements he put the empty can away, locked up the trunk, and got back into the car.

  It was half past twelve when he let in the clutch. He drove fast. Not so much on account of the delay as because of a new feeling inside him. He was not far from being delighted. Lucienne had been scared. Not as she had been in the bathroom earlier. This was quite different, real panic. Why? The risks were much the same all along. Anyhow, whatever the reason, something had suddenly changed in their relations. It was she who had quailed. And he wouldn’t let her forget it. Not that he would ever refer to it openly. He would just give her a meaning look when she spoke in her domineering voice.