At his final words Marie grasped the situation in a flash. Claudine! She dashed down the staircase, snatched the receiver from Jean’s hands and cried out, in anger and in pain: ‘What has she taken? For heaven’s sake look in her room!’
But Claudine’s husband had hung up, and all she heard was a slight crackling on the line. Jean said: ‘He doesn’t know what she’s taken, but he’s called the doctor – he’ll know. When Armand came home yesterday evening he thought she was asleep. He went to bed and didn’t realise until this morning that her sleeping wasn’t normal. He wasted time trying to wake her up … called the doctor first, and then us, straight away.’
Marie interrupted: ‘When’s the next train to Paris?’
‘At half-past, but you won’t catch it, my poor love, you should wait for the …’
‘I will catch it.’
Marie rushed up the stairs, pulled her overcoat over her nightdress, put on her shoes. Picking up a small suitcase that was still in the bedroom, she threw in some underwear and a dress, and checked in her bag that she had enough money for the journey.
‘I’ll call you from Paris,’ she said.
And she ran all the way to the station.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHE TOOK HER SEAT without noticing where it was situated, which carriage it was in. Little by little, she recovered her breath.
Everything was bathed in light – meadows, factories, stations, villages – but she didn’t look out. What was the point of all this rush, she wondered: this haste, this dash to the station? Whatever had happened to Claudine, it was too late to do anything about it now. ‘You won’t abandon me completely, will you, Marie? Answer me, please!’ In a sudden movement she pressed her head against the train window, letting her eyes wander but not seeing anything: she didn’t even register the way her forehead bumped against the glass.
She hadn’t brought any cigarettes, and a need for the taste of smoke engulfed her to the point of pain. She needed to feel that slight burning in the throat as the puffs slid down; more seriously, she needed a dose of nicotine in her blood.
It occurred to her that since she had brought some underwear and a dress, she could go and quickly get dressed in the lavatory; it would also be a relief to clean her teeth. But she didn’t move, she just pulled the folds of her coat more tightly over her knees. What had Claudine taken? Armand hadn’t a clue, but they must surely know by now.
Did it really matter whether she had taken this or that? Yes, it did. This is the way women always do it – poison, gas, or drowning: few have the courage to use a revolver. In the end, few women have the courage to live …
Marie felt a silent anger rising up from the very depths of her outrage. Suicide in the face of problems, or suicide in the face of great distress … Refusing to struggle, refusing to be alone, refusing to suffer: it’s all refusal, all along the way! When women suffer, when they are hurt, what do they do? Cut their losses, that’s what. A cowardly flight towards peace, towards annihilation … Is there nothing to stop them, no quality independent of all others, that makes each person a unique individual, that should always prevent people from killing themselves? A very precious quality that should be carried forward, like a priest waving incense?
Marie turned back towards the window. The landscape was rushing past, moving quickly away from the gaze of this woman with her broad, hard forehead, her wide-open, fiery eyes. Intense thoughts, precise as commands, filled with determination as well as with anger, hammered at her mind and at her heart. ‘You must commit. Right up to the last minute you must struggle against the enemy, against death; you must struggle until it takes you by force and you have to surrender! The crime is to give in. You must not desert; you must be on the side of life.’
THIS WAS THE POINT that Claudine, in her desperation and hopelessness, had reached. Marie thought of the wretched little face she loved so much, of her hesitant walk; she thought of that fine sunny morning when Claudine had complained of feeling cold and Marie had lit a fire. Marie was no longer reflecting; just as she had dashed down the stairs in her desperate need to catch that train, to be by her side, she now had only one thought, only one desire. She closed her eyes, burning with tears. Why doesn’t the train go faster, faster, faster? She wants to feel that hot little body beneath her fingers; she wants to see those child’s breasts rise up again …
A door opened, and someone walked across the wide vehicle; like all trains on the northern network, it had no corridor. There was a slight stirring, and one or two people got to their feet. The train was coming to a halt. Even those who were not getting off moved around, standing in front of windows and opening them, looking at the station. Marie could hold out no longer. She leaned towards a fellow traveller and, with excessive politeness, asked him for a cigarette. He gave her one and lit it. ‘It’s no fun travelling alone,’ he said. ‘Much nicer to be able to talk to someone.’ Seeing that Marie had retreated into herself, smoking nervously, he dared say no more.
The train set off again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ARMAND AND THE DOCTOR turn round as Marie enters the bedroom but she moves straight to the foot of the bed without a word. She was expecting to see a ghostly pallor, but only Claudine’s forehead is pale: her cheeks are dark red, almost violet. She is lying on her back, half-naked. She does not move, but Marie can tell that she is alive.
‘WE’VE BEEN WORKING on her for two hours,’ Armand says desperately.
‘She’s in a comatose sleep,’ says the doctor in a matter-of-fact voice.
Marie sees the basin full of water, the wet towel, the broken ampoules, the syringe leaning against its box, needle in the air. She takes these things in quickly, then looks at Claudine, and finally back at the doctor: she wants to gaze at him, to read his face. But he’s paying no attention to the people standing up; he’s leaning over the sleeping body, opening Claudine’s eyelids with his thumb and index finger. Now Marie understands why her cheeks are so red: he is slapping her, with stronger and stronger blows, first one side and then the other – her little head shakes back and forth between his big male hands. Marie watches, her teeth clenched, her hands clutching the wooden bed.
At last he stops, opening the eyelids and feeling the pulse. Marie still says nothing, thinks nothing, though every move he makes strikes deep into her heart. He mutters, as if to himself: ‘But she moved, a while ago …’
The doctor takes Claudine’s wrist between his fingers again and holds it there for a long time. He stands up and lets an odd humming sound emerge from his lips, as if wanting to distract himself; then, moving fast, he picks up his prescription book and writes some words in it. He looks at Marie, assesses her, hands her the sheet. ‘How far is the pharmacy?’
‘About ten minutes.’
He gestures towards her with his hand; he’s uncertain, thinks aloud: ‘Getting there, coming back, warming it up …’ He shrugs. ‘No. Bring me some warm water, kitchen salt, and an injecting tube.’
Marie goes into the bathroom then runs towards the kitchen.
Armand gets up from his chair and moves towards the bed. ‘Are things not going well?’
‘Yes, they’re fine!’ In other words: ‘Go back to your chair and get off my back.’
Armand had never understood much of Claudine’s character. Nine years ago, her youth came charging into his forty years: bedazzled by her nervous, dreamy, disconcerting nature, he’d indulged her every whim. When he saw her unhappy or suffering, he’d sit down with hands on knees and eyes full of fear, like a lost old man. A decent sort, Armand. Decent, but sad.
Scarcely five minutes later Marie came back into the bedroom with the things the doctor had asked for.
‘Put them on the table,’ he said. Looking at the injecting tube he asked: ‘Was it clean?’
‘Yes, I poured boiling water on it before filling it up with warm.’
Marie’s voice is calm, and her movements have a perfect precision. Her face is set, and her uncombed hair, w
ith its curls lying crushed and flat around her brow, make her look harder than ever, cruel almost. She may be impassive; she is also pathetically pale.
The doctor prepared the solution. He said: ‘Squeeze the tube,’ as he removed the ebonite valve.
It took only a few seconds to fix a whole array of tubes and a needle. Now Claudine is exposed: her nightdress is rolled up to her groin, revealing her skinny legs and her kneecaps, which make two little angular protrusions. Her skin is still light brown, but changes colour slightly in the middle of her thighs, a souvenir of the shorts she wore in the holiday sun three months ago.
‘Let go of the tube,’ said the doctor, ‘and lift up the nozzle.’
Marie obeyed.
‘I should have asked you to bring a nail and a hammer …’
‘We’ll manage,’ she replied. ‘I’d waste too much time looking for them.’
They have both forgotten the presence of Armand.
‘Lift it higher … yes, that’s fine.’
The water flows through incredibly slowly; there is no noise in the bedroom, and Marie’s arm is going numb. The skin on Claudine’s thigh rises and swells, and around the needle, which is fixed like a little steel arrow, a lump develops and expands. Marie can hear the movement of her heart inside her own body; while the doctor feels Claudine’s pulse, she mechanically counts her own heartbeats.
Raising her left arm she carefully passes the receptacle from one hand to the other. Now that her right arm is free, she stretches it out along her body, shakes it a little, lifts it up again and places her hand beneath the bottom of the receptacle. Once more she looks at the broken ampoules on the table: there are four or five of them, flung back carelessly into a metal container. Because of their position it’s not possible to read their labels at a glance; from the little heap she can make out one letter here and another there. She pieces together the word ‘arsenic’. A deadly dose intended to save Claudine, to combat what she has taken. But what has she taken? And now these two litres of salt water. All that inside Claudine’s body.
Claudine wanted to kill herself; Claudine has deserted life. What has she taken? Why has she taken it? Did she want to die because she knew that she was spoiling the life that had been given her, thinking she was unworthy of the gift? Marie’s mind has gone to work again, and this idea has seized her so strongly, like vertigo, that she staggers around in it for several seconds. She sees Claudine stretched out, cheeks very pale; Claudine dead, as if surrounded by a halo. ‘Look at me, Marie, and admire me, at last.’ There she is, undressed, smacked on the cheek, knocked about, her body filled with two counter poisons, her blood heavy with salt water. They are denying her gesture, dragging her against her will, bringing her back by force, feeble and unworthy, to the bosom of what she had tried to respect.
‘Marie, my friend, my sister, stick up for me … Let me keep the only real gesture I have ever made in my whole life.’ Marie’s heart beats faster; for the first time since she has come into the bedroom her face loses its impassivity. The doctor raises his eyes to hers: ‘How much more is there?’
Marie lowers the injecting tube and looks at it. ‘About a litre.’
‘Let’s carry on, then.’
He leans towards Claudine again, to check her eyes and her pulse, to apply a little massage to the swelling in her thigh. He is alert to the tiniest signs given out by this body, to what is left of its life: he wants to open up this remainder, to preserve and increase it. In one leap Marie’s heart takes its place again, next to this man, in the attempt to save her sister’s body.
There is still life there, do you hear me? I don’t want to see you dead, even if your face is at peace. I don’t want to admire you in death, because there is nothing great in death when whatever preceded it was even less. I don’t want to defend you, I can’t save you in death. You must see, Claudine, my sister, my friend – I’m on the side of life …
‘The level of the water is going down: lift it a bit higher,’ the doctor said.
Marie raises both hands again, above her head: they are so cold and stiff that they can no longer feel the weight of the receptacle. From her uplifted arms all feeling has gone; pain has become a fixture. Her heart is now beating quite regularly and her face, so pale today, has resumed its fixed, implacable look.
The water flows with infinite slowness, and it will perhaps take as long for Claudine’s life to return. Perhaps her life will return as gently as this.
NIGHT FALLS EARLY at this time of year; even though it was only three o’clock, it was already getting dark. Marie drew the curtains and lit the lamps. ‘There’s nothing more I can do for the moment,’ the doctor said. ‘Little by little she’ll begin to wake up. This evening I’ll come back.’
He had picked up his instruments from the table and was packing his bag. Marie asked: ‘How did you find out what she had taken?’
Fumbling in his pocket he pulled out two glass phials and threw them on to the table. ‘I found these at the back of the fireplace. They always hide them there, in the ashes.’
As he left the room he added: ‘Above all don’t leave her. If she goes completely still, you know what to do.’
Marie went back into the bedroom to find Armand with one hand on Claudine’s inert arm; with the other hand he was holding the two glass phials left behind by the doctor and looking at them uncertainly. ‘Do you have any idea, Marie, why she would do a thing like that?’
‘Do a thing like that?’ Marie repeated his words with a sad smile. ‘That’ encompassed so many things, including Armand himself.
He was completely exhausted with worry and incomprehension. Marie spoke to him briefly, to reassure him, then sent him to lie down in a nearby room.
She sat on the edge of the bed to watch over her sister as the doctor had recommended. At times Claudine’s head would move gently, a little to the right and then a little to the left, or she would attempt to move and let her hand fall, or her whole body would be seized by trembling. The first time she went totally still, for several long moments, Marie shook her by the shoulders, repeating, ‘Claudine! Claudine!’ Then, since she still wasn’t moving, she reached towards the hot, red cheeks and slapped them, gently. As if explaining her actions, she said to her several times: ‘You mustn’t sleep; you mustn’t …’ Then she hit her harder and harder, bravely, for several minutes.
It was time, now, that flowed with such infinite slowness. Outside, it had long been dark, and Marie was still at her post. Claudine’s arms were stretching out ever further and the trembling of her body was turning into real movements. From time to time she would let out a light groan, a little guttural complaint; from time to time her chest rose and, in an agony of tension, let out a hiccup, and Marie would wipe a greenish foam from her pale lips, her chin, her neck, from her childish breast, now gently calming down. Or was it calming down too much? Once again Marie would hold and strike Claudine’s prostrate, exhausted body, that had already been battered both by herself and by the work of her saviours. And again Marie would say, in a mother’s voice: ‘Claudine, my little one, you must not sleep …’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THIS WENT ON all through the night.
The next day, Claudine opened her heavy eyelids every now and again and tried to look at Marie. Several times those painful spasms rose up from her stomach, still drenched in poison. When someone spoke to her, she made signs to show that she had understood, and a few slow words emerged from her swollen lips.
Marie sorted out some clean clothes for her, tidied her hair, brought a basin of warm water and washed her all over. Whether her woman’s body had been disturbed by this shock to the system or whether it was simply that time of the month, Claudine had started a period: as Marie squeezed the sponge in the basin, the water was pink on her hands. She wrapped Claudine in a blanket and, while the cleaner changed the bedclothes, sat the poor little wretch on her knee. Although Claudine, at thirty-two, was older than Marie, she seemed like an over-sized little girl wh
ose feet touched the ground. Marie held her in her arms, moving her right shoulder so as to support her head naturally. She placed her lips on Claudine’s forehead, on her hairline, and kept them there, moving ever so gently.
A day later Claudine was following all Marie’s movements around the bedroom with her eyes. She was speaking a few words almost normally. From time to time Marie would give her something to drink, lift up her hair, puff the pillows.
Claudine took her hand and said: ‘Can you understand, I felt so alone, so unhappy … It was like a gigantic despair, a kind of fear, and also like a very deep sense of fatigue. I felt that I was finally going to be able to have a long rest …’
Marie said nothing; she was touched to the quick by these sad, halting words.
‘At the beginning of the day, when this … when this fear became so unbearable … if you had been in Paris, I would have called you, I would have asked you to go out with me … If I had seen someone, perhaps I would have felt less desperate … perhaps this need to sleep would have diminished … I don’t know … I don’t know …’
She moved her head, shrugging her shoulders. She spoke without any sense of tragedy or regret; it was as if she wanted to explain something she didn’t fully understand herself.
‘That’s how it came about. You mustn’t think that I preferred death to life … I wasn’t thinking of either death or life … To sleep … Yes, that was what I wanted, above all to sleep …’
Marie removed her hand and said, in a voice as feeble as her sister’s: ‘Shush, don’t think about all that. You must put that day out of your mind …’
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