“Sir, it’s … it’s been a privilege for me to … to …”
Never before had Antoine been “sirred” by a colleague, never before been treated with such deference. It went to his head, like generous wine, and unthinkingly he held out both hands towards the young man. But in the nick of time he regained his self-control.
“You’ve got a wrong impression,” he said in a subdued tone. “I’m only a learner, a novice—like you. Like so many others. Like everyone. Groping our way. We do our best—and that’s all there is to it!”
Antoine had looked forward to the young man’s exit with something like impatience. To be alone, perhaps. Yet, when he heard approaching footsteps, the young woman’s, his face lit up.
“Look here, don’t you intend to go to bed?”
“No, doctor.”
He did not press her further.
The little girl moaned, was shaken by a hiccup, expectorated.
“Good girl, Dédette,” he said. “That’s a good girl.” He took her pulse. “A hundred and twenty. Steady improvement.” He looked at the woman, unsmiling. “I think I can say now that we’re out of the wood.”
She did not reply, but he felt she had faith in him. He wanted to talk to her and cast about for an opening.
“You were very plucky,” he said. Then—as was his wont when he felt shy—he went directly to the point. “What are you here, exactly?”
“I? Nothing. I’m not even a friend of theirs. It’s only that I live on the fifth floor, just below.”
“But who is the child’s mother then? I can’t make head or tail of it.”
“Her mother is dead, I think! She was Aline’s sister.”
“Aline?”
“The servant.”
“The old thing with the shaky hands?”
“Yes.”
“So the child’s not in any way related to the Chasles?”
“No. Aline’s bringing up her little niece here—M. Jules pays, of course.”
They spoke in undertones, bending a little towards each other, and Antoine had a nearer view of her lips and cheeks, and the pale beauty of her skin, touched with a curious glamour by fatigue. He felt overtired and restless, at the mercy of every impulse.
The child stirred in her sleep. As they approached the bed together her eyelids fluttered, then closed again.
“Perhaps the light worries her,” the young woman suggested, taking the lamp and placing it further from the bed. Then, returning to the bedside, she wiped the beads of perspiration from the child’s forehead. Antoine followed her movements with his eyes and, as she stooped, he felt a sudden thrill; outlined as in a shadow-play under the flimsy dressing-gown, the young woman’s body was silhouetted, frankly provocative as if she stood naked before him. He held his breath; a dark fire seemed to sear his eyes, watching through misty shadows the languid rise and fall of her bosom, rhythmed to her breath. Antoine’s hands grew suddenly cold as ice, contracted as in a spasm. Never before with such an urgency of passion had he desired another human being.
“Mile. Rachel,” a voice whispered.
She drew herself up.
“It’s Aline; she wants to come and see the child.”
Smiling, she seemed to plead the servant’s cause and, though vexed by the intrusion, he dared not deny her.
“So your name’s Rachel,” he stammered. “Yes, let her come.”
He hardly noticed the old woman kneeling beside the bed. He went to an open window; his temples were throbbing. No cooling breeze came from without; far above the housetops the distant glimmer of a star or two spangled the darkness. Now at length he realized his weariness; he had been on his feet for three or four hours on end. He looked round for a seat. Between the windows two small mattresses resting on the tiled floor formed a sort of couch. Here, no doubt, Dédette usually slept; the room was evidently Aline’s bedroom. He sank onto the pallet, propping his back against the wall, and again an uncontrollable desire swept over him—to see once again, half veiled beneath the tenuous fabric, Rachel’s firm breasts, their rhythmic rise and fall. But she was no longer standing in the light.
“Didn’t the child move her leg?” he inquired without rising. As she walked towards the bed, her body lithely swayed beneath the wrap.
“No.”
Antoine’s lips were parched and he still felt a burning at the sockets of his eyes. How could he lure Rachel out into the lamplight?
“Is she still as pale as she was?”
“A little less.”
“Move her head straight, will you? Quite flat and straight.”
Now she stepped into the zone of light, but only for a moment, as she passed between the lamp and Antoine. The moment sufficed, however, to quicken his desire anew. He had to shut his eyes, jam his back against the wall and thus remain, clenching his teeth, struggling to keep his eyelids closed upon their secret vision. The stench of cities in the summer, a mingled reek of horse-dung, smoke, and dusty asphalt, stifled the air. Flies pattered on the lampshade, hovered on Antoine’s damp cheeks. Now and again thunder rumbled still, above the remoter suburbs.
Little by little, fever, heat and the very urgency of his emotion sapped his powers of resistance. He was unconscious of the slow tide of lethargy advancing; his muscles relaxed, his shoulders settled down against the wall, he fell asleep… .
It was as if a summons, gently insistent, were calling him from sleep and, still on the verge of dreams, he was vaguely aware of a pleasurable feeling. For a long while he hovered in an ecstatic limbo, unable to discover by what channel and at what point on the surface of his body the warm tide of well-being was seeping in. Presently he traced it to his leg and, at the same moment, grew conscious that someone was seated at his side; that the warmth along his thigh emanated from a living body; that this warmth and the body were Rachel’s and the sensation was really one of sensual pleasure, enhanced now that he knew its origin. Her body must have slipped towards him as she slept. He had self-control enough to sit quite still… . Now he was wideawake. All the feelings of his body were centred in a little space, no wider than a hand’s breadth, where, across the thin covering of their garments, thigh touched thigh. He stayed thus, motionless, breathing rapidly yet fully lucid, finding in the mingling of his body’s warmth with hers a thrill more potent than the subtlest of caresses.
Suddenly Rachel awoke and stretched her arms; drawing away from him, but without haste, she sat up. He made as if he, too, were just awaking, roused by her movement.
“I dozed off,” she confessed with a smile.
“So did I.”
“It’s almost daylight,” she murmured as she raised her arms to settle her hair.
Antoine glanced at his watch; it was just on four.
The child lay all but motionless. Aline’s hands were clasped, as if in prayer. Antoine went to the bed and drew aside the blankets.
“Not a drop of blood—that’s good.”
While his eyes followed Rachel’s movements, he took the child’s pulse; a hundred and ten.
How warm her leg was! he was thinking.
Rachel was examining her reflection in a strip of looking-glass, tacked with three nails to the wall, and smiling. With her shock of red hair, open collar, strong bare arms, and her bold, free-and-easy, slightly scornful air, she might have stood for a heroine of the Revolution, a Marseillaise on the barricades.
“I’m a fine sight!” She pouted at her reflected self, though well aware that the young bloom of her cheeks lost, even in the acid test of waking, nothing of its charm. This was plain to read on Antoine’s face as, moving to her side, he peered into the mirror. She noticed that the young man’s gaze fastened not on her eyes, but on her lips.
But then Antoine took stock of his own appearance—sleeves rolled up, arms burnt with iodine, his shirt crumpled and stained with blood.
“And to think I was due to dine at Packmell’s!” he exclaimed.
A curious smile flickered on Rachel’s face.
&nb
sp; “Say! So you go to Packmell’s sometimes?”
Their eyes were smiling, and Antoine’s heart leapt with joy. He knew little of women other than those of easy virtue. Now suddenly Rachel seemed to become less inaccessible to his desire.
“I’ll go downstairs to my flat,” she said and turned to Aline, who was watching them. “If I can be of any help, don’t hesitate to call me.”
Then, without bidding Antoine goodbye, she drew the flaps of her dressing-gown together and discreetly made her exit.
No sooner had she gone than he too felt a wish to leave. “A breath of fresh air,” he murmured, glancing over the housetops towards the morning sky. “Must go home too, and explain to Jacques. I can return when I’ve done with the hospital. Washed, presentable. Might have them send for her to help with the dressing. Or shall I look in on my way up? But I don’t even know if she’s living by herself.”
He explained to Aline what to do, should the child wake before his return. Then, just as he was leaving, a scruple held him back; how about M. Chasle?
“His room opens into the hall alongside the stove,” the servant explained.
Antoine discovered a cupboard door beside the stove, answering to her description. Opening it, he saw a triangular recess, lit from the far end by a makeshift window let into the party-wall of the staircase. This was the so-called bedroom. M. Chasle lay fully dressed on an iron bedstead, his mouth wide open, placidly snoring.
“Sure enough, the old loon’s plugged his ears with cotton-wool!” Antoine exclaimed.
He decided to wait a minute or two, hoping the old fellow would decide to open his eyes. Pious pictures on coloured cardboard mounts lined the walls. Books—devotional, too—filled a whatnot, on whose topmost shelf stood a terrestrial globe, flanked by two rows of empty scent-bottles.
“The Chasle case!” I’ve a mania for seeing “cases” everywhere, Antoine reflected. Nothing complex about him, really; a second-hand face and a fool’s life! Whenever I try to see into people, I distort, exaggerate. Bad habit! That servant-girl at Toulouse, for instance. Now why should I think of her? Because her bedroom window opened onto a staircase, too? No; must be the stale smell of toilet-soap. Funny things, associations of ideas! … He was conscious of a vivid sense of pleasure in recalling that juvenile experience; the chambermaid with whom, when travelling with his father to attend a congress, he had passed a night in an attic room at a hotel. And, at this very minute, he would have given much to possess the buxom maid as he had known her then between the rough sheets of her bed.
M. Chasle went on snoring. Antoine decided not to wait, and returned to the hall.
No sooner had he begun to descend the stairs than he remembered that Rachel occupied the floor below. Coming round the bend of the stairs, he glanced down towards her door; it was open! No other door was visible, so it must be hers. Why was it open?
No time to hesitate; it would seem odd if he halted on the way down. Soon he was on her landing.
Rachel was in the hall of her flat and, hearing footsteps outside, glanced round. Her hair was tidy, she looked neat and cool. The pink dressing-gown had given place to a white kimono. Above its silken whiteness her red hair glowed like the flame upon an altar candle.
He addressed her first:
“Au revoir!”
She came to the door. “Won’t you come in, doctor, and have something before going out? I’ve just made some chocolate.”
“No, really, thanks—I’m too filthy to come in. Au revoir!”
He held out his hand. A smile hovered on her lips, but she did not imitate his gesture.
“Au revoir!” he repeated. Smiling still, she still refrained from taking his proffered hand, to his surprise. “You won’t shake hands with me then?”
He saw the smile freeze on her lips, her eyes grow set. Then she held out her hand. But, before Antoine could touch it, she had grasped him firmly and, with a brusque movement, drawn him over the threshold. She slammed the door behind them. They stood in the hall facing each other. She had ceased to smile, but her lips were parted still; he saw the white gleam of her teeth. The perfume of her hair drifted towards him and he remembered a naked breast, the warm contact of her limbs. Deliberately, he brought his face near to Rachel’s, his eyes bored into hers, grown large in nearness. She did not flinch; he felt, or seemed to feel, her wavering in his embrace and it was she who raised her lips to his mouth’s kiss. Then with an effort she drew back from Antoine and stood with lowered head, smiling again.
“A night like that works you up …!” she murmured.
Through an open door at the far end of the passage he had a glimpse of a bed and, all about it, the glimmer of pink silk; under the waxing light the alcove, distant and so near, seemed the great calyx of a flower aglow there in the dawn.
IV
ON THE same morning, at about half-past eleven, Rachel knocked at the Chasles’ door.
“Come in!” a shrill voice answered.
Mme. Chasle was at her wonted place beside the open window of the dining-room. She sat stiffly erect, her feet resting on a hassock, her hands, as usual, unemployed. “I’m ashamed of doing nothing,” she sometimes explained, “but there comes a time of life when one can’t go on slaving oneself to death for others.”
“How is the little girl?” Rachel inquired.
“She woke up, had something to drink, and went to sleep again.”
“Is M. Jules in?”
“No, he’s out,” Mme. Chasle replied with a shrug of resignation.
Rachel felt chagrined.
“All the morning,” the old woman lamented, “he’s been going on like—like a mosquito! Sunday’s such a dreadful day with a man about the place. I hoped this accident would teach him to treat us better. No such luck! The first thing this morning I could see he had something else on his mind, the Lord knows what! Nosing around, and don’t I know that way of his? These fifty years now I’ve had to put up with it anyhow. He left for high mass more than an hour too early. Now that’s a queer thing, and no mistake. And he’s not back yet. Look there!” Her lips set tight. “There he comes! Talk of the devil … Really, please, Jules,” she continued, craning her neck towards her son, who had just tip-toed in, “don’t bang the doors like that! Not only because of my heart trouble; there’s Dédette as well to think of now— you’ll be the death of her.”
But M. Chasle showed no contrition; he looked worried and absent-minded.
“Let’s go and see how she is,” Rachel suggested. No sooner were they at the bedside of the sleeping child than she put a question to him. “Have you known him long—Dr. Thibault, I mean?”
“What?” M. Chasle exclaimed with a look of consternation. Then he began to smile knowingly and, “What?” he murmured again, like an echo. After a pause he brusquely turned towards her as though he had a secret to impart.
“Look here, Mile. Rachel, you’ve been so kind about Dédette that I’m going to ask a small favour of you. I was so put out by that business that I seem to have lost my head this morning; honestly I must go back there. At once. But it’s—it’s awkward going back a second time to that office of theirs all by myself. Don’t Say no!” he implored. “I give you my word of honour that it won’t last more than ten minutes.”
Smiling, she assented, though she had no notion what he might mean. She foresaw amusement in humouring the old man’s foibles and meant to seize the opportunity of putting further questions concerning Antoine. But all the way he was deaf to her inquiries and did not open his mouth once.
It was well after noon when they reached the police-station. The inspector had just left. M. Chasle seemed so upset by his absence that the police clerk was nettled.
“I can do it for you just as well, you know. What exactly do you want?”
M. Chasle cast a furtive glance towards him and, lacking the courage to draw back, embarked on explanations.
“It’s because I’ve been thinking things over. I want to add something to my statement.”
“What statement?”
“I came here this morning—I reported at the other end of the counter, over there.”
“What name? I’ll turn up the file.”
Her curiosity aroused, Rachel came and stood beside M. Chasle. The clerk returned in a moment with some papers; he gave the old man a shrewd look.
“Chasle? Jules-Auguste? That your name? Well, what do you want?”
“It’s like this. I fear the inspector didn’t quite gather where I found the money.”
“In the Rue de Rivoli,” the clerk replied, after perusing the record.
M. Chasle smiled as though he had just won a wager.
“You see! No, that’s not quite right. I revisited the spot and some details came back which might be helpful, you know; one’s got to be quite honest, eh?” He coughed into his hand. “It’s this. I can’t be quite sure that it was in the street; more likely in the Tuileries. Yes. I was in the garden, you see. I was sitting on a stone bench—the second from the news-stand on the way from the Concorde to the Louvre. I was sitting there with my stick in my hand. You’ll see why I lay stress on this point. I saw a gentleman and lady passing in front of me, with a child following. They were talking. I remember saying to myself: ‘Well, there’s a couple that have managed to set up a family … a child and so forth.’ You see, I’m telling you everything. Then, just when he was passing my bench, the child fell down and started crying. I’m not used to handling these delicate situations, so I didn’t budge. The child’s mother ran up. And then, when they were just in front, almost at my feet—not my fault, was it?—she knelt down to wipe the child’s face and took a handkerchief or something of the kind from the little bag she was carrying. I remained seated. Well”—he raised his index finger—”it was after they had gone that, poking about in the sand with my stick, with the ferrule, you know, I happened to see the money. It all came back to me afterwards. I’ve always kept straight, as people say. This young lady will tell you so. Fifty-two years old and nothing on my conscience; and that’s what tells, eh? So there’s no need to beat about the bush. I’ve come to think that perhaps the lady with the little bag may have some connexion or other with this business of the money; and I tell you honestly what I think.”
The Thibaults Page 37