The juggler
Page 6
"And I assure you, dear Eliante, that I have no desire to get married, neither now nor later." (He pressed a little against her hip under the pretext of reaching the sugar bowl.) "Is it sugar you are looking for, madam?" he shouted very loudly, to provoke a response from the old diplomat.
"Pah!" said he, his head in the ashes. "Our town council put up magnificent monuments for them, but I don't think they're any more assiduous in their classes than in my time. Youth must take its course!"
"I absolutely agree with you," whispered Leon quietly. "And if Madame Eliante wishes to help me. ... It will take its course exquisitely. Eliante, my letter, that I wrote, didn't offend you."
"... Amused, rather! You are somewhat brutal, and you certainly wrote to ruffle me. . . . Well . . . I've already answered you."
"Yes: Sir and dear lover Are you still making fun of me?"
"I always tell the truth ... in principle."
"So now I'm your lover ... in theory?"
"If you like ..."
"Yes, I like!"
They had reached this point in their feverish chat, quite mundane in appearance, when Missie arrived, carrying a tray of cakes.
"I couldn't find them! There's no one in the pantry, no one in the antechamber, and, if we're supposed to go to the theatre, 1 wonder how we're going to have dinner? I say, aunt dear, invite the gentleman! He can drive us, it's almost in his neighborhood." (She sneezed.) "As for me, I'm feeling better."
The kind of order which reigned throughout the girl's brain, spread itself throughout her speech. At the very moment she deplored the absence of the servants, she invited a new gentleman to dinner, without worrying about the opinion of her relatives present in the room, and she declared her cold to be cured while sneezing as loudly as the cymbals of a bass drum.
Cakes flew off the plate onto the carpet. Monsieur Don-alger let out an exclamation of despair. Madame Donalger pinched her lips together, those lips which had just pronounced an // you like that would damn a saint, and she coughed in a serious tone, seeking to catch Missie's eye.
"Now what's the matter!" said the young lady in her smock, blowing her nose, while Leon picked up the cakes to look virtuous. "Make eyes at me all you want? That won't get you anywhere; the gentleman is a student, and I shall be a lady doctor when it suits me, so we are palsl You say yourself that I pick up science like a sponge!"
Very proud of this new effect, she burst out laughing, the good-natured laugh of an obtuse boy.
Leon copied her. What a strange house and how well he would do to become intimate with these ladies! If this were the source of the exotic perfume, he would get used to it. This sort of big monkey disguised as a choirboy, with a husky voice,
a manner not too vicious, only giddy, clumsy and hurried, riding on Paris life, her eyes fixed, her tongue sticking out, coming first in all her classes and doing somersaults in salons, like a circus clown (breaking conscientiously, moreover, china cups that deserved a better fate, these cups which Eliante alone seemed to know how to juggle), this big ape, moderately female, soon represented the foil to set off the rarity of the other, the window display model. The other need say nothing. This one, once she was wound up, would chatter for hours, strike chords, smash porcelain and would fidget and flap, fanning with her girlish skirts, her badly plaited braid, the mysterious idol who was refreshed by the youth scattered around her as one is refreshed by the breeze of green palms.
It was necessary to really press Leon Reille. He was dreading the second supper, so different, no doubt, from the first he had been served downstairs, on the garden side. On the courtyard side . . . , it would perhaps be boring. Then he thought about the numerous boxes of candy, the bunches of flowers he would have to pile up on the tables of this salon to equalize the situations, the chances.
"No, really, I can't," he murmured, vexed. "It would be too indiscreet," (and he emphasized the phrase) "too indiscreet . . . the same day as I pay a visit . . . formally."
Eliante smiled:
"You'll come back next Friday, that's all there is to it."
He took a deep breath, let himself slide. ... It was warm in this salon, both exotic and bourgeois at once. There, one breathed an atmosphere of sweet intoxication. The brother-in-law with his rheumatism never took his ailments further than the Trocadero and gave up accompanying his nice relatives in society, for he really was too deaf to be a former Embassy attache who had had the ear of ministers.
The dinner was hardly complicated. On the first floor,
Missie took care of the interior, that much could be guessed from the way the maid, while stubborn, obeyed, the way the table was set and the ftuit was on the dish.
During this dinner, Leon Reille learned that Madame Donalget was a Ftench Creole, born of parents so French they had perished in the 1870 war: the father of a saber cut, the mother of sorrow. 15 She had been placed in a boarding school, and she left only to get married, to Monsieur Donalger, the younger brother of the diplomat, a naval officer.
During one of Missies absences, when she went to fetch a flask of island liqueur, scolding the maid the length of the corridor, the young man, able to bear it no longer, asked a burning question:
"Did you love him, this husband?"
She lowered her head a little.
"He was forty years old, I was seventeen. 6 I came out of a convent, out of a sad house to enter a sad house: a big black vessel rolling across the most dangerous oceans. I saw and heard terrible things in that ship! The window of my bedroom, a magnificent nest of fabrics and furs, didn't even have fifty centimeters' view of the sea. I never breathed comfortably there, and when I set foot on land, the sun hurt me, I would hear guttural accents which terrified me. Back in France, it was official receptions all the time, solemn dinners . . . and we set off again without knowing where for. When my husband died, it seemed to me that the convent wall was crumbling . . . but on me . . . since he had a very poor family: his brother, Missie: I was rich, I owed him my entire fortune and, not having any children, I had to take in my relatives, still live ... as a prisoner. . . . The family, you see, is daily semi-mourning! Hush! Don't answer. Missie has just returned."
Leon Reille listened to her in a spin. She froze him, now, with her gloomy, slightly singsong voice of a capricious Creole
who is always cold, a bird of paradise with feathers painted fot other skies. She wasn't born to look after childten or care for old men, that was obvious.
"Are you cold at home?" he murmured while Missie poured the liqueur separately, far from them, into mauve glasses. 7
"Yes."
"Is that why you dare not show more of yourself?"
"No! I have leprosy," she answered calmly.
"You're going to make me believe that? I beg you, don't repeat it, I'm starting to shiver too, myself. What a woman! I'm going to hate you!"
"That's because we don't yet speak the same language? That will come!"
Missie served the little glasses of liqueur and paraded them one by one, like amethysts on a necklace.
"There!" cried the diplomat holding up a delightful chalice after having devoutly warmed it in his hands. "One would think it was flower blossom, blossom made flesh. Try that, young man, our dear Eliante makes this mixture with her ball bouquets. An excellent violet cream, much better than what they sell in English establishments." 8
"The nuns taught me that recipe, and they made a big fuss about it, like a confessional secret," said Eliante simply.
"As for me," declared Missie sneezing, "I think it burns the chest, you have to be my aunt to swallow that ... or my uncle! Goodness gracious! I'm having some because I want to go out this evening, but what a fire. You'd think it had all the fires of hell in it, your nun's cream."
"Good lord!" breathed Leon, annoyed. "A recipe found in the bottom of the Tunisian vase."
For all that he spoke softly, Missie heard and raised her eyes, her eyes which wept from her cold and the liqueur.
"What, you know about the whi
te vase, do you?"
"Yes, no; that is to say, mademoiselle, that madam your aunt has told me a little about it ... at the tuberculat children's ball."
"Well, even I, as I stand before you," (and the girl tapped herself on the chest), "I have never glimpsed it. My aunt doesn't want me going into her rooms."
"Come, come, mademoiselle, I think you are too reasonable to . . . have the good idea of destroying the slightest pot of that type!"
"Goodness, my dear child," replied Eliante getting up to finish the meal, decisively, "I asked you not to come down to my rooms because, in them, there are some objects, souvenirs of my husband, which are fragile. I wouldn't scold you if you wanted to have some respect for them instead of trying to see them."
"Oh! my dear aunt, I'm certain that would bore me to tears. ..." (She turned to Leon.) "Just imagine, there are enough little men to fill a small room, little Chinese gods doing strange things and also crocodiles, snakes, spiders, heaps of fantastic animals . . . then she also has crates full of robes, extraordinary, beautiful robes. Naturally, none of that is appropriate for a girl. I wanted, one fine morning, to get to the bottom of it, and I went on tip toe. . . . My aunt was sleeping . . . She sleeps until noon. I examined everything, except the white vase, which she hadn't yet bought, at that time, I came back feeling pretty silly! If that's all that's forbidden to girls ... I didn't understand any of it, and it didn't seem much fun to me. . . . She can rest easy ... I won't go down there again, even for the Tunisian pot."
"You should always listen to your aunt!" scolded the old diplomat mechanically, in complete digestive beatitude and with the tender respect that ruined old men have for rich young women.
Missie burst out:
"But I do listen! . . . since I'm telling you it bores me to tears. But I'm not blind. I know where children come from, they taught me in school."
Leon Reille felt like he had just received a lash of the whip on one side and a cold shower on the other.
"My sincere compliments, mademoiselle, as for me, I admit I don't know it yet for certain, although I'm a future doctor."
"Missie, Missie!" repeated Madame Donalger, scandalized. "The gentleman doesn't know you well enough for you to make such . . . knowledgeable confessions. . . . Go and get dressed, why don't you, and above all cover up well."
"No, I'm going to wear bare skin. . . . Back in a little while, sir."
Then, with a sudden movement, knocking her chair over backwards, she ran and threw herself on Eliante, who was about to go downstairs.
"My dear aunt ... oh my dear, dear aunt ... I love you so much! I adore you, even . . . kiss me, you aren't angry . . . what's more you're so good, my beautiful dear aunt!"
Standing, nervously, in front of the two women as they kissed, the young man felt like asking for his share. Fortunately, the old diplomat slipped a box of Havana cigars under his nose.
"Ah," said Monsieur Donalger clicking his tongue. "Isn't she amusing, my little niece? She is the joy of our household."
One hour later the two women reappeared all dressed up. Eliante in a dress of spangled black tulle with a satin background, and Missie wearing a violent blue with tufts of daisies, nevertheless a bit babyish for her robust twenty years. To erase the marks of her head cold, she had borrowed her aunt's rice powder and had smeared it on with touching care, putting it everywhere except where it was needed. One eye and her nose were still streaming, she displayed hollow collar bones,
elbows with points like nutcrackers, and plebeian, badly cared-for hands, since they wouldn't fit into Madame Donalger's old gloves, which she insisted on preferring to her own new ones, because they were more stunning, from the best store, and she had put her hair up in a loose bun to copy Eliante, who, for her part, had gone back to her original hairstyle, the bonnet of smooth hair, stuck to the temples and setting off her superb eyes like a velvet brim overhanging two jewels. Simply but carefully made-up, slimmed by a sheath dress like a torrent of ink, Eliante had the appearance of a black siren, agile on her sinuous tail, as though more free without feet.
For one minute, Leon and she found themselves together at the bottom of the stairs, Missie having forgotten her fan.
"The young lady your niece seems to love you tenderly?" said the young man gnawing the edge of his hat.
"Oh! she's a good girl, not at all fanciful, only sometimes she weighs heavily on me, the dear! She is noisy, untidy, much too modern for my feeble lazy nature, and I'm afraid I won't see her married before ..."
"Before you?" interrupted Leon very disturbed.
"Me? I don't want to remarry, my dear child, I have passed the age ... I have to remain free. I insist on running around at whatever time I choose, going out alone, getting away frequently from where I live, because I'm a little wild, I have to seek adventure according to my capricious nature of a beast brought up on all fours. 9 Creoles, sir, are not put in diapers and strapped up in swaddling clothes, they are left naked wandering on the ground in the very first days of their infancy. A custom of the land. These days, I close myself up in extremely high-necked dresses in order to earn a compensation. Since people realize that I am not a coquette, I can go very far . . . "
"Indeed, dear madam, right up to allowing certain suppositions ..."
$o The Juggler
"No . . . don't suppose anything, I don't want a husband any more, because it's too cumbersome, and I don't want a lovet because. ... I have the cure of souls hete."
"You prefer pots?"
"You are very naughty, Leon my deaf friend."
"Ah! so it becomes sir and dear . . . friend this evening?"
Missie came clatteting down with her fan.
They got into the carriage, Leon on the small front seat, the two women at the back of the coupe. He was pressed between their knees barely clothed in light silks.
He ventured a few comparisons.
Missies were pointed, as unyielding as sword handles, but she did not press them against him, on the contrary, she drew them back, a little afraid.
Madame Donalger let them be enveloped, possessed, without a scowl, a frown, to indicate that she suspected or deigned to suspect a thing.
He bent down to hunt again for the fan of that lunatic Missie, who dropped everything she held.
So he had the rude indecency to stroke Eliante's ankle beneath her skirt, and he climbed rapidly into the lace, encountering only the irritating coldness of the silk stocking, a reptilian coldness, then the smooth little apple of the well-rounded knee, finally the supple bracelet of the garter, where he stopped for a second to detail, with his fingernail, a complicated knot of ribbon and to injure himself on the hidden hook of a fastening.
Eliante, still immobile, murmured:
"Do you know what the play is this evening?"
He removed his feverish fingers, hesitated, and, seized with a senseless fury, he pinched her full on the skin, pinched her without restraint, wanting bitterly to see her struggle, give herself away, to hear her cry out, to make her spurt, a woman and all warm, exasperated, from her siren's wrapping.
The Juggler
5'
In a very calm voice, she added: "A drama or a comedy, dear sir?" Missie, bad-tempered, blew her nose desperately. "It's all the same to me! I'm going to have a red nose. "I believe," breathed Leon, "that it's a comedy that . will become a drama towards the end!"
B
UT of course, sir and dear lover, I want to write to you, only, / dorit know, and it embarrasses me always to say what I think in a definitive manner. If I had a great deal of wit, I would amuse you at least, you who want so much to be amused.
"No, I haven't the wit, I will perhaps never have the wit to amuse you according to your desires. You said, no doubt, as you left us: Farewell for my niece Missie. I think she is like you, and one cannot see clearly the people who resemble one, at first; later, you get used to it and you no longer think to reproach them with holding up a mirror to you. She works very hard, and she is in a big hurry to
have a good time, like you; so she has a bad time, she cries often, she's annoyed because she wastes time writing papers, reading big boring books, learning in what hygienic way and for the betterment of humanity one must make babies: she knows everything, except . . . how to look as though she doesn'tl She is a very good girl. If you knew her better, you would certainly value her enough to ask us for her hand in marriage, and even if you were not to love her with a superhuman love, you would retain
a natural affection for her, one of those solid affections on which one founds a family and one conceives, dividing one's heart into as many pieces as one has children, the art of going without what one doesn't have, which is to say everything. I am talking to you about Missie, but I'm not at all jealous. What can she take from me? I love you and I'm happy to love you. By marrying her, you would give me the certainty of an eternity of happiness, simply. You are just arriving, I'm leaving, there is thirteen years' difference between us, that is to say I possess a secret that you will penetrate only when I am dead, completely old; it would be my greatest triumph to hear you exclaim one evening, as you contemplate my white hair, my deep wrinkles, my dim eyes: "How right you were, Eliante!" For the greatest happiness of women is to be right one day, one hour, one second after being wrong all their lives . . . apparently.
"I love you very much, sir and dear Leon, because I have resolved to love you. You know my existence. I am a free recluse, a sort of emancipated nun, a lay priestess. I want only to convert you to my religion, which is the only one. If you hadn't come, I would not have thought to go looking for you, but I understood, when I saw you cross my path like a poor hounded wild animal, that you were destined for me. So I dare to grab hold of you. I call you my lover, and I have no desire to withdraw from you the proof of this complete gift of my person, because I want you to know once and for all, that I don't mean ordinary passion. Other women are very afraid to admit the gift of their person, and with reason, since they are admitting a state of inability to conceive love. When I become your mistress in the physical sense of the word, I shall hide myself, I shall be troubled, mainly in front of you, and I shall belong to you only if I want to stop loving you, or get rid of the importunity of your body standing between you and me. Meanwhile I find it pleasant to have you for my master without