by Anne Serre
Ensconced in his armchair at the center of the room, he receives all these cries, these chirrups and yelps from the women and children of the house, and, shuffling them together in his heart, sends them back transformed, slow and steady like the signals from a lighthouse. Once he has done this, the governesses settle down in their beds, Madame Austeur falls asleep at last, the little boys begin dreaming, and the young maids can rest easy with a smile.
Monsieur Austeur’s task is not a simple one. He’s obliged to sit up late to keep order in the house: otherwise, danger threatens — the walls would crumble and the windows fly open with a bang. If he wasn’t there watching over the heart of the house like a grandfather clock, who knows what would happen. The governesses would appear out of nowhere in their yellow dresses, panting for breath, the maids would start howling, the little boys would fling themselves out of the windows, and the ever so respectable Madame Austeur would rip open her gray dress and expose her skinny body naked on the porch, laughing like a madwoman, a wicked witch.
So he has to be there at night, regulating the breathing of the household with his heart, and, with his solitude held firmly in place by his large square armchair, counterbalancing the chaos that streams in from the bedrooms, prowls on the landings, pokes its nose out from under the doors.
When they hired the governesses the house had been peaceful. A bit too peaceful, perhaps. In those days, he didn’t sit up late, for there was no need to. At night, he would climb into the straitjacket of his square white bed and, in a kind of rage, try to get some sleep. He felt fretful, but didn’t know why. He would press against his wife’s pale body, derive little comfort from it and, in spite of the love he gave Madame Austeur, would feel his manhood unused.
It was chaos he needed. He was there to govern opposing forces, to conjure up sweet sounds and muffle shrill ones, to lead the orchestra with his baton, to blow on the embers and put out fires, to dispel darkness and raise the sun. Instead, here he was with a Madame Austeur who’d become an open book to him, obedient to his dreams, leaving him with nothing further to desire.
The day the governesses walked into the garden, Monsieur Austeur was standing behind the net curtains in the salon, keeping an eye out for their arrival. They advanced in single file: first Inès in a red dress, weighed down with hat boxes and bags, then Laura in a blue skirt, and, bringing up the rear, Eléonore, who was waving a long riding crop over the heads of a gaggle of little boys. He was amazed: it was life itself advancing. He rubbed his hands together and began jumping up and down in the salon. Into the garden they came, and with them a whole bundle of memories and desires, a throng of unfamiliar faces clutching at their dreams, their future children, their future sweethearts, the interminable cohort of their ancestors, the books they had read, the scents of flowers they had smelled, their blond legs and ankle boots, their gleaming teeth.
By noon, Monsieur Austeur had turned back into a man, and the house once more had a center — wherever Monsieur Austeur happened to be located. Each time he visited the greenhouse, strolled through the garden or went to inspect the orchard, the center of the house was there, standing meekly at his side. From the greenhouse or the garden path or the orchard he would share out, generously and fairly, the steady beatings of his heart. Around him concentric circles would form, radiating out to the far edges of his life. That’s what living was.
For the governesses, moving in with Monsieur and Madame Austeur was like a homecoming. Whenever they lost their way in their new garden, all they had to do was climb into a tree and look for the smoke from Monsieur Austeur’s cigar: as soon as they saw it drifting gently between the leaves they knew exactly where they stood in the maze of their new life.
Where were they from? It’s hard to say. But it’s safe to assume that, in spite of their young age, they had experienced some sort of tragedy in their life, at least one. What leads one to believe this is their eccentricity: too much joy, too much grief, too much appetite, too much silence, a strange frenzy. It’s obvious there’s a secret in their past. Nothing out of the ordinary perhaps, but something that has molded their character and shaped the way they move, the sound of their voices, their dreams, their habit of roaming around the garden with their hands pressed to their temples. The presence of that secret somewhere between the heart and the womb could also be said to have deprived them of free will, but then who can be said to possess free will? The governesses are like those clockwork toys that start walking when you wind a key in their back. Each morning, a key turns in their slim, aristocratic backs, and away they go, clapping their hands, rolling hoops, devouring strangers, spinning round, three little turns, each faster than the last. Every evening, they come home tired and a little more gentle. It’s at times like these that you can talk to them and be heard. For a few hours, the machinery has wound down. At times like these they don’t understand a thing about their gargantuan appetite. It horrifies and shames them. At times like these, they dream of being someone else and think it possible. They’d just need to jump around less, wear pale dresses perhaps, and change hairstyles. They vow to imitate Madame Austeur, to go out with her tomorrow gossiping about womanish things as they saunter past the clipped rosebushes, gathering up the wilted petals. Yet when tomorrow comes, they leap out of bed with a wicked gleam in their eye, grab their red dresses, break a window, lash out at the maids, run over to the gates, race across the lawns, sense an unfamiliar form hiding behind a dark tree, go over and start to pursue him, get dirty and tear their clothes.
Keeping a close watch on all this unruliness is Monsieur Austeur. He no more knows what he’s doing than the governesses do, but he reins them in, so that everything is once more orderly, composed.
Every once in a while, they pretend to leave. Just to stir up the household, which, in spite of the governesses’ outlandish behavior, is almost Apollonian in its staidness. It’s also an opportunity to see Madame Austeur cry and Monsieur Austeur looking bewildered, which excites them no end.
Whenever they pretend to leave, they play their parts so well that everyone is taken in by their little game, including themselves. Even though they’ve played it a dozen times before, each time the result exceeds everyone’s expectations: maximum distress, weeping and wailing, shamefaced confessions, shudders, a clean sweep of the past.
They begin by packing their bags with gritted teeth. Tipped off by the maids, Madame Austeur rushes upstairs, a handkerchief clutched to her trembling mouth. The governesses don’t look up. With a bashful air, wringing her hands, Madame Austeur asks them the reason for this headlong departure. They turn icy gazes on her. Their despair is patent.
Carrying hatboxes and bags and wrapped in their traveling cloaks, they descend the stairs, always in single file, their minds made up. Monsieur Austeur comes out of the smoking room and tries to intervene. They march straight past him and arrive at the front door. He flings himself in the way, blocking their path. Without a word, they push past him onto the porch. He rushes down the steps and again blocks their way, pleading with outstretched arms. Again they push past him. He then jogs along behind them as they stride on ahead, their outraged faces staring up at the sky, the flesh of the iris inflamed, legs steady, backs arched. A horde of dismayed little boys has gathered round and accompanies them.
When the gates are in sight they slow their pace. It’s barely noticeable, but the moment they do so Monsieur Austeur straightens up and heaves a discreet sigh of relief. They’re strutting around now, swinging their hips, chatting among themselves, and shaking out their hair. They sit down by the edge of the path; they need “a little breather,” they say. The fact that they’re speaking means that the worst is over. Monsieur Austeur draws himself up to his full height, smooths his hair, straightens his jacket and casts an eye around the gardens. Back in the house, just visible behind the net curtains, Madame Austeur has sat down at last. The elderly gentleman has put down his telescope and is rubbing his hands, laughing quiet
ly to himself.
They don’t surrender their ground just yet. Instead, they wander nonchalantly over to the gates and poke their heads between the bars. Monsieur Austeur observes their every movement. The little boys have gathered round him in a semicircle. The governesses take a step forward, then a step to the side. Then, as though propelled by some mysterious resolve, they wheel round, push their way through the crowd, and march back up the path. The danger has passed. For the next week or so, they’ll be treated like queens. Their every whim will be catered to. At a glance from one of them, Madame Austeur will rush upstairs to fetch something or Monsieur Austeur go out in the rain to look for a hoop that’s gone missing. The little boys will know all their lessons by heart. The young maids will pin photos of the governesses above their beds.
And at night, when they go into the garden, the eyes trained on them from behind the windows and the glint from the telescope following them into the brushwood will give them the feeling they’re cherished and loved and no longer alone in the world, and that in this huge dark garden with its enormous trees, they’re protected, even when they’re lost in the darkest undergrowth.
Not every stranger they meet is devoured in an afternoon. They also have genuine love affairs, relationships that endure, with a beginning, a climax and the inevitable downfall.
Their love life begins with a nondescript stranger whom they devour in an orderly fashion on a summer’s afternoon. The moment they’re back at the house, however, they want to see him again. Initially, this requires no great effort on their part, since the stranger is smitten and soon finds his own way there. He prowls beneath the windows, disturbs Monsieur Austeur’s midnight vigils, clambers up the tangled branches of the Virginia creeper, and pops up on the governesses’ balcony. Marvelous midnight revels ensue that they would never admit being so partial to. But, little by little, they’re overcome with lust. It’s no longer enough that he turns up at night, they want him there in the daytime, too. They want him all to themselves. They want him with no past and no other life than the love they feel for him.
It’s at this point that the pangs of suffering sink into their tender flesh for the first time. They ignore them — they’re not unpleasant, in fact. The stranger grows ten inches, his hair turns a deeper gold, his flesh tastier, his voice more resonant. They succumb.
In love they cease to possess that marvelous self-assurance that sent them striding through garden, woods and fields, lashing the wayside grass. They mellow. They mellow so much, in fact, that you’d think they were melting. Monsieur and Madame Austeur hardly recognize them, let alone the stranger. He preferred them high-handed and aloof, yet here they are welcoming him in a nightdress, shivering on the balcony, cooing and sighing. He hates having the upper hand and tries to restore them to their former state. He slips into their ardent bodies — but no, they want to purr like kittens, rub against him, be the underdog. So the stranger, who had been so pliant up until now, swells out his chest, doesn’t come by for four days, licks his chops, grabs them from behind, and wants to resume his journey. He leaves them in the lurch. They’re not ashamed to beg. Or rather, they are ashamed, but beg just the same: “Sink your teeth into us, drag us by the hair all the way across the lawns, all the way up to the gates. And there, open us up, open the gates of the world for us, take us away, drag us out of this cage of silence where all we see is the sky.”
They’ve started dreaming about his native countryside. They ask him to describe it, but he’s at a loss for words. “Well . . . ,” he says, “there are trees outside the house . . . and behind the house there’s a railroad station.” And so they begin dreaming, dreaming nonstop. One morning the station is pink and white, like a child’s toy, a lovely little station with gleaming rails and the train that devoured Anna Karenina, with snow and a stationmaster. In the evening, it’s a ramshackle old station, high up in the Alps, against a backdrop of dark mountains, with freight trains loaded with pine trunks. The next day, it’s a busy station in a big city, with passengers bustling back and forth and trains screaming at each other like madmen. The governesses are scared, clapping their hands in excitement as their skirts flap around in the blast from the packed express trains screeching by. Outside the station are hotels with faded signs and tired red-plush reception areas, faux-bois doors and melancholy washstands. But all that’s outside, and outside is a marked improvement on the ideal, radiant, frozen cage of their current abode. When the stranger mentions the tree outside his house, they concoct gardens with a handful of pebbles, imagine gardens choked with weeds and roads dappled with the shadows of leaves and sunlight.
Oh, if only they could leave! Run off with this man who has happened along, using him to pass through the gates and loving him because he can take them to a place where their bonds will be ever so gently loosened at last. So that, one day, each of them will be able to live and speak in her own name, love in her own name, be alone in the world, and free of the others at last.
Inès can take the road to the right, Laura the road to the left and Eléonore the one in the middle. Their paths will never cross again. Never. On the contrary, each of them will have a life of her own. But the stranger doesn’t take them away. He refuses to drag them by the hair or drive them on before him. So they remain there, alone, burdened with their imaginary lives and imaginary homes, their imaginary children and imaginary conversations, and when you run into them they’re not easy to understand because they’re carrying around an invisible world which they draw on whenever they search for a word or a gesture or try to remember something. In that invisible world, they’ve spent ten years living with Tom, had two or three children and a home of their own. In that invisible world, they’ve lived to the age of forty, fifty, even eighty perhaps. Each of the governesses is composed of a bundle of memories blown up like a huge, shiny balloon . . . and, in another part of her, of a few rather pretty dresses, a pair of ankle boots, a riding crop, a house that doesn’t belong to her, and a few combs, no doubt. As for their activities, they can be summed up as follows: keeping an eye on the little boys, racing around the garden like madwomen, devouring jellied pheasant and a few strangers along the way, and clapping their hands. And, as often as not, sinking into a silence and inertia that bode no good.
For a long time now, the elderly gentleman has been watching them through his telescope. Each day he notes down his observations. For example: “Monday: Governesses in red dresses, stretched out on the garden lawns all morning. Noon: Governesses gone. Laura’s head at bedroom window; Eléonore’s (bare) leg on porch. Afternoon: Governesses in the woods. Eléonore squatting in an obscene — but not disgraceful — manner on outstretched man. Evening: Governesses seated on front porch steps, smoking. Ardent faces. Night: If only I had a telescope that could see through net curtains!”
If you wanted to know about the governesses’ lives, he would be the one to ask. It’s as though, with the onset of old age and the infirmities that come with it, he had decided to devote himself exclusively to the governesses across the way. They know this and enjoy it. Alone in the dark night of their garden, how could they fail to enjoy being seen by at least one eye? It comforts them in a way. They’re not literally alone in the house, of course, since there are also Monsieur and Madame Austeur, the little maids, and the little boys. But none of the latter is sufficiently detached from the governesses to actually see them live. They’re part of their life, which is probably why the governesses are so afraid to leave. They would step through the gates, and all of a sudden the house would vanish, the garden would roll up like a rug, and the gates would collapse. They would look round and everything that had made up their past, their entire life up to that point, would have vanished. What keeps them there is that all of them have the impression — separately, in secret — of underwriting its reality. Were one of them to go missing, everything would disappear. . . .
This, too, the elderly gentleman has jotted down in his notebook, for he doesn’t simply de
scribe things, he draws conclusions, makes suppositions, mulls things over, double-checks. He has never really sought to communicate with the neighbors across the way, for it would interfere with his observations. When he does address one of them, it’s to remind himself what their voice sounds like, recall the skin tone of their delectable flesh, the click of their ankle boots with their shiny little heels. Once he has refreshed his memory, he abandons them to their fate and settles down for days on end at the window, his eye pressed to his telescope.
Sometimes they signal to him, and in a none too friendly manner. When Laura’s pink cheeks and irresistible gaze appear in miniature at the other end of his telescope, all of a sudden he’ll see her staring back at him, opening her mouth to point a snakelike tongue at him. Offended, and at the same time aroused, he looks away. Then he holds up his telescope again. All three are now framed in the disk of his lens, as though posing for a photograph. Eléonore plays the bride, clasping her hands and gazing ecstatically up to heaven. Laura plays the bridesmaid, plucking at the train of her sister’s gown. Inès plays the bridegroom, gazing at her spouse with a look of ardent desire. Thrilled, he puts down his telescope for a second, then holds it up again. They’re naked now and playing The Three Graces. Eléonore and Laura, who have their hair up and their faces in profile, are baring their pale, chubby bottoms to him. Inès, meanwhile, is standing full face, one hand placed absentmindedly over her barely concealed thatch, and staring into space. At times, they’re frankly obscene, and the elderly gentleman, though very distinguished, revels in it, as when the two Graces with their backs to the window bend forward all of a sudden and part their buttocks for the figure observing them, wriggling the great white smiling moons of their behinds at him. At the same moment, the one in the middle clutches feverishly at her breasts while pointing her dark crotch at the telescope. The elderly gentleman is sweating. Then they’re tired of playing around. They gather up their dresses, chat for a moment, and, without so much as a glance at the figure observing them, dash up the steps of the porch and disappear into the hall.