by Albert Cohen
In the hall, which was a litter of books, he smoothed down the drooping ends of his moustache and scratched his close-cropped dome. Hm, yes, he was awfully late. What would she say? He climbed the stairs, knocked gently on a door on the landing, and went in. Euphrosine opened one eye, poked her hairy chin over the bedclothes, and grumbled that it was a fine thing to be kept waiting for her supper until all hours like this. Inserting his monocle then removing it immediately, he said he was sorry but he'd had to stay with his last patient, who was seriously ill.
'I'm ill an' all,' the old girl muttered, and she yanked the bedclothes over her sprouting chin. 'I gotter have a cheese omelette, with four eggs in, that's wot I gotter have. Oh yus!'
When he returned with the tray, she spurned the omelette and said she wanted another one that was more runnier. For the first time, he stood his ground, pointed out calmly that the omelette was perfectly edible, and said she wasn't going to get another one. She tried to make herself cry, but, observing that this got her nowhere, craned her head towards the plate and proceeded to stuff its contents into her mouth, pausing occasionally to cast a sly, leering look in his direction.
When she'd finished her dessert, he tucked her in again, patted her pillows, and, carrying the tray, went off to the kitchen, where he dined on a boiled egg and an orange and was interrupted three times by the ringing of Euphrosine's bell. On the first occasion it was on account of crumbs in the bed — which in her gaga-speak she called 'pricky-prickies'. On the second it was to demand her herbal tea — which she drank out of the spout of the teapot. And finally because she wanted her face wiped with a flannel damped with eau-de-Cologne. After which she snuggled up to the wall and pretended to go to sleep.
At two in the morning, the ringing of the telephone startled him into wakefulness. Holding the receiver to his ear, he smiled at Madame Dardier, who apologized for disturbing him but her baby had been crying for more than an hour and, what with all this talk of diphtheria, didn't he think? She was really very sorry to disturb him at such an inconvenient time. Not at all, he said reassuringly, he was glad of the chance to get out of the house, it was such a pleasant night.
'Et vera incessu patuit dea,' he muttered as he hung up.
Quite wonderful, the passage where Aeneas recognizes his mother, Venus, who has appeared in the guise of a young huntress. Wonderful, but very tricky to translate. In flowing nightshirt, he sat motionless for a while trying to find a rendering worthy of the original. Suddenly remembering the screams of baby Dardier, he dressed hurriedly, carefully smoothed down the ends of his long moustache, and went out. Standing by his car while the bells of St Peter's chimed a thin snatch from The Village Soothsayer, he shook his head and thought of the delightful Dardiers. A fine family, large and very close-knit. Relative newcomers to Geneva, of course, but very well-connected. Pity no Dardier had sat on the Little Council under the old regime. It would have completed the family's moral credentials very nicely.
After lighting the lamps, he poked the starting-handle into the front of the car and heaved on it, using both hands. Upon a whim, having decided for once to act normally, the capricious old rattletrap roared into life first time. Whereupon her owner climbed up into the lofty driving-seat, seized the wheel, and the monster, already spewing fumes through divers orifices, but not before executing a preliminary solo featuring castanets, bounded forward with a noise like elephants. Proud of his prompt start and feeling that among drivers he was an old and steady hand, Agrippa d'Auble gave the bulb of the ancient hooter a triumphant squeeze.
'Now let's see. Et vera incessu patuit dea.'
All at once the vehicle mounted the pavement, for the solution had just come to him. Yes, simply say: 'By her progress was she revealed a true goddess.' Perfect. It was elegant and caught the succinctness of the original. Wait a jiffy, no, not perfect after all. The 'true' was heavy. Perhaps he should suppress 'true' and say 'revealed a goddess'? Yes, but vera was in the text. Say that by her progress was she truly revealed? He declaimed this new version aloud to get the full effect. No, the adverb was leaden. How about 'By her progress was she revealed a veritable goddess'? No, that sounded lame, and come to think of it 'progress' was clumsy. Why not just say 'gait' and have done with it?
In her progress (or gait), the bucking motor ran the goddesses of antiquity a very poor second in the gracefulness stakes, and weaved along the Rue Bellot driven by chance, for the Latinist's mind was on perfection. Then all at once it abandoned its wayward slaloms and steamed dead ahead, for he had found the answer.
'And her gait revealed her to be a goddess!' he announced loudly, and he beamed with innocent pleasure.
That was it! Ignore the vera! You had to know when to be unfaithful! 'True' tacked on to 'goddess' served no purpose, since goddesses are always true, that is from the pagan standpoint, of course. The fact was that Virgil had only inserted vera for reasons of metre. Vera was a padding-out word and was useless in a translation, no it was worse, it was positively detrimental.
'And her gait revealed her to be a goddess!' said the kindly doctor, rolling the words around his tongue.
While he pressed the Dardiers' doorbell, he smiled at the goddess of the graceful gait. He never suspected for a moment that he was in love with the young bare-kneed huntress who had appeared to Aeneas, and that his painstaking translation was a way of paying respectful court.
On his return to Champel, he felt too exhausted to hang his clothes up, and threw them over the back of a chair. Getting into his nightshirt, which was trimmed with red embroidery, he slipped between the sheets and gave a contented sigh. After all, it was only three in the morning. He had four solid hours of sleep before him.
'For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever,' he murmured. Then he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Toing and froing in the large drawing-room at Onex, her apple-pie bonnet sheltering beneath her open parasol, his sister Valérie repeated that someone was ringing the doorbell and told him to go and see who it was. He rubbed his eyes, realized that she was mistaken, that it was the phone. What time was it? Four o'clock. He picked up the receiver and recognized the rich, golden voice at once.
'Uncle Gri, I can't sleep. Look, would you be an angel and come round to keep me company?'
'You want me to come out to Cologny at this time of night?'
'Yes, please, I do so need to see you. But I don't want you to come in your car, it's bound to conk out and I'd worry. I'll phone and they'll send a taxi to pick you up. We'll have a nice long talk.'
'Yes, we'll talk,' he said, closing his eyes to snatch a little more sleep.
'And I'll get back under the covers and you'll sit by my bed, won't you?'
'Certainly,' he said, and he sat back against his pillow.
'And you can read a book while you hold my hand, and that'll send me off to bye-byes. But you'll have to take your hand away very quietly, bit by bit, so as not to wake me up.'
'Very well, dear girl, bit by bit. I'll go and get dressed now.'
'Listen, Uncle Gri, I'm terribly happy because I've got a friend, a girlfriend, I like very much, she's due to come the night after tomorrow, she's tremendously clever, you wouldn't believe how clever, and such a noble mind.'
'I see,' he said, completing a yawn which he disguised as best he could. 'And is she a Protestant?'
'No, not a Protestant.'
'Catholic?'
'Jewish.'
'Oh, I see, capital, capital. They're God's chosen people, you know.'
'That's right, Uncle Gri, God's chosen people, I'm sure they are! Listen, we'll have breakfast together, nice and cosy, and I'll tell you all about my friend. Her name is Solal.'
'Capital, capital. I know a Solal in Paris. First-rate cardiologist.'
'Tell me, Uncle Gri, how far have you got with your Calvin book?'
'I've finished chapter twenty,' he said, suddenly springing to life. 'It's all about Idelette de Bure, an excellent widow with s
everal children, whom Calvin married in 1541, using Bucer from Strasburg as go-between, after rejecting the candidate suggested by Farel as unsuitable. On the other hand, Idelette won his heart by dint of her modesty and sweet nature. The rather touching thing is that he was the best of fathers to the children she had had by her first marriage. Alas, her daughter Judith, who married in 1554, committed adultery in 1557 or 1558. Hardly thinkable is it, the Reformer's own stepdaughter an adulteress!'
'Yes, it's awful!'
'It grieved him no end.'
'Yes, it's awfully sad, it really is. But anyway, best foot forward, I'm going to ring for the taxi.'
'I'll get a move on then,' he said, and he got out of bed, a tall figure in his long nightshirt.
Twenty minutes later, wearing the new suit he'd got from The Prodigal Son and a panama hat secured by a cord attached to the top button of his waistcoat, he was smiling blithely in the taxi, raring to go, feeling bright as a new pin and sniffing the coolest-before-dawn air. Already the blackbirds were singing their joyful little song to a world in which it was a pleasure to be alive.
He crossed his legs, smiled at the thought of Ariane, who looked like the goddess who had appeared before Aeneas, the huntress with the bare knees. How delightfully enthusiastic she had been when she'd told him about this Solal girl, who was in all likelihood a relative of the cardiologist and therefore of good stock. Darling Ariane, so pretty, the image of her grandmother about the time of her marriage. What a pity he had not thought to bring the latest pages of his manuscript. The sweet girl had shown such interest. The other evening she'd been most taken with the chapter on the doctrine of predestination, he'd noticed that most particularly. And, just now, her indignant reaction when she'd heard that Calvin's stepdaughter was an adulteress was genuinely heartfelt. She was truly dear Frederic's daughter. 'No doubt about it,' he said, nodding his head. Well, in the absence of his manuscript, he would read her chapter thirteen of the first epistle to the Corinthians, so wonderful and so affecting, and afterwards they'd discuss it together. He looked up at the sky and smiled, certain of one sublime truth. Dear old Agrippa, good and gentle Christian, I loved you and you never suspected. Dear Geneva of my youth and long-dead joys, proud republic and noble city. Dear Switzerland, land of peace and gentle living, upright hearts and tranquil minds.
CHAPTER64
'Here's your coffee, though I don't s'pose you taste coffee like this every day of the week, and get these croissants ate up while they're still warm from the oven, but look lively now, shift yourselves, and mind you don't go getting no splashes on my wallpaper, silk it is, cost the earth, so don't you go ruining it.'
She stood there, her podgy hands folded across her stomach, leering at the two deckyrators, who were young and a sight for sore eyes, as they tucked in with a will. Good lads as painters went, they'd even brought along a couple of buffing-pads so as they could put the shine back in the parky floor when they was done with their daubing. As they went back to work, she sat down on a stool and started shelling peas, keeping an eye on every stroke of their brushes, sensuously luxuriating, and feeling ever so pleased for Madame Ariane, who'd be over the moon when she saw her little sitting-room all gleaming, like one of them bijou places, you might say.
Towards the end of the morning, a delivery van brought a parcel and she guessed what was inside. She attacked the string with gusto, eager to bask in reflected glory. She took a handsome dressing-gown out of the box and held it against herself.
'Pure silk. Top quality. I bet your girlfriends can't afford anything as smart as this! When you got money you can do anything! Oh, and there's something else, I was forgetting. Seeing as how you've finished your painting you can come with me, I got something to show you. (In the dining-room, where the Shiraz intended for the little sitting-room had been put for safe keeping, she parked one hand on her hip and launched into a commentary.) It's what they call a Sheerage, that's its name, it comes from somewhere down Algeria way, just look how fine it's wove, all hand-made, them coons certainly know what they're doing, you gotter hand it to 'em. Now if it was me I'd've kept the small one where it was before, it belonged to Mademoiselle Valérie, most likely it was a Sheerage too, but it's her business, if you pay the piper you can call the tune, like Monsieur Pasteur used to say, he's the one who invented the rabies, like wot dogs get, because the family's not short of the ready, they're real nobs, oh is it twelve already, must start thinking about something to eat for me, no need to bother about Madame Ariane, she's gone over to see her uncle, he's a doctor, got my nosebag ready last night, the peas is for tonight.'
The pleasure of her company having, as she had hoped, been requested, she thought it was ever so nice, as she chatted away and was heard with respectful attention, to be sharing the deckyrators' dinner with them: sausage and tinned tuna. Say what you liked, she was very fond of this sort of thing, company, conversation, a sort of picnic really, it reminded her of her young days. To be polite but also to show willing, she cheered the meal up with a leg of mutton, a ratatouille niçoise and a strawberry flan, all of which she'd prepared the night before with precisely this in mind. From under her apron, where she had hidden it, she even produced a bottle of the Chateauneuf-du-Pape which was Adrien Deume's pride and joy.
When they'd had coffee, Mariette and her two volunteers applied polish to the floor and then three buffing-pads sprang into action. Excited by the in-out in-out of their implements and with the sense of communal endeavour rather going to her head, she began humming a song from her youth, whereupon the chorus was taken up, all together and in time to the rhythm of the pads, by all three, their feelings quite running away with them:
Star of love and love's sweet light,
Star of joy and sweet caresses,
See how lovers and their lasses
Spoon by day and swoon by night.
But the singing stopped abruptly when the door opened and Ariane appeared. On her face was stamped all the propriety of the ruling class, while the proletariat stood before her, motionless and shamefaced. At this time of day she, who as Solal's horizontal naked slave was ready in the shadow-filled night to do anything in the service of love without protest, reverted to the vertical, social persona of a dignified Auble, cool in manner and imposing.
When the furniture had been put back in place, gratuities had been distributed and the decorators — accompanied by Mariette who had insisted on sending them on their way — had gone, Ariane gazed gloatingly round her little sitting-room. The furniture was set off magnificently by the white of the woodwork. The long swing-mirror, which the decorators had brought down from upstairs, looked extremely well here, and it was in exactly the right spot, opposite the sofa. Both she and he would feel closer now, because they'd be able to watch each other in the mirror. And the Shiraz was wonderful. He'd love the subtle harmonies and delicate shades, the washed-out greens and pinks.
She took a long, deep breath of sheer pleasure, while at the same instant a seventy-year-old manual labourer named Louis Bovard, who did not own a piano or even a small Persian carpet, too old to find gainful employment and all alone in the world, threw himself into the lake in Geneva without pausing to admire the subtle harmonies of its delicate shades. For the poor have no taste, no eye for beauty or anything which elevates the soul, and in this respect are quite, quite different from Queen Marie of Romania, who, in her memoirs, blesses the gift which God apparently granted her 'of feeling the beauty in things so deeply and of rejoicing in their beauty'. How very thoughtful of God.
Meanwhile Mariette was wiping her nose in the kitchen. Well, that was goodbye to the good times with them two young chaps, no more little chats and jokes. But her disappointments, though acute, were generally short-lived, so she splashed her face with water, rearranged her kiss-curl — rearranging her kiss-curl always cheered her up — and then scooted off to rejoin Madame Ariane.
She found her trying on the silk dressing-gown in the swing-mirror, putting it through its paces with her
usual drill: to wit, walking towards the mirror, stepping backwards, then forward again with a smile, then tightenings and slackenings of the cord, poses various with leg out and leg in, turns partial and complete, assorted seated poses, each accompanied by suitable crossings of the legs, the fullness spread wide then drawn in again, and divers other dumb-shows of the same sort. Concluding that the dressing-gown was rather stylish, she gave Mariette a friendly smile and, thoroughly gratified, drew another deep breath through her nostrils, while Louis Bovard's filled with lake water.
'It's ever so smart on you. Makes you look like a statue, it's them folds that does it,' said the old servant meditatively, with her hands together.
'A teeny bit long. It'll need to be taken up two centimetres,' said Ariane.
After one last tightening of the cord round her middle and one last grateful look at the dressing-gown, she took it off, stood there in her nakedness, and then got into her dress, which she slipped over her head. Will you just look at her! Mariette said to herself, no vest, no petticoat, just her panties she calls them, and only a dress to her back, it's asking for trouble, sure as eggs, it's bronchitis for her come the first cold snap, still she's strong as a ox, which is just as well.
'If you wanted, and the two of us set to, we could take it up straight away, Madame Ariane. You could start one end and me the other, but we got to tack it first to make sure we're doing it right, I'll go and fetch what we need.'
She returned bearing needles, thread and a measuring-tape, and they sat down side by side on the sofa and made a start, chattering animatedly. At intervals they stopped talking and sucked their cotton, screwed up their eyes, and threaded their needles before settling back to the time-honoured task discharged by centuries of rapt and docile slave-wives: pursed- and sober-lipped did they ply their needles in a silence broken only by the gurgle of saliva swallowed by the twin seamstresses as they concentrated on their stitches.
Working quickly, her spectacles glinting with concentration, Mariette felt that they were two friends working happily together with one mind and a single cause, that they were allies and confederates. And, besides, there was just the two of them, nice and chummy, without any Deumes to bother them, specially not Antoinette, God Almighty in skirts, with her smile of what was supposed to be kindness but was in actual fact pure poison, always coming it over you, a nobody reely, goodness knows where she'd been dragged up, and as to this hem that had to be taken up right away, that was a job she liked on account of it being a dressing-gown for courting in, and very pretty in it she'd look too when her gentleman friend came calling, but he'd better realize how lucky he was, this chap of hers. She wanted to hold the hand of the beautiful creature who sat sewing at her side and say how happy for her she was about tomorrow night. But she didn't dare.