Her Lover (Belle de Seigneur)

by Albert Cohen

  What could they do now? Should he kiss her like a tempest, like in the Geneva days? Have a care, that could be dangerous. If the kiss were pcssionate enough, and she responded conscientiously and doubtless out of a sense of duty, the snag was that she would wonder why there was no follow-up. Best make it just an affectionate brush on her eyes with his lips. So he kissed her eyes, and she expressed her gratitude with a ghastly, petted, schoolgirly Thank you.' There followed a silence. Unable to come up with a new topic of conversation or a novel way of telling her either that she was beautiful or that he loved her, which being new would make some impact on her, he decided nevertheless to press ahead with an ardent, long-distance embrace. The which he did, and during the performance he marvelled yet again at this practice to which men and women were given, a quite ludicrous custom really, the peculiar notion of seeking some furious conjoining through orifices designed for eating. When the conjoining was over, the silence returned and she smiled at him, compliant, perfect, game for anything, for kisses or dominoes or childhood memories or bed. Absolutely perfect. Still, when they'd played dominoes last night she'd had to bite her lip to stifle a yawn.

  'How about a game of dominoes?' she said playfully. 'I insist on having my revenge. I just know I'll win tonight.'

  Returning from the sitting-room carrying the box of games, she got out the dominoes and they divided them. But just as she was putting down her first double-six the music struck up below. Once more the happy crowd down there would be dancing now, mocking the two lonely lovers. His poor girl was excluded from all the fun. He said he didn't want to play any more and pushed away the dominoes, which ended up on the floor. She bent down to pick them up. Quick, think up something to compete with the social world downstairs, anything to stop the poor creature dwelling on the contrast between their anaemic life among the dominoes and the offensive gaiety which floated up to them, the wholesome gaiety of the herd of morons who were now clapping and laughing. Anything, but make it alive, exciting, riveting. How about slapping her across the face? But those waiting, lustrous eyes unmanned him. The best and simplest way of course was to want her and have her. Easier said than done. But in Geneva it was easier done than said. He stood up suddenly, and she started.

  'What if I were torso-man?' he asked, and she licked her fear-dried lips.

  'I don't follow you,' she said with an attempt at a smile.

  'Sit down, noble lady and loyal companion. You aren't cold, are you, feeling all right, everything ticking over as should be? We'll come to torso-man in a moment. But first let's settle another problem. The other day, before we went out riding, because you were so keen to go, you came up to me, you smoothed the lapels of my jacket, and you said how handsome I was and how well I looked in my riding clothes. Well?'

  'But I don't understand.'

  '"My darling is so handsome, he looks so well in his riding clothes," that's what you said, and then you started fiddling some more with my lapels. Answer me!'

  'What am I supposed to say?'

  'Do you admit saying those words?'

  'Yes, of course. What harm was there in that?'

  'A great deal! Because it's not me you love but a man, any man, provided he was good-looking! So, if you hadn't met me, you'd have now been slobbering over somebody else my size and telling him the same revolting things! Clucking and cooing, head back, eyes gazing up inanely at some blond Viking with a commanding manner and a pipe stuck in his mouth, stroking his lapels in the same nauseating way, only too anxious to open that mouth of yours! Be quiet!'

  'But I didn't say anything.'

  'Hold your tongue, I said! And if the man were to take the pipe out of his mouth, you are not repelled by the foul taste of tobacco spittle on his lips. I know, I know, that main clause needs a conditional tense, but it's all the same in the end! Whoever would not be repelled is already not repelled! And you also said my boots suited me! Women always get excited about boots! Boots mean virility, military glory, the victory of the strong over the weak, and the rest of the gorilla chest-beating rigmarole women love so much! You and your kind are worshippers of nature and its ignoble laws! And there's worse to come: to a pagan like you, boots are a symbol of social power! Oh yes, a man who rides is invariably a gentleman, a grandee, a headman of the tribe, in other words a descendant of the robber-barons of the Middle Ages, a knight on a charger, a receptacle of power and might, a noble! Noble! A squalid, double-edged word which speaks volumes about the sordid glorification of might, a squalid word which means both oppressor of the weak and man worthy of respect. Have I said all this before? Quite possibly. But did not the prophets too play tunes on the same strings? In a word, the woman who worships boots is a plucked and trussed oven-ready fascist! Knight, chivalry, man of honour, ugh! Ask Naileater to tell you what lies behind honour, that same honour which you laud to the skies! Hold your tongue!

  'Poor, good, mild-mannered Deume, whom she deserted for me — for me! — simply because I flexed my muscles at the Ritz, casually beat my chest like a gorilla, and humiliated poor, inoffensive Deume! And while I was humiliating him by phone I felt totally and utterly ashamed, but I had no choice, because that was the despicable price she demanded for her love! How ironic: I denounced strength and virility, but it was with strength and virility that I won her, ignobly swept her off her feet! I feel ashamed each time I think of myself swaggering that night at the Ritz, like a gorilla, strutting like a peacock, prancing about like some rutting wild beast! But what else could I have done? I had offered her a mild-mannered, inoffensive old man, but she wouldn't have him and threw a tooth-glass or something of the kind in his face! Hold your tongue!

  'Am I mad? Am I crazy with my talk of the animal worship of strength, of strength which is the power to kill? I don't think so, for I see her now — oh yes I see you, my sweet — in my mind's eye I see her that day in Nice, between the acts at the circus, looking strangely aroused and submissive, staring into the tiger's cage! And what a gleam of sensuality there was in that look! In her excitement she grabbed my hand, making do with mine because she could not hold the hand of the tiger! Oh yes, I know, I should have said paw. Excited, aroused by the tiger, just as good Europa was of yore by the bull from the sea! Jupiter was no fool: he knew women! Europa, the virgin with the flowing hair, doubtless lowered her eyes chastely and spake thus to the bull: "Ooh! What big muscles you have, sweetikins." And consider that other good woman, the senorita in the play, who tells her man that he is her proud and noble-hearted lion! Her lion! So you see that the word which to that lickerish trollop Dona Sol, the very word which to her seemed the most tender, the most adoring, the most agreeable of all words, is the word which stands for a brutish beast with enormous teeth and claws and deadly power! "You are my proud, my noble-hearted lion!" O unclean, impure creature!

  'Moreover, did not this woman, this same silent woman who now stands before me putting such a noble face on things, did she not have the effrontery that day in Nice as we paused before the tiger's cage to say that she would love to touch the tiger's fur? Yes, touch it! A clear case of sexual attraction! Sin begins with the work of hands! Hold your tongue! Who knows, maybe she prefers the fur of the tiger to the skin of Solal! And the way you flirt with all the cats you meet! That one yesterday, a miniature tiger, lethal to birds, you tickled its belly with a pleasure that was so very revealing. Hold your tongue, daughter of Moab! But she doesn't stroke slugs, oh no! She turns up her nose at slugs! Why such revulsion, why not flirt with slugs? Because they are soft and non-erectile, because they have no muscles or teeth, because they are harmless and incapable of murder! But a tiger or a generalissimo or a dictator or a Solal being arrogant and forceful at the Ritz is a different matter altogether: he carries all before him, his hand is kissed on that first evening, until such time as his lapels can be patted! Is there no end to this base worship of the power of life and death, the base worship of sordid virility! Hold your tongue!'

  Trembling-lipped, he glared for a moment at the guilty woman
before him, then picked up the riding-crop where it lay and thwacked an armchair so violently that she recoiled in fear.

  'And if I had them cut off,' he asked. 'Answer me!'

  'I don't know what you mean,' she replied.

  'Don't be evasive! You know very well what I mean! If I had both of those two loathsome testifiers removed, would you still stroke my lapels so lovingly, you know, lovingly as in Mozart, as in "Voi che sapete"? And would your soul still be twinned with mine? Answer me!

  'Listen, darling, let's not go on with this.'

  'Why?'

  'You know very well why.'

  'Tell me why.'

  'Because it's such an unlikely idea.'

  'Unlikely is it? Go tell that to the birds, or your cats if you prefer. Unlikely? And what, pray, do you know about what's unlikely and what isn't? How do you know that I'm not tempted by the prospect of saying goodbye to virility?'

  'Darling, don't let's talk about this any more.'

  'I take it, then, that you refuse to commit yourself. Give praise to those two humble spheroids so dear to the hearts of Ophelias everywhere, and let us guard them as jealously as a treasure without price! (He looked at her closely, and his eyes shone with the joy of knowing.) I know exactly what you are thinking at this moment! You're hesitating between "Jewish mind goes to pieces" and "Jewish mind hell-bent on destruction", isn't that so? You women keep your brains wrapped in a cosy cocoon of romantic platitudes, that's how you always deal with awkward truths! Lucifer was the angel who came bearing light, so you turned him into the devil! But let us now come to torso-man. Would you still love me if I were torso-man?'

  A sudden pang, an ache, a pain: the other evening in Nice, the sight of ship's colours being struck at sunset on a French destroyer. The flag was hauled down reverently and he had watched, envying the sailors standing stiffly to attention, envying the officer who gave the salute while the colours were slowly lowered in the gathering dusk. Farewell, sweet France, for he was now no son of hers. A few days after arriving in Saint-Raphaël he had received the letter on flimsy paper from the police department begging to inform him that by a decree published in the Journal Officiel Monsieur Solal was stripped of his French nationality; that motive for loss of entitlement was not, according to the terms of the law, required to be given, but that the person concerned was allowed a period of two months in which to lodge an appeal; that, the aforementioned decree being immediately applicable regardless of the entering of any such appeal, the above-mentioned person was invited to present himself at the above-named police station for the purpose of returning all French identity papers and, in particular, of surrendering his passport. Solal knew the letter by heart. He had duly presented himself at the police station. He had sat for hours on a squalid bench, waiting upon the good pleasure of a paunchy inspector. He remembered the leer of pleasure on the face of the seedy policeman, and his dirty fingernails, as he had examined the diplomatic passport. And now the only papers he had were a temporary residence permit and the identity and travel document issued to all stateless persons. He was nothing now: he was only a lover. And what was he doing at this moment? He was trying to save their love from its anaemia, he was inflicting pain on a hapless woman. Meek she was and submissive, and once more respectful of his silence. She believed in him, had forsaken all for him, caring nothing for what other people said and thought, and she lived only for him, she was his, defenceless she was, and absurdly clothed in grace and weakness when she went naked, so beautiful and destined to die and lie stiff and white in her coffin. Oh, the ghastly laughter downstairs, the applause to which she was listening. . .

  'I'm waiting for an answer. Torso-man!'

  'I don't know what you're talking about.'

  'Then I shall spell it out. Here I am, all of a sudden, not handsome any more, I'm hideous to look at, I'm torso-man as the result of some unavoidable operation. What are your feelings towards me? Are they feelings of love? I'm waiting for your answer.'

  'But I haven't got an answer. It's such a ridiculous idea.'

  He felt the impact as though he had been punched. Gone was the respect she had shown him during their first days together. He was now ridiculous. He decided to make the affront an excuse to walk out on her. After a while she would come knocking, begging to be forgiven, and there would be making-up and their love would be regilded for another hour or two.

  'Good-night,' he said, getting to his feet. But she held him back.

  'Listen Sol, I'll be frank. I'm feeling pretty rotten, didn't get much sleep last night. So let's put a stop to all this, because I don't think I've got the strength to give you much of an answer, I'm whacked. Listen, don't let's spoil this evening. (Even supposing we don't spoil this one, there are three thousand six hundred and fifty other evenings which we mustn't spoil either, he thought.) Listen Sol, it's not because you're handsome that I love you, though I'm glad you are. It would be sad if you ever got ugly, but, good-looking or hideous, you'll always be my dearest love.'

  'But why should I be your dearest love without legs or toes? Why should I be so dear to you?'

  'Because I have given you my heart, because you are who you are, because you are capable of asking all these crazy questions, because you are my fretting child, my ailing boy.'

  He sat down, the wind quite taken out of his sails. The thrust had gone home. Damn! If it was love you wanted, then what was this but love? He scratched his temple, pulled a face by moving his closed mouth from side to side, felt to see if his nose was still where it should be, and stroked it. Then, reaching out to the gramophone, he began absent-mindedly winding the handle. Suddenly aware that it was meeting no resistance, he remembered the broken spring and looked round warily. No, she hadn't noticed anything. He cleared his throat to give himself confidence, and stood up. But it simply couldn't be: she was lying and didn't know it. If she believed she would still love him if he were hideous, a mutilated trunk of a man, it was merely because at this moment in time he was handsome, disgustingly handsome.

  God, what did he think he was playing at? Everywhere in the world there were liberation movements, hopes, struggles to create greater happiness among men. And what was he doing? He was fully occupied creating a miserable climate of passion, had a full-time job relieving the boredom of a wretched woman by tormenting her! She was obviously bored with him. But that first evening at the Ritz she hadn't been at all bored. Oh no, she had been dizzy with bliss that first evening at the Ritz. And who had made her dizzy? A man named Solal whom she did not know. And now he was a man she did know, a man who had sneezed maritally this afternoon, after their coupling, and in the silence of the post-coital intermission she had, to his mortification, heard him sneeze. Oh yes, she had deceived him in advance with the Solal she had known that first night, the Solal of the Ritz who had not sneezed, Solal the Romantic.

  'Solal cuckolded by Solal,' he murmured, and he twisted his curly mane left and right into cuckold horns, and he waved to the cuckold in the mirror, while she, head bowed, sat and shivered. To be sure, she had deceived him with that other Solal-self, for had she not dared to love him that very first evening? She had deceived the man she knew now with a stranger she had met at the Ritz! And she had immediately kissed the hand of the very first man who had shown his face — a Solal substitute, a stand-in, not the real Solal! And why? For all the reasons he despised, for the same animal reasons which had operated in the times of the primeval forest! And that first evening, at Cologny, she had not shrunk from giving her lips to the lips of a stranger! Brazen and wanton! Oh women! Brazen, wanton lovers of men! It was unbelievable, but they who were so delicate loved men, beyond a shadow of a doubt they loved men, they loved the braggarts, they loved the louts, they loved revoltingly hairy boors! Incredibly, they accepted male sensuality, yearned for it, gorged on it! It was past all belief, yet it was true! And no one was shocked!

  He turned to face her, only to be utterly disconcerted by the purity of her expression, the innocence of her demurely
lowered eyes. Pure! She who had given herself to a stranger at the Ritz, a Jew from God knew where, was also purity! Yet she had needed no bidding to give her lips, her tongue, to a man she did not know! Oh, women would drive him insane, for who could understand them? They would make him mad: Madonnas one moment, lewd Bacchantes the next! And yet they spoke such noble words when they were dressed! But suddenly riding on the wild wings of night they spoke words which would strike you dead on the spot, my poor little Solomon!

  'Listen, darling,' she said. 'Don't let's stay here. Let's do something. Let's go downstairs.'

  He was stabbed to the heart by a dagger of despair. Her tender words were a judgement. 'Don't let's stay here. Let's do something!' So being together meant not doing anything. 'Let's do something!' But what? Why not just carry on from where you left off?