‘I forbid you to mention it. And you’re making everything dirty. As soon as you turn up you stop me doing my work.’
Odette was surprised by the blow; she raised her arm to shield her face. Louise caught her by the wrist, shook her, and slapped her again. Just at that moment, Madame opened the door.
‘Come here, Odette, I’ve got some pictures for you to look at. You’re getting on your mother’s nerves in here.’
Madame spoke in her calm voice. She took Odette out of the room quietly, exactly as she had entered it.
*
Louise went back to work and thought about Madame. Madame was gentle; she said little, and there was nothing to add to what she said.
Now she had to wash the vegetables. It wasn’t an unpleasant task: your hands were in nice cold water and the sink was near the window, so you could watch the street while you were at work. It was a beautiful sunny day and Louise wished she could be out walking. She would be doing that tonight, when she’d finished work, when the kid was asleep. She’d walk along the street, confidently; she’d walk into a café and have a drink, for seventy-five centimes; she might even run to one franc twenty-five and sit at a table. She liked to do that: she liked to be in a place where people were enjoying themselves. Occasionally men would come and talk to her, and some of them were nice. When Louise knew that she could go out in the evening, she thought about it all day long. It was her only form of entertainment, but there was more to it than that – it was a haven, a reassurance, and she was surrounded by people.
It was October and the evenings were fresh; she’d look ridiculous in a cotton dress. What she needed was a light coat, in blue cloth perhaps, with a round collar, buttoned from top to bottom, to hide the shabby dress beneath. Yes, a round cloth collar, perhaps with another one pinned on top of it, in white rep. She’d put lipstick on, she’d do her hair properly, and what with the blue coat as well she’d look really pretty. A man might come and sit at her table: Bob, for instance. She would be wearing her coat and she would run into Bob.
But what was she doing dreaming like this? For a full ten minutes her hands had lain still on the vegetables in the water. Her hands were very cold, and now they were also very clean; the water had made them smooth. They were a bit red, perhaps, but that would pass. They looked even better now than they did after she’d done the washing. That made them clean but wrinkled. Louise got back to work, chopped the vegetables and threw them into the pot.
Madame came back, with her gloves on, ready to go out. While she gave Louise some instructions about lunch, Odette stood very close to her, clinging to her, pawing her coat with the grubby hands of a child who is never completely clean. Louise said:
‘You’ll mess up Madame’s clothes.’
Madame neither agreed nor disagreed, but as she continued talking she put her arm round Odette and kept her close. Louise didn’t dare say any more. As soon as Madame had left, Odette said:
‘You see, I didn’t say anything about the chips.’
She smirked, bent her knee, held her foot in both hands behind her back, and hopped up and down on the other. She held her skinny, dirty, pathetic little face up to her mother. It was a pointed face, paler than Louise’s but with many of the same fine features, like the big black eyes that had a fiery, almost feverish look about them.
Louise moved towards her child and embraced her too tightly.
‘Off you go now… Go and look at your pictures.’
Louise went back to the sink. From the window she could see Madame walking along the street. She’d dressed up nicely: she’d put on her three-quarter-length coat. It was a blue coat with a round collar. Madame walked with verve and elegance. Louise could make her out less clearly now: she was getting hazy, mingling with the crowd. She spotted her one last time before she disappeared altogether. She carried on watching, without thinking, as if in a trance, and as she stared out of the window into the street a whole series of images of Madame came into her mind. She saw her in the morning when Louise arrived, saying in her soft and special voice, ‘Good morning, Louise, how are you?’ Madame never said anything when work was done badly – she just looked amused, raised her eyebrows and pointed at the trail of dust under the table. When that happened, there was nothing for it but to go and fetch the broom and start the work all over again. At times like that Louise was never tempted to answer back or offer excuses. The long trail of dust seemed to her to be something abnormal that had been grafted on to the world, something totally outlandish that could not be allowed to stay there for a moment longer.
Next Louise saw Madame coming home and asking in a strange breathless voice, ‘Did anyone telephone?’ At other times Madame would look down at Louise’s hands with a look that was even stranger than her strange voice and say, ‘No letters?’ Faced by empty hands and a negative answer, her manner would change. You couldn’t say that she seemed sad or disappointed, exactly: the words ‘sad’ and ‘happy’ were not words that you would apply to Madame. You could only say that she had this or that look on. Louise called this one her ‘phone call and letter’ look. But what phone call, what letter was it she was waiting for? Nothing ever came. When she looked like this you might well imagine that she had lost a child. It was always hard to know much about other people, but of Madame it was quite impossible to know anything at all.
Then she saw Madame that day when she’d been ironing some linen on the kitchen table, and Louise, who was right next to her, had raised her eyes, looked Madame straight in the face and said, ‘You know, it comes through in your face how clever you are…’ Madame had laughed openly at Louise’s admiration. She was holding a damp ribbon in her hand and as she spread it out on the edge of the table to remove the creases, she stopped laughing and said, as if confiding something to herself, ‘Intelligence is one thing, but “that” is quite another.’ ‘That’? What did she mean? Louise didn’t understand. But there were so many things about Madame she didn’t understand that this ‘that’ simply stood for all the incomprehensible things rolled into one. Madame was intelligent, and what’s more she was ‘that’.
There was also Madame’s beauty, the beauty she had shown just now, when she opened the door of the kitchen and when she walked along the street. With other women you could say where their beauty came from – from their big eyes, their well-shaped mouth or their wavy hair. Madame did have beautiful eyes, mouth and hair but it wasn’t because of any of these that she was beautiful. What was it then? Was it ‘that’? Oh it’s too difficult, you go round and round in circles. Louise meant to get back to work and she moved away from the window – but she instantly returned to it to spend one last moment staring out into the street, brooding on the beauty which she could not explain, on what Madame had said whilst ironing the ribbon and on how little she knew about her. Louise thought of a simile which pleased her. She turned it over in her mind a few times and then said it out loud: ‘Madame is as beautiful as a mystery.’
A little comforted by this, Louise left the window, filled a bucket with hot water and got down to work.
Madame came back. Everything happened so quickly that Louise went on feeling bewildered for some time afterwards. She admired Madame’s coat and asked, ‘Was it expensive?’ Madame laughed, and Louise apologised for the question, explaining how much she would like a coat like that.
‘Well then, Louise, I’ll lend it to you for your evening off tonight.’
Louise protested; later she forgot exactly how. Madame laughed again and helped her into the coat.
‘You’re smaller than me, so it becomes a full-length coat rather than a three-quarter one, that’s all. It suits you very well.’
Louise did remember saying:
‘Madame, you’re not like other people… It’s not normal, you lending your coat to someone like me…’
‘I don’t need it tonight, and you really want it. What would be abnormal would be not to lend it to you.’
And as always, Louise could find nothing to say.
Now she was standing there, the coat folded over her arm, ready to go home. Odette asked:
‘Are you taking Madame’s coat away with you?’
Again Louise was struck by the oddness of the situation. As she took the child away she replied, ‘Yes, I’m going to strengthen one of the seams.’
Louise and Odette ate their supper side by side – bread and ham – and drank their glass of red wine. Still eating, Odette leaned her head against her mother’s arm and said, ‘Would you like some of my orange, Mama?’
‘No.’
‘Yes!’
‘Just a quarter then.’
Louise cleared the table, undressed Odette and put her to bed. She waited a little while until the child fell asleep and then, walking on tiptoe, crossed the bedroom to the wash basin. She combed out her pretty brown hair, rolled some strands up into little curls and piled them on top of her head in the fashionable manner. She had no rouge for her cheeks but she did have a lipstick, so she rubbed some of it between her fingers and expertly applied it to her skin. Hair done and face made up and powdered, she put the blue coat back on again. There are small moments of happiness in life that can, briefly, give as much joy as the greatest of miracles.
Louise couldn’t see all of herself in the glass above the wash basin so she stood on a chair, where she could see everything from her hips to her ankles. The bottom of the coat billowed out slightly, and hung like a dream, just over her knees. She walked out of the bedroom, turning the key in the door without a hitch.
The city was all lit up, and Louise walked along feeling very happy. She stopped in front of one café but didn’t go in, then in front of another, but still she walked on. In this evening full of lights she was searching for something, but she didn’t know what it was.
She made for an area that she knew and went into her usual café. She went up to the bar and asked for a coffee. There was a man there, absurdly got up, who was going from café to café: he was carrying an instrument made out of a wooden pole and a sardine-tin which he was pretending was a violin, miming the movements and imitating the sound with his lips. He wore a tiny green silk hat, and this hat was connected by a small rubber tube to a squeezer concealed in his pocket. Whenever the man pressed the squeezer the hat shot up in a crazy way. Everyone burst out laughing when that happened and so did Louise.
The clown left the café but the jolly atmosphere lingered. Louise sat down at a table and ordered a glass of cider, drinking it in tiny sips, watching people coming in and out. From behind the bar, the waiter called out to her: ‘You look smart tonight!’ She gave him a big smile, which faded very slowly. She drank a little more cider. Minutes passed, more and more slowly, and time began to drag. It must be lovely to wait when you know that someone is going to turn up, Louise thought to herself. Lowering her head, she went off into a sort of dream. She felt very pretty and very alone.
The coat gave off a faint whiff of something – a mixture of perfume and body smell, as if the material was still warm from a skin that had just left it. In the place where her own heart was beating, another heart had recently beat too. ‘Oh, how good she is to me,’ she nearly said out loud. No one else would have offered to lend a garment like that. She is so good, so beautiful… These were the only two adjectives Louise could find, but she knew that there ought to be other words to use and she would have liked to know them.
Closing her eyes, Louise summoned up Madame’s image again, for it seemed to her that this was the best way to find the right means of describing her. She concentrated on thought rather than expression. She saw her with all her distinctive features: the long thoughtful face, the forehead that was almost too high, the smile, the fingers so slender that rings slipped about on them, the beautiful, rather tired eyes whose gaze penetrated the meaning behind every action. If only this passing time was being killed waiting for her. To be her friend, or rather her sister – that surely would be the happiness of a lifetime. If only she were to come into the bar, sit down at her table, and say, ‘Why are you so unhappy, Louise?’
‘I’d not be so unhappy if Bob loved me just a little.’
‘You mustn’t be unhappy, Louise – you know that I love you.’ They would leave together, and talk, and have no secrets from one another.
But it wasn’t like that. Louise was alone. She had a daughter; but though a child might give warmth, a presence and a reason for living, she couldn’t offer relief or help of any kind – she was more like a tender burden.
Louise left the bar and walking smartly made her way towards the market area of Les Halles, where Bob usually hung out. Today she would dare to go and look for him, because today she was much too pretty for him to reject her.
She went first into one café, then into another, and a third. Each time she walked straight out again, because Bob wasn’t there and no one had seen him that evening. At last someone was able to tell her something: Bob had just gone out with the café owner and he’d be back soon. Louise sat down at a table to wait for him.
And when Bob did come back, she didn’t move; she made no sign.
He stood at the bar with some of his mates. She took a piece of paper and a pen out of her bag and began to write down some figures, as if she was deep in an important calculation. Instead of the figures that she was writing at random, Louise wanted to write ‘Bob’ – or rather, ‘Bob, I love you,’ – but she didn’t dare because she was afraid that he might suddenly come up to her table. She went on writing random figures. And then, as if it was moving by its own impetus, the pen traced an ‘M’, a very small ‘M’, on the corner of the paper. It went back over the letter several times, pressing down hard, adorning it with flowery bits and surrounding it with little marks which might have been stars or perhaps flowers, though they didn’t particularly look like either. In the end, beneath her sums the whole corner of the paper was filled up. It became a cabalistic message of love.
Louise waited. Time didn’t weigh so heavily any more; it could stretch out a bit longer yet, because at the end of all this waiting there might be tenderness and joy.
Bob turned round and looked at her. ‘You writing to your lover? Is he dark or fair?’
She greeted him casually and said, ‘No, I’m doing my accounts.’
He picked up his glass, put it down on the table and sat down opposite her. He gave a little whistle of admiration. ‘Hey, you’re all dolled up tonight… you look really good.’
She said mockingly, ‘Do I really?’
‘I just said so, didn’t I?’
The other men finished their drinks and left. Bob let them go and stayed on with Louise. With all the restraint she could muster she managed not to reveal how happy this made her. He asked: ‘Shall we go and have some onion soup?’
She pretended to think about it before saying, ‘All right, if you like.’
At the bistro they were sent up to the first floor.
‘That’s smart,’ Bob said, laughing.
The first floor was a very small room right at the top of the stairs, with three wooden tables covered with paper cloths. Louise went over to sit by the window. Just as Bob was about to sit down he adopted a mock gallant air and said, as a joke:
‘Will you parmit me, Meddem…?’
Louise laughed softly. She was no longer concealing her joy: she let her happiness shine out of her face, her voice, and her eyes, which looked tenderly at Bob. He was wearing his work jacket, his hair was uncombed and he hadn’t shaved, but untidiness suited him: he was young and strong, with a good complexion and physique, and he could get away with anything. The soup was good and hot and they ate with pleasure.
A dog appeared at the top of the stairs, hesitated, and went back down. Louise guessed that this must have been the animal that had recently deposited a little pile under a nearby chair. From where he was sitting, Bob couldn’t see it. She started to laugh. She didn’t dare tell Bob why, but the idea that she was laughing because of a little pile of dog-shit made her laugh all the
more. The laughter was uncontrollable and Bob, thinking she was laughing for no reason, caught it too. They laughed together, louder and louder, every now and again saying they must calm down but then starting again all the louder. Finally Bob said:
‘Wow, that makes you thirsty…’
He ordered a bottle of red wine: if they went on like this, they’d get through ten francs’ worth. They started to laugh again at the very idea. Bob was hot and he took off his jacket. He was wearing a dark blue short-sleeved shirt with a turn-down collar buttoned at the neck – no tie. One button was missing. Louise hadn’t removed her coat and she’d eaten carefully, with her left hand spread open on her chest like a napkin.
Bob paid for the soup and the wine. When they were downstairs Louise bought a bag of chips from the stall in front of the bistro. They walked along eating them, side by side. How lovely and fine it was out of doors! Better than earlier on, or so it seemed to Louise.
When all the chips were eaten, Bob put his arm round Louise and pushed her into the corner of a doorway, up on to a step so that her eyes were almost on a level with his. He kissed her gently, and then looked into her eyes. She said, ‘My love…’
Her voice was fainting, and full of tenderness. She left her mouth half-open and Bob kissed her again.
Then he led her away, holding her round the hips and lifting her up a little.
The deep sleep of an exhausted woman is not interrupted by dawn. Only the loud noises of morning – the thud of empty dustbins chucked back on to pavements, the honking of the first buses – could wake Louise from her stupor.
She pulled the blankets up to her shoulders and remained in that position, feeling strangely sad. Bob wouldn’t come back this evening; it would be days and days before he came back, maybe a whole month even. And to have left her in the street like that, so abruptly, without a kiss, without a word… It is not one of those things that you can be sure of, but she had a feeling that this behaviour was proof that Bob didn’t love her. But didn’t she know that already, that Bob didn’t love her? How much did it matter?
A Nail, a Rose Page 5