I made a sign to Laurence that I wanted to leave. She resisted at first, but Falou made the remark that if we arrived too late Alberte might not keep the table that we had reserved. That convinced her, and I drew her outside.
In recapitulating the events of that memorable evening, I can still see a taxi glass that I pulled down precipitately in spite of the cold and the protests of my friends. I can also still see in a barley-sugar shop on the Boulevard de Clichy a Japanese man in an operetta costume who is turning a metallic handle with one hand and raising a jar of magical candy in the other.
Alberte’s bar is full of the music of an orchestra hired for the occasion. The cloth of our table makes me think of an altar-cloth. I sit down and I look over my shoulder to see if the Japanese man has followed me. I turn my head in order not to see Drevet, a café bohemian of a species inferior to Falou’s, whom the latter despises and calls a bohemian. He is a former painter, whom alcohol now prevents from painting. Laurence makes him signs of amity, because Drevet, naturally, has all her sympathies.
Groups with illuminated faces, men in suits, and women in low-cut dresses are coming in and going out incessantly, and I almost have vertigo. One wave of that human tide deposits on a high stool, like a piece of wreckage, a tall thin creature, slightly stooped. It is a woman who is still young, with a nose that is too long. Alberte lavishes consolations upon her.
We ask the cause of her chagrin. She has no special chagrin. She is the tall Loulou, who has no luck, and to whom inexorable life continues to be contrary. Alone among all the women in Paris and perhaps in the world, she has no invitation for the evening of revels.
“That can happen,” says Alberte, without conviction, for she knows that it can only happen to the tall Loulou, marked since birth with eternal bad luck.
But Laurence cannot tolerate such an injustice. She gets up with a surge of amour that I have never seen and before I can stop her, she invites the tall Loulou to supper. In vain, Falou protests by means of signs, for he is superstitious and understands in its profound extent what the term “bad luck” can mean. The tall Loulou refuses, timidly, but Laurence is ready to get down on her knees before her and she forces her to sit down with us. I can see under the table that Falou is holding his index finger and little finger extended. Everything that surrounds me takes on a symbolic meaning for me, and I have the sentiment that an event of an occult order is about to occur.
However, I’m calm, and I think: What folly! Always that taste for baseness! What would my friends think if they saw me at table with a hooker like that?
Falou leans forward to whisper in my ear: “Something bad is going to happen to us this evening.”
But Alberte comes to pour the champagne personally, in spite of the difficulty she has in moving. I had only seen her upper body until then, and her obesity fills me with astonishment.
Thus, what is hidden is revealed, I say to myself.
The orchestra is making so much noise that one can see mouths articulating phrases without being able to hear any sound. Dancers are trying to sketch steps on tables. An odor of food mingles with the perfume of women and regular gusts of fresh air that come from the door, opening and closing incessantly. I still expect to see the Japanese man appear with his jar of barley sugar.
I have no idea how long we stay there. I drink everything that is poured into my glass, but my mind remains lucid enough to notice Laurence’s anxiety and the manner, even stranger than usual, in which she looks around.
Her attitude in my regard seems modified. Two or three times she takes my hand with a gesture that is not habitual to her, but I don’t respond to the gesture and I disengage myself every time rather swiftly, because I’m exasperated with the amity that she is showing to the tall Loulou and the knowing glances that she is exchanging with the painter Drevet.
That exasperation is attenuated, however, and things around me take on a character of unreality. My head is spinning slightly.
At a given moment and although Laurence has not manifested any sign of it, I’m certain that she has just heard someone calling to her. The voice had no human tone and did not come from anywhere. It’s the one I heard at the Bal Wagram. And at the same time, I’m gripped by a power of immobility and indifference, as if, instead of being an actor in the scene I’m seeing, I became a simple witness.
Then I hear a heart-rending cry, like that of someone having his throat cut. Is it the occult event I’m expecting. Is the Japanese man in the room? No. A few paces away a man in a suit is standing, waving his arms, with a knife in his hand and a great bloodstain on his shirt-front, in the place of the heart. But his cries are false. I understand. A glass of red wine has spilled on him, and in order to amuse the audience he has made a semblance of striking himself and is staggering, mimicking the throes of death. He’s an old party animal with waxed moustaches and his friends are howling with joy around him. A drunken young woman simulates the preparation of a dressing with her folded napkin.
The door opens and I turn my head away. Someone has just entered, no matter who, an anonymous being with a bowler hat. In the frame of the doorway I have the vision of a few poor people, a beggar, a flower-seller with a little girl and other silhouettes even less distinct.
The man in the suit is agitating on one side like a caricature of assassinated stupidity, on the other, the creatures of the street immobilize, taking on a dream-like quality, and astonishment gives their faces the suave purity that one sees in certain paintings.
What happens then? I have never really understood. Is the voice real? Does it come from the street, does it emit vibrations like all terrestrial sounds or does it only resonate in the depths of the heart? Have the paupers in the street suddenly started intoning a hymn of misery? Is it the voice that I imagine to be that of evil?
Laurence squeezes my arm; she had heard. But perhaps for her it is a voice that is coming from further away, coming from the maternal entrails that bore her and is reminding her that girls are vowed to the same servitude as their mothers. Perhaps there is no voice at all and Laurence has already made her resolution a long time ago.
A soft kiss brushes my temples, at the place where my hair is beginning to go gray...
I have the sentiment of a dress going away, a little of my youth that is being taken away from me...
I sit there without budging, my head in my hands...
Much later, I perceive that Laurence is no longer there. I’m not astonished, but I stay and wait for her for an indeterminate time, while knowing that she isn’t coming back. The tall Loulou has disappeared too.
I finally get up. The expression on Falou’s face is completely stupid.
“Laurence left first,” he says, simply.
And Alberte, without any hidden agenda, with the perfect ingenuousness of which her slack face is capable, adds: “Your lady has preceded you.”
I nod my head. I let her believe that I’m tranquil, that I’ll find Laurence a home. I’m certain that I won’t find her there, that I won’t see her the next day, or the following days, or ever again.
Outside, I perceive the Japanese man, who had just closed his shop. He has put an overcoat over is costume and plunged a felt hat over his head. But he still has red slippers of a bizarre form. There is nothing mysterious about him. He walks slowly. He seems poor and sad. Laurence would like him.
I think: How quickly one becomes attached, without suspecting it.
And Falou say to me: “That’s curious! Nothing bad happened to us.”
There is a hint of regret in his voice.
We pass through the Place Clichy. I raise my eyes. The sky is extraordinarily clear and I’m surprised by the different colors of the stars. I remark to my companion that it is perhaps the first time that I’ve noticed the beauty of the stars of Paris. And I add: “One only looks at the stars in the country.”
He replies that he never looks at them, either in Paris or in the country.
He finally quits me. There are no taxis.
Then I start running as fast as I can.
Oh, if I could only find Laurence asleep in our bedroom.
The key makes a noise in the lock. I call out: “Laurence!” in a low voice at first, and then in a loud voice, unrecognizable in its tone.
But no, I knew it. There’s no one there.
It is futile to describe the regrets that I experienced and how, according to my habit, I recapitulated a thousand times the events that had occurred in the last few months, representing to myself what I ought to have done in some circumstance or other, imagining the exact phrases that I ought to have pronounced on such a day, at such an hour, I let myself fall into an extreme depression. Everything was my fault and I alone knew the extent of that fault. I had not loved Laurence enough to retain her. She would not have left if she had been afraid of causing me a profound and true dolor. I had only experienced desire for her. Who can tell whether even that desire might have been insufficient? I relived every minute I had spent with Laurence since the first kiss in the dining room, since the first embrace in a bedroom with the odor of stuffiness and seaweed until the last nights in Paris, and I eventually convinced myself that I had not loved her at all.
Face to face with myself, I was obliged to confess that every time I had taken her in my arms my imaginative power had, by an involuntary transposition, put in her place the image of her sister. I had begun in the automobile carrying me along the road to Toulon, at the moment when I had just overtaken the Holy Sacrament, and perhaps the initial cause of the evil was in the encounter between the Catholic God and the possessed individual that I was. I had continued. I had never ceased to imagine Eveline when I held her sister against me and many a time, face to face, I had closed my eyes in order to see her better, with her name on my lips.
I had not articulated the syllables of that name, but who can tell whether Laurence had not heard them all the same.
I had the confirmation that I was not mistaken when, two days after her departure, I received a letter from Laurence.
She told me rather briefly not to worry about her. She had wanted to live as she pleased. She did not merit the interest—she did not say the love—that I had taken in her. She apologized for the abruptness of her abandonment and any pain that it might have caused.
The sentence in her letter that struck me most forcefully was: In any case, I’ve divined that you were thinking incessantly about my sister, and I don’t hold it against you.
She did not give me her address. I could not send on her things or come to her aid. It was a great relief for me to recall that, a few days before, I had given her a rather large sum for a purchase of dresses that had then been postponed, which had still been in the bag she was carrying on Christmas Eve.
Dismal days passed. I went one evening to question Alberte. She had not seen Laurence again. She assured me of that several times, with vivacity, and even extended her head, swearing on her mother’s head, which I had not asked her to do. While making that oath she was squeezing a lemon that she was about to peel in order o make a cocktail, and the fruit suddenly appeared to me as the symbol of a gilded lie. Then she paid no further heed to me, while nevertheless watching me from the corner of her eye, and I thought I discerned in her willful indifference the intention of discouraging me from coming back. The painter Drevet, who was slumped on a banquette in front of a drink, did not salute me, and even took care to avoid my gaze.
I made long stations in the neighboring cafés, but they were futile. Then I took the decision not to go out again and I started reading books in my library. I studied religions. I read everything I could relating to the Essenes, the Gnostics and the various sects that had perpetuated their beliefs. I also read everything I could relating to possession, demons and the relationships between demons and humans. I saw that, according to the priests who had treated the subject, those relationships were narrow and multiple.
But I only read with half my mind. The other half was elsewhere than the books, concentrated in the sense of hearing, avoid to hear whether the doorbell might ring. Sometimes, it did ring. It was the electrician, or the plumber, or someone making a mistake.
I then enunciated, for myself: “I’m not expecting anyone.”
In reality, I was incessantly expectant. But was it really Laurence that I was expecting?
It was a Sunday, at about five o’clock. The part of my being occupied in listening, unknown to the other, to the noises of the house, perceived the brief, timid ring of someone who will not ring a second time if no one responds to the first. I had given everyone leave that day, and I was in pajamas, in a darker mood than usual. I had decided not to see anyone. However, I pursed my lips and at a slow pace, I went to open the door myself.
On the threshold, in the demi-obscurity of the landing, stood Eveline. I cannot say that I was surprised to see her. No, I was expecting her. It was her for whom I was waiting. It was, therefore, natural that she had come. We stood there for a minute, however, considering one another.
In the end I said: “Come in.”
And she simply came in.
I stammered an apology for my costume, for the obscurity of the antechamber, where one risked bumping into an umbrella-stand, and I took her into the studio.
She darted a glance around the room curiously, and the calmness of that gaze made me think that she was not expecting to see a door open. She knew, then, that Laurence had left me. She did not speak until after that rapid inspection.
The step that she had taken was very painful, and I ought to understand that. She had thought, however, that it was her duty to make it—unknown to her father, of course.
She spoke in a determinedly grave and severe tone.
“I’ve come on Sunday because I thought that you wouldn’t go out on that day.”
She repeated that insignificant and evidently unnecessary phrase twice.
She had changed. The blue-tinted ash-gray of her eyes was more profound. Her features were more mobile and animated by a kind of life that had not been there before. She appeared to me to be more beautiful and less distant, and I had the bizarre sensation that she had returned from a voyage after a season on a distant planet. It was very warm in my studio and, without thinking about it, she unfastened her fur coat. She was wearing a white dress, simple and straight. I saw the scene in the corridor again and I turned my eyes away, inviting her to sit down. She remained standing.
She did not want to reproach me. She had not come for that. Everyone had to settle their own conscience. I had to know, undoubtedly, that everyone had judged my conduct severely, perhaps too severely. She alone knew the part of the responsibility that her sister Laurence had. She alone knew how far her coquetry went, and even the word coquetry was too weak. Her mother had often predicted what was bound to happen. Yes, I had excuses. But in the end, there was an age-difference between Laurence and me that ought to have made me reflect.
In saying that she had a glint of triumph in her eyes, and the creases of her mouth expressed a delicious and pure cruelty.
It was not the first time she had made an allusion to my age. That had always been very disagreeable to me. I made an evasive gesture. I got ready to respond that Laurence was of age and that she had not found my age disproportionate with hers, but she stopped me.
“No matter! That isn’t the question. I believe that if Laurence hadn’t left with you she would have left with the first man who came along.”
The first to come along! That was the expression that Laurence had used herself, in front of the abandoned house, when the project of flight had been formed between us.
“What has pushed me to come to see you,” Eveline went on, fixing me with her immense eyes, “is the anxiety that my sister now inspires in me. Do you know what has become of her? Do you know her existence?”
I replied that I had received a letter from her and that I had done everything possible to find her, but I had not succeeded in doing so.
“Anyway, what’s the point? Laurence left me
voluntarily. She knew what she was doing. I consider that everyone is free to dispose of themselves.”
Perhaps my voice had a hint of melancholy in saying that. As if she were abruptly interested in the element of chagrin that she believed she discerned, Eveline sat down, invited me with a gesture to sit down facing her, leaned forward and said: “And have you suffered from being abandoned? Are you still suffering now? For you loved her, didn’t you?”
I did not reply.
“You loved her?” she repeated.
I made her the observation in my turn that that was not the question and that if I were suffering, it was the punishment for my sin, if there was one.”
Well,” said Eveline, “personally, I’ve had news of my sister. Oh, indirectly, for she doesn’t love me enough to write to me. Friends have encountered her and they came to warn me about the existence she’s leading. But I’m hesitant; I don’t want to deal you too painful a blow.”
The same immaterial cruelty that I had already seen in her face refined her features, and put a mist into her eyes. Then, firmly, articulating her words so that none would be lost, but nevertheless speaking rapidly, for all executions are rapid. She said:
“Laurence is leading an abominable life. She has been seen with people who belong to the utmost depths of society. It seems that she had attained the ultimate degree of depravity. Personally, I had foreseen everything that has happened and I’m not afflicted by what my sister might do. But it’s because of my father. It’s necessary, so far as it’s possible, that he doesn’t know. It’s necessary to ask Laurence not to show herself, to offer her money, if necessary, for that. You ought to have at least an idea of the people with whom she might be living. Perhaps—almost certainly, in fact—she knew them with you? It’s absolutely necessary to try to find her.”
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