The Congo Venus

by Matthew Head

  I thought that if a moment’s glance at the photograph of a lost love could make so much difference in a personality, Madame de St. Nicaise should look more frequently at the photograph of Morelli. As we approached the front door, Mimette came loping hopefully down the hall, and rubbed his side against my trouser leg. He yowled his odd half-harsh, half-mellow yowl, like an odd unseen bird—like a Siamese cat, impossible to describe, and he said to me, “Get me out of here, won’t you?”

  Madame de St. Nicaise picked him up. “No-no-no, Mimette.” She smiled at me. “He always tries to leave with the guests,” she said. “Naughty-naughty-naughty Mimette! Au revoir, Monsieur.”

  She lifted Mimette’s face to her own, and pressed his jowl against her cheek. Mimette looked at me in degradation and despair, then in wild hope as I reached out to open the door. He struggled faintly, without any real conviction, in Madame de St. Nicaise’s arms.

  My hand touched the knob, but it seemed to come alive under my grasp, twisting of its own accord. The door opened from outside, and Mimette nearly slithered free. There was a moment of confusion as I stepped back to keep from being hit by the opening door and the young girl, Jeanne, paused on the sill. Behind her there was the silhouette of a big man, making an immediate impression of physical power through his sheer bulk. For an instant Jeanne’s face took on an expression of surprise, but almost immediately she brought it under control. As many times as I saw Jeanne Morelli, and I saw her briefly and inconsequentially here and there many times during the following months, I was always brought up short by the unyielding reserve of her face, which was like a barricade for her to hide behind. It would be inaccurate to say that she was dead-pan, since the phrase has associations of stupidity, or to call her placid, which is certainly tied up with the idea of serenity. There was something a little sullen and something a little on the defensive at the same time in her expression, which seemed to recognize a pointlessness in her making any effort to interest you, and to deny the possibility of your interesting her by anything you did and said, although she was always polite and, in a purely formal and superficial way, attentive.

  Madame de St. Nicaise introduced us as the door closed and Mimette’s struggles subsided. Her niece, Jeanne; her brother-in-law, Hector Morelli; Monsieur Tolliver, the young man from the American Mission. She set Mimette down and he walked away listlessly down the hall. Now, said Madame de St. Nicaise, Monsieur Tolliver must certainly stay a few moments longer.

  Jeanne and Morelli didn’t seem to like the idea any more than I did, but we all moved back into the room, and as we went through a series of empty politenesses I tried to figure out where Jeanne Morelli missed fire. Her clothes were second-rate, but that was the rule in that locality during wartime, and they were in good enough taste. She had a beautiful figure, by the measurements, but something was wrong. She carried herself well—too well, maybe, because her body never suggested by any chance movement the possibility of its ever yielding. You could look at her and call her pretty or even very nearly beautiful, yet she remained so always in an oddly abstract and sexless way.

  I kept feeling that if she would smile, just once, the whole person might warm up. Then I realized that she did smile, after a fashion, at the appropriate spots in what we were trying to pass off as a conversation, but the smile was as empty as the politenesses it recognized, and she remained hidden behind it, thinking whatever rather sullen and defensive thoughts it gave her satisfaction to cultivate. She was very young—only sixteen or seventeen—but her quality of unrelenting self-containment had nothing in it of the merely unawakened young virgin. She was awake, but she wasn’t having any, thanks.

  When I tried to describe this quality to Miss Finney, Miss Finney said to me, “Well, you know where it must come from, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t then; I think I do now.”

  “Sure. You haven’t any reason to think that she thought any different about Liliane’s possible activities than other people thought, have you?”

  “I guess not. Even the reverse. With Madame de St. Nicaise on the job, especially while the kid was growing up, she must have been subjected to some pretty good anti-Liliane propaganda.”

  “So Jeanne freezes to show the town that Liliane might be free and easy but that a real honest Morelli, of Morelli blood, wasn’t only hard to get, but was impregnable. Not even interested.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, “unless Madame de St. Nicaise actually managed to induce a pathological frigidity. Don’t you want to hear about Morelli?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The impression of physical strength created by Morelli’s silhouette in the doorway vanished when he came into the light and you saw him in the full round. He was a big man, and if you hunted for it you could still find indications of the fine Herculean proportions he must have had before his muscular flesh turned pasty, hanging as it did now, flaccid and in ruins, upon his bones. Of the handsome face in the picture on Madame de St. Nicaise’s piano, only one feature remained intact: he had a nose with the kind of bony distinction which endures through any vicissitudes of bodily change, but the mouth and eyes were puffy and dragged out of shape in the general downward pull which culminated in his sagging belly. I am afraid this is a fairly unpleasant description to tag onto anybody, especially onto a man who didn’t make that bad an impression when I met him. Morelli had a saving quality—a gentleness of manner which, however, was itself marred by a suggestion of discouragement and fatigue.

  I was pretty sure I knew most of what there was to know about Madame de St. Nicaise, but I didn’t have at all the same feeling about her niece and her brother-in-law. When you talked to Madame de St. Nicaise you got somewhere, even if it was somewhere you didn’t like getting to, but with Jeanne and Morelli you didn’t get anywhere at all.

  Morelli, like Jeanne, was extremely polite, and he made some exhausted efforts to sound hearty, since it was certain that in his job at Appro he would sooner or later have to do with me in my work at the American offices. My immediate interest in Morelli was a less creditable one. Here was the man who, by hearsay or truth, was the town’s champion cuckold, and I felt a morbid curiosity about him. Whether his cuckoldry was a legend, as I suspected, or whether it was a fact, Morelli’s air of faded vitality inevitably suggested it to anyone who had seen Liliane and felt her quality of urgent life.

  But I can’t really say that during the ten minutes or so I felt obliged to stay on at the Morellis’ that day, I learned much about Jeanne or about Morelli, except what I could imagine about them from what I already knew of Liliane and Madame de St. Nicaise, and what you can imagine for yourself from the exteriors presented by people who are intent upon keeping themselves hidden from you. And I am willing to admit that perhaps I read more into two words I overheard Madame de St. Nicaise speak than was actually there. These words were simply, “Who knows?” spoken to Morelli. They said a lot, and in a way they answered their own question.

  From where I sat, on the sofa near Jeanne, making words into sentences and exchanging them with her, but not doing what I would call talking, since talking implies some kind of communication—I could hear Morelli when he turned to Madame de St. Nicaise and asked, in a low voice, where Liliane was.

  “Who knows?” said Madame de St. Nicaise, and although she spoke in accents of superficial patience and tolerance, I have never heard any words with more venom in them. I even wondered whether, with the kind of skill a woman like Madame de St. Nicaise can develop, she had not spoken with just the little bit of extra emphasis which would assure my hearing, and understanding, and elaborating for myself upon the disgraceful possibilities she managed to suggest in so simple a circumstance as Liliane’s absence from home in the middle of a day which was no different from any other.

  I told all this to Miss Finney, riding around after we had dropped Emily at the hotel.

  Miss Finney said: “A couple of things, Hoop. You’re usually a pretty clear reporter, but I don’t get a couple of things. Wh
ere did the Morellis stand—socially, I mean. And where do they stand now, if they’ve changed. Outside La Belle Nicaise’s delusions.”

  “Where they stood then and where they stand now is about the same thing,” I said. “They’re high-class second-raters.”

  “Oh, those,” said Miss Finney. “I know the type. If they have aspirations they’re the most uncomfortable people in the world.”

  “That’s right. They never know for sure whether they’re going to be asked to the best parties or not.”

  “Uh-huh. And they never know for sure whether they ought to accept their invitations to the lower second-rate parties or not.”

  “And they have a hell of a time with their own guest lists.”

  “Yes, like should they ask so-and-so and maybe get a rebuff, or should they just let it slide and maybe miss a chance to scratch their way up one more millimeter by their fingernails?”

  “Should they drop so-and-so?”

  “Add so-and-so?”

  “If they get a good invitation, they don’t know whether to mention it casually here and there, or lie low and hope word gets around that they were there.”

  “If they have a good guest list for a dinner, they don’t know whether it’s better to give it to the newspaper or go in for aristocratic reserve.”

  “They’re all the time wondering just what quiet little parties go on that they don’t even know about.”

  “Wait a minute,” Miss Finney said. “Is this you talking, or me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve lost track. Anyway, I guess you understand where the Morellis stand socially.”

  “What we’re really talking about is Madame de St. Nicaise,” said Miss Finney. “Do you think Liliane felt the same way?”

  “She loved attention and needed companionship. I think she had a normal taste for social prestige. But mostly I think she loved friendly attention, no matter where it came from.”

  “What about Morelli?”

  “Morelli was tired. I think he was so tired of being a battleground, with Madame de St. Nicaise charging over him day after day, that he was just lying down and taking what came.”

  “Jeanne?”

  “Any young girl without anything to hope for but a good marriage suffers like hell from the party-list obsession. It’s worse out here, with the ratio of girls to eligible prospects. You know that.”

  Miss Finney nodded in assent, but in the few seconds it had taken me to answer, her attention had wandered and now she tapped ruminatively against her chin with the nail of her forefinger. I didn’t speak, but let her go on with whatever was occupying her, and shortly she stopped the tapping and said, “Hoop—of the various people closest to Liliane, how many saw her during the time she was sick?”

  “Gollmer, of course,” I said. “And Morelli. Madame de St. Nicaise. They nursed her. You couldn’t get a nurse under any circumstances around here at that time.”

  “Why didn’t they take her to the hospital? Crowded, I suppose.”

  “Full up. Then I suppose they didn’t see any reason, at first. I’m just guessing. But a routine case of malaria, even if it was a bad one. Then she was getting better pretty steadily.”

  “Who says so?” Miss Finney snapped.

  “Don’t you believe it? Why not?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t believe it,” Miss Finney said. “I only asked who said so?”

  “How do I know? That’s what you heard around town, that’s all. Everybody said it, I guess. Didn’t you say yourself that it was on the records Gollmer showed you?”

  “It was.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Forget it. Obviously the reports would have come from the old Madame, or Morelli, or Gollmer. But why didn’t you mention Jeanne?”

  “Because she wasn’t here. She was here when Liliane got sick, but she wasn’t here when she died. She didn’t come back for the funeral, either, and it caused a lot of comment.”

  “On a lot of comment, phooey,” Miss Finney interrupted.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where was she?”

  “South Africa. Is that important?”

  “I’ve told you many a time that anything can be important. Why was she in South Africa?”

  “They put her in school down there. Liliane took her down, and stayed there for a while. But Liliane had been back in town for some time before she got sick. Then Jeanne came home.”

  “Because Liliane was sick?”

  “No, because there was some kind of vacation. She stayed over a few extra days because Liliane was so sick, but when she got better Jeanne left. Then immediately Liliane got this blackwater stuff and died three days later. I think it was three days. Do you want me to check for you?”

  “Not now. Maybe later.” She sighed heavily and said, “Give me a cigarette, Hoop”—a sign, from her, that the session was nearly wound up. “You know, Hoopie, it tires me out just to think of life in Morelli’s house.”

  I passed her my cigarettes and matches. She took a cigarette, lit it, and handed the pack and the matches back to me. “Leave them on the seat,” I said; there was somehow something comfortable in having them there.

  Miss Finney took a couple of deep puffs and then settled against the back of the seat. “Sometimes, Hoop,” she said, “when I’ve been working too hard, I ask myself why I’ve spent my life patching up a bunch of poor Godforsaken natives who don’t know what the hell it’s all about anyway. But when I think about lives like the Morellis’, I think mine’s been one long idyl. Lordamighty, can you imagine being Madame de St. Nicaise, and having Liliane brought into your house? All the hatred, frustration—”

  “Always having to hide it.”

  “Every time she thinks she’s clawed her way up that extra millimeter, having something like the Tiny business start going around town.”

  “Sitting at the same table,” I said, “with Morelli and Liliane, and looking at Liliane and hating every yellow hair and every fine healthy pore of that body, and then going upstairs and looking in the mirror and seeing what she looks like herself, and going into Morelli’s room and staring at the big double bed—“

  “Wait a minute,” Miss Finney said. “When did you see Morelli’s big double bed?”

  “I never did. I was just imagining.”

  “Well, you’re getting a little florid,” Miss Finney told me. “Don’t overreach, Hoopie, you’ve got to stick to observed fact. Another thing I wanted to ask: Was that an honest slip when you looked at that photograph and said you’d look forward to meeting Jeanne’s mother, or were you just badgering the poor old she-dragon?”

  “It was an honest slip. I’d only just come to town. I’d only seen Liliane that time with Schmitty at the Equatoriale, and maybe a time or two on the street or at the club. And the thing was, there wasn’t a thing in that room, or a thing in anything that Madame de St. Nicaise said, that recognized Liliane’s existence. As far as Madame de St. Nicaise was concerned, there wasn’t any Liliane. I’ve thought of it often, since then—how Liliane must have moved around that house like somebody who had got there by mistake.”

  “I know, I got that,” Miss Finney said. “You know, Hoop, when you were telling me this, I got about three different impressions of Madame de St. Nicaise.”

  “She acted like about three different people that morning.”

  “That’s what I wanted to be sure of,” Miss Finney said. “It’s important. All right, go ahead now and tell me the rest of the E-string business. Then I’ve got to go home. Emily’s always restless if I’m out late, and she needs the sleep. I’m listening.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I HAVE SAID THAT Madame de St. Nicaise’s uninspired performance on the night of the concert could be attributed to her being under some very special difficulties. One of these difficulties was a technical one, the other an emotional one. The emotional one was the death of Mimette. You may say what you wish about the performer who carries on in spite of a tragic circumstance (
“Just before she went on, they told her in the wings that her husband had been run down by a taxi.”) but it is not the rule that this inspires a great performance, especially if the part performed is not a tragic one, including, as this one did, anything as light in character as an arrangement of Chaminade’s “Scarf Dance.”

  When I heard that Mimette had died, I felt bad about it, because in spite of his opinion of me and the dirty names he had called me I liked him, and also I thought it was a shame that as handsome a tom as Mimette had been should have died without experience of the world. I felt better when I learned the details, because Mimette had actually escaped out the front door at last, and his body was not found until five days later in the native village. The body was fairly fresh but in very poor condition, having been almost entirely devoured by scavenger birds. Most of the skin was there, however, and the head. Madame de St. Nicaise herself made the identification, but even if she had been unable to do so with certainty, it would have been safe to assume that the body was Mimette’s, since he was certainly the only Siamese cat between Accra and Johannesburg. But I did feel better about him, because he had been at liberty a few days living the fine, full, free life of uncloistered tomcathood, and if he had found any disappointment in what he had so long looked forward to, at least his curiosity was satisfied.

  The trouble was that Mimette’s death came at a terrible time for the Léopold String Quartet not only because of the fundamental emotional shock to Madame de St. Nicaise, but because she blamed the occurrence on Dr. Gollmer. There had been a rehearsal at the Morelli residence, and afterward when the guest members were leaving, Dr. Gollmer had carelessly opened the front door and Mimette, unnoticed among the confusion of feet and legs in the hallway until he had made good his escape, had slipped out. I never heard a firsthand eyewitness account of the scene that followed, and it is such an easy scene to embroider that the various versions I heard, some of which concluded with Madame de St. Nicaise laid out on the sofa in a rigor, aren’t worth repeating, but apparently it was a scene of great unpleasantness.