by Ursula Bloom
‘You, Jan?’ she asked in surprise.
‘It’s poor Josette. She is ill. It is the baby.’
And instantly, without sparing herself, as though she had expected this mission: ‘I will come.’
She was hardly a minute drawing on some clothes, then she came out into the street, and walked beside him over the cobbles, without saying a word. So they came to the attic where he lived.
They went up the stairs and into the room. The very atmosphere breathed pain, and Josette was half-lying on the bed, her hands pressed to her side, as though she could go no further.
At that particular moment Jan had the feeling that he was to blame. He had the idea that he had been the cause of all this, that he could never forgive himself; for she lay like a crumpled leaf which had been trampled into the gutter, and was bruised.
He said: ‘I cannot bear it,’ it hurt him so much.
Matina turned to him. The fire in her eyes had leapt into sudden life, like a warrior who hears a distant bugle.
‘You have got to be quiet,’ she said, ‘you have got to help. You must bear it all for her sake, and we must do what we can for her. This is not the moment to be squeamish.’
She was strong. She was the Madonna in whose tender but efficient hands lies life, and he recognized it. She went about the room coolly, giving Josette strength by her very presence, and all the time staying calm herself. She laid Josette down gently; she made coffee in the pan on the fire, and brought it to Jan. It was very strong, and tasted bitter, but he knew that she had done this, particularly because she wanted to give him strength to go through with this crisis in their lives.
So, for hours the three of them worked in this room where he and Josette had been so happy. So, with the turn of the tide, and the morning touching the east with colourful fingers, the little new life slipped into the world, and screamed in anger at it.
‘It is a boy!’ said Matina triumphantly, and gathered him up into her arms, wrapped in the old shawl she had had ready for him.
Josette turned on the bed, her hair clung damply to her head, her eyes fluttered.
‘I knew,’ she said, and again, ‘I knew.’
Then she coughed.
V
The boy was large and strong. He had fine lungs and roared defiantly when anything went wrong; in face he had much of his mother, but nobody thought of him for Josette was ill for over a month, and she did not seem to have any strength left, nor want to stir herself. She lay there, content to watch the sunshine on the sea below the window, and the new leaves come to the vine, but she had no desire to get out and about again.
Jan fetched the doctor to see her, because he was so anxious.
‘Come, come,’ said the doctor, who was rather a playful old man, and would take such lethargy as a childish delusion, ‘this will never do. You must go out and have fresh air and show the baby the world. He is anxious to see it, the poor little bambino.’
Even when Josette did get down all those stairs (horrified at the prospect of climbing up them again) she sat lethargically upon the shore with the baby held in her arms, and she stared out at the sea as though it were a dream, no more. Sometimes she coughed.
Jan tried to interest her in the idea of dancing again. ‘What about going back to the old job?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ she always replied.
He gathered that she did not want to dance.
It dawned on him after a long while that she had no desire left to enter the restaurant on the tips of her toes, and to spin round like a flower tossed in the wind. She had turned dreamy.
Jan confided in Matina that it almost broke his heart. ‘Things have never been the same since the baby came,’ he said, ‘never the same; what do I do?’
‘It is because she is not well.’
‘I know that she is not well, I know that she is unhappy, and it worries me to death. You see, my own mother’s marriage broke because of the children. We ought not to have had the bambino. It was all wrong.’
Matina said: ‘Every marriage should bring children if it is to be complete. You will not be sorry that you have had the little Luis later. He is a beautiful boy, and will bring you much happiness. I do not think that you must reproach yourself there. And Josette will get over it, it is only that she feels so ill now.’
The Padrone was impatient about it.
‘When does Josette return to dance for me?’ he inquired one day, and there was something abrupt about the tone of voice when he said it. Jan was not used to his speaking so harshly. ‘We cannot keep the place empty for her, for ever, you know. The rich patrons are coming back to Amalia, and the season is in full swing. We need some additional attraction here.’
He sounded extremely irritable.
Anxious to propitiate him, Jan said: ‘Soon. Soon. She had a bad time with the bambino, and she is not well enough yet; but soon.’
The Padrone did not look too well pleased. He said: ‘Oh,’ indifferently, almost as though he doubted it, and wandered off, his hands stuck into the pockets of his short coat. He was obviously anxious. Jan began to feel nervous, but never having known anything but kindness from the Padrone, he did not pay much attention, merely assuming that he was in a bad mood.
At the end of the week, when Jan came to the Golden Galleon, turning the corner of the road, he was amazed to see a big poster outside. The restaurant was advertising the engagement of ‘La Fleur’, an exquisite artiste dancer who was giving them a short season, appearing at midnight every night.
Jan rubbed his eyes, for he could not believe that this had happened. If it were true, it meant that Josette’s place had been filled, and that somebody else would be dancing where once she had danced.
He looked again, and saw that alas, it was quite true; there was no doubt whatsoever about it! When he entered the restaurant he was aware of the other waiters glancing at him nervously, he did not know how to cope with it, he felt disillusioned and unreal. He stared hopelessly. He would go to the Padrone and have it out with him he told himself; it was the Maestro who stayed him.
‘You cannot reproach him,’ he said, ‘after all the Padrone has his living to make, and the season is here, he must have some attraction. Nothing will come from a quarrel save bad feeling, and you will regret it all your days. Say nothing. Accept it.’
At that particular moment Jan had felt that he could only do one thing, and that was to go and strike the Padrone for having set anybody in Josette’s place; but he cooled down; he knew that the Maestro was a reasonable man, not easily upset and far-seeing. Jan said nothing, and that night La Fleur came in at midnight, bigger than Josette, older, with a high firm bust, and a tin tiara on her hair, and an abundance of tulle. She was tawdry. She danced well but mechanically, there was none of that joie-de-vivre that had been Josette’s.
Jan watched, folded his arms, and leaning back against the wall; he hoped the clients would realize that this was not real dancing, but something that can be bought, and is therefore valueless. Genius refuses to be paid for. This was not genius. But the clients had dined and wined well, they were in an approving mood, and they felt that anything in the way of entertainment was worth while, so they clapped gaily. Jan could have killed them. They threw flowers from the tables to La Fleur as she pirouetted away, her hands outstretched, and smiling that idiotic smile which might have been nailed upon her face.
They liked the act.
After, the Padrone walked round the restaurant, preening himself, and coquetting. He received compliments; it was an excellent idea to have a dancer here again. Nobody asked what had happened to Josette. Nobody was interested.
Jan thought: ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it,’ and he bustled about with serving the meals. Hours later he went home. Josette was lying awake, with the baby in her arms. She was watching the stars over the sea, and the way that the moon made that golden road, which one day they would walk along.
She said: ‘Dear Jan,’ and then tenderly, ‘it will not always
be like this. Soon I shall be well and fit again, and able to go to the Galleon and dance; tell the Padrone I’ll be there soon.’
He said: ‘I will, my sweet, I will,’ for at that moment he could not trust himself to tell her the truth.
VI
He never knew how she caught that cold. It was not the time of year when people caught colds, it was hot enough in all conscience, and the days were breathless, but coming in one afternoon he found her there more languid than before, and heard her cough. He wheeled sharply.
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve got a cold,’ and she coughed again. It rasped. He did not know why, but it reminded him of a passing bell, like the ones that he had heard at Villefranche.
‘We will have the doctor,’ he said.
‘But that would be foolish, and only throwing money away.’
‘No,’ said he, ‘it would be right.’
He did not send for the same silly little doctor who thought of them as a couple of children, but for the English doctor, who was staying at the big hotel, and had only the other night given him five lire for himself, to buy the baby a rattle.
Jan had been much impressed with the English doctor and had liked his face. He went himself and begged him to come. ‘I have faith in you,’ he said, ‘I believe in you. I could not have anyone else.’
At first the English doctor demurred, then he said that he would come. He would do what he could, but he did not expect that it was much; after all women would catch colds.
‘But not Josette,’ said Jan.
The doctor came to the attic where the vine curled greenly about the window, and the sea lay beyond with never a ripple upon it. He saw Josette sitting there, hunched into a chair which looked pathetically too big for her. The doctor went over to her. He was very patient. Jan sat with the baby in his arms watching the doctor, and he knew that his eyes had grown large and wondering, and that there was a curious little pricking in his heart which told him that he was afraid.
‘Very well,’ said the doctor to Josette, ‘it is silly to catch cold! I must talk to your husband about you,’ and he took the baby and handed it back to her, and then tucked his hand inside Jan’s arm. ‘We will go outside?’ he suggested.
They went down the stairs on to the cobbled quay where the children played, and where at night the moon cast its silver fish-net.
‘Listen,’ said the doctor, ‘you have got to be very brave. There is something wrong with her, and she will have to go right away, but I can help you.’
Jan stared at him. He knew that his mouth was going dry, and that he felt an unreasonable pricking behind his eyes, just as he had once felt, when, as a little boy, he knew that he was going to cry.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
The doctor was talking reassuringly. He said: ‘To-day consumption is not the menace that it once was. Josette will go to Switzerland, to a sanatorium in the mountains there, and she will recover herself at once. She must not have the baby with her, but there is a convent at hand, where I think the baby could go. I will inquire of the kind nuns. As for yourself there are restaurants where you will get work. It is not so bad as it might be.’
Jan stared helplessly. He saw now that this bright dream had ended as suddenly as it had been born. All the ecstasy of love which had been outpoured into that little room was something dead and done with. The Maestro had been right. This curse had hung over poor little Josette, and she had contracted the disease. Their own doctor had been too old and stupid, and too amused at life to go deeply into the subject. He did not care.
He said: ‘When do we start?’
‘I will make all arrangements,’ said the doctor.
It was as though this were another breaking up of home. Just as he had left Villefranche and had stepped out into the wideness of the world, now he would step out again, only this time he would have wife and child on his hands. A sick wife, too.
‘I will explain to her,’ said the doctor, ‘I will make it all sound good so that she will like the idea.’
Motionless Jan stood very still.
He did not know for how long. He realized that the doctor had gone back to the attic they had loved so well, with the view of the sea, and the scent of the magnolias in spring. He did not know that he had cared so much, nor so warmly for this place, and suddenly became intensely aware that places appealed to him. He was born with a nostalgic love. Where he had lived, there also he had loved. Villefranche with the cobbled quay, and the nets that he had hated to darn, but the hotel that he had cared for, and which had welded him to it. He had worked hard in that hotel, and had been a slave to the whims of Madame, but he had loved it well.
Often he had thought of it with yearning even when he had come here, which was so much more beautiful. And now he could not bear to think that his roots were to be torn up again, and he would have to leave a place that he had loved so well. A place where so much had happened! Meeting Matina and the Maestro, loving the work in the Golden Galleon, and wanting to go on with it; meeting Josette, her arms outstretched, her whole body poised on those absurd little toes. Meeting her, and loving her. Marrying her, and sleeping in that attic room, with the vine and the sea beyond, and the knowledge that they were one another’s.
It was all ending.
This phase in his life was finishing with an abruptness that, curiously enough, he had half expected.
Ever since the Maestro had told him about it. Ever since the Maestro had said this day would come.
He had been a fool to think that he could go against Fate when it is an open book in which the history of lives are written before they are lived. He knew that now.
Five
I
They came to Switzerland.
It was a dreadful business uprooting themselves from Amalia, and he hated every moment. Josette made no protest. The lethargy was a lichen that had settled itself upon her and she did not care what happened, it seemed. The doctor told her that she would be made well and strong again in the sanatorium built high on the hill, and he talked with such enthusiasm that she seemed to be carried away by it.
‘Then I shall be happy again,’ she said.
The doctor knew the little town well and he had written to the proprietor of Papillon bleu, a restaurant there where he thought that Jan could get work. He was doing his best.
Jan told the old Maestro: ‘Just as you said, and now it has happened, and I blame myself. She should never have married; she was too young, too simple, and all the time this wretched complaint was lying under it all, waiting to spring out. I blame myself.’
The old man put out a hand and patted him consolingly on the shoulder.
‘You must blame no one. These things happen. Why it should be so, I do not know, but they do happen. It is the fault of no man, and you must not blame yourself.’
‘Supposing she doesn’t get better?’ For the first time he voiced the question that had tormented him.
‘You have the boy! You have the knowledge that you had some months of exquisite happiness, and that you gave her a joy she would never have known had she not met you.’
He shook his head. ‘That does not console me.’
‘Listen, my son,’ said the old man, ‘nowadays much can be done, doctors are clever, all things are possible. I believe that they will restore her to the most perfect health.’
‘They failed with her father.’
‘Her father was older. Here it has been caught so early. You must not always look upon the dark side, my son, you must look to the stars!’
He said good-bye to the Padrone, who was more concerned with replacing a good waiter than with making adieux. He considered that he had been treated shabbily, for he had brought Jan all the way from Villefranche here, and he thought that the young man had behaved extremely badly, now wanting to go away with his sick wife. The Padrone was a man of moods, and he was in that kind of mood that argued the whole thing was a hoax. The girl had had a child, and was merely slow in recovering
from the effects of it; there was no need to make such a fuss as though women never had had children before, and pretending that Switzerland was necessary. It was absurd, said the Padrone. Why, he argued, he had been told by a most eminent doctor, a far more eminent one than this crazy Englishman who wanted to send the whole family scuttling over to Switzerland, that it had been proved that every man, woman and child at some time in their lives were infected with consumption. Everybody had it. But, he protested, everybody did not go to Switzerland for it!
Jan said no more.
He said good-bye to Matina one night when the playing was done, and she was closing the piano in the restaurant dirty and untidy from feasting and fun. The tables had been put straight but the floor was scattered with roses, and souvenirs of the carnival night. La Fleur had danced, and had gone off to her cheap lodgings at the furthest end of the town, usually with the richest client in the room. La Fleur preferred them rich; her dance had none of the joyous simplicity of little Josette’s because La Fleur was not a simple woman, as they all knew now. She was sophisticated, she had an eye to the main chance on every possible occasion. Nobody really liked her.
Matina was passing an old silk duster lovingly across the keys, and shutting the lid. She looked very tired and her dark eyes had rings round them.
‘To-morrow,’ said Jan, ‘I shall not be here.’
‘I knew you were going about this time.’
‘It is a terrible journey to take. Josette is so ill that she can do little for the boy. He is to go into a convent where the kind nuns will see after him. Oh Matina, I am so afraid for the future.’
She tried to be reassuring.
‘It does not do to think too deeply of the future; I believe that there is always something joyous ahead. Try to think that way too.’
‘I dare say, but it is not easy.’
‘Josette will be cured.’
‘So the English doctor says.’