The Vatard Sisters

by Joris-karl Huysmans

  ‘You don’t really think that, you wicked boy,’ interrupted Désirée, who thought it her duty to simper.

  ‘But I do think so, I’ve told you I think you’re nice and pretty.’ She tapped him on the fingers to make him be quiet. ‘And you,’ he began again, ‘what will you say to your father since Céline ought to have spoken to him about our wedding?’

  ‘Well, I won’t say anything to him I expect. He probably won’t accept the idea at first, but after a couple of days he will. Let’s not worry, it’ll all turn out right on its own.’

  It was at that very moment that Vatard was shouting: ‘An idiot, eh?’

  When Désirée returned home, Céline, who was waiting for her, gave her a look. Désirée reading her eyes, guessed everything, sprang towards her: ‘You’ve spoken to him? Tell me quickly!’

  Céline lowered her head, then her sister lowered hers and a large tear trickled from her eyelash. Still Céline didn’t say a word, having no hope of consoling her; nevertheless, she started to say something, but couldn’t finish, and, putting her arm around her sister’s neck, she kissed her eyelids and made her go to bed.

  XII

  Vatard wasn’t wrong; he was going to be overwhelmed by countless quarrels and endless troubles. The first consequence of his refusal was to make Désirée completely obsessed by Auguste. Never had she loved him so much. They used the familiar tu form all the time now, not saying sometimes tu, sometimes vous as before; it felt like a kind of consolation in their unhappiness and they found that they were closer, that they belonged more to each other since they’d started speaking like this. In secluded corners, in the courtyard, near the fountain, they stared at each other in pent-up joy, stammering out their words, laughing without reason, exchanging bits of ribbon and flowers. Auguste got up earlier in the morning, running ahead of his girlfriend, stationing himself in the street, reading the posters pasted to the walls, examining the muddy barrows of fruit being pushed by women whose clogs clattered on the pavement, and when he glimpsed her from afar, trotting along with her leather handbag under her arm, he would throw himself in front of her, lead her down a little half-deserted side street, and there they’d kiss, their arms wrapped round each other’s shoulders. They only had one aim now, to elude the surveillance of Vatard who, having become very suspicious, came to look for his daughter at the workshop exit and no longer went out in the evenings for fear that she’d decamp.

  Life became unbearable for one and all. At the dinner table Désirée would barely open her mouth, hardly eat a thing, picking at each morsel, leaving her wine glass full, daydreaming and sighing ‘Jesus, my God’ and ‘Alas’ so plaintively it ruined your appetite. Céline would grumble, and whenever she spat out a plum pit she’d hurl it angrily into the fireplace, then she’d get up and, with a look of defiance, slam the door behind her. Vatard would look down, fearing to start a quarrel; then Désirée would get up in her turn, fold her napkin and, without looking round, go straight to her room and lock the door.

  Vatard would raise his eyes, clench his fists and curse the heavens, but he stayed where he was, contemplating Eulalie, whose stomach cast a shadow like a demi-john on the wall. He was under the impression that Désirée’s deliberate show of locking herself in her room was a mute protest against his refusal. He was mistaken. There was a little bit of that, obviously, but the real reason was something else. In fact, she was standing by the window, keeping a watch on the suspension bridge; Auguste would then arrive and take up his position, and there, too far apart to speak, they would make signs at each other, exchanging kisses, winks, and smiles. That would last until night fell and sometimes their signals were interrupted by a passing train. Auguste would suddenly disappear, as if into a cloud, then, when the smoke cleared, carded like tufts of wool, the young man continued blowing her little kisses with his fingers. As nosy as he was, Vatard had not yet discovered this ruse, but on the other hand he now recognised Auguste by sight. Seeing the same individual continually prowling around outside his house, it had been easy to guess who he was.

  Meanwhile, Désirée’s obstinate silence, her apathetic air, her ever-increasing carelessness in preparing meals, threw Vatard into suppressed rages that played havoc with his digestion. Sitting in front of his soup, having nothing around him but tearful or hostile faces, he shrank into himself, angry and apprehensive, leaving his spoon mired in his congealing soup.

  So the sight of a poorly cooked piece of veal, bleeding on a bed of carrots, filled him with a boundless fury that was restrained only by Céline’s cantankerous expression. In the evenings, he would remain alone; even Ma Teston no longer visited him, so after two silently smoked pipes he would put Eulalie to bed, and, in a bad mood, yawn until ten o’clock.

  Then one fine evening the situation got worse. Céline returned from her escapades gesticulating wildly, she knocked things over, slammed doors, banged windows shut with her fist: you wouldn’t have dared touch her with a pair of tongs. Vatard thought that his reaction to the plan she’d proposed of uniting Désirée and Auguste was the cause of these outbursts. In this he was once again mistaken. Céline was annoyed enough on her own account without persevering, as she’d done until now, in the defence of her sister.

  She had seen Anatole again. He hadn’t succeeded in storming the defences of the poor girl he was counting on pillaging. The unfortunate girl having summarily dismissed him, he now regretted not having slapped Céline that evening he’d sneered out his plans and his goodbyes. What’s more, he’d learned from some good friends at the workshop that his former mistress was about to be sumptuously wrapped in silk. He’d concluded from this that she was being kept by a rich lover and it was only fair that he should share in such a windfall. So he’d kept an eye out for Céline and one evening he accosted her: ‘Hey, wench!’ Céline increased her pace, but he caught up with her, took her by the arm, and continued with a grand flourish:

  ‘So you must have been saying to yourself: “Anatole’s doing all right for himself. He’s forgotten me, has Mr. Big-shot. Now it’s another woman who’s harvesting his charms. Oh, men…men… how fickle they are!” But you’d be wrong, my love, Anatole was always thinking of his little Céline. What the memory of her cost him in bottles of wine as he tried to forget her is incalculable…at least forty sous a day on credit. You’ll be the ruin of many a bar. That’s all your work. Isn’t it a shame? But I still adore you, and now that I’ve found you again, I’ll never leave you.’

  Céline was distraught. ‘Look, leave me alone,’ she said, ‘you know very well that everything’s finished between us; I have a lover, you have a mistress. As for me, I’m not mad at you for taking one…’

  ‘I’ve dumped her,’ Anatole shouted triumphantly, ‘she was as stupid as an empty bottle…and ugly! Boobs? like two beans on a saucer! Eyes? like two prunes in the white of an egg! And what’s more, every time she opened her mouth to blab, she smelt of absinthe. No thanks! If she were a piece of jewellery she wouldn’t have a hallmark, and I don’t like fakes; me, I want the real thing. She wasn’t a bit like you, you’ve got the bait that hooks a man’s heart. By God, I’m on fire just looking at you. You’ve got fireworks in your eyes, I’d have to be a downright liar not to admit it. Yes, I know full well you have a lover who showers you with gold coins whenever you call him “My Prince.” How much does he give you, by the way? Nothing? You wouldn’t be that stupid! Oh, it’s not possible, I respect you too much to think you’d give your gentleman a good time without it costing him anything. What’s more, if that’s the case, I’m against it. Me, I want you to be happy. But that’s not important, let’s get to the point. I’m big-hearted enough not to want you to be mean to this bloke of yours. So I’m authorising you not to leave him, that would be lacking in good manners. No, no, my angel, pet him, pamper him, pick his fleas for him, tell him he’s as pretty as a picture, that you love him when he gets up in the morning and that you adore him when he goes to bed at night; tell him he’s got style when he moves and a n
oble bearing when he’s still. Whisper in his ear: “You, you’re the first, the only, the sole man who has ever made me happy. However you want your pleasure, roasted, fricasseed, or covered in sauce, I’ll be the waitress who brings it…provided I get a tip.” Now, how does that sound to you?’

  ‘But I don’t want to!’ cried Céline.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to? You thought you could break with me, well you better think again. You don’t want to go over there and make up in that bar? Have I got to thump you in the eye then? No, there, it would really cost me. Come on, you decide, make the best of a bad job or I’ll belt you.’

  Céline glanced anxiously around her, she was afraid; she took Anatole by the hand and tried to be calm.

  ‘But you’re not being reasonable, you know full well I can’t help you, I haven’t a sou, he isn’t selling any paintings, he gives me hardly anything; no really, I can’t!’

  ‘All that, that’s just talk,’ replied Anatole. ‘Look, I mean what I say,’ and out of the corner of his eye he spotted two police officers approaching in the distance, ‘I’ll give you three days to think about it, between now and then I’m going to heat the glue that’ll fix us up again. It’ll be strong, I can tell you, and it won’t do no good putting vinegar on it, it’ll rip your skin off if you try to remove it!’And he stood to attention, clicked his heels, bowed as if he were opening the door of a cab, and whistling, left with that swaggering air that made him irresistible to women.

  So Céline made her lover accompany her through the streets in the evening. Anatole followed them at a distance, but the painter’s lead-tipped cane evidently gave him pause because he never approached them. Nonetheless, Céline couldn’t regain her courage. Her lover limited himself to making the observation that it was insufferable having to walk her home at night in all weathers, and that the prospect of getting into a punch-up with some lout had little appeal for him. She found this a bit disloyal, but as every time she was about to swear at him he would just hum to himself and mix his paints in a bowl, she restrained her anger and only let it out when she returned home to her father’s. Having lost his patience with all this arguing and bickering over nothing, Vatard began to feel that the house was becoming unbearable, that he couldn’t continually stay at home like a concierge, and little by little the surveillance he was keeping over Désirée relaxed. Even so, he would sometimes be assailed by a sudden feeling of suspicion, and after a fit of zeal that wore him out he would moan as he got into bed: ‘If she turns out bad, it really won’t be my fault! Never has a father had so much worry over his daughter’s virtue.’ He would follow her, spy on her, forgetting that philosophical principle outlined by Tabuche: ‘If you annoy your daughter, if you’re always on her back, you can be sure that it’ll be her downfall; it would be simpler to push her straight into her lover’s arms, you’ll at least save yourself a lot of time and trouble.’ Whether he’d immediately recognised the truth of this axiom or not, it was nonetheless true that Vatard ceased to chase after his daughter. She was now able to see Auguste once again, though their meetings were necessarily brief. Désirée would wait for half an hour after her father had gone out, fearing he might have forgotten to take his handkerchief or his pipe, and she would come back early before he returned.

  Fortunately, the street where they met wasn’t far away, a street expressly made for lovers, the Rue du Cotentin, a large but poorly-lit road, bordered on the left by the railway embankment, goods depots, a customs shed and a parcels office, and on the right by a few buildings and masonry yards full of slabs and paving stones. They would walk up and down, encountering at most one or two people, a child on an errand or a dog on the prowl; halfway down the road, by the entrance to some warehouses, opposite the Rue de l’Armorique, they hurried past the three lanterns that illuminated the customs shed and plunged back into the shadows. They nearly always stopped midway to pry curiously through the palings of a gate. An immense field stretched out, interrupted in the distance by a mass of black houses lit by the red dots of their windows. As far as one could see, heaps of paving stones rose up, grey pyramids that turned blue when the moon, cresting their summits, spread the cold water of its gleams over the waning shadow of the streets. Further off, in a vague twilight, between two gigantic cones of larger slabs, trees were being buffeted, suddenly bent by a gust of wind or obscured by swirling clouds from a nearby factory chimney. In front of Désirée, behind the plank fence, lay a cart, its four wheels in the air, the copper sleeves of the wagon’s shafts glittering, sending out shimmers that snagged on the metal blade of a shovel, on the curve of a pick-axe. A deathly silence hung over the street, broken suddenly by the piercing noise of an engine whistle, by the hearty laughter of customs officers in their shed.

  These accumulations of stones rising up into the night gave Désirée goosepimples; she snuggled closer to Auguste, and with her head resting on his shoulder she walked along slowly, and like all girls in love on a moonlit night, without knowing why, she looked up and admired the stars, then, head still tilted, she tugged at her lover’s arm, and pinched him with the end of her nail so that he’d look at her and see her smile. It was nearly time to leave but they stayed there, side by side, silent, and didn’t move. Finally, tying the strings of her hood, she murmured, ‘I’m going,’ and they kissed each other lingeringly, sighing, arranging to meet the next day at the workshop. Then she scurried off like a rat, keeping close to the walls, turning round at the corner of the street to look at Auguste again, and he, after a few minutes, all the while rolling an unlit cigarette around between his lips, would reach his lodgings on the Rue du Champ d’Asile.

  Their meetings were renewed, but these few minutes, achieved with great difficulty, no longer satisfied them. They had become as hungry for each another as before, when they could see each other only during the day, by the water-press or behind barricades of paper and books. Now they aspired to have a whole evening to themselves, to eat at the same table, to laugh side by side at the insipid couplets of a café-concert, to go back home together via deliberately circuitous routes. This dream obsessed them and when, after having exhausted the lexicon of caresses, they began bewailing in monotonous laments the unquenched ardour of their desires, they couldn’t stop. To them the Gaité quarter seemed different to how it really was. Seen through their desires, it became a promised land, a paradise of enchantment and joy. ‘It’s no use, it’s no use,’Auguste would say, ‘you’ll have to find a way to be free one day’; in the meantime, they idled along, arm in arm, and beneath the walls would softly recite their stammered litanies of tenderness. One evening, they didn’t have the street to themselves. Another couple was walking slowly along, and then they too got into the habit of coming regularly as soon as night fell. By common consent, without a word being spoken, each pair of lovers strolled on opposite sides of the pavement, and in order to be more isolated they went in different directions, Auguste and Désirée heading up towards the Rue des Fourneaux, while the others went down towards the Rue Vandamme.

  They would shuttle back and forth like this, and when they arrived back at their point of departure, they would stop, turn round, and resume their walk in the other direction; one couple’s coos and sighs had barely finished reverberating before the other’s started up again, as if, rebounding from a racquet, they had been volleyed across the street to the opposite pavement.

  Sometimes, after having kissed each other and repeated a thousand times that they adored each other, it happened that no one could find anything more to say. It was then that the two girls would begin to examine each other out of the corners of their eyes.

  One evening, the men spoke to each other. Both of them were eagerly awaiting their girl, who hadn’t arrived yet; Auguste didn’t have any matches and the other was smoking; to kill time they started to talk. Auguste thought his comrade was a decent lad. He was a very young man, puny and thin, with a sad and sickly air. He told Auguste that he loved his cousin, but that he was going to have to join his regi
ment soon, and they were seeing each other for the last few times. He also said that he was a porcelain painter, that he’d worked piece-rate earning eight francs a week, but added sadly that after five years of military service he’d no doubt be unable to take up his former profession. Auguste understood what he meant. Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the girls, who emerged at the same time from the Rue du Château. At the sight of the two men talking, they were speechless and stared at one another, but their lovers were already by their sides, so each of the couples, separately, began their long walks back-and-forth.

  Désirée immediately asked Auguste for details about the couple opposite, and the other girl must have asked her lover a similar question, because she surreptitiously cast a curious glance at the walkers.

  One day when the other girl was later than usual, Auguste and Désirée kept the young man company. His intended finally arrived. Then they all began talking and, after having chatted together for a while, the two couples, perhaps tired of their own tête-à-têtes, accompanied each other on the same side of the pavement and, in between kisses, to converse about clothes and love.

  The moment was approaching when the young man had to leave; the night before his departure he invited Auguste and Désirée to come and have a drink, and all four went and sat down in the back room of a small bar nearby.

  At the thought that the next morning he had to quit Paris, leave the woman he loved, abandon his work and his friends, and that by that very evening he’d no longer be master of himself, that he would be a thing, a mere nothing, moved and shifted at the whim of an order, the young man felt very depressed. Seated in front of his glass with downcast eyes, he remained silent. Auguste gave him some pointers about the soldier’s trade that were accurate, but not very consoling; at the end of each of his sentences the words ‘guardhouse’, ‘in the clink’, and ‘glasshouse’, kept returning like an obstinate refrain. According to him, it was a horrible torture for anyone weak, but for sturdy chaps like himself, and he thumped himself in the chest, it was a joke and that’s all. However, he added: ‘There were days when I was shattered, and I’m not saying that to discourage you but because it’s the honest truth.’ And as if, despite their intention to relieve his fears, they’d sworn to rob him of all consolation, his girl continued in an undertone, saying as she showed off her lover’s frail wrists: ‘He’s got such dainty arms, it’s always stopped him learning a strenuous profession. He’ll never be able to carry his rifle.’