Belle De Jour (12 page)

But when she saw him start, and noticed during the drive back that something heavy and unexpressed separated them, Séverine was horrified. A second of thoughtlessness had compromised all her careful work. Once again she had hurt Pierre.

Séverine only fully realized the strength of her love for him at such moments of emotion or peril; but in those moments she felt it to the point of pain. She now recognized suddenly that she was no longer going to Mme Anaïs’ in search of an anonymous lust, but for Marcel. She knew then that her secret life, which had been so well contained within the walls of the rue Viréne, was overflowing into her other world which was dedicated to Pierre; and she knew too that she risked losing everything in that corrupt flood. She had to dam up the dike at all costs. The routine she’d gotten into
with Marcel was what had caused this dangerous situation. She’d have to forget him. It would mean a sacrifice, but one she looked forward to as she contemplated Pierre’s solemn face in the darkness. She decided to set straight the course of destiny.

Mme Anaïs greeted Séverine’s resolution with a satisfaction in which there was an admixture of anxiety.

“Sure, I know how you feel, honey, you don’t want to see any more of him,” she said. “I don’t know anything about that guy, but frankly he’s someone I’d rather not see in my place. The only thing is, how’s he going to take it? One of Hippolyte’s friends, you know … well, I’ll tell him you’re sick. He’ll get tired of waiting.”

Four days later when Séverine left the house a figure barred her path. She knew who it was before she made out his features: that body was so massive it seemed to shut out the evening light.

“I’ll walk you to the end of the road,” Hippolyte said quietly.

Séverine was paralyzed with terror, at first. But once past the rue Virène—Mme Anaïs’ antichamber—and onto the square of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, a cry rose within her. What was she doing! Here she was out in that world where she represented only virtue, health —where she was Pierre’s wife—with a man from Anaïs’ house. And what a specimen! She’d given up the most vivid passion of her secret, cloistered life in order to keep her two worlds separate; and here was that life stretching its tentacles toward her quite literally, with none other than Hippolyte for its agent.

Her trembling terror arose not so much from her present situation as from a realization that fate, which she had thought she could bend to desires, was utterly out of her control. Then her fright gave way to an instinct of self-perservation. Rigid, ready to shriek for help, Séverine ran toward a passing cab. She made no more than a sort of stumble: Hippolyte’s hand fell on her and Séverine knew the dull shock of a convict taking his first step at the end of a chain. The weight of that hand drained all her strength.

“No hurry,” said Hippolyte without raising his voice. “I want to talk with you. Somewhere quiet O.K.? Come on.”

He walked toward a small wine-store on the square. Although he’d let go of her, in fact wasn’t even looking at her, Séverine followed him.

The tiny room was empty. There was just one workman downing a glass of wine at the stained counter. He did so with such relish, however, that he gave Hippolyte the idea. He waited till his drink had been brought before turning toward Séverine.

“Listen to me,” he said, “because I don’t want to say this again. And if you want to know how I keep my word, ask around in Montmartre or Les Halles about Hippolyte the Syrian. What I’m saying is, if you don’t want any trouble”—the mildness of his expression sent a shiver through Séverine—“then don’t play around with Marcel.”

Slowly he drank his wine, and reflected, for it was clearly an effort for him to develop an idea.

“Now you, you seem to be a nice kid, a good kid,”
he went on, “so maybe I better tell you how it is. See, Marcel’s a guy once saved Hippolyte’s life. Get that straight. That’s more than if he were my son, I mean. Only thing, he has one weakness—women. Last year, for instance, without telling me … well, I don’t have to tell you all that. I never thought he was going to start all over again when he picked you out—but you never know. In the beginning he kept himself going pretty good … he’s a man even when he’s acting like a damn fool. And then … see, he’s so simple, he lets them take him. But, you don’t really think he swallowed that story you were sick, do you? If I didn’t stop him it’d be Marcel you were seeing tonight, kid. But I didn’t want that. No. He gets too excited.”

Hippolyte seemed to lose himself in a heavy reverie. For a second Séverine thought he’d forgotten her.

“What I mean is,” he said eventually, “I think you’ve got the idea.”

He put his hand on her shoulder again, gave her the full stare of his immobile eyes, and said, “Fix it up. Only fast, see. It’s giving me a headache.”

From the other side of the window Séverine saw the huge, blurred shadow slumped in front of an empty glass. And though she was free again she turned her head away sharply. That shadow fascinated her. She had to do something right away, every one of her maddened nerves told her that. One more day and she’d be completely in the power of that pair; she didn’t know which of the two scared her most. And behind them she sensed other dangerous men, ready to obey them. She returned quickly to the rue Virène.

“I’m going away,” she told Mme Anaïs.

“Had a talk with your friend, is that it, dear? He’s taking you off on a vacation?” A total break with the house was incomprehensible to the madame.

“Yes, yes, that’s right,” Séverine said, to avoid having to explain.

If Mme Anaïs’ guess was not what decided Séverine, it certainly relieved her of any further hesitation. She had already, during the interview with Hippolyte, felt a blind desire to escape. But escaping the house on the rue Virène was not enough. Séverine couldn’t—wouldn’t—breathe the same air as her tormentors. She had to put distance between herself and Marcel, between herself and Hippolyte. Summer was starting. As a rule Pierre liked to take his vacation later on. He’d put up objections about the hospital, the clinic, about the doctors’ fixed roster for vacations. But Séverine knew herself sufficiently hardened by suffering now to win him over. Once again her love made her unite her feelings of deepest tenderness with her most wretched writhings.

As she’d suspected, she was easily able to persuade Pierre, arguing her health and her longing to be alone with him. A week after Hippolyte’s warning the Sérizys left Paris by train for a little beach near Saint-Raphaël.

Even on the platform Pierre and Séverine were nervous, each for different reasons. Pierre was worried about the way this sudden departure would interfere with his work; Séverine was in dread of seeing the evil gold thread of Marcel’s smile, or the monstrous shadow
of Hippolyte. The first jolts of the train shook up and carried off these worries. The wonderful isolation of private sleeping compartment enveloped Pierre and Séverine. The same pristine pleasure shone in both their eyes. They felt their love as fresh as on their honeymoon, and considerably stronger. Above all, Séverine was moved by the nearness of gentle, quiet days ahead—stretching on, so it seemed to her, into eternity.

They were indeed among the happiest days of her life. The weeks she’d just lived through, together with the threat hanging over her life, increased her capacity for happiness. And that capacity, which had sufficed Séverine so long, was deep and powerful. So she proceeded to extract from all the elements around her—sea, sand, sunlight, hunger and sleep—their most intense essence. The sky was a clear blue. The air overhead was like a delicate, precious balm. It bathed her body—a body which began to forget the touch of many hands, began to belong to her again, as it chastely unfolded.

Pierre too was happy. He loved the relaxation, the beloved countryside, and above all he adored the sight of the young woman who was all his joy in the fullness of her innocence. They swam together. When they hired a boat their oars dipped together easily. They played like two schoolboys on the sand. It was in this sort of life that Séverine felt truly close to Pierre. In Paris, his patients, his books, and his learned articles all came between them; but here every game they played
—vigorous, innocent exercise at which she was almost as good as he—served to unite them in common contentment.

How sweet, how beloved Pierre was to her during those matchless days. How she pitied and despised herself for risking the ruin of such total harmony.

After some hurt or moral shock too strong for the system, certain vices so frighten their victims that they become horrified by their addiction, and, as a result, think they’ve freed themselves from it for ever. So it was with Séverine. In the heat of her new-found happiness and resurrected love she would have considered it mad even to think of the house in the rue Virène. Since she no longer felt the sting that drove her to that shadowed house, she was amazed—and disgusted—to remember her enslavement to it. She’d got away in time. There would be no trace left of her visits. Nobody—not even Hippolyte—would know where to find Belle de Jour. She held her safety in her own hands. And what could keep her from feeling invulnerable as she lay under a July sun, at the edge of a gentle sea, protected by Pierre?

But her own weapons turned against her. Her self-assurance had been won too rapidly, too totally. Distance had served to reduce to human proportions what in Paris had haunted her like a nightmare. As soon as Séverine had begun to be realistic, and could see Mme Anaïs’ apartment as an apartment, Mathilde as just a poor kid, Marcel as the pimp he was; and when Hippolyte himself had turned into a sort of inarticulate wrestler: then Séverine thought she was safe. And her
best guard—her sense of mystical terror fell. Only reason was left to protect her. Crouching in her carnal depths, the enemy became quick with life.

One morning it rained. Later, Séverine thought that if only the weather had been good that day everything would have been all right; as if the powers that drove her could have remained indefinitely patient, those powers that had waited so many years for their sweet sad prey.

The bad weather kept Pierre and Séverine in. He took advantage of the rain to revise an article on surgery. Mechanically she picked up the illustrated magazines she’d bought on leaving Paris but hadn’t bothered to read during the trip. They’d lain on a table since. She glanced through a couple, opened the third. The stories and the illustrations were equally boring. She turned to the ads. All at once her eyes stumbled on a sequence of lines which at first made no sense to her. Then the letters turned into words she could understand:

9b rue Virène
Mme Anaïs receives daily
in her intimate home
surrounded by her three Graces
Elegance, Charm, Specialties

Séverine read it over and over again. For a moment she imagined she’d given her name away. Then she remembered that all she’d left behind in the rue Virène was a nickname. She gave a frightened glance at Pierre
—but he was studiously working away—then she looked out of the window. Sea and sky were growing brighter.

Briskly she said, “Let’s go out. It’s clearing up.”

But neither the bathe nor a run on the beach allowed her to forget that greasy insert. At night she took up the magazine again and, folding it so that Pierre couldn’t see the page, gave the advertisement a dull scrutiny. It was the tally-ho of the whore-house keeper, the rallying cry to Belle de Jour’s bed … and how different the printed name, Mme Anaïs, seemed when it was—spoken. Her house, her girls, eventually Séverine herself, stood transformed and debased by euphemisms dirtier for their insipidity than honest filthy language.

Intimate home … the three Graces … Specialties.

Séverine’s mouth filled with the strange baleful taste of a drug both familar and new. A shameful, bountiful heat spread through her. She calculated, and realized that Pierre’s vacation was almost over. And she felt sorry for him, not for herself.

How did Marcel know immediately that Belle de Jour was back? He never told her; but Séverine hadn’t been in the rue Virène more than an hour when she heard his voice. Her head swam. She’d expected to see Marcel, but that he was there so quickly testified to both his tenacity and his methods of getting information. But she didn’t have long to think about it. The door slammed angrily. In front of it stood Marcel, white in the face, trembling with a fury built up by days of waiting.

“So you’re by yourself,” he said almost inaudibly. “Too bad. I’d have liked to have caught a man here.”

Without realizing it, Séverine had retreated to the wall.

“I had to go away,” she murmured, “I’ll tell you why.”

The gold jawline snickered.

“You’ll tell me why! Just wait, I’ve got something to tell you, too.”

He took off the belt that enclosed his narrow waist. Then he locked the door. Séverine watched him like an idiot, uncomprehending. Swung by that angry hand, the lash whistled through the air.

Séverine never knew where she managed to find the agility, the strength, to dodge the cut and cling to his belt—nor indeed where the savage energy came from that held Marcel back as she said, “Don’t make a move or whatever you do, any of you, you’ll never see me again.”

They stayed like that for some time, separated by the width of the room. Their panting breath filled the silence. Gradually they grew calm and gradually also there vanished for Séverine the ghastly image that had hurled her into action—Pierre staring at a squalid welt across her face. As this picture faded so did her will-power. She needed it no longer. Head low, Marcel was saying:

“You’re different from the others. I don’t care what Hippolyte says.…”

A thud made him look up. Séverine had fallen to the floor. He ran and carried her to the bed. Semi-conscious, she raised her arms to protect herself.

“Don’t be scared, don’t be scared,” he muttered in bewilderment.

He didn’t touch her that day. There was something deeper than desire on the face of that fallen angel.

But by the next day he’d recovered and went in to Séverine with his usual sneer. But when he took her in his arms, an imperceptible watchfulness in his muscles showed that he was afraid of hurting her, and that he wanted to please her. Consequently, she enjoyed their love-making less than usual. And her enjoyment continued to decrease as she became more and more aware that their union was no longer purely sensual.