Belle De Jour (16 page)

Like many people who are essentially noble enough, but who are eaten within by a secret blight, Husson sought to fight free of his evil genius by deploying as intensely as possible the good qualities he did have. Therefore, since this meeting made him uneasy, it was necessary that he should keep it.

The end result of these conflicts was that he got to the garden a few minutes before the agreed-upon hour. He had hardly entered the little alleyway with its view over the left bank before he caught sight of Pierre. He went straight toward him.

It was at that moment that Marcel sprang forward.

Even if Marcel’s resolution had been insufficiently powerful, Séverine’s murderous, passionate cry would have made him strike by its very vehemence. It was a cry which, with men like Marcel and Hippolyte, stiffened the spirit for battle, heated the still-fearful blood. And since he’d been lucky so far in a number of difficult affairs like this, nothing could hold him back.

He ran with his hand gripping the handle of the switch-blade in his pocket. He was thinking lucidly: I’ll get him, make that plot of grass, and before anyone knows what’s hit him Al’ll be on his way. He trusted his own strength and agility, and his driver’s skill. But he hadn’t calculated on Pierre’s intervention, nor on his intended victim’s uneasiness.

As he went to meet his friend, Pierre saw a man rushing at Husson. He made a violent sign of warning.
Husson whirled and drew back in a motion that could never have been so fast if his instinct hadn’t been on the alert: there was a flash in front of his face. Supple as an animal, Marcel recovered his balance and raised his knife again. But Pierre had thrown himself forward: he saw a contracted face, a metal snarl. It was Pierre who received the blow, which caught him in the temple.

Still Marcel might have got away. But he realized he’d stabbed Séverine’s husband. Although the shock caused him to hesitate for only a second, that was enough. As Pierre staggered back Husson grabbed the wrist holding the darkened blade. Marcel squirmed to break free, but that fleshless body had unusual strength. Moreover, passers-by were running up and the first police whistles rang in his ears. Marcel gave himself up. At his feet lay a motionless body.

After a series of detours, much retracing of tracks, and innumerable stops Al pulled up at the Place de la Bastille.

“Now get lost,” he told Séverine.

She didn’t understand.

“Get out,” he said threateningly. “And watch you don’t get picked up.”

Séverine obeyed passively. As the car was about to take off she asked, “And Marcel?”

He glared at her, but it was so obvious she spoke in good faith that he merely growled, “Read it in the papers tonight. And tell yourself he did it for you.”

The Ford vanished.

“I have to go home,” Séverine said loudly.

Two passers-by turned to look at the young woman talking to herself. Séverine dragged herself out of her stupor. Her conscious life seemed to have stopped the moment Marcel got ready to strike. The aimless ride in the jolting car seemed to have numbed her. She had imagined she was driving for eternity in that questionable vehicle, beside the silent Al cramped over his wheel. Now she had to continue an advance in an unknown direction. In unleasing Marcel, she pictured herself throwing up a wall, digging a precipice, putting some impassible barrier between herself and her future. She was convinced that no living creature could have broken the fatal chain of events. Groping painfully forward through the murky agony of her chaotic soul, she tried to link what she’d lived through with what lay ahead.

She was sure Marcel had killed; the fact caused her no emotion. Her task was to decipher the meaning of those abstract symbols: the actions of men and of herself. Marcel had killed Husson. Husson had been going to tell Pierre what Pierre must never know: that had been the cause of all her terrors. Now Husson wouldn’t talk. Thus she had no more to fear. She could see Pierre again. She had to, in fact. It was lunch time.

Once back home Séverine hadn’t the energy left to be surprised that Pierre wasn’t in. She stretched out in bed and fell asleep immediately. The doorbell, ringing harshly through the still apartment at about two o’clock,
didn’t wake her. She didn’t hear her maid knock and come in.

“Madame, madame,” the maid exclaimed more and more loudly, till Séverine’s eyes opened, “there’s a doctor outside and he’s got very serious news about Monsieur.”

Brief as it had been, Séverine’s sleep had brought back all her anguish; her first thought was that Husson had had time to talk before dying, and that Pierre had no desire to return home.

“I don’t want to see anyone,” she said.

“Please, madame, you must.” The maid’s tone was so insistent Séverine suddenly got up and went into the living-room.

The intern from Pierre’s hospital was very pale.

“Madame,” he began, “there’s been an unfortunate accident.”

He stopped, searching for words, hoping for some interruption. It didn’t come. Séverine’s rigidity frightened him.

“Please don’t be alarmed, it’s nothing critical,” he went on hurriedly. “What happened … well, Sérizy was stabbed in the temple.”

“Who?”

She threw herself at the intern so violently that he barely dared repeat, “Sérizy.”

“My husband? Pierre? You must be mistaken.”

“I’ve been working under him for a year, madame,” the intern said sadly, “and I have the same affection for him we all have there … yes, he was stabbed;
the man who did it has already been arrested. They brought your husband straight into emergency. Of course, he still hasn’t recovered consciousness but his heart … there’s a good chance he’ll get through. Professor Henri, our director, has been told about it. He’ll be there now. I’ll go with you, madame.”

Even when they were in front of the hospital Séverine couldn’t concede that here, in the same building in which he’d looked after so many suffering bodies, Pierre himself was now no more than a body in the care of men in white coats. She recognized the porch under which she’d waited for him after her first visit to the rue Virène. The memory merely seemed to confirm her sense of unreality: only bad dreams could close a circle as totally as that.

Then she saw Professor Henri, and her protective confusion vanished. They had dined with him several times, and she recalled the pleasure Pierre had taken in repeating the word “director” to him, in mingled affection and deference. The word returned to her now, Pierre’s intonation intact; it all but made her faint, for if the professor was really there, if he was walking toward her … Séverine’s thoughts were cut short. The surgeon was holding her hands.

He was a small, wiry man who had retained his youthful appearance. Because of this, he had great confidence and a scorn for the amenities.

“My dear lady, please don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll answer for Pierre’s life. As far as anything else goes I’ll know tomorrow.”

“Can I see him?”

“Of course. He’s still in a coma. As I say, I’ll know better tomorrow.”

The intern took Séverine to Pierre’s room. She entered firmly but, despite what her mind had accepted in the past few minutes, she couldn’t get herself past the middle of the room. It wasn’t his bandaged forehead or the waxy appearance of the face. It was his total immobility and motionless features, more than asleep yet less than dead. This flaccid impotence made Séverine shudder, not only with pity and fear, but with a sort of ghastly reluctance—and also (though she didn’t admit it to herself) revulsion. Was this lifeless, flabby, lump, mouth hanging wide and eyelids fallen rather than lowered, the firm alert face of her husband? An uncouth relaxation lay upon his flesh which, only that morning, had glowed with bountiful youth.

Séverine couldn’t tell what threatened Pierre, but his features frightened her own animal instinct for good health; they told her that the punishment against which she’d armed a brutal lover was taking a far crueler form than anything she had ever dreamt of.

“I don’t know anything any more,” she whispered. “I must go.”

At the door a man was waiting for her.

“Very sorry to have to question you at such a painful moment, Madame Sérizy, but I’ve been put in charge of the inquiry, you see. Your husband’s still unable to talk. We wondered if you could help us.”

Séverine leaned against the wall. Something she hadn’t thought of before dizzied her. She was Marcel’s accomplice, they’d come to arrest her.

“Oh look,” said the intern, “what do you want her to say, after all? Monsieur Husson has told you that he was the one attacked, and that Doctor Sérizy was stabbed by accident.”

He took the plain-clothesman to one side and added softly: “I know it’s your duty, but give the poor woman a chance. At least for a little while. They were so very much in love with each other, you can see she can hardly stand up.”

Séverine watched the policeman leave. It was hard for her to realize she was free. She asked shyly:

“You mentioned Husson, you’ve seen him then?”

“But I told you, madame.…”

Dimly she recollected that during the ride to the hospital the intern had given her a recital of facts, which hadn’t penetrated her consciousness. She made him repeat them. Only then, and with terrifying clarity, did she understand the consequences of that leap she’d seen building up in Marcel’s muscles. She bit her lips so as not to cry out—“I made him do it, me, me.”

And as if this understanding of her responsibility had suddenly sharpened Pierre’s danger she murmured:

“He’s going to die.”

“I assure you he isn’t,” returned the intern. “Please calm down. You heard what the director said. Sérizy will recover, he’s going to be all right.”

“Why doesn’t he move then?”

“That’s quite usual after a shock of that nature. But he’ll live, I swear it.”

She felt the assurance couldn’t be false, or Pierre’s friend would have shown more anxiety himself. But
she didn’t want to question him any further. What did a long and painful period of looking after Pierre matter, beside the single fact—he wasn’t going to die.

Séverine spent the rest of the day beside her husband. He remained motionless. At times she would bend over him, seized with terror, listening to his heart. It beat softly on. Then, reassured, she tried not to ask herself what such a strange surrender of all his muscles meant.

When evening fell Professor Henri changed the dressing and examined the wound. Despite herself Séverine gazed at that somber gash. From it had flowed the most precious blood in all the world, and what more precious still she didn’t know. She knew the weapon that had made that hole. When he undressed Marcel always put his revolver under the pillow and then his horn-handled knife. Séverine had held it in her hand, had toyed with the switch that released the blade.

Her teeth chattered.

“It’d be much better if you’d try to get some sleep at home,” the professor told her. “Sérizy’ll be well looked after, I’ll answer for that. And you’ll need all your strength tomorrow. Tomorrow’s the important day … I don’t mean as regards his life but … well, we’ll see. Why don’t you go and get some rest.”

She obeyed with a kind of concealed satisfaction. But she didn’t return to the apartment. A secret irresistible desire had formed within her. She only recognized it when she was actually giving the cab-driver Husson’s address. Some law of psychological gravity led her to the source of all, the man with whom she thought the
affair would end, and the only being who knew her whole story.

Directly she was in Husson’s presence she saw he’d been expecting her.

“Yes, I knew it,” he said absently.

He took her into a quiet luxurious living-room. Though it was the middle of summer, logs blazed in the hearth. Husson sat in front of the fire, his long hands dangling.

“There’s no news, is there?” he inquired in the same queerly abstracted tone. “I was just calling the hospital. It’s the price of my life lying there, you know.”

Séverine remained silent, but a strange well-being went through her. Husson’s company was the only one she could tolerate at the moment, his words alone she could listen to.

He stared alternately at the fire and then at his hands, which he held in front of the flames. It was as if he’d have liked to melt them there. He went on:

“You know, I was sure he wasn’t going to die, as soon as he fell. No, there was something worse in the air.”

Wearily, he raised his eyes to Séverine’s.

“You really thought I’d tell him?”

A flutter of her eye-lids was his only answer.

“How you loved him,” Husson went on after a pause. “Someone like me can’t really understand that, I suppose … so I made my mistake. I didn’t foresee what an emotion like that might lead to.…”

Séverine sat listening attentively. He couldn’t understand the best side of me, she was thinking. And Pierre couldn’t understand the worst … if only he’d
guessed, maybe he’d have held me back or watched me more closely. But if he’d guessed, he wouldn’t have been Pierre.

“And the other man, with that knife of his,” Husson said suddenly, “what passion too.”

He shuddered, hugging the fire more closely. His head shook with a sorrow exceeding the circumstances.

He murmured: “I’m the only one who wasn’t motivated by something noble. Yet you three were wounded to death and I got off free. Why? In the name of what, for God’s sake? So that I could begin my little experiments over again?”

He laughed weakly. Then he continued thoughtfully:

“See how well we get on tonight. In this whole wide world there isn’t anyone this evening—even the most ardent lover—who needs you more than I do. And vice versa.”

“Tell me,” Séverine asked him, “when you first caught sight of Marcel, you knew he was sent by me?”

“By us,” Husson corrected her gently.

Then he gave himself up to vague thoughts. The sound of easy breathing drew his attention. Séverine had fallen asleep on the sofa.

A sleep, Husson reminded himself, wrung from how many torments of insomnia. And tomorrow.…

He thought of Professor Henri’s fears, of the official inquiry that would be held. How could this poor broken child defend what remained of her sanity? He’d help her, of course, but could he save her?