Belle De Jour (18 page)

She smiled then, a sudden grin that oddly recalled a mouth filled with gold, and whispered:

“She won’t talk.”

Séverine tried to take her hands out of Husson’s hold. He gripped them harder, said in a low tone:

“Look, Marcel’s in prison. By yourself you can’t possibly.…”

She shuddered. It was true. She’d actually wanted.…

“Do you think a fat sum of money might do the trick?” asked Husson.

“No. I’ve had her for ages. I know her through and through. I used to have only absolutely honest people around me.”

“So?”

Husson released Séverine’s hands, since his own had started to tremble. He left without asking to see Pierre.

After Professor Henri’s daily visit, Séverine called in her maid. She told her the doctor had advised her not to go out for some time; she begged the girl not to hand over her evidence or, at least, to postpone doing so indefinitely. All she got out of the maid, who was now thoroughly suspicious, was the promise of a week’s delay.

In the days immediately prior to the crime Séverine had thought nothing could exceed her suffering. She learnt now that pain is boundless. More than once she recalled a foreign proverb which Pierre had translated for her: “Oh God, do not give man all he is capable of suffering.” In truth, Séverine felt her martyrdom extending into infinity. Every hour brought her some unsuspected pang, since every hour showed her more clearly Pierre’s complete need of her.

His wan smile and pathetically happy eyes whenever he saw her had been wonderful discoveries for her at the hospital; now they turned into awful accusations. What would become of her when she was arrested? When Pierre found out. When he learnt that, not content with tarnishing his love, she’d cut down all his strength and youth with the knife of a lover picked up in a whore-house.

At least Pierre had then had a faultless body, a good job, with which to defend himself. Perhaps she’d die; or, if she lacked the courage for that, she might be able
to rejoin Marcel, be soon buried in the mud of a classless existence. In the rue Virène she’d heard talk of women entangled in that way, passed memories rising intermittently to the surface of their drugged or alcoholic degradation.

Drugs or alcohol … she might have had recourse to them, too; she felt the need enough during those leaden days. But she couldn’t possibly think of such a thing. She had to appear calm and contented whenever she was with Pierre, and she had to be with him constantly. He didn’t require her to be present, he didn’t even ask her to be. But whenever she left his room, the worried fixity of that lost face was itself sufficient appeal.

She went into the next room to read the papers. They fascinated her now. They were full of information about her, in about equal parts of fantasy and truth. Now that everything else about the crime was known, the enigma of Belle de Jour had become the focus of interest. Reporters had questioned Madame Anaïs and her girls. The clothes Belle de Jour had worn in the rue Virène were minutely described, her hours of attendance discussed. Eventually a reporter rang the Sérizys’ doorbell.

Séverine imagined she’d been found out, but the young man only wanted a report of Pierre’s progress. It was his visit that made Séverine realize her husband wasn’t getting any better. And that same evening Professor Henri said with unusual gentleness:

“I’m afraid Sérizy’s going to stay just about as he is now. Possibly there’ll be an improvement in his speech,
in control of the neck and arm muscles; but from the pelvis down the body’s dead.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Séverine said.

She wanted to burst into wild, convulsive laughter. This was the state to which she’d reduced Pierre: he could no longer live like a man, but he could suffer with the best of them.

The next day, having been given Professor Henri’s permission to read, Pierre asked to see the papers.

“He thinks about it too much for us to keep the papers away from him,” the Professor had told Séverine.

And Pierre, seeing his wife’s fearful hesitation, had articulated the words:

“I’m not afraid.…”

He wanted to add “darling” but it was a word he hadn’t yet succeeded in forming.

His hands wandered erratically before he found what he wanted to see; Séverine had to turn the pages for him. Belle de Jour was the center of attention, and Pierre, with a sick man’s curiosity, grew interested in this woman on whose account he’d been so pointlessly stabbed. He couldn’t talk very much, but each time he read that name his expressive eyes turned to Séverine. His look tortured her. Soon those same eyes, more full of her than ever, would see the photograph of his wife under the notorious nickname. Her time was running out. She knew the term of her freedom—Tuesday morning the District Attorney’s office would have her maid’s evidence. And today was already Friday.

On Sunday her maid came to tell her that she was wanted on the telephone.

“It’s a Monsieur Hippolyte,” she pronounced distastefully, “and
he
sounded like a character
too.”

Séverine paused before picking up the receiver. What was he going to tell her? By how much was her wretched respite to be curtailed? Terror at the idea of setting off another disaster possessed her. Without giving any explanation, Hippolyte insisted on seeing Séverine right away, at the lake jetty in the Bois de Boulogne.

She found Hippolyte dully contemplating the ripples on the surface of the water. His shoulders hung a little, something that would have seemed impossible two weeks before. His cheeks were grey. As Séverine greeted him his vast frame quivered slightly, his lips contracted in a destructive crease. But these signs disappeared immediately.

“Get in,” he said in a dead voice, pointing to a boat he’d hired.

Séverine was convinced he was going to kill her. A great peace closed upon her. Hippolyte pulled at the oars. He hardly exerted himself, but his strength sent them out to the center of the lake. He let go the oars, and in the tired voice he maintained throughout their conversation he said:

“We can talk here. In a bar someone would have turned us in. But here.…”

Their boat was lost among a dozen others, amid holiday laughter. It was a summer Sunday.

“Marcel wanted me to see you,” Hippolyte continued, “and to tell you to keep calm. He won’t give you away. That was all his idea, see. If it was me, I’d have squealed right away, I don’t mind telling you. He’s got
a good lawyer, I saw to that. With Belle de Jour in court he was O.K. Unpremeditated. Passion of the moment. O.K. And I’d have squealed on you in spite of him, even, only he told me if I did he’d tell about the two guys he killed. And he’d do it, too. He’s that crazy.”

He ground his jaws, which seemed less hard than they had been. He sighed:

“You’re lucky, you know it? Al saved your skin, and me, I keep my mouth shut. Now Marcel wants for me to tell you wait for him. He’ll get out. He’ll come back. You’ll see. We’ll give him a hand. He wants you to stay his woman, know what I mean.”

Hippolyte stared harshly at Séverine. She moaned:

“What’s the use? The day after tomorrow Juliette’s going to the police and I’ll be arrested.”

“Who’s this Juliette?”

“My maid. She saw Marcel in my apartment.”

“Wait a minute,” Hippolyte said.

There followed a profound meditation. Without his having anything to do with it, a surprise witness was going to disclose the identity of Belle de Jour. Marcel’s interests and honor would be safe. But would he accept neutrality from Hippolyte? Might he not take vengeance, in the heat of his anger, as he’d promised? For several long minutes Hippolyte summed up these conflicting possibilities and also his duty as a friend. Séverine didn’t know it, but her fate was being played out.

“So she thinks she’s going to the cops,” Hippolyte said finally. “That wouldn’t change anything if I didn’t want it to. I’ve got Anaïs and her girls right in my hand.

All you’d have to do would be deny it, you’d be believed before your maid. But she won’t go. It’d be better if she didn’t go.”

Séverine said in a whisper, “You mean, you’ll.…”

“Don’t be scared. I don’t hit often, only when I have to. No, I’ll just talk to her. That’ll be enough. Just like I’d have talked with the other one, the guy Marcel missed.”

He was swinging the boat back to the landing-platform. Before coming alongside he asked her: “Any message for Marcel?”

Séverine looked Hippolyte straight in the face.

“Please tell him,” she said, “that after my husband there’s no one in the world I love more.”

Her tone seemed to touch Hippolyte. He shook his head. “Ah, that husband of yours, I read how he’s half done for … and I once said you were lucky! The whole thing’s come out bad. But any way, you don’t have to bother about Juliette any more. Now go and take care of your cripple and don’t worry, poor girl.”

When she got back Séverine found Professor Henri at Pierre’s bedside.

“I took the opportunity of a Sunday free to be with Sérizy a bit,” said the surgeon. “I told him where he stood. In a couple of weeks’ time you must take him south. The sun is kind to the muscles.”

“Darling, aren’t you glad?” she asked when they were alone together again.

She tried to put cheerfulness into her words, but the scene she’d just been through robbed her voice of resonance.
Strange—she didn’t feel the slightest sensation of relief. She trusted Hippolyte’s word implicity—in fact, Juliette left the following morning without waiting for her pay—but gaining the security she’d so despaired of achieving filled her with no joy. It only scooped a shapeless, nameless hollow inside her, into which everything sank. The runner who has put out too violent a final effort falls, in the same way, beside the winning-post he’s just passed.

Painfully she repeated, “You are glad, aren’t you?”

Pierre made no reply. It was growing dark, she had difficulty seeing the reactions of his feebly expressive face. She switched on the light, sat down beside those dead legs and, as always, questioned her husband’s eyes.

And then Séverine knew a crueler suffering than any that had ever wrung her heart. Embarrassment … worse, shame was what she saw in those trembling, boyish, faithful eyes. Shame for his ruined body, shame for having always to be looked after by her, the one person he himself had so dearly protected.

“Pierre,” she stammered out, “my darling, I’m absolutely happy with you.”

He tried to shake his head, scarcely succeeded in doing so and mumbled between twisted lips—“Poor … poor … south … the small car … sorry.”

“Please, Pierre, no more, no more.”

It was he who was asking her forgiveness, and all his life long, she knew now, he’d think himself a burden on her and long to die to free her from it.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Séverine cried out suddenly. “I can’t bear.…”

She pressed her face against the chest that had once been so warm and strong. Was the whole struggle and its miraculous ending going to turn against Pierre then! She would seem purer and purer to him and he would simply suffer the more at causing her so much trouble, she … she who’d been.…

She knew no more. She wanted only to know where the real good, and true salvation lay. She longed for lightning, a shock, a thunderbolt.

In her feverish despair, pressing closer and closer against Pierre, she felt his clumsy hands trying to stroke her hair. Those invalid fingers were intolerably trusting, they decided the struggle. Séverine had been able to endure it all, but this was beyond her. She told him.

How is it possible to explain her motive? The impossibility of showing a false virtue to the man she loved so infinitely? A less noble need to confess? Or a hidden hope of being pardoned despite it all, and of living out her life without the weight of a horrible secret upon her? Who could assess the powers that moved and melted a human heart after such dreadful disturbances, and forced its secrets onto trembling lips?

Three years have now gone by. Séverine and Pierre live over a quiet little beach. But since the day Séverine spoke, she has not heard her husband’s voice.

JILL
BY
P
HILIP
L
ARKIN

Larkin’s novel of student life at Oxford during World War II.

978-0-87951-961-2

A GIRL IN WINTER
BY
P
HILIP
L
ARKIN

The famed poet’s eloquent second novel.

978-0-87951-217-0

TRUE GRIT
BY
C
HARLES
P
ORTIS

“An epic and a legend.”
—The Washington Post

978-1-59020-459-7

THE DOG OF THE SOUTH
BY
C
HARLES
P
ORTIS

The classic novel of Ray Midge in pursuit of his runaway wife.

978-1-58567-931-7

GRINGOS
BY
C
HARLES
P
ORTIS

The classic and wonderfully bizarre novel of an American expatriate living in Mexico.

978-1-58567-093-2

MASTERS OF ATLANTIS
BY
C
HARLES
P
ORTIS

“One of the few laugh-out-loud novels I’ve read.” —Conan O’Brien

978-1-58567-021-5

NORWOOD
BY
C
HARLES
P
ORTIS

Portis’s first and most celebrated novel.

978-0-87951-703-8

THE TEMPEST
BY
J
UAN
M.
DE
P
RADA

Prada’s tempestuous, prize-winning novel set in Venice, Europe’s quintessentially enigmatic city.

978-1-58567-550-0

THE RADETZKY MARCH
BY
J
OSEPH
R
OTH

A new translation of Roth’s masterpiece.

978-1-58567-326-1

THE EMPEROR’S TOMB
BY
J
OSEPH
R
OTH

Haunting sequel to
The Radetzky March.

978-0-87951-270-5