Belle De Jour (8 page)

Séverine was so revolted that she had to turn away to keep from slapping that pasty face.

“You’re just shy,” whispered M Adolphe, “you wait, you’re going to like it all right.”

He tried to take off Séverine’s jacket but she twisted away from him.

“I’m not kidding around,” M Adolphe exclaimed, “you excite me, honey.”

He took her full in his arms—and a fist in his chest sent him reeling. He was stunned for a second; then the frustrated passion of a man paying for his pleasure produced, in his insipid eyes and bland features the same transformation which Séverine had seen in Mme Anaïs’ face, and which had made her obey. He gripped the young woman’s wrists, shoved his furious and discolored face into hers and got out: “You’re crazy! Me, I like to play around all right, but not with your kind.”

And the same hideous sensuality she had felt a few minutes before—but still stronger—made Séverine powerless before him.

She eventually left, scarcely bothering to put her clothes on properly, ignoring Mme Anaïs’ recriminations. The pleasure the degradation had given her had vanished almost as soon as the man who caused it touched her. He had taken her dead.

And now she fled the rue Virène, M Adolphe, her own actions, and especially the question of what she was going to do. She fled them down the damp evening
quays, down shining streets she didn’t recognize, through squares as huge as her despair, crawling with as many caterpillars as there were twisting through her brain. She couldn’t think of the future. The idea of returning home, finding everything as it was, seemed utterly impossible. She walked more and more quickly, paying no attention to where she was going, as if a mere multiplication of steps would serve to place an increasingly impassable space between her and her apartment. So she walked on, sometimes through dense crowds, sometimes down empty alleys, a hunted animal trying to escape being wounded by its mad career. Exhaustion finally stopped her. Seeking the shadows, she leaned against a wall. At once oppressive images streamed into her mind. To get rid of them she started off again. This time she was soon overcome by fatigue. Finally she surrendered to memories of the day she’d just lived through. Though she was mortally afraid of these memories, she tried to recall the day’s events in detail, since doing so at least shielded her from having to make a decision. But gradually her memories lost the power to fill her mind. Hallucinatory blots appeared in her consciousness—the entrance to her house, the concierge looking up at her, her housemaid’s smile, the mirrors, oh all the mirrors all variously reflecting that face kissed by the swollen lips of M Adolphe. For a moment it seemed better to run back to Mme Anaïs’ and shut herself up there, night and day.

Belle de Jour … Belle de Jour.

Could she go home with that name?

The lights of a car were slowly blinking in front of
her. She flung herself towards them, shouted her address at the driver and added:

“Hurry, hurry. It’s an emergency.”

Her real agony was finally rising to the surface. Despite all her efforts to suppress it, the image of Pierre’s face had appeared in her consciousness, and Séverine knew that nothing mattered any more, humiliation or horror, except that she get back before Pierre and see to it that he wasn’t worried.

“It’s after six,” she murmured, trembling, as she went into her room. “I’ve only half an hour.”

Frantically she undressed, washed her body over and over again, scrubbed her face till it hurt. She would have liked to change her skin. It was all she could do not to light a fire and burn her suit and underclothes as if she’d just committed a murder.

She was in a peignoir when Pierre came in. As he kissed her, Séverine froze with terror.

“I forgot. My hair.”

She was sure her hair smelled of bordellos, stank of the rue Virène. She was surprised to hear Pierre say in his usual voice, “Yes, you’re almost ready, darling. I’ll have to hurry.”

Only then did she remember that some friends were stopping by to pick them up for dinner and the theater. For a moment she was relieved; but the thought of coming back with Pierre to the sweet midnight tenderness that bound them so closely was utterly intolerable.

“Darling, I’m not feeling very well,” she said hesitantly. “I think I caught a chill in the park this morning. I’d really rather not go out tonight, but you must …
no, I insist, darling. The Vernois are such nice people. And I know you want to see the play, you told me so, I’d really be unhappy if you missed it.”

It was a long and cruel night for Séverine. Despite her infinite physical and spiritual weariness she couldn’t sleep. She was terrified of Pierre’s return. So far he hadn’t noticed anything, but it was impossible for this miracle to continue when he came into her room, as he inevitably would. It was impossible that that monstrous day had left no trace on her, in her, about her. More than once Séverine jumped out of bed to see in her mirror whether some special line, some stigmata, hadn’t appeared on her face. The hours went by in this state of demented persecution.

Finally she heard the door open. She pretended to be asleep, but her features were so tense that if Pierre had approached her bed he would have seen through the sham. But he was afraid of waking her up, and slipped out noiselessly. Séverine’s first feeling was one of gloomy surprise. Was it so easy, then, to hide such chaos from the person who knew her best? Though there was reassurance in the idea, it hurt her, and she refused to believe it. Surely this was simply a respite granted by darkness. She would be punished when daylight came. When he saw her then, Pierre would know.

“And my God, my God …” she groaned, propped against her pillows like some suffocating invalid.

Incapable of imagining the result of his discovery, incapable of divining whether the pain she would feel would be worse than the pain she would cause, she shut
her eyes, as though the darkness of the room were not intense enough for her despair.

Alternating between terror and abandon she ended by feeling neither shame nor regret. She simply waited for morning and its justice. But the morning brought nothing. Certain as she felt that such a clumsy trick could never save her twice, Séverine again faked sleep and Pierre was again deceived.

As the minutes passed and day-light grew, a dim hope rose within her. It still seemed impossible to escape, but at least she desired to do so. All morning she ceaselessly telephoned, inviting friends to lunch or dinner, getting herself asked out, making dates for every minute of the day—even filling many of her evenings. When she looked at her engagement book after these efforts she breathed again. She wouldn’t be able to spend a moment alone with Pierre for more than a week.

He was surprised by Séverine’s sudden frenzy of gaiety, but as explanation she gave him such an imploring look that, without understanding, he was overcome and disarmed. That night they didn’t go home till Séverine absolutely tired out, nearly fell asleep in a nightclub. As soon as they got home she fell into a deep sleep which helped her avoid Pierre the following morning. The day was taken up with a dozen duties she’d imposed on herself. That evening was a repetition of the one before, and equally exhausting.

Séverine gradually wore down her fears and even her memories. The hectic rush of her life thrust into the distance, reduced to unreality, that day she’d been to
the rue Virène. Soon she wouldn’t need a shield to guard her from Pierre.

There now appeared in Séverine’s soul the phenomenon from which those governed by overly-strong instincts seldom escape. She was like a gambler who has weathered his first loss and who, now that the danger is over, begins to dream of the green tables, the look of the cards, and the ritual of the game; or like an explorer tired of his travels who is suddenly consumed by images of solitude, combat, and space; or like an opium addict who has kicked the habit but who, softly terrified, smells the fumes of the drug. Just so, Séverine was insensibly surrounded by memories of the rue Virène. Like all those ruled by forbidden desire, she was tempted, not by the satisfaction of that desire, but by the first-fruits with which satisfaction was surrounded.

Mme Anaïs’ face, Charlotte’s lovely breasts, the ambivalent humility in that room, the smell she seemed to have carried off with her in her hair: all these images maddened Séverine’s lusting memory. At first they made her quiver with distaste; then she derived delight from them. Pierre and the powerful love she had for him stopped her for a while. But the stamp of her destiny, that fate inscribed within her, had to be fulfilled.

Having just shown out a good client, Mme Anaïs paused to consider the justness of her thinking. She simply had to find a partner for Charlotte and Mathilde. They were both attractive, but the house lacked variety; moreover, an empty room was a complete waste. All the same, Mme Anaïs hesitated to seek a replacement for Belle de Jour. That one would have fitted perfectly—so educated, so lady-like. And perhaps Mme Anaïs found it hard to forget the look that had brought them together for a second.

Charlotte and Mathilde lay naked on the bed. Mathilde’s hair was paler than the shoulder on which it lay, and Charlotte tenderly stroked it.

“Sorry to bother you, girls,” said Mme Anaïs, “but I have to talk to you about business. You still don’t know anyone who wants to come and work here?”

Mathilde answered first, in that timid voice of hers, as if she’d done something wrong without realizing it, but everyone else knew about it:

“It’s no good, I don’t know anyone, Madame. I work here, go home, and that’s it.”

“What about you, Charlotte? One of your old friends?”

“I can’t ask them. When I left the last place I told them I was going to be somebody’s mistress. Even if I should meet any of them again, I can’t let them know I was lying.”

Mme Anaïs sighed as if to show that she was ashamed of her sentimentality and asked, “What about Belle de Jour? Think she’ll come back?”

“Oh hell!” And Charlotte stretched sensually.

Mme Anaïs took a step toward the door, but Mathilde called her back. Mathilde was a passive, vague creature who enjoyed any conversation that might lend itself to speculation.

“I was sure we’d never see her again,” she said. “That girl wasn’t one of us, she had some secret or other.”

“A secret, a secret,” cried Charlotte. “You see a soap-opera everywhere, Mathilde. She had a lover, he left her, now she’s found another; that’s all there is to it.”

“No, it’s not like that at all. She asked to leave at five,
so
she already had a man, see. That kid had a secret, all right.”

Mme Anaïs listened carefully to this exchange. The subject had been discussed daily, and with the inexhaustible patience of semi-cloistered creatures; but Mme Anaïs hoped some chance phrase might still yield a clue. She said slowly:

“I won’t say I’m certain, girls, but I think you’re both wrong. Why? Because Belle de Jour is coming back, that’s why. All right, you can laugh your head off, Charlotte, but in a thing like this you never know, honey, not till the very last minute.”

She was proved right a few minutes later: the first person at the door was Séverine.

“So it’s you, is it.” Mme Anaïs spoke in the most glacial, flat manner imaginable. “What do you think you want?”

The sweat clinging to Séverine’s temples was witness to the effort it had been for her to satisfy the ghastly rending demands that drove her. It had been such an effort that once she had rung the bell she wanted nothing more. But Mme Anaïs’ manner cured her indifference. Was she to be forbidden entry into that sordid paradise? Where would she be able to feed the hunger she had thought dead but which now—close to the taste of its corrupted source—seemed more insatiable than ever?

“I’d like, I’d like,” Séverine stammered, “to see if I could.…”

“Start work again here? And disappear the minute you feel like it, without a word? Oh no, dearie, I’m not interested in amateurs. There’s the street for that.”

Séverine would have done anything for a glimpse of Mme Anaïs’ usual affable expression then. Her whole body begged, pleaded, not to be sent off to seek out some other scummy sanctuary. This one she knew; her own imprint was on it already, as if she’d stepped in soft mud.

“Please,” she murmured, “please.”

Mme Anaïs pushed her into her private sitting room and said, “Listen, dearie, you’re damn lucky I’ll still talk with you at all. Anyone else and I’d have shut the door in their face, but there’s something about you … well, you make me feel like a sort of godmother and you take advantage of that, don’t you.”

She looked at Séverine with genuine affection.

“Now then, Belle de Jour,” she asked, “what was it? Didn’t we treat you right here? Didn’t you feel at home with us?”

Still unable to answer Séverine nodded her head. She gave a scared smile. It was true, the work-table now looked like a familiar piece of furniture.

“Please may I?” She made a movement to take off her hat. Then without waiting for Mme Anaïs’ permission, she put it in the closet. Only then did any peace return to her features.

“It goes without saying,” Mme Anaïs stated simply, “that if I take you back you’ve got to be serious.”

A violent resistance gripped Séverine.

“Oh yes, yes. But only every other day, please,” she
implored humbly. “I promise you, I can’t.…”

“O.K.,” snapped Mme Anaïs after a brief thoughtful silence. “In a little while you’ll be begging me to come every day.”

Then in a voice so happy it made Séverine tremble she called out:

“Charlotte! Mathildel Here’s Belle de Jour.”

Nude and incredulous, the two girls ran in. As they cried out their astonishment Séverine felt her knees quiver. Their bare bodies, so close to each other and so immodestly different in color, caused her an only too pleasant sense of weakness. Softly, half-regretfully, she asked: “Won’t you catch cold?”

“Oh, we’re used to it,” answered Charlotte. “Anyway the apartment’s heated. Mme Anaïs is very good about that.”

Her white teeth flashed in an ambiguous smile as she added, “Come on, try. Feels good, doesn’t it, Mathilde?”