Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (36 page)

‘It’s Madame the Baroness Sandorff… She is kept by Monsieur Delcambre, and to enjoy her in comfort, he rents a little ground-floor apartment in the Rue Caumartin, in a building with a fruit-stall in front, near the corner of the Rue Saint-Nicolas… And Monsieur goes along to take his place while it’s still nice and warm…’

She had reached for the bell to get the man thrown out, but he would certainly have carried on speaking in front of the servants.

‘Oh, when I say warm!… I have a friend there, Clarisse, the chambermaid, and she has watched them together, and seen her mistress, a real icicle of a woman, doing all sorts of filthy things with him…’

‘Be quiet you wretch!… Here, take your fifteen francs.’

And with a gesture of unspeakable contempt, she gave him the money, realizing it was the only way to get rid of him. And indeed, he at once became quite polite again.

‘For myself, I only want to help Madame… The building with the fruit-stall. The steps at the back of the courtyard… Today is Thursday, and it’s four o’clock, if Madame wants to catch them…’

She pushed him toward the door, her lips tightly pressed together, her face livid.

‘All the more so today, when Madame would perhaps witness something really amusing… Not likely Clarisse is going to stay in
such a place! And when one has had good masters, one leaves them a little souvenir, isn’t that so? … Good afternoon, Madame.’

At last he was gone. Madame Caroline stood stock still for a few seconds trying to understand, and realizing what sort of scene awaited Saccard. Then, drained of strength, she gave a long groan and slumped over her work-table, while the tears that had been choking her for so long flowed freely.

This Clarisse, a skinny blonde girl, had simply betrayed her mistress, offering Delcambre the chance to surprise her with another man in the very apartment he was paying for. She had first asked for five hundred francs, but as he was very miserly, she’d been forced to haggle, and finally settled for two hundred francs to be paid cash in hand, the moment she opened the bedroom door for him. She herself slept in the apartment, in a little room behind the dressing-room. The Baroness had taken her on for the sake of discretion, to avoid having the concierge in to do the housework. Most of the time Clarisse lived a life of idleness in the empty apartment, with nothing to do in between the assignations, just keeping out of the way and disappearing as soon as Delcambre or Saccard arrived. It was in this building that she had met Charles, who for a long time had been coming in at night to share with her the big bed in the master bedroom, with the sheets still in disarray from the day’s debauchery, and it was indeed she who had recommended Charles to Saccard as a solid, honest fellow. Since his dismissal, she had shared in his resentment, especially since her mistress was not playing fair with her, and she had found another job which would pay her five francs a month more. At first Charles had wanted to write to Baron Sandorff, but she had thought it would be more amusing and more lucrative to arrange a surprise with Delcambre. So that Thursday, with everything prepared for her big plan, she waited.

At four o’clock, when Saccard arrived, Baroness Sandorff was already there, stretched out on the chaise longue in front of the fire. She was usually very punctual, like a businesswoman who knows the value of her time. On the first few encounters, Saccard had felt disillusioned at not finding the ardent lover he had hoped for in this woman, with her dark hair, bruised eyelids, and the provocative allure of a wild Bacchante. She was like marble, tired of her useless quest for a sensation that never happened, wholly absorbed by her gambling, the stress of which at least warmed her blood. Then, having felt that
she was curious, free of disgust, and resigned even to revulsion, if she thought it might offer some new thrill, he had depraved her to the point where she would give him caresses of any and every sort. She talked about the stock exchange, prised bits of information out of him, and as she had been winning—chance no doubt playing its part—since their affair began, she regarded Saccard rather as a lucky charm, something you pick up and kiss, even if it’s dirty, because it brings you luck.

Clarisse had made such a big fire that day that they didn’t get into bed, preferring the extra pleasure of staying on the chaise longue in front of the leaping flames. Outside, night was about to fall. But the blinds were closed, the curtains carefully drawn, and two large lamps with frosted-glass globes and no shade, threw their stark light upon them.

Saccard had hardly entered the room before Delcambre, in turn, alighted from his carriage. The Public Prosecutor Delcambre, a personal acquaintance of the Emperor, and on his way to becoming a minister, was a thin, sallow man of about fifty, tall and solemn in stature, his clean-shaven face deeply furrowed, and severely austere. His rugged nose, like an eagle’s beak, seemed as devoid of weakness as of forgiveness. As he mounted the steps at his usual pace, measured and grave, he had the same cold and dignified air as he had in the courtroom. No one in the building knew him, for he generally came only at night. Clarisse was waiting for him in the tiny antechamber.

‘If Monsieur will just follow me, and I strongly urge Monsieur to make no noise.’

He hesitated—why not enter by the door that opened directly into the bedroom? But she explained very quietly that it would almost certainly be bolted, so they would need to break it down, and if she were forewarned, Madame would have time to rearrange herself. No! What she wanted was to let him catch her just as she herself had seen her one day, when peering through the keyhole. To this end she had devised a very simple plan. Her own room had formerly communicated with the dressing-room by a door now kept locked, and since the key had been thrown into a drawer, she had only had to retrieve it, and reopen the door; so, thanks to this unused and forgotten door, it was possible, without making any noise, to enter the dressing-room, which was separated from the bedroom simply by a screen. Madame would certainly not be expecting anyone to come in from there.

‘Just trust me, Monsieur. Don’t I have every reason for this to succeed?’

She slipped through the half-open door, disappearing for a second, leaving Delcambre by himself in her tiny maid’s bedroom, with its unmade bed and its bowl of soapy water; Clarisse had already sent off her trunk in the morning, so as to be ready to leave as soon as the job was done. Then she came back, closing the door quietly behind her.

‘Monsieur will need to wait a while. It’s not time yet. They’re just talking.’

Delcambre remained dignified, not uttering a word, but standing there quite still under the slightly mocking glances the girl directed at him. However, he was tiring, and a nervous tic was twitching all the left-hand side of his face, as repressed anger flooded up to his brain. Beneath the icy severity of his professional mask, the hidden raging male, with ogre-like appetites, now secretly began to growl with anger at this flesh that was being stolen from him.

‘Let’s get on with it, let’s get on with it,’ he repeated, hardly knowing what he was saying, his hands trembling feverishly.

But when Clarisse, after disappearing once more, returned with a finger to her lips, she begged him to wait a little longer.

‘I assure you, Monsieur, be sensible, otherwise you’ll miss the best of it… In a moment or two they’ll really be at it.’

And Delcambre, his legs suddenly giving way, had to sit for a moment on the maid’s little bed. Night was falling, and he stayed there in the dark, while the chambermaid, listening carefully, captured every slightest sound from the bedroom, sounds which he also heard, but so amplified by the buzzing in his ears that they seemed like the tramping of an army on the march.

At last he felt Clarisse’s hand groping along his arm. He understood, and without a word gave her an envelope into which he had slipped the promised two hundred francs. And she walked in first, drew aside the dressing-room screen, and pushed him into the bedroom, with the words:

‘Look! There they are!’

In front of the roaring fire with its glowing coals, Saccard was lying on his back on the edge of the chaise longue, wearing nothing but his shirt, which was rolled up, right up to his armpits, exposing, from his feet all the way to his shoulders, his dark skin which age had covered
with animal-like hair, while the Baroness was on her knees, completely naked and toasted quite pink by the flames; and the two big lamps lit them both up with so brilliant a light that the slightest details stood out, thrown into extravagant relief.

Gaping and gasping at this unnatural
flagrante delicto
, Delcambre had stopped, while the two others, as if thunderstruck and stupefied at seeing this man coming in from the dressing-room, remained quite still, with wild, staring eyes.

‘Ah, you filthy pigs!’ the Public Prosecutor at last stammered out. ‘Pigs! Pigs!’

It was the only word he could find, and he kept repeating it, emphasizing it each time with the same jerky gesture to give it more force. The woman had now leapt up, frantic at her nakedness, turning this way and that, looking for the clothes she had left in the dressing-room, where she couldn’t go and get them; and having managed to grab a white petticoat which was lying there she covered her shoulders with it, gripping the two ends of the waistband between her teeth, to pull it round her neck and over her bosom. The man, who had also got up from the chaise longue, pulled down his shirt, looking very put out.

‘Pigs!’ Delcambre repeated again. ‘Pigs! And in this room that I’m paying for!’

And shaking his fist at Saccard, growing more and more furious at the idea that these filthy activities were taking place on furniture bought with his money, he raged at them.

‘This place is mine, you filthy pig! And this woman is mine—you are a pig and a thief!’

Saccard, who wasn’t angry, would have tried to calm him down, feeling very embarrassed at being caught like this in his shirt, and thoroughly annoyed by the whole affair. But the word ‘thief’ offended him.

‘Lord! Monsieur,’ he replied, ‘when one wants to have a woman all to oneself, the first thing you do is give her what she needs.’

This allusion to his meanness was the ultimate provocation for Delcambre. He became unrecognizable, frightening, as if the human animal, all the hidden priapism within him, was bursting out through his skin. That face, so dignified and cold, had suddenly turned red and was swelling, bulging, protruding like the muzzle of a furious beast. His rage was releasing the carnal brute within, in the awful pain of all this stirred-up filth.

‘Needs? Needs?’ he spluttered. ‘What she needs is the gutter… Ah! The slut!’

And he made such a violent gesture at the Baroness that she took fright. She had remained standing, motionless, only managing to hide her bosom with the petticoat by leaving her belly and thighs exposed. Realizing that this display of her guilty nudity was enraging him further, she retreated to the chaise longue and sat on it, with her legs together and knees drawn up in such a way as to hide as much as she could. Then she just stayed there, without a gesture or word, her head lowered, casting sly, sidelong glances at the battle, a female being fought over by men, waiting to become the prize of the victor.

Saccard had bravely thrown himself in front of her.

‘At least you’re not going to strike her!’

The two men were now face to face.

‘Come now, Monsieur,’ Saccard went on, ‘this has got to stop. We can’t go on rowing like cabbies… It is indeed true, I am Madame’s lover. And I tell you again, if you paid for the furniture here, I have paid for…’

‘For what?’

‘Lots of things: the other day for instance, the ten thousand francs owing on her old account with Mazaud that you had absolutely refused to pay… I have the same rights as you. A pig, possibly! But a thief? Oh no! You will withdraw that word.’

Beside himself, Delcambre shouted:

‘You are a thief, and I’m going to smash your face in if you don’t clear off this instant.’

But now Saccard too was growing angry. As he pulled his trousers back on, he protested:

‘Ah, that’s enough, you’re seriously annoying me now! I shall go if and when I choose… And it certainly won’t be a fellow like you who’ll frighten me away!’

And when he had put his boots back on, he firmly stamped his feet on the carpet, and said:

‘There, I’m all fixed now, and here I stay.’

Choking with rage, Delcambre moved nearer, his face thrust forward.

‘Filthy pig, will you get out!’

‘Not before you, you old scoundrel!’

‘And if I give you a good slap across the face!’

‘Then I’ll give you a good kick somewhere else.’

Nose to nose and teeth bared, the two men barked at each other. Quite forgetting themselves, making a nonsense of their education, caught in the flow of filthy mud in this rut they were fighting over, the magistrate and the financier were reduced to rowing like drunken carters, hurling appalling words at each other, seeking ever-fouler language. Their voices were strangled in their throats, they were frothing at the mouth with filth.

On the chaise longue, the Baroness was still waiting for one of them to throw the other one out. Now that she had calmed down and was thinking of the future, the only thing still bothering her was the presence of the chambermaid, whom she knew to be waiting behind the dressing-room door, enjoying the scene. As the girl craned her neck, with a satisfied chuckle at hearing these gentlemen saying such disgusting things, the two women caught sight of each other, the mistress huddled up in her nudity, the servant standing there all neat and tidy, with her little flat collar; and they exchanged a look that blazed with the age-old hatred of female rivals, in that equality that levels farm-girls and duchesses, when they have no clothes on.

But Saccard too had seen Clarisse. He angrily finished getting dressed, pulled on his waistcoat, turned back to fling another insult into Delcambre’s face, pulled on the left sleeve of his coat, yelling another insult, then the right sleeve with yet more, and more again, hurling them out by the bucketful. Then suddenly, to bring things to an end: