Monsieur Monde Vanishes (10 page)

“What have you got?”

“Some excellent ravioli … onion soup to start with if you like … or a rare steak …”

Several tables were occupied by people having supper, and the waiter set their places in front of them. In spite of the bright electric lights, a certain gray weariness pervaded the air. The people present were speaking little and eating conscientiously, as at a regular meal.

“In the left-hand corner, look,” she whispered to him.

“Who is it?”

“Don't you recognize him? … It's Parsons, one of the three Parsons brothers, the flying-trapeze acrobats.… That's his wife with him. She ought never to wear a suit, it makes her look like a teapot.… She's in their act now, in place of Lucien, the brother who had an accident in Amsterdam.…”

They were very ordinary-looking people; the man, who was about thirty-five, might have been a well-dressed workman.

“They must be in a show here.… Oh, look! Three tables away …”

She brightened up, all her apathy had vanished, and to emphasize her remarks she kept laying her hand on her companion's wrist so as to compel his admiration.

“Jeanine Dor! The singer!”

This was a woman whose raven-black, oily hair hung down on either side of her cheeks; she had enormous, deeply ringed eyes in a pallid face, and her mouth was a crimson gash. Alone at a table, with a tragic disdainful air, her coat flung back behind her, she was eating spaghetti.

“She must be over fifty.… But she's still the only person who can hold an audience breathless for over an hour, just with her songs.… I'll have to ask her for her autograph.”

She rose suddenly and went up to the proprietor, who was standing by the cashier's desk. Monsieur Monde had no idea what she was going to do. Their food was brought, and he waited. He could see her talking self-confidently, then the proprietor turned to glance at him with apparent approval, and she returned.

“Give me the baggage-room ticket.”

She took it off, and then came back.

“They've got a room with two beds.… You don't mind, do you? For one thing, they probably wouldn't have had two single rooms vacant.… And then it wouldn't have looked natural! … Oh, look! Those four girls to the right of the door … They're dancers.…”

She was eating with the same concentration as at Marseilles, but without missing anything that was going on around them.

“The proprietor tells me it's still early. The music halls have closed but they won't start coming in from casinos and night clubs till after three.… I wonder …”

He did not understand at first. The girl wore an obstinate frown. She must be contemplating a job.

“The food's good here, and not too dear. I gather the rooms are clean.”

They were drinking their coffee when a boy came to tell them their luggage had come and been taken up into the bedroom. Julie, despite the previous night's ordeal, did not seem to be sleepy. She was watching Jeanine Dor going out, through a side door, to the hotel staircase.

“They all stay here. In an hour there'll be some more of them.…”

But an hour was too long and dreary a wait. She smoked one more cigarette, and then rose with a yawn.

It was not until the third day that they made love. A confused three days. Their room, which overlooked a narrow courtyard, was furnished only with drab old things, a grayish threadbare carpet on the floor, a tapestry-covered armchair, wallpaper that was more brown than yellow, and in one corner a screen hiding the washbasin and bidet.

The first night Julie had undressed behind the screen, emerging in blue-striped pajamas. But finding the trousers uncomfortable, she had discarded them during the night.

He slept badly, in the next bed, separated from hers by a bedside table and a narrow mat. His supper was giving him indigestion. Several times, hearing sounds from the brasserie below, he had been tempted to go downstairs to ask for bicarbonate of soda.

He got up at eight, dressed noiselessly, without awakening his companion, who had flung back her bedclothes, for the radiator was boiling hot, the room overheated and airless. Perhaps that was why he had felt so uncomfortable during the night.

He went downstairs, leaving his suitcase clearly visible lest Julie think he had gone for good. The coffee room was empty. There was nobody to serve him and he went to have breakfast in a bar full of workmen and clerks, then walked along the seashore without thinking of that other sea by the edge of which he had dreamed of lying weeping.

Perhaps he needed to get used to things? The sky was a very pale, babyish blue, the sea too, like the sea in a schoolchild's watercolor, the gulls were chasing one another, white in the sunshine, and water carts were tracing wet patterns on the paving.

When he got back, at about eleven, he felt compelled to knock at the door.

“Come in.…”

She could not have known it was he. She was wearing only her panties and her brassière. She had plugged an electric iron into the socket of the lamp and was pressing her black silk dress.

She asked him: “Did you sleep all right?”

Her breakfast tray was on the bedside table.

“I'll be ready in half an hour.… What time is it? Eleven? Would you wait for me downstairs?

He waited, reading a local paper. He was growing used to waiting. They lunched alone together again. Then they went out, and they had scarcely reached the Promenade des Anglais, up near the Casino de la Jetée, when she asked him to wait yet again and disappeared into the Casino.

Next she dragged him down a street in the town center. “Wait for me.…”

On an enamel plate there was a Greek name, followed by the word “Impresario.”

She came back in a fury.

“He's a pig!” she announced, without further explanation. “If you'd rather go off and walk by yourself …”

“Where are you going?”

“I've got two more addresses.…”

Grim and tight-lipped, she strode along the unfamiliar city streets, questioned policemen, climbed flights of stairs, and kept pulling scraps of paper with new addresses out of her bag.

“I know the place we must go to for an apéritif.…”

This was the Cintra, the fashionable bar. She renewed her make-up before going in. She put on a jaunty air. He understood that she was wishing he were better dressed. She was even wondering whether he would know how to behave in a place like this, and it was she who gave the order with an air of authority, as she climbed onto a high stool and crossed her legs:

“Two pink gins, barman …”

She nibbled some olives, ostentatiously. She stared boldly at men and women. It infuriated her to know nobody, to be merely a newcomer rating only a supercilious glance because of her cheap little dress and her shabby coat.

“Let's go and have dinner.…”

She knew where to go for dinner too. Afterward, with a certain embarrassment, she began: “Would you mind going back by yourself? … Oh, it's not what you might think.… After what I've been through, I can tell you I've had enough of men and you won't catch me at that again. But I don't want to be a burden on you. You've got your own life to lead, haven't you? You've been very kind.… I'm sure that backstage I shall meet people I know.… At Lille I used to meet all the artistes on tour.…”

He did not go to bed, but walked about the streets alone. Then, at one point, because he was tired of walking, he went into a movie house. And this was another familiar image, drawn from the remote mysterious depths of his memory: an aging man, all by himself, being guided by an attendant with a flashlight into a darkened room where a film has already begun, where voices boom and men larger than life gesticulate on the screen.

When he got back to Gerly's—that was the name of his hotel and of the brasserie—he caught sight of Julie sitting at a table in the café with the group of acrobats. She saw him go past. He realized that she was talking about him. He went upstairs, and she came to join him a quarter of an hour later, and this time she undressed in front of him.

“He's promised to put in a word for me.… He's a decent sort. His father, who was Italian, was a bricklayer by trade, and he himself started off in the same way.…”

Another day passed, and then another, and Monsieur Monde was getting used to things; he had even stopped thinking about them. After lunch, that third day, Julie decided: “I'm going to have an hour's sleep.… I got back late last night.… Aren't you going to have a nap?”

He felt sleepy too, as a matter of fact. They went up one behind the other, and meanwhile he had a vision of other couples, hundreds of couples, going up flights of stairs in the same way. And a slight flush rose to his cheeks.

The room had not been done. The two beds, unmade, revealed the livid whiteness of sheets, and there were traces of lipstick on Julie's pillow.

“Aren't you going to undress?”

Usually, when he took a siesta—and in Paris, in the course of his former life, he had done so from time to time—he would lie down fully dressed, with a newspaper spread out under his feet. He took off his jacket, then his waistcoat. Julie, with that snakelike movement which he was beginning to recognize, drew her dress up along her body and slipped it over her head.

She showed no surprise when he came up to her, with a rather shamefaced look. She was obviously expecting it.

“Draw the curtains.”

And she lay down, making room for him beside her. She was thinking about something else. Every time he looked at her he saw that now familiar frown on her forehead.

On the whole, she was not sorry about it; things seemed more natural this way. But fresh problems occurred to her, and suddenly she lost all desire for sleep. Her head propped on her hand, her elbow on the pillow, she gazed at him with fresh interest as if from now on she had acquired the right to call him to account.

“What do you actually do?”

And as he failed to grasp the exact meaning of the question, she went on:

“You told me, the first day, that you had private means. People in your position don't go gallivanting about all by themselves. Or else surely they live in a different style.… What did you do before?”

“Before what?”

“Before you went off?”

Thus she was making her way toward the truth as unfailingly as, landing in Nice in the middle of the night, she had made her way toward this hotel, where she was at home.

“You've got a wife.… You told me you had children.… How did you go off?”

“I just went!”

“Did you have a row with your wife?”

“No.”

“Is she young?”

“About my age.”

“I understand.…”

“What d'you understand?”

“You just wanted to have a good time! … And when you've spent all your money, or when you're tired …”

“No … It's not that.”

“What happened, then?”

And he replied, with a sense of shame, chiefly because he felt he was spoiling everything by such stupid words, blurted out on that tumbled bed, in front of those bared breasts that no longer tempted him: “I'd had enough of it.”

“Have it your own way!” she sighed.

She took this opportunity to slip behind the screen to wash, which she had been too lazy to do immediately after making love; from here she went on:

“You're a funny sort of fellow!”

He put on his clothes again. He no longer felt sleepy. He was not unhappy. This squalid drabness was all part of what he had been seeking.

“Would you like to stay on at Nice?” she asked, emerging naked with a towel in her hand.

“I don't know.…”

“You're not fed up with me too? … You know, you must tell me honestly. I keep wondering how we happen to have got hitched together.… It's not really like me. Parsons has promised to look after me.… He's in well with the man who runs the floor shows at the ‘Pingouin.' … I shan't be out of a job for long.…”

Why was she talking of leaving him? He did not want that. He tried to tell her so.

“It suits me all right like this.…”

She looked at him, as he tried to pull his braces over his shoulders, and she burst out laughing, the first time he had heard her laugh.

“You're a scream! Well … When you feel like clearing off, you just say so.… If I may give you one piece of advice, it's to buy yourself another outfit.… You're not miserly, by any chance?”

“No …”

“Then you'd do better to dress decently. If you like, I'll go with you. Didn't your wife have any taste at all?”

She was lying down again, lighting a cigarette and sending the smoke up to the ceiling.

“Above all, if it's a question of money, don't be afraid to tell me.…”

“I've got money.…”

The bundle of notes, wrapped up in newspaper, was still in the suitcase, and he glanced at this instinctively. Since coming to Gerly's he had given up locking it, for fear of offending his companion. Under pretext of looking for something in it, he made sure the bundle was still there.

“Are you going out? Will you come back and get me about five o'clock?”

That afternoon he spent sitting on a bench on the Promenade, his head bent, his eyes half closed in the sunshine, with the blue of the sea before him and the occasional flash of gulls' wings as they crossed his horizon.

He never stirred. Children played around him, and sometimes a hoop came to rest between his legs, or a ball was thrown toward him. He seemed to be asleep. His face looked thicker and flabbier and his lips hung half open. Several times he gave a start, thinking he heard the voice of Monsieur Lorisse, his cashier. Not for one moment did he think of his wife or children, but it was the meticulous old clerk who appeared in his dream.

He remained heedless of time, and it was Julie who eventually came to look for him and remarked: “I was sure I'd find you flopping on a bench.”