The Thibaults (59 page)

“How about your mother?”

“Mother? She’s very much alive. Every time I see her she looks younger. No wonder, of course, considering the life she leads.” Her voice had a curious inflexion as she added: “She’s shut up—at Saint Anne’s.”

“The asylum?”

“Hadn’t I told you?” Her smile seemed almost apologetic and she made haste to satisfy his curiosity. “She’s been there for seventeen years. I can hardly remember what she was like-—before. When one’s only nine, you know … Anyhow she’s cheerful,, doesn’t seem to worry in the least, always singing. Yes, as a family, we’re a tough lot! Look, the water’s boiling!”

He hurried to the gas-ring and, while the tea was brewing, surveyed himself in the dressing-table glass, covering his beard with his hand to see how he would look clean-shaven. No. It suited him, that dark mass at the bottom of his face; it emphasized so well the pale rectangle of his forehead, the curve of his eyebrows, and his eyes. Moreover, some instinct made him chary of unmasking his mouth-almost as if it were a secret better kept concealed.

Rachel sat up to drink her tea, then lit a cigarette, and stretched herself again on the bed.

“Come near me. What are you up to, mooning about over there?”

Gaily he slipped beside her and bent above her face. In the warm alcove the perfume of her loosened hair enveloped him, honey-sweet yet piquant, clinging and almost cloying; sometimes he ached for it and sometimes turned away, for, if he inhaled it too long, it left his throat and lungs filmed with a bitter-sweet aroma.

“What are you after now?” she asked.

“I’m looking at you.”

“Toine darling!”

When their lips parted he bent over her again, gazing down at her with insatiable eyes.

“What on earth are you staring at like that?”

“I’m trying to make out your pupils.”

“Are they so hard to find?”

“Yes; it’s because of your eyelashes. They form a sort of golden haze in front of your eyes. That’s what makes you look so …”

“So what?”

“So sphinx-like.”

She gave a little shrug.

“My pupils are blue, if you want to know.”

“So you say.”

“Silvery blue.”

“Not a bit of it!” He set his lips to Rachel’s, then teasingly withdrew them. “Sometimes they look grey, and sometimes mauve. A muzzy sort of colour … blurred.”

“Thanks very much!” Laughing, she rolled her eyes from side to side.

He gazed at her musingly. “Only a fortnight,” he said to himself, “but it seems like months. Yet I couldn’t have described the colour of her eyes. And her life—what do I know of it? Twenty-six years she’s lived without me, in a world so different from mine. Years crowded with a host of things, adventurous years. Mysteries, too, that I’m beginning to discover, bit by bit.” He would not admit the pleasure each discovery afforded him; still less give her an inkling of his pleasure. He never asked her anything, but she was always ready to talk about herself. He listened, ruminated, set facts and dates together, trying to understand, but above all amazed, taken aback at every turn. He was at pains to hide his wonder, but it was not chicanery that prompted him to do so. For years now his pose had been that of the man who understands everything; the only people he had learned to question were his patients. Surprise and curiosity were feelings that his pride had taught him to conceal, as best he might, under a mask of quiet interest and knowingness.

“One would think you’d never seen me before, the way you’re staring at me today,” she said. “That’s enough, drop it now for goodness’ sake!”

Under his scrutiny she was growing restive and, to escape it, shut her eyes. He began prising her lids apart with his fingers.

“Look here! That’s quite enough of it! I won’t have your eyes prying into mine like that.” She crooked her arm over her eyes.

“So you want to keep me in the dark, little sphinx?” He sprinkled kisses on the shining, shapely arm, from shoulder to wrist.

Secretive, is she? he asked himself. No, a trifle reserved, but not secretive. Quite the contrary; she likes chattering about herself. In fact she gets more talkative every day. And that’s because she loves me, he thought delightedly. Because she loves me… .

Putting her arm round his neck, she drew his face beside hers once more. When she spoke again, there was a graver note in her voice.

“That’s a fact, you know; one has no idea how one can give oneself away in a mere look.” She paused. He heard, deep down in her throat, the silent little laugh which so often preceded her evocations of the past. “That reminds me. … It was by his look, just the look on his face, that I hit upon the secret of a man with whom I’d been living for months. At a table, in a Bordeaux restaurant. We were facing each other, talking. Our eyes were going to and fro, from the plates to each other’s face, or glancing round the room. Suddenly— I’ll never forget it—for the fraction of a second I caught his eyes fixed on a point behind me, with an expression … I was so startled that I couldn’t help turning in my chair to see.”

“Well?”

“Well, that just shows, “she continued in a changed voice, “that one should mind the look in one’s eyes.”

“And what did you find out?” The question was on the tip of Antoine’s tongue, but he dared not utter it. He had a morbid dread of making himself ridiculous by putting futile questions. Once or twice already he had ventured to ask for explanations at such moments and Rachel had looked at him with surprise, followed by amusement, laughing with an air of gentle mockery that deeply galled him.

So he held his tongue and it was she who broke the silence.

“All those old memories give me the blues. Kiss me. Again. Better than that.” But evidently the subject had not left her thoughts, for she added: “As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t have said ‘his secret,’ but ‘one of his secrets.’ You could never get to the bottom of that man’s mind.”

Then, to break away from the past and, perhaps, to elude Antoine’s unspoken query, she rolled right over on the bed, with a slow, lithe, snake-like wriggle of all her body.

“How supple you are!” He stroked her body appreciatively, like a fancier stroking a thoroughbred.

“Yes? Did you know I’d had ten years’ training at the Opera School of Dancing?”

“What? At Paris?”

“Yes, my boy! What’s more, when I left I was a leading ballerina!”

“Was that long ago?”

“Six years.”

“Why did you give it up?”

“My legs.” Her face darkened for a moment. “After that, I almost joined a circus—as a trick-rider,” she continued quickly. “Are you surprised?”

“Not a bit,” he replied coolly. “What circus was it?”

“Oh, not a French one. A big international show that Hirsch was touring all over the world at the time. Hirsch, you know—that’s the fellow I told you about, who’s settled in the Sudan. He wanted to exploit my talent, but I wasn’t taking any!” While she spoke, she amused herself crooking and straightening out each leg in turn with the effortless agility of a trained gymnast. “What gave him the idea was that he’d persuaded me to try my hand at trick-riding some time before that, at Neuilly. I loved it. We had a fine stable then, and we made the most of it, you may be sure!”

“Were you living at Neuilly?”

“No; but he was. He owned the Neuilly riding-school in those days; he was always keen on horses. So was I. Are you?”

“I ride a bit,” he replied, straightening his back. “But I haven’t had many opportunities for getting on a horse—or the time for it.”

“Well, I had opportunities all right. And to spare. Why, we were once on horseback for twenty-two days on end!”

“Where was that?”

“At the back of beyond. In Morocco.”

“So you’ve been to Morocco?”

“Twice. Hirsch was selling obsolete Gras rifles to the tribes in the south, and an exciting job it was! Once there was a regular pitched battle round our camp. We were under fire for twenty-four hours; no, all night and the following morning. They don’t often make night-attacks. It was a terrifying business; we couldn’t see a thing. They killed seventeen of our bearers and wounded over thirty of them. I threw myself between the crates of rifles at each volley. But they got me all right!”

“What? You were wounded?”

“Yes.” She laughed. “Only a scratch it was.” She pointed to a silky scar on the line of her waist, just under the ribs.

“Why did you tell me you’d had a carriage-accident?” Antoine inquired unsmilingly.

“Oh,” she exclaimed with a little shrug, “that was our first day together! You’d have thought I was trying to show off.”

They were silent. So she’s capable of lying to me, Antoine thought.

Rachel’s eyes grew darkly pensive, then suddenly brightened again —but with a glint of hatred that quickly came and went.

“He’d got it into his head that I’d follow him anywhere and always. Well, he was wrong.”

Antoine felt an uneasy satisfaction every time she cast such rancorous glances at her former life. “Stay with me—always!” he felt inclined to say. Pressing his cheek against the little scar, he waited. His ear, true to its professional training, followed the languid vascular flux and reflux murmuring deep down in her chest, and heard, remote yet clear, the full-toned throbbing of her heart. His nostrils quivered. On the warm bed all Rachel’s body breathed the perfume of her hair, but subtler, more subdued; a faint yet maddening odour with a tang of spices in it, a humid fragrance redolent of a curious range of scents—hazel-leaves, fresh butter, pitchpine, and vanilla candy; less of a perfume, truth to tell, than a fine vapour, almost a flavour, leaving an aftertaste of spices on the lips.

“Let’s drop the subject,” she said. “Give me a cigarette. No, the ones on the little table. They’re made by a girl I know; she puts a dash of green tea in with the Virginia leaf. They smell of burning leaves, camp-fires, and—yes, that’s it—shooting-parties in September; the smell of gunpowder, you know, when you shoot the coverts and the smoke hangs in the mist.”

He stretched himself out beside her under the smoke-rings, and his hands caressed the almost phosphorescent whiteness, hardly pink at all, of Rachel’s belly, ample as a vase turned on the potter’s wheel. She had acquired, probably in the course of her travels, the habit of eastern unguents and, in its maturity, her skin still kept the fresh and flawless smoothness of a young child’s body.

“
Umbilicus sicut crater eburneus
,” he murmured, recalling as best he could the sonorous Latin of the Vulgate which had so thrilled him in his sixteenth year. “
Venter tuus sicut
—like a what?—
sicut cupa
.”

“What on earth does it mean?” She sat up on the bed. “Wait a bit! I’ll try and guess.
Culpa
; I know that word.
Mea culpa
, that’s it; a fault, a sin. ‘Thy belly is a sin,’ eh?”

He burst out laughing. Since she had come into his life, he no longer kept a hold on his high spirits.

“No,
cupa
. ‘Thy belly is like a goblet,’ ” he amended, leaning his head on Rachel’s hip, and proceeded with his slightly garbled versions of the Song of Solomon. “
Quam pulchrae sunt mammae tuce, soror mea
! ‘How beautiful are thy two breasts, my sister!’ Sicut duo (what’s the Latin for them?)
gemelli qui pascuntur in liliis
. ‘Like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.’ ”

Delicately she held them up, first one and then the other, with a tender little smile for each, as if they were two friendly little animals.

“They’re awfully rare, you know, pink tips like that—really pink, like the buds on apple-trees,” she declared with almost judicial gravity. “As a doctor, you must have noticed that.”

“Yes, I believe you’re right. A skin without pigmental granulation. White on white, with pink shadows.” Shutting his eyes, he crushed himself against her. “Soft, soft shoulders …” he murmured sleepily. “I can’t bear flappers with their skimpy little shoulders.”

“Sure?”

“I love your delicious plumpness, every curve’s so smooth and firm; its texture’s like … like soap! Don’t move; I’m so comfortable.”

Suddenly a galling memory crossed his mind. “Like soap!” … A few days after Dedette’s accident he had travelled with Daniel from Maisons to Paris. They were alone in the compartment. Antoine’s mind was full of Rachel and the thought that now at last he could regale this expert amorist with an adventure of his own had proved too tempting; he could not contain himself, but launched into an account that lasted out the journey, of his dramatic night, the operation
in extremis
, the anxious vigil at the child’s bedside, and his sudden passion for the handsome red-haired girl dozing beside him on the couch. Then he had used those very words, “delicious plumpness,” “texture like soap.” But he had not dared to tell Daniel of what followed; describing how, as he went down the stairs, he noticed Rachel’s open door, he had added (less from motives of discretion than an absurd anxiety to prove his strength of will): “Did she expect me? Should I take the opportunity? Anyhow, I sized things up, pretended not to see, and passed the door. What would you have done in my place?” Then Daniel, who so far had heard him out in silence, looked him up and down, and rapped out: “Why, I’d have acted just as you did—you humbug!”

Daniel’s exclamation echoed in his ears, sceptical, ironic, almost cutting, but with’just the touch of geniality it needed not to be effective. Whenever he recalled it, it stung him to the quick. A humbug! Well, of course he was apt to lie upon occasion; or, more accurately, to catch himself out lying… .

Meanwhile, that “delicious plumpness” had made Rachel think too.

“I’ll grow into a fat old dame, quite likely,” she said. “Jews, you know. . , . Still, my mother wasn’t fat and I’m only half Yiddish. But you should have seen me sixteen years ago when I joined the beginners’ class. A regular little pink mouse I looked!”

She slipped off the bed before he had a chance of stopping her.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve got an idea… .”

“Anyhow you might give a fellow some warning.”

“Least said, soonest mended.” Laughing, she eluded his outstretched arm.