Vertigo (10 page)

‘You’re not listening,’ she said. ‘Is anything the matter?’

‘No… I’m just a bit tired. It’s stuffy in here.’

They walked rapidly through several rooms to the exit. Flavières was glad to see the sun again and hear again the roar of the traffic. He wanted to be alone. He needed a drink.

‘I’ll leave you here. I’ve got to go to the Food Office to see about my supplementary rations. Amuse yourself. Buy yourself what you like. Here!’

He shoved a bundle of notes into her hand, then promptly regretted the impulse. Why had he made her his mistress? That had spoilt everything. He had turned her into a sort of freak who was neither Madeleine nor Renée.

‘Don’t be too long,’ she called after him.

When she was twenty or thirty yards away he nearly ran back
to her. Her gait, the slight movement of her shoulders—every detail as she walked away along the sunny pavement was exactly as it had always been. Now she was going to cross the road.
Mon Dieu!
He was going to lose her, and it was he who had opened his arms to let her go.

No—idiot that he was! She wasn’t going to run away… No danger of that! She wasn’t such a fool. She would be waiting for him obediently at their hotel.

He went straight into a café. He was at the end of his tether.

‘A
pastis
.’

The cool drink didn’t calm him down. Not for a second could he banish the problem from his mind, nor could he get any nearer to a solution. Renée was Madeleine, yet she wasn’t
altogether
Madeleine. What sort of a show would your Dr. Ballards put up if they had to find an answer to a riddle like that?… Unless, of course, he, Flavières, had been completely mistaken from the start, his memory having played him a trick. After all, he had only known the old Madeleine for a very short time… And with all that had happened in between… No, that wouldn’t wash either. Had not she haunted him day and night? Had not her image been perpetually before his mind’s eye, like an icon? He could have recognized Madeleine with his eyes shut, from her presence alone.

The truth was that she was different from other women, belonging to another species. And just as Pauline had been a bit lost in the part of Madeleine, so was the latter in that of Renée. As though her spirit hesitated a little before abandoning itself to a new incarnation… Perhaps in the end she would become Renée completely… No. He would never allow that… Because Renée was an ageing woman, because she
had neither Madeleine’s distinction nor her charm, because, lastly, she was so obstinately holding out against the proofs he lay before her.

He ordered another drink. Proofs? Could he honestly call them that? When he couldn’t put a single scrap of evidence before her which could be verified! He was
morally
certain. No more than that. To break down Madeleine’s resistance, to force her to admit she was hiding behind the identity of Renée, he needed some solid, material fact. But what?

The alcohol began to seep through his veins. Encouraged, he began to see the problem less gloomily. Perhaps, after all, there was a solid fact that wouldn’t be too difficult to establish. More than once already, he had seen Renée’s identity card, which said:
Sourange, Renée Catherine, née le 24 octobre 1916 à Dambremont
,
Vosges
.

Pensively, he paid the bill. Yes. His idea was perfectly reasonable. He jumped on to a tram going towards the post office. He tried not to think now, afraid of stumbling on an objection. He studied the commonplace faces of the people standing with him on the rear platform, and he could almost have wished himself one of them, for they were not afraid.

At the post office he queued up patiently for a telephone call. If the lines were working again and not monopolized by priority calls, he would soon know…

‘Can I put through a call to Dambremont?’

‘What Department?’

‘Vosges.’

‘Dambremont? Probably have to go through Gérardmer. In that case…’

He turned to another man.

‘You ought to know… Dambremont, Vosges… A gentleman wants to telephone.’

The other looked up.

‘Dambremont? It’s flat. The Boches didn’t leave a stone standing… What’s it for?’

‘An extract from the register of births,’ said Flavières.

‘There’s nothing left at all. Just a heap of rubble.’

‘What can I do then?’

The man shrugged his shoulders and went back to his work. Flavières walked away. So there was nothing left. No records. Nothing but that identity card dated November 1944… That didn’t prove that Renée had lived at the same time as Madeleine… He went down the steps sadly. It was lacking. No one would ever be able to establish the fact that they had been alive simultaneously, that they were thus really and truly two separate beings. If they weren’t…

Flavières walked aimlessly. He oughtn’t to have started drinking. He oughtn’t to have tried to telephone. His mind had been more tranquil before. Why couldn’t he simply love this woman and leave it at that, instead of poisoning their relations by his ceaseless probings… All the same, the fact that he’d drawn a blank at the post office proved nothing. Very well, then—ought he to go to Dambremont and start rummaging in the ruins? There he was again! Incorrigible, odious!… And supposing she got tired of his suspicions, his reproaches, his ill-tempered tyranny, and left? Yes, think of it! Supposing she packed her bags one day and left?

The idea was enough to make his legs feel weak under him. He stopped at the corner of the street, his hand pressed to his side, like an invalid fearing a heart attack. Then he went
on again slowly, his shoulders sagging. Poor Madeleine! He seemed to take a delight in making her suffer… But why, why did she refuse to speak?

Suppose she did. Suppose she turned suddenly on him and said:

‘Yes. I was dead. I’ve come back from down there. And these blue eyes of mine have seen…’

Would he not fall dead himself, struck by lightning?

‘Now I really am going out of my mind,’ he thought. ‘But if you carry logic to its uttermost extreme, isn’t that the same thing as madness?’

At the hotel he hesitated, then, catching sight of a florist, went and bought some carnations and mimosa. That would brighten up their room. Renée would feel less of a prisoner. He took the lift, and the heady scent of the mimosa in the little cabin reminded him of that other one… His obsession returned treacherously. When he opened the door of his room he was again drooping with disgust and despair. Renée was lying on the bed. Flavières flung the flowers down on the table.

‘Well?’ he said.

No! She wasn’t crying, was she? He rushed forward, his fists clenched.

‘What’s the matter? Tell me quickly. What’s happened?’

He took her head in his hands and turned her face to the light. ‘My poor child!’

He had never seen Madeleine cry. But neither had he forgotten her wet face when he had dragged her out of the Seine. He shut his eyes.

‘Stop crying,’ he murmured. ‘Please stop crying. At once. You’ve no idea what it does to me.’

And, suddenly angry, he stamped his foot.

‘Stop, I tell you! Stop!’

She sat up and drew him towards her. For a minute they sat quite still, as though waiting for something. Then Flavières put his arm round her shoulders.

‘Forgive me. My nerves are all jangled. Forgive me. You know how I love you.’

The day faded slowly. Below, a tram screeched round a bend. Green flashes from the contact with the overhead wire were reflected in the windows opposite. The mimosa smelt of wet earth. Pressed close to Renée, Flavières calmed down. What was the point of his incessant quest? Wasn’t he happy at this woman’s side? Of course he would have preferred her to be Madeleine. But it wasn’t too difficult in the twilight to imagine she was. Madeleine in her black dress escaped for a moment from the shadows into which she had dissolved.

‘It’s time we went down to dinner,’ she whispered.

‘No. Let’s stay here. I’m not hungry.’

It was a marvellous respite. She would be his so long as the night lasted, so long as her face was no more than a splash of paleness in the hollow of his shoulder… Madeleine… He sank gently into a serenity such as he had never known. No. They were not two… no need to try and explain it… He was no longer afraid.

‘I’m no longer afraid,’ he murmured.

She stroked his forehead. He could feel her breath on his cheek. The scent of the mimosa seemed to be swelling, filling the whole room. He gently pushed away this body, whose warmth entered into him, and seized the hand that had been caressing his face.

‘Come.’

The bed hollowed on his side. He still held her hand. He handled it delicately as though he would count the fingers. He now recognized the bony wrist, the short thumb, the rounded nails. How could he ever have forgotten?… God! How sleepy he was. He sank into the shadows in which his memories were still leading their strange lives: in front of him the steering wheel of a car and on it a small hand full of nervous energy, the same that had undone the packet tied with blue ribbon and taken out the card.
A Eurydice ressuscitée
… He opened his eyes. Beside him lay a motionless figure. For a moment he listened to her breathing, then, raising himself on one elbow, he bent over the invisible face and let his lips touch the closed eyelids which flickered in an almost imperceptible response.

‘Won’t you really tell me who you are?’

Tears wetted the warm eyelids and he tasted them pensively. Then he looked for his handkerchief under the pillow. He couldn’t find it.

‘I’ll be back in a second.’

Softly he slipped into the bathroom. Renée’s bag was there on the dressing-table among the cosmetics. He opened it and delved into it, but found no handkerchief. On the other hand, his fingers came in contact with something which intrigued him—some oval beads, a necklace. Yes, it was a necklace. He took it to the window and held it up in the pale glaucous light which filtered through the frosted glass. The amber beads glowed faintly golden. His hands began to tremble. There was no room for doubt. It was the necklace of Pauline Lagerlac.

‘You’re drinking too much,’ said Renée.

She quickly glanced at the next table, fearing to have spoken too loudly. She knew very well that for some days now people had been looking askance at Flavières.

Defiantly he emptied his glass at a draught. His cheeks were pale except for a little hectic flush over his cheek-bones.

‘It isn’t this phony burgundy that’ll go to my head,’ he retorted.

‘All the same… You’re doing yourself no good.’

‘Precisely! I’m doing myself no good. I spend my life doing myself no good. You can’t teach me anything on that score.’

He glared at her, without any reason. She studied the menu to avoid those hard, desperate eyes, which watched her unceasingly. The waiter came up.

‘A sweet?’

‘Just a tartlet,’ said Renée.

‘The same for me,’ said Flavières.

As soon as the waiter had gone, he leant over towards her.

‘You don’t eat enough… In the old days…’

His lips trembled slightly as he finished the sentence.

‘… In the old days you thought nothing of putting down three or four
brioches
.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Yes, you did… Think a little… In the Galeries Lafayette…’

‘That old story!’

‘Yes. The story of the time when I was happy.’

Flavières’ breath came quickly. He searched in his pockets, then in Renée’s bag for cigarettes and matches, keeping his eyes on her all the time.

‘You oughtn’t to smoke so much either,’ she faltered.

‘I know. That’s another thing that’s doing me no good. But I happen to like being ill. There! And if I peg out…’

He lit his cigarette and waved the match in front of Renée’s eyes.

‘… If I peg out, that doesn’t matter either. You told me so yourself once. You said: “It doesn’t hurt to die”.’

She shrugged her shoulders, at the end of her patience.

‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘and I can tell you the exact spot where you said it. It was by the Seine, at Courbevoie. You see, I have a memory.’

He laughed. He had his elbows on the table and one eye half shut because of the smoke from his cigarette. The waiter brought the tartlets.

‘Go on,’ said Flavières. ‘Eat them both. I’ve finished.’

‘People are looking at us,’ pleaded Renée.

‘What? Haven’t I even the right to say I’ve finished eating? If my appetite’s satisfied, it’s a good advertisement for the house.’

‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you this evening.’

‘Nothing,
chérie
. Nothing. I’m in excellent spirits… Why don’t you eat them with a spoon? You used to.’

She pushed her plate away, snatched up her bag, and got up.

‘Really. You’re impossible.’

He got up too. She was quite right: everybody was looking at them, but that didn’t disturb him in the least. Other people
no longer existed. He was far beyond minding anything that was said about him. Which of them could stand one hour of what he was living through day in, day out?

He caught Renée up at the lift. The lift-boy eyed them surreptitiously. She blew her nose, hid her face behind her bag, pretending to powder her nose. She became truly beautiful like that, on the verge of tears. Moreover it was only right that she should share his martyrdom. They went down the long corridor in silence. Entering their room, she threw her bag down on the bed.

‘We can’t go on like this,’ she said. ‘These continual allusions to something I can’t understand… this restless life we lead… no… it would be better for us to separate… Otherwise you’ll end by driving me out of my mind.’

She wasn’t crying, but her eyes glistened with a quivering moisture. Flavières smiled sadly.

‘Do you remember the church of Saint-Nicolas?… You had just got up from your knees. You were pale, just as you are now.’

She sank heavily on to the edge of the bed, as though some invisible hand had pressed her down. Her lips hardly moved.

‘Saint-Nicolas?’

‘Yes, that church tucked away in the depths of the country not far from Mantes… You were on the point of dying.’

‘On the point of dying? Me?’

Suddenly she threw herself face downwards on the bed, burying her head in her arms. Sobs shook her shoulders. Flavières knelt down beside her. He wanted to stroke her head, but she shrank away from him.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she cried.

‘Are you frightened of me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think I’m drunk?’

‘No.’

‘Mad, then?’

‘Yes.’

He stood up for a moment and was lost in thought. He ran his hand over his forehead.

‘That’s not impossible… All the same, there’s that necklace… No, let me finish… Why don’t you wear it?’

‘Because I don’t like it. I’ve told you so already.’

‘Or was it because you were afraid I might recognize it?… That’s it, isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘Do you swear it?’

‘Of course I do.’

He considered that answer, making a complicated pattern on the carpet with his toe.

‘And, according to you, it was a present from Almaryan?’

She raised herself on one elbow and tucked her legs up. He looked at her miserably.

‘Almaryan told me he’d bought it in Paris. At an antique shop in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.’

‘How long ago?’

‘I’ve told you that too. Why do you always make me repeat the same thing over and over again?’

‘Never mind. Repeat it. How long ago?’

‘Six months.’

That was possible, of course… no, it wasn’t. Such a coincidence was inconceivable.

‘You’re lying,’ he said.

‘What should I want to lie for?’

‘Come on. You might just as well confess and have done with it. You’re Madeleine Gévigne.’

‘No. Don’t say that again. You’re simply torturing me. If you’re still in love with that woman, you’d better leave me… I’d rather you did… I’ll clear out. I’ve had enough of this.’

‘That woman… is dead, and…’

He hesitated. He was terribly thirsty, and kept coughing to cover the burning dryness of his throat. Correcting himself, he went on:

‘Or rather she was dead for a while… Only, is that possible?’

‘No,’ she moaned. ‘Don’t go on, please…’

Again, the pale mask of dread spread over her face. He drew away from her.

‘You’ve nothing to be afraid of. You can see I don’t want to hurt you… I know I say strange things, but that’s not my fault… Take a look at this. Have you ever seen it before?’

His hand dived into his pocket, and he threw the gold lighter on to the bed. Renée uttered a cry and shrank back from it as though it had been a scorpion.

‘Go on! Look at it… It’s a lighter… Touch it; take it in your hand. I tell you, it’s only a lighter. It won’t bite you… Well? Doesn’t it remind you of anything?’

‘No.’

‘Not a visit to the Louvre?’

‘No.’

‘I picked it up near your body… It’s true you couldn’t remember my doing that.’

He said that in a slightly sneering tone and Renée’s tears began flowing again.

‘Go away,’ she whimpered. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Keep it,’ went on Flavières. ‘Keep it. It’s yours.’

It lay there glittering between them like a sort of ominous challenge. Looking across it at Renée, Flavières saw a woman he was torturing needlessly. Needlessly? His blood was throbbing at his temples. He trailed over to the wash-basin and gulped down some tepid water that tasted of disinfectant. He had still a host of questions to ask her. They writhed in his brain like worms. But they must wait… He had put Madeleine to flight by his haste, his rough handling. He must coax her back little by little to the threshold of life. He would reconstitute her out of Renée’s substance. Then… The moment would come when she would remember. He turned the key in the lock.

‘I can’t stay here,’ said Renée.

‘Where would you go to?’

‘I don’t know. Anywhere, so long as I get away.’

‘I won’t touch you, I promise… I’ll never speak about the past again.’

He could hear her breathing rapidly. He knew, as he undressed, that she was following every movement.

‘Take that lighter away,’ she cried and her voice was full of horror.

‘Really? Won’t you keep it?’

‘No. I only want to be left in peace. I had a bad enough time during the war. If I’ve now got to…’

She flicked away a tear from the corner of her eye, groped for her handkerchief. Flavières threw her his, but she pretended not to notice.

‘Why are you angry?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t mean to be nasty. Come on, let’s make it up.’

He picked up his handkerchief, sat down on the bed, and wiped her eyes. A brusque tenderness made his movements awkward. Her tears flowed on steadily like blood from a wound that wouldn’t heal.

‘There’s nothing to cry about,’ he kept repeating. ‘There’s nothing to cry about.’

He pressed her head against his breast and rocked her gently.

‘There are times,’ he said softly, ‘when I hardly know what I’m doing. I’m so tortured by memories… I don’t suppose you could ever understand… If she had died peacefully in bed… of course I should have suffered… but I’d have got over it, perhaps even forgotten… The thing is… I may as well tell you now… She killed herself. She threw herself from the top of a tower. What she did it for, what she was trying to escape from… for five years I’ve been racking my brains for an answer to that question.’

A muffled sob was Renée’s only answer.

‘There! It’s all over now. You see, I’ve told you the whole story… I need you, my little one. You must never leave me, for this time I should die. It’s quite true… I’m still in love with her. I’m in love with you too. And it’s one and the same love, a love such as no man has ever known before… It would be perfect if only you could just make that effort… if you could tell me what happened…
after that
.’

The head he was holding moved but he grasped it the more firmly.

‘No. Let me go on… I’ll tell you something, something which I’ve only realized myself in the last few days.’

He felt for the switch and turned off the light. He was in an uncomfortable position, but didn’t think of changing it.
Pressed together, they drifted in the dusk, with vague forms floating around them. They were half-drowned beings seeking to come up into the lost light of day.

‘I’ve always been afraid of dying,’ Flavières went on in a voice that was now no more than a whisper. ‘The death of other people upset me terribly because it foretold my own. And my own… no, I have never been able to resign myself to the idea… I came near to believing in the Christian God because of the promise of the resurrection… That body wrapped in a linen cloth, the great stone rolled to the door of the sepulchre, the soldiers watching… And then, the third day… When I was a boy, how I used to ponder over that third day… I went secretly up to an empty cave and shouted into it. The sound echoed under the ground, but no one rose from the dead… It was too early then… Now… now I believe my shout was answered… I want so desperately to believe it. If it were true… if you could only tell me… you… Ah! What a relief it would be… I would send the doctors about their business. You, you would teach me to…’

He looked down at the dim face whose orbits seemed empty. Only the forehead, cheeks, and chin were touched by a faint light. His heart was full of love; he gazed at her, waiting perhaps for some word from her. Another tram screeched round the bend, and the flashes from the contact flickered on the walls and ceiling. Her eyes, too, flashed for a moment with a weird green sparkle. He started.

‘Shut your eyes,’ he said. ‘You must never look at me like that again.’

His right arm was completely numb. The whole of that side of him seemed to be dead. He thought of the moment when, in the Seine, dragged down by Madeleine’s weight, he had had to
struggle for his own life as well as hers. He was being dragged down again now, but he no longer had the wish to struggle. He was tempted to yield, to abandon his role as guide and protector. After all, it was she who knew the secret…

Sleep was already clouding his thoughts. He tried once again to speak. He wanted to promise her something, but what it was was obscured by too many mists. He was vaguely aware that she moved, no doubt to undress. He tried to say to her:

‘Stay with me, Madeleine.’

But his lips scarcely moved. He slept but without any real repose. Only towards dawn did his spirit seem to be at peace, and he was quite unconscious of her when she looked at him for a long time in the grey morning light, her eyes once again slowly filling with tears.

He woke up with a headache, feeling washed out. Sounds of splashing in the bathroom reassured him. When he got out of bed, he felt an absolute wreck.

‘I shan’t be a minute,’ cried Renée.

His mind bereft of thought or any feeling of pleasure, he gazed absently at the blue sky over the roofs opposite. Another day! Life went on: another day as stupid as its predecessors! He dressed listlessly. As on every other morning, he was racked by the longing for a drink. He had a nip. That cleared his mind a bit, but only for him to find all his anxieties intact, all his questions neatly arranged side by side like the cutlery in a canteen. Renée emerged in a magnificent dressing-gown, bought the previous day.

‘There you are. You can have the bathroom now.’

‘No hurry… Did you sleep well?… I’m feeling rotten this morning. Did I talk in my sleep?’

‘No.’

‘I do sometimes. When I have nightmares. There’s nothing in that: I’ve had them all my life.’

He yawned, then studied her. She didn’t look any too good either, but now that she was thinner she troubled his spirit more than ever. She began doing her hair. Once again, Flavières couldn’t restrain himself: he snatched the comb out of her hand.

‘Here! Give that to me.’

He pulled a chair forward in front of the looking-glass.

‘Sit down. I’ll show you… Having your hair on your shoulders doesn’t suit you a bit.’

He tried to pass it off lightly, but his hands trembled with impatience.

‘As a matter of fact, what it really needs is a touch of henna. Some strands are lighter than others. It is neither one thing nor the other.’