Chapter SIXTEEN

The little clock on the table by the bed was ticking so loudly that Marya got up and shut it away in a drawer. But she could still hear it, fussy and persistent. Then a train gave a long piercing shriek and she sighed, turned on the light and lay contemplating the flowers which crawled like spiders over the black walls of her bedroom. The mechanism of her brain got to work with a painful jerk and began to tick in time with the clock.

She made a great effort to stop it and was able to keep her mind a blank for, say, ten seconds. Then her obsession gripped her, arid, torturing, gigantic, possessing her as utterly as the longing for water possesses someone who is dying of thirst. She had made an utter mess of her love affair, and that was that. She had made an utter mess of her existence. And that was that, too.

But of course it wasn’t a love affair. It was a fight. A ruthless, merciless, three-cornered fight. And from the first Marya, as was right and proper, had no chance of victory. For she fought wildly, with tears, with futile rages, with extravagant abandon--all bad weapons.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she would ask herself. ‘Why are you like this? Why can’t you be clever? Pull yourself together!’ Uselessly.

‘No self-control,’ thought Marya. ‘That’s what’s the matter with me. No training.’

But of course he was very clever. And Lois, just sitting tight and smiling, was very clever. Oh, very clever! And she, Marya, was a fool who could do nothing but cry behind a locked door.

She shut her eyes and at once his face was close to hers, hard and self-contained. ‘All that!’ his cool eyes said. ‘Oh, yes, very nice. But all that grows on every blackberry bush, my dear.’ His cool eyes that confused and hurt her.

He wasn’t a good lover, of course. He didn’t really like women. She had known that as soon as he touched her. His hands were inexpert, clumsy at caresses; his mouth was hard when he kissed. No, not a lover of women, he could say what he liked.

He despised love. He thought of it grossly, to amuse himself, and then with ferocious contempt. Not that that mattered. He might be right. On the other hand, he might just possibly be wrong. But it didn’t really matter much.

What mattered was that, despising, almost disliking, love, he was forcing her to be nothing but the little woman who lived in the Hôtel du Bosphore for the express purpose of being made love to. A _petite femme_. It was, of course, part of his mania for classification. But he did it with such conviction that she, miserable weakling that she was, found herself trying to live up to his idea of her.

She lived up to it. And she had her reward.

‘... You pretty thing--you pretty, pretty thing. Oh, you darling. I say, did you notice what I did with my wrist-watch? Lois has got hold of two Czecho-Slovakians and that young American chap--you know--what’s-his-name?--the sculptor--for tonight and I promised I’d turn up. Are you all right for money? I’d better leave some money, hadn’t I?’

The endless repetition of that sort of thing became a torture. She would wait for him to say, ‘Look here, I must go now. Because Lois....’

As he dressed she would lie with one arm over her eyes and think: ‘A bedroom in hell might look rather like this one. Yellow-green and dullish mauve flowers crawling over black walls.’

Her lips were dry. Her body ached. He was so heavy. He crushed her. He bore her down.

The dim room smelt of stale scent. She began to imagine all the women who had lain where she was lying. Laughing. Or crying if they were drunk enough. She felt giddy and curiously light, as if she were floating about bodiless in the scented dimness.

‘It’s frightfully hot in here,’ Heidler was saying. ‘D’you mind if I pull the curtains and open the window? Where’s your handbag? Look here--do go and dine somewhere decent, for God’s sake.’

He always hurried the end of his dressing, as if getting out of her bedroom would be an escape.

‘Yes,’ said Marya dully. ‘All right. I will.’

‘It oughtn’t to be like this. I oughtn’t to let it be like this. It’s ugly like this.’

All very well to think that. But he crushed her. He bore her down.

Besides, she hadn’t a leg to stand on, really. He had everything on his side--right down to the expression on the waiter’s face when he brought up her breakfast. Everything. Including Logic and Common Sense. For he could so easily say--he often did say--‘Why did you leave the Avenue de l’Observatoire?’

Or, ‘Why don’t you come along with me and see Lois? Come to Lefranc’s tomorrow for lunch. Lois is very fond of you. And you must turn up occasionally, my dear; you really must.’

* * * * *

They would be sitting in the Café de Versailles, a peaceful place at three o’clock in the afternoon, given up to middle-aged gentlemen drinking bocks and young men writing letters. The vague smell of lunch still hung on the air. Outside, the Rue de Rennes stewed drearily in the sun.

‘I don’t want people to know anything. It isn’t anybody’s business. We can’t let Lois down, surely you must see that. She’s been awfully generous and we can’t let her down.’

‘But everybody knows already,’ said Marya. ‘If you think they don’t, your crest ought to be an ostrich.’

‘Nonsense!’

She persisted. ‘Everybody cuts me dead all along the Boulevard Montparnasse, anyway. Even De Solla cuts me. I’m the villain of the piece, and they do know. They say that Lois picked me up when I was starving and that the moment I got into her house I tried to get hold of you. And that there are limits. Or they say--shall I tell you what else they say, the ones who have lived here long enough?’

‘Oh, I know the sort of thing,’ said Heidler. ‘But what if they do? They can’t be sure. You must live it down. My dear child, you can live everything down, believe me, if you keep your head and don’t give yourself away.’

‘And if you have a good little income. Don’t forget that.’

‘Why should I be a butt for Lois and her friends?’ Marya went on excitedly. ‘She wants me there so that she can talk at me. She wants me there so that she can watch out for the right moment to put her enormous foot down.’

She began to laugh loudly. There was a coarse sound in her laughter. Heidler looked at her sideways. He disliked her when she laughed like that.

He told her coldly: ‘You talk the most awful nonsense sometimes, don’t you?’

‘What?’ said Marya. ‘Aren’t Lois’s feet enormous? Well, I think they are. You didn’t exactly look for _fines attaches_ when you married, did you?’

His eyes were very hostile. When she saw his hostile eyes she stopped laughing and her lips trembled.

‘All right. Very well. Just as you like,’ said Marya. ‘What’s it matter, anyway?’

* * * * *

It was no good arguing, there she was, the villain of the piece; and it hurt, of course. When the lonely night came it started hurting like hell. Then she would drink a couple of Pernods at Boots’ Bar to deaden the hurt and, carefully avoiding the Boulevard du Montparnasse, she would walk to a side-street off the Boulevard St Michel and dine in a students’ restaurant, not frequented by the Montparnos.

‘A Pernod fils, please.’

‘Pernod is very bad for the stomach, mademoiselle,’ the _patronne_ said disapprovingly. ‘If mademoiselle had a Dubonnet instead?’

The _patronne_ was really a wonderfully good sort. Fancy caring what happened to the stomach of a stray client. On the other hand, fancy facing life--that is to say, facing Heidler and Lois--on a Dubonnet! Marya could have cackled with laughter.

‘No, a Pernod,’ she insisted.

And a minute afterwards the merciful stuff clouded her brain. Then, dazed, she watched the lady who was sitting opposite dining slowly and copiously. Soup; a beefsteak; a salad; cheese. She was a lady with a pale face, crimson lips, a close-fitting black hat, and eyebrows like half moons. She was indeed exactly like Pierrot and every now and then she would turn and look at herself in the glass approvingly. Eventually, gathering up her belongings, she moved out with stately and provocative undulations of the hips.

But the students at the next table were _camelots du roi_. They were talking politics and the lady passed out unnoticed. Then Marya, imitating her, turned round and looked at herself in the mirror at the back, powdered her face and reddened her lips. But hopelessly, thinking, ‘Good God, how ugly I’ve grown!’ Loving had done that to her--among other things--made her ugly. If this was love--this perpetual aching longing, this wound that bled persistently and very slowly. And the devouring hope. And the fear. That was the worst. The fear she lived with--that the little she had would be taken from her.

Love was a terrible thing. You poisoned it and stabbed at it and knocked it down into the mud--well down--and it got up and staggered on, bleeding and muddy and awful. Like--like Rasputin. Marya began to laugh.

* * * * *

As she walked back to the hotel after her meal Marya would have the strange sensation that she was walking under water. The people passing were like the wavering reflections seen in water, the sound of water was in her ears. Or sometimes she would feel sure that her life was a dream--that all life was a dream. ‘It’s a dream,’ she would think; ‘it isn’t real’--and be strangely comforted.

A dream. A dream. ‘_La vie toute faite des morceaux. Sans suite comme des rêves._’ Who wrote that? Gauguin. ‘_Sans suite comme des rêves._’ A dream. Long shining empty streets and tall dark houses looking down at her.

Often during these walks she passed under the windows of the studio in the Avenue de l’Observatoire. Once it was on a Thursday night. Lois’s party, of course. She stood outside in the dark street imagining that she heard the sound of the gramophone playing, ‘If you knew Suzie like I know Suzie’.

Then she thought, ‘No, this is too stupid. I’m going home.’ But still she stood there listening, looking up at the lit windows.

Well, there she was. In a bad way. Hard hit. All in. And a drunkard into the bargain. And she had to stuff herself with veronal before she could sleep.

But when she tried to argue reasonably with herself it seemed to her that she had forgotten the beginnings of the affair, when she had still reacted and he had reconquered her painstakingly. She never reacted now. She was a thing. Quite dead. Not a kick left in her.

When Lois sneered she sat with bent head and never answered.

‘Oh, I know I’ve got a terrible tongue,’ Lois would say complacently. And Marya, watching her, silent, would think: ‘One of these days just when she’s thought of something clever to say about me for her friends to snigger at, just when she’s opening her mouth to say it, I’ll smash a wine-bottle in her face.’

Sitting there silent, her hands cold and a little fixed smile on her face, she would imagine the sound of the glass breaking, the sight of the blood streaming. As she lay awake she imagined it, breathing quickly, and then she would tell herself, horrified: ‘My God, I’m going mad!’

Little wheels in her head that turned perpetually. I love him. I want him. I hate her. And he’s a swine. He’s out to hurt me. What shall I do? I love him. I want him. I hate her.

So she would lie for hours, tortured by love and hate, till the morning came and the coloured tepid water which they called coffee in the Hôtel du Bosphore. Then she would get up and look at herself in the glass, thinking: ‘Good Lord! can that be me? No wonder people think I’m a bad lot.’

Her eyelids were swollen and flaccid over unnaturally large, bright eyes. Her head seemed to have sunk between her shoulders, giving her a tormented and deformed look. Her mouth drooped, her skin was greyish, and when she made up her face the powder and rouge stood out in clownish patches.

She would stare at herself, feeling a horrible despair. A feeling of sickness would come over her as she stared at herself. She would get back into bed and lie huddled with her arm over her eyes.

This was Marya’s life for six days of the week. On the seventh she went to Fresnes and returned soothed, comforted, and, because she reacted physically so quickly, once more desirable.

‘My dear, how much better you look!’ Heidler would never fail to remark the next day. ‘Not half so peaky. My darling child. You pretty thing.’

* * * * *

Marya thought of her husband with a passion of tenderness and protection. He represented her vanished youth--her youth, her gaiety, her joy in life. She would tell herself: ‘He was kind to me. He was awfully chic with me.’

Soon, for her sentimental mechanism was very simple, she extended this passion to all the inmates of the prison, to the women who waited with her under the eye of the fat warder, to all unsuccessful and humbled prostitutes, to everybody who wasn’t plump, sleek, satisfied, smiling and hard-eyed. To all the people who never went to tea-parties or gave them. To everybody, in fact, who was utterly unlike the Heidlers.

She went to the prison gaily, as if she were going to visit a friend, and all the way there she would revolve her plans for Stephan.

* * * * *

It was the beginning of August. Stephan was to be released on the second Sunday in September.

‘I’ll have to find a coiffeur,’ he said anxiously. ‘I don’t want to go around Paris with my hair on my shoulders and a long beard....’

The warder who shaved the prisoners’ heads was, it seemed, a good sort. A few weeks before they were released he let them start to grow their hair.

‘Not a bad type,’ said Stephan. ‘Many of them are not bad. They do their work, what do you wish? I daresay they’d prefer to do something else.’

‘Oh, you’ll find a coiffeur,’ said Marya. ‘I’ll get a room for you in the Quartier Latin somewhere, will that do?’

‘Look in the Rue Tollman,’ he advised.

‘Well, you can go straight there from Fresnes and in the afternoon I’ll turn up with the money.’

‘It’s all very well,’ said Stephan, ‘but what about you? How will you manage about money?’

She answered: ‘I’ve told you, the Heidlers have lent me some money.’

‘They’re chic,’ remarked Stephan.