Chapter EIGHTEEN

‘Monsieur has arrived,’ announced the landlady of the hotel in the Rue Tollman ‘Yes. Number 19, Madame, the room you booked.’

When Marya opened the door of Room 19 Stephan was sitting at the table writing a letter. He looked like some frail and shrunken apostle, his beard and hair flowed.

When he took her in his arms she felt his thin body tremble. It was as if a stranger were touching her.

She said: ‘Hello, my dear. Well, couldn’t you find a coiffeur’s shop open after all?’

He explained that he had been kept at the Palais de Justice for several hours. ‘And I wanted to be here when you came. Oh, I know that I look awful.’

She smiled at him and answered: ‘You look a regular Montparno.’--‘I didn’t know how thin he was,’ she was thinking.

‘There’s a place open just round the corner. I’ll go there now,’ said Stephan.

She walked restlessly up and down the room till he came back shaved and carrying a cardboard box of cream cakes. As he opened the box, she watched his hands: thin, brown, quickly moving. Clever hands he had.

‘A savarin, an éclair, two meringues--the ones you like, and I’ve ordered tea downstairs. I looked for flowers but I didn’t see any.’

‘But I can’t eat all those cakes,’ she told him.

‘Well, you must. You don’t look well, Mado. You look--I don’t know; you’re changed. Oh, zut!’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Don’t let’s be sad.’

‘No, don’t let’s be sad,’ she said and thought again: ‘He’s simply dreadfully thin.’ Every bone in his face showed. His clothes hung on him.

The tea arrived.

‘Arrange yourself on the bed, Mado. It’s more comfortable.’ He piled pillows behind her back, poured the tea out and brought the cup, waiting on her with anxious gentleness.

She ate and drank quickly and then lay back, relaxed. Gradually an irrational feeling of security and happiness took possession of her. She sighed deeply like a child when a fit of crying is over, lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, luxuriously. It was extraordinary, but there it was. This was the only human being with whom she had ever felt safe or happy.

His old grey felt hat was lying at the foot of the bed.

She said: ‘About your clothes--I packed them all away in your trunk. They’re at the Hôtel de l’Univers.’

‘Oh, I’ll sell the lot,’ answered Stephan. ‘The less I have with me the better.’

A shaft of sunlight made patterns through the lace curtains on the carpet. It was oppressively hot and airless in the little bedroom. From some distant--probably subterranean--region came the sound of a laboriously played piano.

She opened her handbag and looked at herself in the little glass, and was astounded because her mouth was so smiling and peaceful.

Stephan, seated in the one armchair near the window, was saying: ‘I’ll be able to stay four days in Paris. A type who left Fresnes with me this morning is going to lend me some money tomorrow. And with what you’ve brought.... You know, I took care of the books at the end--the library--oh, my dear, _what_ a selection of books! I’ll tell you that one day. Well, this man, a Russian Jew, Schlamovitz is his name, was there, too. We talked sometimes--it was a funny life--well, if you knew.’ He was silent, as if he were remembering the bizarre and cynical conversations of the Santé and Fresnes. ‘He lives with a girl in Montmartre and she was there to meet him this morning.’

‘What sort of girl?’ asked Marya, interested.

‘Oh, well, a _grue_, it seems. But she’s a good girl. She was awfully happy when she saw him.’

‘Was she?’

‘Yes. She cried. Oh, they’re fond of their men, these girls, I tell you.’

Marya looked away. But there had been no reproach in his voice, and he went on speaking very quickly and excitedly about the man Schlamovitz who, it seemed, spent an extraordinary existence, being petted by women in Montmartre (‘My dear, what a beautiful boy!’) and at regular intervals being arrested and taken to jail. He had been expelled from Paris two years before.

‘Well,’ said Stephan. ‘What can you expect? When he was fourteen a rich old woman adopted him. And she made love to him very soon because he was so beautiful. Then she died without leaving him a penny.’

There was also another individual released two days before, known as Michel the nigger, a former soldier of the Foreign Legion, who would put a knife in anybody’s back as soon as look at him. ‘But a _bon camarade_.’ Michel was apparently contemplating reform and turning an honest sou or two. He had a soap-making apparatus in his little two-roomed flat.

‘Yes. That transparent soap, you know. And he makes cold cream and the stuff women put on their faces at night.’

‘Skin food? Good Lord! All that in his two rooms?’

‘Yes,’ said Stephan. ‘Of course, his wife helps him. And he sells it to the big Paris stores very cheap. But it seems that it’s awfully cheap to make. The pots are the most expensive part of it.’

Marya considered him all the while he was talking, and thought: ‘He’s changed, he’s awfully changed.’

She said suddenly, ‘If anybody tried to catch me and lock me up I’d fight like a wild animal; I’d fight till they let me out or till I died.’

Stephan laughed. ‘Oh, no, you wouldn’t, not for long, believe me. You’d do as the others do--you’d wait and be a wild animal when you came out.’ He put his hand to his eyes and added: ‘When you come out--but you don’t come out. Nobody ever comes out.’

She stared at him, impressed by this phrase.

‘Let’s not talk of it. Later on, Marya, one day I’ll tell you everything, everything from the beginning, but let it go now for a while, let it....’ He began to walk up and down the room. ‘Imagine. In a few more days, no more Paris for me. I can’t believe it.’

‘Don’t think about it,’ she said, ‘don’t let’s think.’

Then he told her that he had determined to go to Amsterdam, that he knew a man there who might help him, a Jew, a friend of his father’s.

‘People abuse Jews, but sometimes they help you when nobody else will.’

‘Yes,’ said Marya, ‘I think so, too. They often understand better than other people.’

But now peace had left her again. She was too restless to lie still. She got up and, sitting on the edge of the bed, watched him gesticulate. His optimism seemed pitiful to her, and strange. She remembered Stephan calm, silent and self-contained; now it was as if prison had broken him up.

He assured her that in six weeks’ time he would have arranged something and that he would send for her.

‘Can you manage for another six weeks?’

‘Of course,’ muttered Marya. ‘I must tell him,’ she thought, and then: ‘Oh, I can’t now--I must wait a bit. It would be too horribly cruel.’ She lit a cigarette, let it go out and then tore it to pieces.

‘Don’t strew tobacco on my bed, Marya,’ said Stephan. ‘And, look here, I want to be able to thank your friends, the Heidlers. I suppose they can’t want to meet me, but all the same I would like to thank them. It was _chic_ what they did, to take you into their house when I was in jail and to be your friends; yes, it was _chic_.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ said Marya in a hard voice.

She asked for another cigarette and went on: ‘They’ll be in the Taverne this evening at half-past nine, if you want to see them. The Panthéon, you know. But why should you want to? Don’t let’s go.’ She thought of Lois’s brown eyes raking Stephan, shabby and shrunken, and she repeated: ‘Don’t let’s go.’

‘Are you ashamed of me?’ he asked. ‘Am I such a scarecrow, so _moche_ as all that?’

‘Good God, no!’ she said. ‘You really want to see them? All right.’

‘Is Madame Heidler pretty?’ inquired Stephan.

‘No,’ answered Marya. Then she added at once: ‘I don’t know. She has lovely eyes; she dances well....’

‘Good!’ said Stephan, ‘_à la bonheur_! And now, how about two Mominettes in the little bar on the corner?’

* * * * *

Almost immediately after they reached the café Marya, who had her eyes fixed on the door, saw Lois come in and look round with an expression of defiance. Heidler followed her. They came up to the table and sat down. The horrible moment of meeting was over.

Lois began a smooth and tactful monologue. As she talked she fidgeted with her long necklace of huge, brownish yellow beads and watched the ex-convict with antagonism and curiosity.

‘Oh, is that so, Madame?’ from Stephan.

Heidler had carefully arranged his face to look perfectly expressionless, but when he lit a cigarette his hand trembled. He cut Stephan’s thanks short with nervousness. Silence. And then more desperate conversation about the café--how old it was, how famous it was, how ugly it was.

Marya gazed intently at a woman behind the counter and wondered whether she wore a wig or whether her hair had by some extraordinary freak of nature remained blonde, supple, and vital above her rather terrible mask of an avaricious and sensual old woman.

‘If it’s a wig,’ thought Marya, ‘it’s the most marvellous one I’ve ever seen. It’s darker at the roots. Can’t be a wig.’

She stared at the woman, who was arranging a huge green bow round the neck of a minute and hairy dog that stood on the counter, shivering violently. Then she listened again to the careful and nervous conversation of her three companions, and every time she heard Lois’s sharply patronizing accents a feeling of such intense irritation shot through her that she clenched her hands under the table.

‘For God’s sake,’ she said suddenly, ‘ask the waiter for a _fine_; I’m so thirsty.’

Stephan began to protest. ‘Don’t have brandy, Mado. She oughtn’t to drink brandy, you know....’ Heidler gave him a furious glance; Lois lifted her eyebrows.

‘_Garçon, une fine pour Madame._’

Another silence.

The violin wailed with pathos: ‘Laugh, Pagliacci, for your love is ended.’

Three girls passed the table, disappeared into a door marked telephone and emerged shortly afterwards, relieved, powdered and smiling, their lips very red. The woman behind the counter kissed her dog passionately, calling it the _fille de sa mémère_.

Lois looked round her in an undecided fashion, fixed her eyes on a wall painting and murmured: ‘Well, I’m afraid....’

‘You’re coming back with us, aren’t you?’ said Heidler to Marya with authority. ‘We’ll drop you at your hotel.’

She looked at Stephan. He made a quick movement: ‘You’re very kind, Monsieur,’ he said; ‘I’ll take her home.’

‘Oh, I think she’d better come with us,’ answered Heidler, staring over Stephan’s head. ‘It’s all on the way.’

‘And it’s pouring with rain,’ added Lois.

‘I’ll meet you at the little restaurant near the Panthéon tomorrow, Stephan,’ said Marya without looking at him.

The three got up. The violin was still wailing. Stephan bowed. Heidler muttered something, looking rather awkward. At the door, she looked back and saw her husband leaning forward staring after them.

* * * * *

‘Well, he looks all right,’ said Lois in the taxi. She spoke with cool contempt. ‘And his hair’s not short, that’s one good thing for him, isn’t it?’

‘No, on the contrary, it was too long,’ Marya told her.

‘I think he seems quite all right,’ continued Lois. ‘I shouldn’t worry about him at all, if I were you.’

Marya stared at her without answering.

As they passed Montparnasse station. ‘Stop here, will you,’ she said. ‘I want to get a taxi.’

‘What d’you want another taxi for?’ asked Heidler. His mouth opened a little as it always did when he was surprised.

Marya said: ‘I’m only going home to get some things. I’m going back to the Rue Tollman; I’m going to stay with my husband while he’s in Paris, naturally.’

‘Naturally!’ she repeated, staring hardly at Lois.

She rapped on the glass in front. The driver looked round. She rapped again and he stopped. She opened the door for herself and got down.

‘Good night,’ she said and shut the door on them. She ran up to the nearest taxi. ‘First to the Hôtel Bosphore, then to the Rue Tollman, number--I’ll stop you.’

As she spoke, she was thinking with agony: Heidler! Heidler!

* * * * *

‘Extraordinary thing to do,’ remarked Heidler. He was very pale.

Lois said: ‘Yes. Monsieur Zelli is a funny little man, isn’t he? But she’s obviously very fond of him.’

He was silent.

She went on in a low voice: ‘My poor H. J. Oh, my poor, poor H. J. All this is so abominably sordid.’

She looked sharply at him as she spoke, then out of the window at the wet streets.

‘That’s that,’ she thought. And suddenly she felt weak, exhausted like someone at the end of a long and terrible effort. Tears came into her eyes. She blinked, pressed her lips together, and told herself again: ‘Yes, that’s that.’

* * * * *

It was very quiet in the room at the hotel in the Rue Tollman. Only the gentle sound of falling rain came up from the dark street outside.

‘You don’t love me any more,’ said Stephan. ‘I feel it. I know it. You stiffen when I touch you. Well, I don’t blame you. A year in jail doesn’t make a man appetizing.’

‘I’m awfully tired,’ said Marya, ‘and awfully sad. Will you just be kind to me for a little? And don’t let’s think about love at all. You know, sometimes I’m so sad! Life is so hard and puzzling, awful, it seems to me. If I could rest just for a bit. I’m longing to rest for a bit.’

He said gently: ‘Don’t worry. _T’en fais pas!_’ He put his arms round her. ‘Can’t you sleep like that? Are you well like that?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she sighed. And slept at once, rocked by the sound of the rain.

The next few days passed like a dream. Lovely days, fresh, and washed and clean. And the knowledge that this was the irrevocable end of their life in Paris made every moment vivid, clearly cut and very sweet. Those were strange days, detached from everything that had gone before or would follow after.

On their last evening they dined recklessly in the Restaurant Chinois of the Rue de l’Ecole de Médécine.

As they began the meal Stephan remarked: ‘I’ve just enough money left for my fare to Amsterdam and a hundred francs for when I get there.’ Marya was silent. Then he said: ‘Your friends the Heidlers don’t like me.’

‘Oh yes, they do,’ Marya answered feebly. She was taken aback. It was the first time he had mentioned the Heidlers since their meeting.

‘And to tell you the truth.... What wine shall we drink? Here’s a good Sauternes. I suppose you still like Sauternes? To tell you the truth I care as little as I care what’s happened to my first shirt whether they like me or not.’

‘Stephan,’ she asked, ‘tell me what you think about Lois.’ She waited for his answer nervously as if a great deal depended on it.

‘Madame Heidler? I think she is absolutely primitive.’

‘You think she’s primitive?’ Marya repeated slowly. ‘You don’t think that she might be--very clever?’

‘Look here, Mado,’ said Stephan, shrugging, ‘I’ve only met Madame Heidler once for a short time, I can’t tell you all that. Primitive people follow their instinct and sometimes that’s the cleverest thing one can do. Why do you ask me? Madame Heidler is a woman who could be cruel, I think, and very hypocritical, but I saw her squeeze your hand under the table, so I can only suppose that she likes you very much.’

‘Oh, she often does that,’ said Marya.

Silence.

Then she added, with an effort: ‘Don’t let’s talk about them, don’t let’s spoil our last evening.’

‘No, don’t let’s spoil it,’ said Stephan.

After they had dined they went upstairs to the red-lit bar where several Chinese students were dancing with very blonde women long past their first youth. The students strutted past in a stiffly correct way, melancholy for the sake of dignity, but obviously highly pleased with themselves. At intervals the lights were lowered and a good-looking young violinist played sentimental music on muted strings, and occasionally the something-or-other girls, four of them, pranced in and did a few acrobatics in strict time.

‘Wait a moment,’ said Stephan. ‘I’m going to talk to that boy, I know him.’

‘What boy?’

‘The violinist.’

He crossed the room and began a long conversation.

At the next table a little flat-faced Japanese was drawing on the tablecloth and she longed to see what he was doing. The problem of her existence had got beyond her, her brain had given up grappling with it. She stared curiously, absorbed, at her neighbour’s thin beautiful hands.

The violinist, finishing his smiling conversation with Stephan, placed his violin under his chin with affection and began to play. It seemed to Marya that the music he played had fate in it. And what was there to catch on to in life but that same idea of fate? A dark river that swept you on you didn’t know where--nobody knew where. What was the use of worrying, anyway? _Nitchevo!_ ‘And have another _fine_, for the Lord’s sake.’ It was Stephan asking her to have another _fine_.

The Japanese at the next table got up and left. She could lean over and look at his drawings, which were of elongated and gracefully perverse little women.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Stephan, ‘that Russian song that the violinist is playing, I had it on the brain when I was in Fresnes. Oh, it’s called in French _Par Pitié_. I asked him to play it. I absolutely had it on the brain; I made up words to it.’ He looked at the clock above the buffet. ‘It’s eleven o’clock. If I want to get a seat in the third-class carriage we must go. And I must call at the hotel for my bag.’

In the taxi she turned to him to say: ‘Stephan, don’t leave me here. For God’s sake, take me with you.’ But before she could speak, he was talking to her: ‘Yes, only just the money for the fare and a very little over.’ He spoke as if he had half forgotten her, as if his mind had leaped forward and was already in Amsterdam. ‘Oh, I expect I’ll be able to manage something,’ he said.

‘I expect you will,’ answered Marya mechanically.

The Gare du Nord was dimly lit, gigantic in the half light....

‘I’m not going to wait to see your train out,’ she said when he had found a seat. ‘It’s unlucky and I do so want good luck for you, my dear. Good-bye.’

She kissed him and walked away, turning round several times to wave her hand.

* * * * *

She stood for a moment outside the station looking about her with a bewildered, undecided expression. Then she walked up to a taxi stand. ‘Hôtel du Bosphore, Place du Maine, please.’

She rang the night bell and was let in. She looked in the letter-rack. There were no letters.

Then she mounted the stairs to her room, where green-yellow and dullish mauve flowers crawled over the black walls.

She undressed, and all the time she was undressing it was as if Heidler were sitting there watching her with his cool eyes that confused and hurt her.

She lay down, for perhaps thirty seconds she was able to keep her mind a blank; then her obsession gripped her, arid, torturing, gigantic, possessing her as utterly as the longing for water possesses someone who is dying of thirst.