Chapter NINETEEN: Marya asked: ‘Any letters for me?’

‘Nothing, Madame,’ answered the _patron_, smiling. Smiling? No, grinning was the word. Hateful man. He always grinned when he looked at her. She kept her mouth steady with an effort and stood in the hall putting on her gloves deliberately.

Four days of this. Four days can be a long time.

Across the street was a tobacco shop where they sold pneumatiques. She went there, bought a card and wrote to Heidler, standing at the counter.

_My dear,_

_I want to see you as soon as possible. Please._

When she had posted the pneumatique she felt relieved, but numb and grey, like a soul in limbo. Four days can be interminable. She lunched, sat for a long while over her coffee, walked for an hour.

When she got back to the hotel, he had answered: ‘Can you come to the Versailles about nine this evening? I’ll be waiting for you.’

‘I must pull myself together,’ thought Marya. She was trembling all over. Even her legs were trembling.

As she was dressing, a letter from Stephan arrived. Things weren’t going well, he wrote. He might have to leave Amsterdam and go farther on. An evasive letter, which she read indifferently, almost impatiently, finding in it an echo of her own indifference. She put it away in a drawer and went on with her careful preparations.

* * * * *

‘Sit here,’ said Heidler, ‘and have a _café fine_.’ He gave her a cold sidelong look. ‘Did you see your husband off?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s gone to Amsterdam, hasn’t he?’

She nodded.

A waiter with a benevolent eye brought the coffee and brandies. From the farther side of the café, where Jimmie’s Jazz performed nightly, the sound of music reached them faintly, as it were with regret.

‘Are you vexed with me?’ asked Marya.

‘Not at all,’ answered Heidler. He cleared his throat. ‘My dear Mado....’ He began to talk dispassionately and deliberately. He spoke with dignity and with a certain relief, as though he were saying something which he had often longed to say. Towards the end of his explanation he became definite, even brutal, though not to excess. All the time that he was speaking she was looking into his eyes. Then she said slowly:

‘You’re horribly treacherous, Heidler. I suppose you can’t help it. I don’t suppose you even know it. But you are.’

‘I’m not being treacherous; I’m being cruel perhaps,’ he added, not without complacency. ‘But I’m not being treacherous. I’ve never shared a woman in my life, not knowingly anyhow, and I’m not going to start now.’

He folded his arms over his chest and looked across into one of the mirrors.

‘You forced me to share you,’ said Marya, ‘for months. Openly and ridiculously. You used your wife to torture me with.’

He answered coldly: ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

And she saw that it was true.

Then she said: ‘But, H. J., I--I love you.’

‘You haven’t behaved as though you did,’ answered Heidler. ‘And it’s too late now.’ He began to talk again--more emphatically, as if her persistence irritated him.

‘How cold it is in here,’ said Marya when he stopped.

The odd thing was that sitting on a café bench opposite was a little man whom she had met when she first came to Paris five years before, a little, yellow, wizened man and his name was--she couldn’t remember--something like Monferrat, Monlisson, Mon ... something.

It seemed to her enormously important that she should remember the name of the little man who, staring at her, was obviously also thinking: ‘Who is she, where have I met her?’

She couldn’t see his face clearly. There was a mist round it. Her hands were so cold that she felt them through the thin stuff of her dress. Mon. Monvoisin, that was it.

Heidler was saying in a low voice: ‘I have a horror of you. When I think of you I feel sick.’

He was large, invulnerable, perfectly respectable. Funny to think that she had lain in his arms and shut her eyes because she dared no longer look into his so terribly and wonderfully close. She began to laugh. After all, what did you do when the man you loved said a thing like that? You laughed, obviously.

She said, still laughing: ‘So this is the _café fine_ of rupture.’

‘It is,’ said Heidler; ‘don’t get hysterical about it.’

‘Why hysterical?’ asked Marya. ‘I can laugh if I want to, I suppose. You’re funny enough to make anybody laugh sometimes.’

‘Of course, laugh. Laugh, but don’t cry at the same time.’

‘Oh, am I crying?’ she said, surprised. She put her hand up to her face.

Monsieur Monvoisin was gazing at her with an expression of avid curiosity. She began to remember all about Monsieur Monvoisin. He was one of Stephan’s friends. They had been out together one night, the four of them; Monsieur Monvoisin had brought a girl called Lisette and they had wandered from bar to bar till four o’clock in the morning. A very tall young man had joined the party, who had hummed ‘_Si j’étais roi_’ all the time. The jingling tune began to run in her head.

‘Awfully funny,’ she remarked to Heidler; ‘do you see that man opposite? Well, I know him and he knows me. And he knows, I’m sure, that you are _plaquéing_ me. And so does the waiter. Isn’t _plaquer_ a good word?’

‘Very,’ he said. ‘Now pull yourself together, because we’ve got several things to talk about.’ He looked away from her and added uncomfortably: ‘You haven’t got to worry, you know.’

‘What?’ said Marya. ‘Oh, yes. Well, you can write to me about that. Let’s go now, shall we?’

He seemed surprised and taken aback and made a feeble detaining gesture.

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute.’

She turned and looked at him, and when he saw her eyes he put his hand up to his tie, fidgeted with it and said: ‘Oh God! Oh God!’

She passed her tongue over her dry lips, put her handkerchief into her bag and shut it carefully.

He began talking again, hurriedly and uncertainly.

‘Look here, Marya, don’t suppose ... I want you to go down South to get well, to forget everything and get well. It’s the only thing, believe me. Will you?’

‘No,’ said Marya.

‘Well, I beg you to.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m very tired,’ Marya said, ‘I want to go.’

Outside the café he told her: ‘Get your things packed,’ then he turned and left her.

* * * * *

Marya walked straight ahead, her face stiff and set, across the boulevard which looked to her as if it were blazing with lights, on fire with lights, across the Place du Maine and up the avenue.

When she passed under the railway bridge where the cobblestones are always black and glistening, and the walls ooze with damp, she felt for the first time a definite sensation of loss and pain, and tears came into her eyes. She walked on with the fixed idea that if she went far enough she would reach some obscure, dark cavern away from the lights and the passers-by. Surely at the end of this long and glaring row of lamps she would find it, the friendly dark where she could lie and let her heart burst. And as she walked she was certain that every woman she passed was mocking her gleefully and every man she passed was mocking her contemptuously. After a time she felt tired and went into a café, a vast echoing place, nearly empty. The electric lights were arranged in a square pattern overhead and for some reason this made the place look like a casino. The orchestra was seated on a raised platform in the middle of the room; it had just finished playing _The Huguenots_, and the pianist, in spectacles, leaned forward arranging the music of _The Barber of Seville_ with a fussy, conscientious look on her face. Jazz was far from her well-ordered mind.

As Marya was drinking the brandy she had ordered, the music blared forth. It echoed lugubriously in that barn of a place, and a young man who was writing letters at the next table looked up with a pained expression, sighed and pushed away his blotter; then he proceeded to stare with interest at Marya.

She paid the waiter, got up and went out, and he followed her, leaving money on the table. When he spoke to her she looked up at him with vacant eyes. He repeated his question:

‘Why are you sad?’

‘I’m not sad,’ answered Marya mechanically; ‘I’m tired.’

But now she walked to the rhythm of the words.

‘Why are you sad? _Pourquoi êtes-vous triste? Pourquoi? Pourquoi?_’

The young man by her side began to talk. He told her all sorts of things. That he had been born in Tonkin, that his nurse had had a name which meant spouse. That most of the Annamite women seemed to have a name which meant spouse. That his family had returned to France when he was nine years of age. To Toulon. That was ten years ago. That he, also, was sad as his mistress had betrayed him.

‘I ought to know better by this time. Nevertheless, I’m sad. I know what it is to love.’ As he talked he observed her carefully, glancing sideways. ‘If you’re tired,’ he said at last, ‘won’t you come to my room and rest?’ He took her firmly by the arm. ‘I live not so far away--in the Rue Racine. You must come up to my room and rest.’

‘Why not?’ said Marya. ‘What’s it matter?’

She laughed suddenly, and when she laughed the young man looked surprised, even shocked. Then he gripped her arm more firmly and led her across the road to a taxi. She went with him silently--like a sleep-walker.

When they got to his room she said: ‘Oh, but I don’t like the light. Light hurts me.’

‘Well,’ answered the young man, ‘don’t worry about that. I’ll soon arrange that.’

He went to a drawer and produced two enormous blue silk handkerchiefs, which he proceeded to tie round the electric light.

‘I’ve often noticed,’ he continued, ‘that women, for one reason or another.... _Enfin._’