Chapter SEVEN

When the Paris tram to Fresnes stopped outside the café called the Cadran Bleu, Marya got down. She walked up a wide road bordered with magnificent trees to the prison, a high, grey building standing in large grounds.

The usual formalities. The usual questioning warders whom she found herself regarding with a mixture of fear and hatred. Then she crossed a cobblestoned courtyard and a dark, dank corridor like the open mouth of a monster swallowed her up. At the extreme end of this corridor a queue of people, mostly women, stood waiting, and as she took her place in the queue she felt a sudden, devastating realization of the essential craziness of existence. She thought again: people are very rum. With all their little arrangements, prisons and drains and things, tucked away where nobody can see.

She waited with cold hands and a beating heart, full of an unreasoning shame at being there at all. Every time the warder approached her she moved her shoulders nervously, and when he laid a fat, lingering hand on the arm of one of the women to push her into place, she thought: if he touches me I shall have to hit him, and then what will happen to me? I’ll be locked up, too, as sure as God made Moses.

Eventually she was conducted to the inevitable small, roofless cubicle. A warder paced up and down a wooden platform overhead, stopping every now and again to listen to the conversations. Stephan appeared with a piece of coarse sacking over his head. He was like some bright-eyed animal, staring at her, and she sat in an embarrassed silence, wondering how she could ever have thought that he would be able to talk things over with her or give her advice. At last, spurred by the knowledge that soon the warder would bang on the door and the interview be over, she began to murmur: ‘My poor darling, my poor darling, my poor dear.’

‘_Oh, ça!_’ said Stephan. He shrugged, leaned forward and asked: ‘What’s that scarf you’ve got on? I don’t know that scarf, do I?’

They talked about the scarf for a time and then she told him that the Heidlers had asked her to go and stay with them.

‘Look here, Stephan. I don’t want to go a bit,’ she added.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then, for God’s sake, why not?’ asked Stephan nervously. ‘They’re our country-people, aren’t they? You understand them and they understand you.’

‘I’m not sure of that,’ Marya answered in an obstinate voice.

He went on fretfully:

‘Do you want to drive me mad? I wonder if you know what it’s like for me shut up here, thinking of you without a sou. Is Mrs Heidler nice?’

‘Very nice!’

‘A good sort? _Bonne camarade?_’

‘Oh, yes.... Oh, very, I should think.’ She added: ‘If they weren’t awfully kind people they wouldn’t ask me to stay with them under the circumstances, would they?’

‘No, naturally not,’ Stephan answered with bitterness. ‘Well, if she’s as kind as all that, why don’t you want to stay with her? You must go, Mado; it seems to me so much the best thing for you to do. Look here, you must go.’

‘All right!’ she said. She would have agreed to anything to quieten him and make him happier, and she was still full of the sense of the utter futility of all things.

* * * * *

As she walked back to the tram she wondered why she had ever thought the matter important at all. There was a merry-go-round at the Porte d’Orléans where the tram stopped. Children were being hoisted on to the backs of the gaily painted wooden horses. Then the music started to clank: ‘_Je vous aime._’ And the horses pranced around, pawing the air in a mettlesome way.

Marya stayed there for a long time watching a little frail, blonde girl, who careered past, holding tightly on to the neck of her steed, her face tense and strained with delight. The merry-go-round made her feel more normal, less like a grey ghost walking in a vague, shadowy world.

* * * * *

The day before Marya left the Hôtel de l’Univers she received a money order for five pounds from her aunt and namesake enclosed in a letter:

_My dear Marya_,

_Your letter distressed me. You are rather vague--you always are a
little vague, dear child. But I gather that all is not well with you.
It is difficult for me to offer any advice, since you write so seldom
and say so little when you do write. I feel that we live, and have
lived for a long time, in different worlds. However, I send the money
you ask for. I only wish it were at all possible to send more._

_Is your husband well? You don’t mention him. You have not quarrelled
with him, I hope, or he with you. As I say, your letter distressed me
and I feel so powerless to offer help of any sort._

_Do write soon and tell me that things are going better with you._

_Your affectionate aunt,
Maria Hughes._

_P. S. Have you thought of visiting the British clergyman resident in
Paris? He might be able to help you. There are, I believe, several.
You could easily find out the address of one of them, or I could find
out and sent it to you._