My long talk with Ann on the night of the fire of London had given me a
deeper insight into the behavior of my comrades—of Claude and Mickey as
well as of Ann herself.
There were many ways in which Mickey resembled Claude. She, too, liked
to play the dangerous woman. But while Claude knew exactly when she was
doing good or evil, and while she called her actions by their right
names, Mickey didn’t have the least moral sense. It had little to do
with her youthfulness; she simply knew no wrong. Occasionally she liked
to offer some of the girls what seemed to her to be serious advice and
moral counsel. She would rattle off any number of catch phrases,
platitudes, and it could be seen that they had no significance whatever
to her, and that she never related these precepts to her own behavior.
In her own life, Mickey was always carefree and gay. She was not a very
demanding girl and life was easy for her. She liked novelty, adventure,
and a little danger. If she burned herself, she cried for a few minutes
and then began again. Moreover, she was quite practical and realistic
and didn’t get mixed up in things for the sake of ideas.
She was immensely taken with Claude, for in her eyes Claude represented
the ideal woman. She wished she could be like Claude.
Before long Mickey was chattering to us about her unfaithfulness to
Robert, and for a time she made love haphazardly with one man or
another. Each time she wanted to feel more and more ravished, and so she
would come back and tell us that her new lover was “handsome as a god!”
She was learning the technique of love, like a dutiful student.
Presently she began to report to us that men were telling her she was an
excellent mistress, and in the end Mickey even believed that she was
happy.
Claude and Mickey made an excellent pair, and went out a good deal
together. Claude began to see less of Ursula. She sensed that Ursula was
not really made for Lesbianism, and even felt a little guilty about
having started the girl toward perversion. Lately, when Ursula had come
to her, this feeling of guilt toward the girl had made Claude
ill-tempered and petulant. Often she had sent the child away. Ursula
would suffer, without understanding these changes of mood in the woman
she adored. But with Mickey, things were easier for Claude; with Mickey
she had no feelings of guilt. Mickey was made of the same stuff as she
was, and so Claude got into the habit of taking Mickey along on her
dates. The blonde and blue-eyed youthfulness of Mickey contrasted
attractively with Claude’s air of the mature _femme fatale_. Mickey was
amusing, very gay, and universally pleasing.
One day, when Claude was drunk, she made a little game of kissing Mickey
on the mouth in front of her current lover, and from Claude’s mouth
Mickey passed to the mouth of the lover.
That evening Mickey described her afternoon to me. Ursula was sitting on
her cot, in her pajamas, and Mickey somehow included her, though not
speaking directly to her.
Mickey had gone with Claude to visit a colonel whom Claude had met at
the house of some friends, and who had invited her to come to his place
for a drink. Mickey, as a second-class private, had felt flattered and
impressed at going along to the house of a real ranking officer.
After a few whiskies, Claude began to undress. Her eyes grew quite
small, as always when she was drunk. The colonel was what is known as a
fine specimen of a man, according to Mickey’s description: about forty,
graying elegantly, fairly large and tall. He was a good officer and
probably a good family man. But his family was in France, and there was
no end to his exile. Besides, here was a woman undressing in front of
him without even having to be asked. He studied her, nude. Claude was
very beautiful. She was rather large, with fully rounded muscular
shoulders and magnificent breasts, round and firm. Her skin was soft as
though polished by years of caresses. She had a hard belly and a long
back. Only her legs were a little short, but altogether, for a woman of
forty, she was extraordinary. Seeing Claude nude, Mickey said she
considered that she ought to keep her company, and began to undress in
her turn. The colonel kept on only a funny little undershirt that
reached to his thighs. One could sense that actually he was a little
shocked by Mickey’s youthfulness, for, as he told them, he had a
daughter of Mickey’s age. But Claude gave him no time for recollections.
A brief spring sunlight came through the windows. Mickey remembered a
photograph of a woman, smiling in a frame. A man’s glove lay open-handed
on the floor.
In spite of everything, it was Claude whom the colonel preferred. Mickey
probably reminded him too much of his daughter.
But, “He’s handsome as a god!” Mickey declared. “He makes love
marvelously. It was very amusing.”
* * * * *
Ursula had listened without saying a word, sitting there with her bare
feet swinging a little above the floor. She lowered her head, watching
her feet so that we might not see anything in her eyes. But one could
see into her heart. Ursula was pained, unable to accept this
abandonment.
* * * * *
Ginette recounted the tale of her latest love, a Canadian. Two women
whispered together, laughing. From the hall below came the sound of the
record that was most often played after “Violetta,” “_Mon coeur a besoin
d’aimer._” Ursula too went to bed. She buried her head in her pillow.
Her heart beat fast. She told herself, She just used me for amusement.
And all at once she recalled the black eyes, the melancholy eyes of
Michel, and the thought came to her that Michel would never have made
use of her. But he had left, gone out of her life. She herself had
driven him away. A longing rose in her for the calm voice of a man, and
for the security that a woman feels because of a man’s being in love
with her—a man like Michel. Until now she had been a little girl all
alone. But after her experience with Claude, Ursula had come to know the
need of another being. She no longer knew how to be alone; she was
afraid to be alone. And yet she was not resentful of Mickey. It was not
in her nature to be resentful, and she liked Mickey very much.
The idea of evil arose in Ursula’s mind. No one had ever taught her what
was right. Whatever morality she possessed was instinctive. When she
felt happy, she had told me once, it seemed to her that her actions were
good, and when she felt unhappy, she thought of evil. And it seemed to
her that the fear and the sense of solitude and the suffering within her
were the result of evil. She did not know how to cry. Her tears never
emerged, but seemed to remain at the bottom of her throat. Once again
Ursula felt herself crushed by this world of grown-up people who took
little girls and covered them with lies that were disguised as shining
words, and then discarded them. She felt no resentment against either
Claude or Mickey. She resented only the gestures, the false gestures
that were made in the name of love, and that were used by grown-up
people in life as in a play. Every gesture she had made had been pure,
but now her own actions were tarnished, because all that people did was
tarnished.