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._