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._’