Quiet Days in Clichy

  I looked at the name of the street again. I thought I knew the St. Paul quarter well. The more I looked at the name the more I was convinced that there was no such street, not in any part of Paris. However, one can’t remember the name of every street. . . .

  “So you’re Polish, then?”

  “No, I’m a Jewess. I was born in Poland. Anyway, that’s not my real name.”

  I said nothing more; the subject died as quickly as it had been born.

  As the meal progressed I became aware of the attention of a man opposite us. He was an elderly Frenchman who appeared to be engrossed in his paper; every now and then however, I caught his eye as he peered over the edge of the paper to give Mara the once—over. He had a kindly face and seemed rather well-to-do. I sensed that Mara had already sized him up.

  I was curious to know what she would do if I slipped away for a few moments. So, after the coffee had been ordered, I excused myself and went downstairs to the lavabo. When I returned I could tell by the quiet, easy way she was puffing at her cigarette that things had been arranged. The man was now thoroughly absorbed in his newspaper. There seemed to be a tacit agreement that he would wait until she had done with me.

  When the waiter came by I asked what time it was. Almost one, he said. “It’s late, Mara, I must be going,” said I. She laid her hand on mine and looked up at me with a knowing smile. “You don’t have to play that game with me,” she said. “I know why you left the table. Really, you’re so kind, I don’t know how to thank you. Please don’t run away. It isn’t necessary, he will wait. I told him to . . . Look, let me walk with you a little way. I want a few more words with you before we part, yes?”

  We walked down the street in silence. “You’re not angry with me, are you?” she asked, clutching my arm.

  “No, Mara, I’m not angry. Of course not.”

  “Are you in love with someone?” she asked, after a pause.

  “Yes, Mara, I am.”

  She was silent again. We walked on for another block or so in eloquent silence and then, as we came to an unusually dark street, she hugged my arm still tighter and whispered . . . “Come this way.” I let her steer me down the dark street. Her voice grew huskier, the words rushing out of her mouth pell-mell. I haven’t the slightest recollection now of what she said, nor do I think she herself knew when the flood broke from her lips. She talked wildly, frantically, against a fatality that was overpowering. Whoever she was, she no longer had a name. She was just a woman, bruised, badgered, broken, a creature beating its helpless wings in the dark. She wasn’t addressing anyone, least of all me; she wasn’t talking to herself either, nor to God. She was just a babbling wound that had found a voice, and in the darkness the wound seemed to open up and create a space around itself in which it could bleed without shame or humiliation. All the while she kept clutching my arm, as if to verify my presence; she pressed it with her strong fingers, as if the touch of her fingers would convey the meaning which her words no longer contained.

  In the midst of this bleeding babble she suddenly stopped dead. “Put your arms around me,” she begged. “Kiss me, kiss me like you did in the cab.” We were standing near the doorway of a huge, deserted mansion. I moved her up against the wall and put my arms around her in a mad embrace. I felt her teeth brush against my ear. She had her arms locked around my waist; she pulled me to her with all her strength. Passionately she murmured: “Mara knows how to love. Mara will do anything for you . . . Embrassez-moi! . . . Plus fort, plus fort, chéri . . .” We stood there in the doorway clutching one another, groaning, mumbling incoherent phrases. Someone was approaching with heavy, ominous steps. We pulled apart and, without a word, I shook hands with her and walked off. After I had gone a few yards, moved by the absolute silence of the street, I turned around. She was standing where I had left her. We remained motionless several minutes, straining to see through the darkness. Then impulsively I walked back to her.

  “Look here, Mara,” I said, “supposing he’s not there?”

  “Oh, he’ll be there,” she answered, in a toneless voice.

  “Listen, Mara,” I said, “you’d better take this . . . just in case,” and I fished out the contents of my pocket and stuffed it in her hand. I turned and walked off rapidly, throwing a gruff “au revoir” over my shoulder. That’s that, I thought to myself, and hastened my steps a little. The next moment I heard someone running behind me. I turned to find her on top of me, breathless. She threw her arms around me again, mumbling some extravagant words of thanks. Suddenly I felt her body slump. She was trying to slide to her knees. I yanked her up brusquely and, holding her by the waist at arm’s length, I said: “Christ Almighty, what’s the matter with you—hasn’t anybody ever treated you decently?” I said it almost angrily. The next moment I could have bitten my tongue out. She stood there in the dark street with her hands to her face, her head bowed, sobbing to break her heart. She was trembling from head to toe. I wanted to put my arms around her; I wanted to say something that would comfort her, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. Suddenly, like a frightened horse, I bolted. Faster and faster I walked, her sobs still ringing in my ears. I went on and on, faster, faster, like a crazed antelope, until I came to a blaze of lights.

  “She will be at the corner of such and such a street in ten minutes; she will be wearing a red dotted Swiss dress and she will have a porcupine handbag under her arm . . .”

  Carl’s words kept repeating themselves in my brain. I looked up, and there was the moon, not silvery but mercurial. It was swimming in a sea of frozen fat. Round and round and round as if it were huge, terrifying rings of blood. I stood stock still. I shuddered. And then suddenly, without warning, like a great gout of blood, a terrifying sob broke loose. I wept like a child.

  A few days later I was strolling through the Jewish quarter. There was no such street as she had given me in the St. Paul district, nor anywhere in Paris. I consulted the telephone book to find that there were several hotels by the name she had given, but none of them were anywhere in the vicinity of St. Paul. I was not surprised, merely perplexed. To be honest, I had thought little about her since I had taken flight down that dark street.

  I had told Carl about the affair, of course. There were two things he said, on hearing the story, which stuck in my crop.

  “I suppose you know whom she reminded you of?”

  When I said no, he laughed. “Think it over,” he said, “you’ll remember.”

  The other remark was this, which was typical of him: “I knew that you would meet someone. I wasn’t asleep when you left; I was only pretending. If I had told you what was going to happen you would have taken another direction, just to prove me wrong.”

  It was a Saturday afternoon when I went over to the Jewish quarter. I had started out for the Place des Vosges, which I still regard as one of the most beautiful spots in Paris. It being a Saturday, however, the square was filled with children. The Place des Vosges is a spot to go to at night, when you are absolutely tranquil and eager to enjoy solitude. It was never meant to be a playground; it is a place of memories, a silent, healing place, in which to gather one’s forces.

  As I was going through the archway leading to the Faubourg St. Antoine, Carl’s words came back to me. And at the same instant I recalled whom it was Mara resembled. It was Mara-St. Louis, whom I had known as Christine. We had driven here in a carriage one evening before going to the station. She was leaving for Copenhagen and I was never to see her again. It was her idea to revisit the Place des Vosges. Knowing that I came here frequently on my lonely nocturnal rambles, she had thought to bequeath me the memory of a last embrace in this beautiful square where she had played as a child. Never before had she mentioned anything about this place in connection with her childhood. We had always talked about the Ile St. Louis; we had often gone to the house where she was born, and had often walked through the narrow isle at night on our way home from a gathering, always stopping for a moment in front of the old house to look up at the wind
ow where she had sat as a child.

  Since there was a good hour or more to kill before train time, we had dismissed the carriage and sat at the curb near the old archway. An unusual atmosphere of gayety prevailed this particular evening; people were singing, and children were dancing about the tables, clapping their hands, stumbling over the chairs, falling and picking themselves up good-naturedly. Christine began to sing for me—a little song which she had learned as a child. People recognized the air and joined in. Never did she look more beautiful. It was hard to believe that she would soon be on the train—and out of my life forever. We were so gay on leaving the Place that one would have thought we were going off on a honeymoon . . .

  At the Rue des Rosiers, in the Jewish quarter, I stopped at the little shop near the synagogue, where they sell herrings and sour pickles. The fat, rosy-cheeked girl who usually greeted me was not there. It was she who had told me one day, when Christine and I were together, that we should get married quickly or we would regret it.

  “She’s married already,” I had said laughingly.

  “But not to you!”

  “Do you think we would be happy together?”

  “You will never be happy unless together. You are meant for one another; you must never leave each other, no matter what happens.”

  I walked about the neighborhood, thinking of this strange colloquy, and wondering what had become of Christine. Then I thought of Mara sobbing in the dark street, and for a moment I had an uncomfortable, crazy thought—that, perhaps at that very moment when I was tearing myself away from Mara, Christine was also sobbing in her sleep in some dreary hotel room. From time to time rumors had reached me that she was no longer with her husband, that she had taken to wandering from place to place, always on her own. She had never written me a line. For her it was a final separation. “Forever,” she had said. Still, as I walked about at night thinking of her, whenever I stopped before the old house on the Ile St. Louis and looked up at the window, it seemed unbelievable that she had relinquished me forever, in mind and heart. We should have taken the fat girl’s advice and married, that was the sad truth. If I could only have divined where she was, I would have taken a train and gone to her, immediately. Those sobs in the dark, they rang in my ears. How could I know that she, Christine, was not sobbing too, now, this very moment? What time was it! I began to think of strange cities where it was night now, or early morning: lonely, Godforsaken places, where women bereft and abandoned were shedding tears of woe. I got out my notebook and wrote down the hour, the date, the place . . . And Mara, where was she now? She too had dropped out, forever. Strange how some enter one’s life for just a moment or two, and then are gone, forever. And yet there is nothing accidental about such meetings.

  Perhaps Mara had been sent to remind me that I would never be happy until I found Christine again . . .

  A week later, at the home of a Hindu dancer, I was introduced to an extraordinarily beautiful Danish girl newly arrived from Copenhagen. She was decidedly not “my type,” but she was ravishingly beautiful, no denying it. A sort of legendary Norse figure come to life. Naturally, everybody was courting her. I paid no obvious attention to her, although my eyes were constantly following her, until we were thrown together in the little room where the drinks were being served. By this time everybody, except the dancer, had had too much to drink. The Danish beauty was leaning against the wall with a glass in her hand. Her reserve had broken down. She had the air of one who was waiting to be mussed up. As I approached she said with a seductive grin: “So you’re the man who writes those terrible books?” I didn’t bother to reply. I put my glass down and closed in on her, kissing her blindly, passionately, savagely. She came out of the embrace pushing me violently away. She was not angry. On the contrary, I sensed that she was expecting me to repeat the attack. “Not here,” she said aloud.

  The Hindu girl had begun to dance; the guests politely took their places about the room. The Danish girl, whose name turned out to be Christine, led me into the kitchen on the pretext of making me a sandwich.

  “You know I’m a married woman,” she said, almost immediately we were alone. “Yes, and I have two children, two beautiful children. Do you like children?”

  “I like you,” I said, giving her another embrace and kissing her hungrily.

  “Would you marry me,” she said, “if I were free?”

  Just like that she popped it, without any preliminaries. I was so astonished that I said the only thing a man can say under the circumstances. I said Yes.

  “Yes,” I repeated, “I’d marry you tomorrow . . . Right now, if you say the word.”

  “Don’t be so quick,” she sallied, “I may take you at your word.” This was said with such forthrightness that for an instant I was dead sober, almost frightened. “Oh, I’m not going to ask you to marry me immediately,” she continued, observing my dismay. “I merely wanted to see if you were the marrying kind. My husband is dead. I have been a widow for over a year.”

  Those words had the effect of making me lecherous. Why had she come to Paris? Obviously to enjoy herself. Hers was the typical cold seductive charm of the Northern woman in whom prudery and lasciviousness battle for supremacy. I knew she wanted me to talk love. Say anything you like, do anything you like, but use the language of love—the glamorous, romantic, sentimental words which conceal the ugly, naked reality of the sexual assault.

  I placed my hand squarely over her cunt, which was steaming like manure under her dress, and said: “Christine, what a wonderful name! Only a woman like you could own such a romantic name. It makes me think of icy fjords, of fir trees dripping with wet snow. If you were a tree I would pull you up by the roots. I’d carve my initials in your trunk . . .” I rattled off more silly nonsense, all the while clutching her firmly, pushing my fingers into her gluey crack. I don’t know how far it would have gone, there in the kitchen, if our hostess had not interrupted us. She was a lascivious bitch, too. I had to mush it up with both of them at the same time. Out of politeness we finally went back to the big room to watch the Hindu girl’s performance. We stood well back from the others, in a dark corner. I had my arm around Christine; with my free hand I did what I could with the other.

  The party came to an abrupt end because of a fist fight between two drunken Americans. In the confusion Christine left with the jaded-looking Count who had brought her to the place. Fortunately I got her address before leaving.

  When I got home I gave Carl a glowing account of the affair. He was all a-twitter. We must invite her for dinner—the sooner the better. He would ask a friend of his to come, a new one, whom he had met at the Cirque Médrano. She was an acrobat, he said. I didn’t believe a word of it, but I grinned and said it would be fine.

  The evening came. Carl had prepared the dinner and, as usual, had bought the most expensive wines. The acrobat arrived first. She was alert, intelligent, spry, with cute diminutive features which, because of her frizzy coiffure, made her look somewhat like a Pomeranian dog. She was one of those happy-go-lucky souls who fuck on sight. Carl didn’t rave about her to the extent he usually did when he made a new find. He was genuinely relieved, however, that he had found someone to replace the morose Eliane.

  “How does she look to you?” he asked me on the side. “Do you think she’ll do? Not too bad, is she?” Then, as an afterthought—“By the way, Eliane seems quite stuck on you. Why don’t you look her up? She’s not a bad lay, I can vouch for that. You don’t have to waste time on preliminaries; just whisper a few kind words and push her over. She’s got a cunt that works like a suction pump . . .”

  With this he beckoned to Corinne, his acrobatic friend, to join us. “Turn around,” he said, “I want to show him your ass.” He rubbed his hand over her rump appraisingly. “Feel that, Joey,” he said. “It’s like velvet, what?”

  I was just in the act of following his suggestion when there was a knock at the door. “That must be your cunt,” said Carl, going to the door and opening it. At sigh
t of Christine he let out a howl and, throwing his arms around her, he dragged her into the room, exclaiming—“She’s marvelous, marvelous! Why didn’t you tell me how beautiful she was?”

  I thought he would go off his nut with admiration. He danced around the room and clapped his hands like a child. “Oh, Joey, Joey,” he said, fairly licking his chops in anticipation, “She’s wonderful. She’s the best cunt you ever dug up!”

  Christine caught the word cunt. “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “It means you’re beautiful, dazzling, radiant,” said Carl, holding her hands ecstatically. His eyes were moist as a puppy’s.

  Christine’s English was almost elementary; Corinne knew even less. So we spoke French. As an appetizer, we had some Alsatian wine. Someone put on a record, whereupon Carl began to sing in a loud piercing voice, his face red as a beet, his lips wet, his eyes gleaming. Every now and then he would go up to Corinne and give her a wet smack on the mouth—to show that he hadn’t forgotten her. But everything he said was addressed to Christine.

  “Christine!” he would say, caressing her arm, stroking her like a cat. “Christine! What a magical name!” (Actually he detested the name; he used to say that it was a stupid name, fit for a cow or a spavined horse.) “Let me think,” and he would roll his eyes heavenward, as if struggling to capture the precise metaphor. “It’s like fragile lace in moonlight. No, not moonlight—twilight. Anyway, it’s fragile, delicate, like your soul . . . Give me another drink, someone. I can think of better images than that.”

  Christine, in her down-to-earth way, interrupted the performance by inquiring if dinner were soon ready. Carl pretended to be shocked. “How can a beautiful creature like you think of food at such a moment?” he exclaimed.