Jezebel

  ‘No, you’ll come and see me.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘As you please. By the way, what’s the name of your fiancé, my future grandfather? It’s Count Monti, isn’t it?’

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Gladys in anguish, ‘you’re playing a dangerous game. This is nothing short of blackmail.’

  ‘And you know very well that it is a very specific kind of blackmail.’

  She went to see him. He lived in a stuffy, dark little room with a low, dirty ceiling. A deep crack ran across the marble sink; the bedclothes were worn out and yellowish; a thick lace curtain covered the windows.

  ‘What a horrible room,’ murmured Gladys. ‘You can leave here whenever you like, my dear boy.’

  He looked at her and smiled. ‘No, that’s not what I need. You don’t understand. I can assure you, you don’t understand.’

  Some books were open on the table, others covered the floor; a plate of oranges sat on the bed.

  ‘Listen,’ said Gladys. ‘What do you want from me? There’s just so much I can do to make amends for the past, but …’

  She fell silent, expecting him to say something, but he just stared at her.

  ‘Go on, Madame, I’m listening. Would you like to sit down?’

  She obeyed mechanically; when she realised that her hands were shaking, she hid them beneath her fur coat.

  ‘Why do you want a scandal?’

  ‘But, Madame, you misunderstand me. You persist in believing that I wish to prove I have rights, and I do not, because I’m illegitimate, I know that. But that’s not what this is about. At least, I haven’t properly considered that part yet. I simply feel a need that will seem strange to you: the need to make my presence felt in your life, the need to disturb your magnificent peace of mind. Look at yourself in the mirror. At this moment, you don’t look like the woman you were yesterday, only yesterday, when you so graciously spoke to the strange young man who was following you in the street. You look your age now, my darling Grandmother. Come now, don’t be annoyed. Don’t disown me. After all, I’m your flesh and blood. The only reminder left of a daughter whom you adored, judging by the magnificent white marble mausoleum you had placed in the cemetery in Nice. I’ve seen the grave. I’ve seen the Gonzales woman. Charming creature. How well I understand that my mother chose to die rather than have that woman at her bedside.’

  ‘Who brought you up? Was it Jeanne?’

  ‘No. She took a job, so she could continue earning her living and supporting me. She entrusted me to her cousin, a former cook who lived with Martial Martin, a retired butler. He was a stupid but honest man who agreed to claim I was his so I could have an official status that was honourable, if not exactly lofty. He died when I was still a child. I was raised by Berthe Souprosse, Jeanne’s cousin. Mama Berthe, I called her.’

  Gladys hid her face in her hands.

  ‘They told you everything?’

  He shrugged his shoulders and didn’t reply. In fact, the two women had never forgotten a single detail of what had happened the night he was born; they barely spoke of anything else, nor did they think of anything else, which is what happens when ordinary people witness a tragedy whose protagonists are richer and more powerful than they are. At the beginning they didn’t talk about it in front of the child, but he used all his passionate, hungry, patient intelligence to piece together the truth from bits of their conversations, their sighs, the knowing looks the women gave each other. Their memories from the night he was born, Marie-Thérèse’s death, Gladys’s attitude, her character, to him, all those things took on the curious fascination of a work of art. At night, after they’d put him in the large bed where he slept next to Mama Berthe, they would sit in front of the lit stove in the dining room and knit while tirelessly retelling the same story.

  Through the half-open door, the boy could see Berthe hunched over, her triangular black shawl over her shoulders, the long steel hairpin that held up her white hair beneath the fluted frill hat she still wore. Jeanne would mend Bernard’s shirts and his velvet short trousers. The child would be half asleep, but even in his dreams he would hear Jeanne telling the story over and over again. Certain phrases were repeated night after night, so Bernard knew them by heart.

  ‘Shameful! There wasn’t even a vest to put on the baby in a house that was overflowing with money. His grandmother spent a hundred thousand francs on the grave of that poor mademoiselle, a hundred thousand francs before the war, and that little boy, who is her own flesh and blood, could have died without her giving him a second thought.’

  Bernard would rub the sleep from his eyes, wake up and listen closely, and he nurtured a complicated, passionate feeling of hatred in his heart that he fed, allowed to grow, and which brought a bitter yet exquisite sensation to his life.

  Now, he contemplated Gladys with cold curiosity.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she asked again, trembling.

  ‘We’ll talk about it another time,’ he murmured, and smiled. ‘Today, I don’t want anything. Today, all I wanted was to see you and to speak to you.’

  ‘I won’t be coming back …’

  ‘Oh, but you will. There’s no doubt about it. You’ll come back as soon as I tell you to.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ he repeated mockingly. ‘You’re thinking that you’ll go away now, aren’t you? You’re thinking, “I’m rich. I could go to the other end of the earth tomorrow, if I wanted to. This miserable little kid won’t find me.” But a letter would find Count Monti, of course.’

  She didn’t reply. She tried to find something of Marie-Thérèse in his features. She recognised nothing of her bloodline in him. Bernard’s voice was soft and feminine, but his laugh was harsh.

  ‘Old age will be upon me in a few years, a few months perhaps,’ she thought to herself, sighing, ‘real old age, the kind that is pure peacefulness and renunciation. The day will come when I’m tired of love, and since there are no miracles in this world, since the only person I gave birth to is dead, why not this boy? I would have a home, a place where I could be at ease. Of course, I’ve been guilty of things, but …’

  For who has ever looked into his own soul and condemned himself unreservedly?

  ‘I was young, too beautiful, spoiled by my life, by men, by the world, spoiled by love …’

  She wanted to say it out loud, but Bernard’s sharp, pale, ugly face and the spark of intelligence that burned deep in his narrow, bright eyes prevented the words from leaving her lips. She looked once more at his miserable student room, the dirty windows, the worn-out rug and the photo of a woman that sat on the table.

  ‘Who is that? Is she your mistress?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘I didn’t come because of your threats, Bernard. Don’t think that’s the reason. You can’t understand. If you were a woman, you’d understand how you could spend a whole part of your life in utter ignorance, how you wouldn’t notice time passing, how it’s possible to have a man’s love in your heart and forget everything else. I haven’t come here as your enemy. How could I?’

  ‘But you did think about going away, didn’t you?’ he said, breaking in.

  ‘Yes, but I know that a letter would get to my lover. Can’t you see, I’m not defending myself. I’m not denying anything. All I want is to help you. I’m rich. I can see to it that you have an enviable life.’

  ‘So long as I stay away from you, right?’

  She looked at him in anguish. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘So you’re happy to give me money, are you? But what if it’s something else I want?’

  ‘I am prepared’, she said weakly, ‘to love you like a mother.’

  He let out a dry little laugh. ‘Who’s asking you for love? Who needs you any more? Young gigolos, no doubt, and that Monti, who must be a pimp?’

  ‘Monti is a respectable man,’ she said softly.

  ‘Yet he’s living with you, with a sixty-year-old woman? So does he cheat on you?’

&nbsp
; ‘Possibly,’ whispered Gladys, her heart aching with sudden, fierce pain.

  ‘Well, anyway, that’s none of my business. Let’s get back to me. You imagine nothing else you could offer me apart from money and your belated affection? But what if I were ambitious? What if I weren’t happy with the official status you gave me? The natural son of Martial Martin, a former butler, whom he recognised after the fact?’

  ‘It’s too late to fix that.’

  ‘Do you think so? We’d have to see about that …’

  ‘She’s shaking, the old thing,’ he thought, enjoying the feeling immensely, ‘But then again, who knows?’

  At that very moment, however, it wasn’t the hope of a brilliant future or even the joy of revenge that made his wicked heart pound with exquisite delight: it was the satisfaction of knowing that he had played his hand well and come out on top.

  ‘You never thought of me once in the past twenty years, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could have starved to death.’

  ‘I told Jeanne to come to me if …’

  ‘But you went away, didn’t you? You left France?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gladys, ‘but I thought I’d be coming back in a few months, I swear to you.’

  ‘And you forgot all about me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The way you forget about a dog?’

  ‘Oh, I’m begging you,’ she said, clasping her hands together. ‘Let’s not talk about the past. The way you look at me … Such hatred …’

  ‘Will you introduce me to Aldo Monti?’

  ‘Are you mad? Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

  ‘Are you ashamed of me?’

  ‘I’m ashamed of what I did,’ she said, instinctively coming up with a lie she thought would appease him.

  But he just shook his head and smiled. ‘Is that the only reason? Then I absolve you. And who wouldn’t understand that you might wish to keep your daughter’s mistake a secret?’

  ‘It’s exactly because of that, that’s why I can’t … It hurts me, Bernard.’

  She broke off when she heard him laughing. And his harsh laughter was followed by a soft voice.

  ‘Come on now, you can stop pretending. You forget that I knew Jeanne and that you can keep no secrets from a chambermaid. You’re afraid to admit how old you are and that’s all there is to it.’

  Blood rushed to Gladys’s powdered cheeks, but all she said was, ‘My lover is more important to me than anything.’

  ‘Your lover? At your age? You should be ashamed to use the word!’

  ‘I love him. And if I hold on to him, it’s not because of virtue or fine feelings. You can’t understand that yet. You’re still a child. He stays with me because I’m a woman who still looks young and beautiful, and that flatters his ego. If he knew my age, and more importantly, if he knew how I’d lied, how ashamed I am deep down, and what the misery and decay of old age means to me, he’d leave me. And if he stayed it would be worse, because then I’d think that he wanted my money, and I couldn’t stand that, I couldn’t. I’d want to die. I want to be loved.’

  ‘Well, then, what do you think you will do?’

  ‘I think that you will understand what’s in your own best interest. You have nothing to gain from a scandal. According to the law, I owe you nothing. You have a legally recognised father. Anyway,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders and looking weary, ‘I don’t really know anything about the law. But I’m prepared to give you the only thing I can freely give you: money. Later on, in a few years, or even a few months perhaps, my lover will leave me. Overnight I’ll become an old woman. That’s always the way it happens,’ she murmured. ‘Things will be different then. But I won’t give up the short time I have, not for anything, not for any feeling of either remorse or obligation!’

  He said nothing. He had stood up and walked over to her. He stared at her with intense curiosity. Finally, he whispered, ‘You can go now.’

  She left.

  18

  Gladys went downstairs and crossed a wide avenue where the first street lights shone through the reddish autumn mist. She was in the student quarter. Every house, every street belonged to the young. Every face she saw was surrounded by a halo of fog and was poor, gaunt and hungry, but young, so young … She looked at them with hatred. Bernard’s words weighed heavily in her heart. She could still hear them: ‘So does he cheat on you?’

  He had asked that question so sincerely, almost naïvely. Does he cheat on you? No one could love you, not you, you’re old! She had never ever been jealous: she was so sure of herself and her power. But for the first time in her life she now felt that fear, that despair, that horrid hope …

  ‘Does he love me? Did he ever love me? Why hasn’t he left me, why? Is it because he wants to get married? Is it the money? Is he faithful to me? Why didn’t he come to see me yesterday? Where was he? Who was he with? Why?’

  When he held her in his arms, when he closed his eyes and touched her, was it to increase his own pleasure or so that he didn’t have to look at her face? Did her face really convey the illusion of youth?

  She stopped right there in the middle of the street, took out a mirror from her handbag and studied her face. Then the thought came to her that if she had done the same thing five years ago … only five years ago, a man would surely have smiled at her and whispered, ‘Oh yes, very pretty, yes …’

  No one looked at her. Young men walked by, arm in arm. Gladys passed shabbily dressed young women, a beret tilted over one ear, carrying briefcases full of books. She heard one heavy, ugly girl shout out to her friends, ‘They went to the Italian lakes!’ She pronounced it ‘Eye-talian’, the better to stress her mocking and surprise, as if she were thinking, ‘How could anyone go to the Italian lakes? What show-offs!’ But in spite of herself, an envious sadness crept into her voice and Gladys looked at that poor, fat young girl as if she were a friend, because she too had dreams that would never come true.

  She went home. Her heart was pounding deeply, painfully, in her chest. That night she couldn’t get to sleep. She anxiously stroked her body.

  ‘But I’m beautiful, I’m beautiful. Where would he find a body more beautiful than mine? I’m not sixty; it isn’t true! It’s not possible! It’s some sort of horrible mistake! Why did I go and see that boy? I haven’t given him a thought in twenty years. I should have gone away, moved to the other side of the world. But would Aldo have got a letter? Aldo … Does he love me? Where is he right now? Does he love another woman? What do I really know about him? What does anyone know about the man she loves? Perhaps he’s laughing at me? Perhaps …’

  She thought of one of her friends, Jeannine Percier, who was always flirting with Monti.

  ‘If he knew … If he were told the truth, they’d make fun of me, the two of them. He’d never forgive me for making him look foolish, never. She’d say: “Poor Gladys. You never suspected; but you can’t fool a woman. I always knew she was older than people thought, but even then, for her to be … Oh, it’s hilarious!” ’ She, Gladys, ridiculous? Odious, yes, criminal, yes, but not ridiculous! A monster, something horrific, but not that, not a grandmother, an old woman, a hag in love!

  ‘I’ll show him that I can still be the favourite, that I still know how to make an entrance,’ she thought in a surge of fury. ‘Bernard … That boy wants revenge through a petty lie. I’m beautiful. Who would ever guess my age? And even if people knew,’ she thought, ‘there are attractive women of fifty or even older, aren’t there? Yes, that’s what they think, but everyone makes fun of them, the poor things. If they only knew how people laughed at them. Ah, if Aldo were here now, I’d forget about everything. You can’t fake desire. If only he were here,’ she thought anxiously, getting out of bed. Her beauty mask kept her face from moving; she ripped it off in a rage. How demeaning! Skin products, secrets, the illusion of youth created only by artificial means. The creams, the make-up, her hair dye, t
he invisible corset underneath the bathing suit in summer …

  ‘All those things are bearable to women who have never experienced what it’s like to be truly beautiful, serene, triumphant, but to me?’ she thought bitterly. She felt a desperate need to see Aldo, to be reassured.

  ‘I’ll go to his house. He’ll think I’m mad. I’ll test his patience,’ she whispered in anguish, ‘but I can’t bear to be alone tonight. I’m not well. If my life were in danger, I’d go to him. I’ll die if I have to suffer like this all night.’

  She switched on the light and walked over to the mirror and, for a second, she looked at her reflection in terror, expecting to see an old, defeated woman instead of her own familiar face.

  She hurriedly got dressed and left. Monti lived in a ground-floor apartment on a quiet street close by. She walked to his house, hoping that walking quickly along the dark street would calm her pounding heart. Through the slits in the shutters everything was dark. ‘He’ll be asleep.’ She went over to the window and rapped on it gently. No reply.

  ‘He must be fast asleep.’

  She called him quietly again. She had come to him this way more than once in the past, but then he had been expecting her. Nothing. She listened closely to see if she could hear anything and suddenly, behind the closed shutters, she heard the muffled sound of the telephone ringing beside Aldo’s bed. But Aldo didn’t answer. Where was he? And who was calling him? Who, apart from her, had the right to call him at five o’clock in the morning? Where was he? She shook the iron shutters furiously, then stopped, overcome by fear that the concierge or the neighbours might come out. She walked back to the corner of the street and sat down on a bench; it was shrouded in the icy fog of early dawn. Mist hung in the branches of the trees. Every now and then a drop of water ran slowly down the back of her bare neck. The street lamp flickered and went out. It was morning. Greyish light rose from the east. A drunkard passed by, swore at her and disappeared. In this calm, wealthy street with its closed windows, the houses looked dark and mocking.

  ‘Who is it?’ she thought. ‘I’m such a fool!’ She was trembling with rage and despair. ‘I’m an idiot! A stupid fool! He’s cheating on me! And I didn’t even see it, never suspected a thing! Who is she? I’d really rather not know,’ she thought, feeling cowardly.