She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She was wearing her newest suit, a little oval brooch of the “family heirloom” type was pinned at the base of the high boned collar of her cream blouse. The next moment she had revived and was completely herself, consulting the mirror in her new handbag and feverishly anticipating my questions.
“Ah, I’m better now! It was that port, I’m sure it was. Yes, my dear, port! And in the company of Lieutenant Alexis Trallard, son of General Trallard.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed with relief, “is that all? You quite frightened me. So you’ve actually seen the ruffianly soldier? What’s he like? Is he like his letters? Does he stammer? Has he got a lisp? Is he bald? Has he a port-wine mark on his nose?”
These and similar idiotic suggestions were intended to make Marco laugh. But she listened to me with a dreamy, refined expression as she nibbled at a piece of buttered toast that had gone cold.
“My dear,” she said at last. “If you’ll let me get a word in edgewise, I might inform you that Lieutenant Trallard is neither an invalid nor a monster. Incidentally, I’ve known this ever since last week, because he enclosed a photograph in one of his letters.”
She took my hand.
“Don’t be cross. I didn’t dare mention it to you. I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of you, darling, of being teased a little. And . . . well . . . just simply afraid!”
“But why afraid?”
She made an apologetic gesture of ignorance, clutching her arms against her breast.
“Here’s the Object,” she said, opening her handbag. “Of course, it’s a very bad snapshot.”
“He’s much better looking than the photo . . . of course?”
“Better looking . . . good heavens, he’s totally different. Especially his expression.”
As I bent over the photograph, she bent over it too, as if to protect it from too harsh a judgment.
“Lieutenant Trallard hasn’t got that shadow like a saber cut on his cheek. Besides, his nose isn’t so long. He’s got light brown hair and his mustache is almost golden.
After a silence, Marco added shyly: “He’s tall.”
I realized it was my turn to say something.
“But he’s very good-looking! But he looks exactly as a lieutenant should! But what an enchanting story, Marco! And his eyes? What are his eyes like?”
“Light brown like his hair,” said Marco eagerly.
She pulled herself together.
“I mean, that was my general impression. I didn’t look very closely.”
I hid my astonishment at being confronted with a Marco whose words, whose embarrassment, whose naïveté surpassed the reactions of the greenest girl to being stood a glass of port by a lieutenant. I could never have believed that this middle-aged married woman, inured to living among bohemians, was at heart a timorous novice. I restrained myself from letting Marco see, but I think she guessed my thoughts, for she tried to turn her encounter, her “queasiness,” and her lieutenant into a joke. I helped her as best I could.
“And when are you going to see Lieutenant Trallard again, Marco?”
“Not for a good while, I think.”
“Why?”
“Why, because he must be left to wear his nerves to shreds in suspense! Left to simmer!” declared Marco, raising a learned forefinger. “Simmer! That’s my principle!”
We laughed at last; laughed a great deal and rather idiotically. That hour seems to me, in retrospect, like the last halt, the last landing on which my friend Marco stopped to regain her breath. During the days that followed I have a vision of myself writing (I did not sign my work either) on the thin, crackly American paper I liked best of all, and Marco was busy working too, at one sou a line. One afternoon, she came to see me again.
“Good news of the ruffianly soldier, Marco?”
She archly indicated “Yes” with her chin and her eyes, because Monsieur Willy was on the other side of the glass-topped door. She submitted a sample of dress material which she would not dream of buying without my approval. She was buoyant and I thought that, like a sensible woman, she had reduced Lieutenant Alexis Trallard to his proper status. But when we were all alone in my bedroom, that refuge hung with rush matting that smelled of damp reeds, she held out a letter, without saying a word, and without saying a word, I read it and gave it back to her. For the accents of love inspire only silence and the letter I had read was full of love. Full of serious, vernal love. Why did one question, the very one I should have repressed, escape me? I asked—thinking of the freshness of the words I had just read, of the respect that permeated them—I asked indiscreetly: “How old is he?”
Marco put her two hands over her face, gave a sudden sob, and whispered: “Oh, heavens! It’s appalling!”
Almost at once, she mastered herself, uncovered her face, and chided herself in a harsh voice: “Stop this nonsense. I’m dining with him tonight.”
She was about to wipe her wet eyes but I stopped her.
“Let me do it, Marco.”
With my two thumbs, I raised her upper eyelids so that the two tears about to fall should be reabsorbed and not smudge the mascara on her lashes by wetting them.
“There! Wait, I haven’t finished.”
I retouched all her features. Her mouth was trembling a little. She submitted patiently, sighing as if I were dressing a wound. To complete everything, I filled the puff in her handbag with a rosier shade of powder. Neither of us uttered a word meanwhile.
“Whatever happens,” I told her, “don’t cry. At all costs, don’t let yourself give way to tears.”
She jibbed at this, and laughed.
“All the same, we haven’t got to the scene of the final parting yet!”
I took her over to the best-lighted looking glass. At the sight of her reflection, the corners of Marco’s mouth quivered a little.
“Satisfied with the effect, Marco?”
“Too good to be true.”
“Can’t ever be too good. You’ll tell me what happened? When?”
“As soon as I know myself,” said Marco.
Two days later, she returned, in spite of stormy, almost warm weather that rattled the cowls on the chimney pots and beat back the smoke and fumes of the slow-combustion stove.
“Outdoors in this tempest, Marco?”
“It doesn’t worry me a bit, I’ve got a four-wheeler waiting down there.”
“Wouldn’t you rather dine here with me?”
“I can’t,” she said, averting her head.
“Right. But you can send the growler away. It’s only half past six, you’ve plenty of time.”
“No, I haven’t time. How does my face look?”
“Quite all right. In fact, very nice.”
“Yes, but . . . Quick, be an angel! Do what you did for me the day before yesterday. And then, what’s the best thing to receive Alex at home in? Outdoor clothes, don’t you think? Anyway, I haven’t got an indoor frock that would really do.”
“Marco, you know just as well as I do . . .”
“No,” she broke in, “I don’t know. You might as well tell me I know India because I’ve written a novelette that takes place in the Punjab. Look, he’s sent a kind of emergency supply around to my place—a cold chicken in aspic, champagne, some fruit. He says that, like me, he has a horror of restaurants. Ah, now I think of it, I ought to have . . .”
She pressed her hand to her forehead, under her fringe.
“I ought to have bought that black dress last Saturday—the one I saw in the secondhand shop. Just my size, with a Liberty silk skirt and a lace top. Tell me, could you possibly lend me some very fine stockings? I’ve left it too late now to . . .”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“Thank you. Don’t you think a flower to brighten up my dress? No, not a flower on the bodice. Is it true that iris is a scent that’s gone out of fashion? I’m sure I had heaps of other things to ask you . . . heaps of thing
s.”
Though she was in the shelter of my room, sitting by the roaring stove, Marco gave me the impression of a woman battling with the wind and the rain that lashed the glass panes. I seemed to be watching Marco set off on some kind of journey, embarking like an emigrant. It was as if I could see a flapping cape blowing around her, a plaid scarf streaming in the wind.
Besieged, soon to be invaded. There was no doubt in my mind that an attack was being launched against the most defenseless of creatures. Silent, as if we were committing a crime, we hurried through our beauty operations. Marco attempted to laugh.
“We’re trampling the most rigorously established customs underfoot. Normally, it’s the oldest witch who washes and decks the youngest for the Sabbath.”
“Ssh, Marco, keep still—I’ve just about finished.”
I rolled up the pair of silk stockings in a piece of paper, along with a little bottle of yellow Chartreuse.
“Have you got any cigarettes at home?”
“Yes. Whatever am I saying? No. But he’ll have some on him, he smokes Egyptian ones.”
“I’ll put four amusing little napkins in the parcel, it’ll make it more like a doll’s dinner party. Would you like the cloth too?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got an embroidered one I bought ages ago in Brussels.”
We were talking in low, rapid whispers, without ever smiling. In the doorway, Marco turned around to give me a long, distracted look out of moist, made-up eyes, a look in which I could read nothing resembling joy. My thoughts followed her in the cab that was carrying her through the dark and the rain, over the puddle-drenched road where the wind blew miniature squalls around the lampposts. I wanted to open the window to watch her drive away but the whole tempestuous night burst into the studio and I shut it again on this traveler who was setting off on a dangerous voyage, with no ballast but a pair of silk stockings, some pink makeup, some fruit, and a bottle of champagne.
Lieutenant Trallard was still only relatively real to me, although I had seen his photograph. A very French face, a rather long nose, a well-chiseled forehead, hair en brosse and the indispensable mustache. But the picture of Marco blotted out his—Marco all anxious apprehension, her beauty enhanced by my tricks, and breathing fast, as a deer pants when it hears the hooves and clamor of the distant hunt. I listened to the wind and rain and I reckoned up her chances of crossing the sea and reaching port in safety. “She was very pretty tonight. Provided her lamp with the pleated shade gives a becoming light. This young man preoccupies her, flatters her, peoples her solitude, in a word, rejuvenates her.”
A gust of bad weather beat furiously against the pane. A little black snake that oozed from the bottom of the window began to creep slowly along. From this, I realized that the window did not shut properly and the water was beginning to soak the carpet. I went off to seek floor cloths and the aid of Maria, the girl from Aveyron who was my servant at that time. On my way, I opened the door to Masson, who had just rung three times.
While he was divesting himself of a limp mackintosh cape that fell dripping on the tiled floor, like a basketful of eels, I exclaimed: “Did you run into Marco? She’s just this minute gone downstairs. She was so sorry not to see you.”
A lie must give off a smell that is apparent to people with sensitive nostrils. Paul Masson sniffed the air in my direction, curtly wagged his short beard, and went off to join Monsieur Willy in his white study that, with its brief curtains, beaded moldings, and small windowpanes, vaguely resembled a converted cake shop.
After that, everything progressed fast for Marco. Nevertheless she came back, after that stormy night, but she made me no confidences. It is true that a third person prevented them. That particular day, my impatience to know was restrained by the fear that her confidence might yield something that would have slightly horrified me; there was an indefinable air of furtiveness and guilt about her whole person. At least, that is what I think I remember. My memories, after that, are much more definite. How could I have forgotten that Marco underwent a magical transformation, the kind of belated, embarrassing puberty that deceives no one? She reacted violently to the slightest stimulus. A thimbleful of Frontignac set her cheeks and her eyes ablaze. She laughed for no reason, stared blankly into space, was incessantly resorting to her powder puff and her mirror. Everything was going at a great rate. I could not long put off the “Well, Marco?” she must be waiting for.
One clear, biting winter night, Marco was with me. I was stoking up the stove. She kept her gaze fixed on its mica window and did not speak.
“Are you warm enough in your little flat, Marco? Does the coal grate give enough heat?”
She smiled vaguely, as if at a deaf person, and did not answer. So I said at last: “Well, Marco? Contented? Happy?”
It was the last, the most important word, I think, that she pushed away with her hand.
“I did not believe,” she said, very low, “that such a thing could exist.”
“What thing? Happiness?”
She flushed here and there, in dark, fiery patches. I asked her—it was my turn to be naïve: “Then why don’t you look more pleased?”
“Can one rejoice over something terrible, something that’s so . . . so like an evil spell?”
I secretly permitted myself the thought that to use such a grim and weighty expression was, as the saying goes, to clap a very large hat on a very small head, and I waited for her next words. But none came. At this point, there was a brief period of silence. I saw nothing wrong in Marco’s keeping quiet about her love affair: it was rather the love affair itself that I resented. I thought—unjust as I was and unmindful of her past—that she had been very quick to reward a casual acquaintance, even if he were an officer, a general’s son, and had light brown hair into the bargain.
The period of reserve was followed by the season of unrestricted joy. Happiness, once accepted, is seldom reticent; Marco’s, as it took firm root, was not very vocal but expressed itself in the usual boring way. I knew that, like every other woman, she had met a man “absolutely unlike anyone else” and that everything he did was a source of abundant delight to his dazzled mistress. I was not allowed to remain ignorant that Alexis possessed a “lofty soul” in addition to a “cast-iron body.” Marco did not, thank heaven, belong to that tribe who boastfully whisper precise details—the sort of female I call a Madame-how-many-times. Nevertheless, by looking confused or by spasms of perturbed reticence, she had a mute way of conveying things I would gladly have been dispensed from knowing.
This virtuous victim of belated love and suddenly awakened sensuality did not submit all at once to blissful immolation. But she could not escape the usual snares of her new condition, the most unavoidable of which is eloquence, both of speech and gesture.
The first few weeks made her thin and dry-lipped, with feverish, glittering eyes. “A Rops!” Paul Masson said behind her back. “Madame Dracula,” said Monsieur Willy, going one better. “What the devil can our worthy Marco be up to, to make her look like that?”
Masson screwed up his little eyes and shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing,” he said coldly. “These phenomena belong to neurotic simulation, like imaginary pregnancy. Probably, like many women, our worthy Marco imagines she is the bride of Satan. It’s the phase of infernal joys.”
I thought it detestable that either of her two friends should call Madame V. “our worthy Marco.” Nor was I any more favorably impressed by the icily critical comments of these two disillusioned men, especially on anything concerning friendship, esteem, or love.
Then Marco’s face became irradiated with a great serenity. As she regained her calm, she gradually lost the fevered glitter of a lost soul and put on a little flesh. Her skin seemed smoother, she had lost the breathlessness that betrayed her nervousness and her haste. Her slightly increased weight slowed down her walk and movements; she smoked cigarettes lazily.
“New phase,” announced Masson. “Now she looks like the Marco of the old days, when she’d ju
st got married to V. It’s the phase of the odalisque.”
I now come to a period when, because I was going about more and was also more loaded up with work, I saw Marco only at intervals. I dared not drop in on Marco without warning, for I dreaded I might encounter Lieutenant Trallard, only too literally in undress, in the minute flat that had nothing in the way of an entrance hall. What with teas put off and appointments broken, fate kept us apart, till at last it brought us together again in my studio, on a lovely June day that blew warm and cool breezes through the open window.
Marco smelled delicious. Marco was wearing a brand-new black dress with white stripes, Marco was all smiles. Her romantic love affair had already been going on for eight months. She looked so much fatter to me that the proud carriage of her head no longer preserved her chin line and her waist, visibly compressed, no longer moved flexibly inside the petersham belt, as it had done last year.
“Congratulations, Marco! You look marvelously well!”
Her long deer’s eyes looked uneasy.
“You think I’ve got plump? Not too plump, I hope?”
She lowered her lids and smiled mysteriously. “A little extra flesh does make one’s breasts so pretty.”
I was not used to that kind of remark from her and I was the one who felt embarrassed, frankly, as embarrassed as if Marco—that very Marco who used to barricade herself in her room at the country inn, crying: “Don’t come in, I’ll slip on my dressing gown!”—had deliberately stripped naked in the middle of my studio drawing room.
The next second, I told myself I was being ungenerous and unfriendly, that I ought to rejoice wholeheartedly in Marco’s happiness. To prove my goodwill, I said gaily: “I bet, one of these days, when I open the door to you, I’ll find Lieutenant Trallard in your wake! I’m too magnanimous to refuse him a cup of tea and a slice of bread and cheese, Marco. So why not bring him along next time?”
Marco gave me a sharp look that was like a total stranger’s. Quickly as she averted it, I could not miss the virulent, suspicious glance that swept over me, over my smile and my long hair, over everything that youth lavishes on a face and body of twenty-five.