When the opportunity came, I made my way once more to the narrow-fronted house over whose brow the open blue pane of the photographic studio window slanted like a visor.
As soon as I entered the hall of the block of flats, a cleaner’s deliveryman in a black apron and a woman carrying bread in a long wicker cistera barred my-way. The first, without being asked, obligingly informed me: “It’s nothing, just a chimney on fire.” At the same moment, a “runner” from a fashion house came dashing down the stairs, banging her yellow box against all the banisters, and yapping: “She’s as white as a sheet! She hasn’t an hour to live!”
Her scream magically attracted a dozen passers-by who crowded around her, pressing her close on all sides. Desire to escape, slight nausea, and idle curiosity struggled within me, but in the end they gave way to a strange resignation. I knew perfectly well—already out of breath before I had begun to run—I knew perfectly well that I should not stop until I reached the top landing. Which of them was it? The photographer’s wife or Mademoiselle Devoidy? Mentally, I ruled out the latter, as if no peril could ever endanger her mocking wisdom or the sureness of those hands, soft as silky wood shavings, or scatter the milky constellations of precious, tiny moons she pursued on the green baize table and impaled with such deadly aim.
All the while I was breathlessly climbing the stories, I was fighting to reassure myself. An accident? Why shouldn’t it have happened to the knitting women on the fourth floor or the bookbinding couple? The steamy November afternoon preserved the full strength of the smells of cabbage and gas and of the hot, excited human beings who were showing me the way.
The unexpected sound of sobbing is demoralizing. Easy as it is to imitate, that retching, hiccuping noise remains crudely impressive. While I was being secretly crushed to death between the banisters and a telegraph boy who had pushed up too fast, we heard convulsive male sobs and the commentators on the staircase fell silent, avidly. The noise lasted only a moment, it was extinguished behind a door that someone up there had slammed again. Without having ever heard the man whom Mademoiselle Devoidy nicknamed little old Big Eyes weep, I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was he who was sobbing.
At last I reached the top floor, crammed with strangers between its two closed doors. One of them opened again and I heard the biting voice of Mademoiselle Devoidy.
“Ladies and gentlemen, where are you going like that? It doesn’t make sense. If you want to have your photographs taken, it’s too late. Why no, don’t worry, there hasn’t been any accident. A lady has sprained her ankle, they’ve put a crepe bandage on it, and that’s the beginning and end of the story.”
A murmur of disappointment and a little laughter ran through the crowd flocking up the stairs. But it struck me that, in the harsh light, Mademoiselle Devoidy looked extremely ill. She proffered a few more words designed to discourage the invaders and went back into her flat.
“Well, if that’s all . . .” said the telegraph boy.
To make up his lost time, he jostled a cellarman in a green baize apron and a few dim women and disappeared by leaps and bounds, and at last, I was able to sit down on the gothic chair reserved for First Communicants. As soon as I was alone, Mademoiselle Devoidy reappeared.
“Come in, I saw you all right. I couldn’t make signs to you in front of everyone. Do you mind? I wouldn’t be sorry to sit down for a moment.”
As if there was no refuge except in her regular, everyday haunt, she collapsed into the chair she worked in.
“Ah, that’s better!”
She smiled at me with a happy look.
“She’s brought it all up, so we needn’t worry anymore.”
“All what?”
“What she’d taken. Some stuff to kill herself. Some disgusting filth or other.”
“But why did she do it?”
“There you go, asking why! You always have to have three dozen reasons, don’t you? She’d left a letter for little old Big Eyes.”
“A letter? Whatever did she confess?”
By degrees Mademoiselle Devoidy was recovering her composure, and her easy, mocking way of treating me.
“You’ve got to know everything, haven’t you? As to confessing, she confessed all. She confessed: ‘My darling Geo, don’t scold me. Forgive me for leaving you. In death, as in life, I remain your faithful Georgina.’ By the side of that, there was another scrap of paper that said: ‘Everything is paid except the washerwoman who had no change on Wednesday.’ It happened about quarter past two, twenty past two . . .”
She broke off and stood up.
“Wait, there’s some coffee left.”
“If it’s for me, don’t bother.”
“I want some myself,” she said.
The panacea of the people appeared with the sacred vessels of its cult, its blue-marbled enamel jug, its two cups adorned with a red-and-gold key pattern, and its twisted glass sugar bowl. The smell of chicory faithfully escorted it, eloquent of ritual anxieties, of deathbed vigils and difficult labors and whispered palavers, of a drug within reach of all.
“Well, as I was saying,” Mademoiselle Devoidy went on, “about two or a quarter past, someone knocked at my door. It was my little old Big Eyes, looking ever so embarrassed and saying: ‘You haven’t happened to see my wife going downstairs?’ —‘No,’ I says, ‘but she might have gone down without my seeing her.’ ‘Yes,’ he says to me. ‘I ought to have been out myself by now, but, just as I was on the point of leaving, I broke a bottle of hyposulphite. You can see the state my hands are in.’ —‘That was bad luck,’ I says to him. ‘Yes,’ he says to me, ‘I need a duster, the dusters are in our bedroom, in the cupboard behind the bed.’ —‘If that’s all,’ I says, ‘I’ll go and get you one, don’t touch anything.’ ‘It isn’t all,’ he says to me. ‘What’s worrying me is that the bedroom’s locked and it never is locked.’ I stared at him, I don’t know what came into my head, but I got up, nearly pushing him over, and off I went and knocked at their bedroom door. He kept saying: ‘Why, whatever’s the matter with you? Whatever’s the matter with you?’ I answered him tit for tat: ‘Well, what about you? You haven’t taken a look at yourself.’ He stayed standing there with his hands spread out, all covered with hyposulphite. I come back in here, I snatch up the hatchet I chop up my firewood with. I swear to you the hinges and the lock bust right off at the same blow. They’re no better than matchwood, these doors.”
She drank a few mouthfuls of tepid coffee.
“I’ll get a safety chain put on mine,” she went on. “Now that I’ve seen what a fragile thing a door is.”
I was waiting for her to continue her story, but she was toying absently with the little metal shovel that gathered up the seed pearls on the cloth and seemed to have nothing more to say.
“And then, Mademoiselle Devoidy?”
“Then what?”
“She . . . Madame Armand . . . Was she in the room?”
“Of course she was. On her bed. Actually in her bed. Wearing silk stockings and smart shoes, black satin ones, embroidered with a little jet motif. That was what struck me all of a heap, those shoes and those stockings. It struck me so much that, while I was filling a hot-water bottle, I said to her husband, ‘Whatever was she up to, going to bed in her shoes and stockings?’ He was sobbing as he explained to me: ‘It’s because of her corns and her crooked third toe. She didn’t want anyone to see her bare feet, not even me. She used to go to bed in little socks, she’s so dainty in all her ways.’”
Mademoiselle Devoidy yawned, stretched, and began to laugh.
“Ah! You’ve got to admit a man’s a proper muff in circumstances like that. Him! The only thing he could think of doing was crying and keeping on saying: ‘My darling . . . My darling . . .’ Lucky I acted quickly,” she added proudly. “Excuse details, it makes me feel queasy. Oh, she’s saved all right! But Dr. Camescasse, who lives at number 11, won’t let her have anything but a little milk and soda water till further orders. Madame Armand swallowe
d enough poison to kill a regiment, apparently that’s what saved her. Little old Big Eyes is on sentry duty at her bedside. But I’m just going to run in and have a look at her. Shall we be seeing you again soon? Bring her a little bunch of violets, it’ll be more cheerful than if you’d had to take one to her in the Montparnasse cemetery.”
I was already on the pavement when, too late, a question crossed my mind: Why had Madame Armand wanted to die? At the same moment, I realized that Mademoiselle Devoidy had omitted to tell me.
During the following days, I thought of the photographer’s wife and her abortive suicide; this naturally led me to thinking about death and, unnaturally for me, about my own. Suppose I were to die in a tram? Suppose I were to die while having dinner in a restaurant? Appalling possibilities, but so highly unlikely that I soon abandoned them. We women seldom die outside our own homes; as soon as pain puts a handful of blazing straw under our bellies, we behave like frightened horses and find enough strength to run for shelter. After three days, I lost the taste for choosing the pleasantest mode of departing. All the same, country funerals are charming, especially in June, because of the flowers. But roses so soon become overblown in hot weather . . . I had reached this point when a note from Madame Armand—admirable spelling and a ravishing curly handwriting like lacework—reminded me of my “kind promise” and invited me to “tea.”
On the top landing, I ran into an elderly married couple who were leaving the photographer’s studio, arm in arm, all got up in braided jacket, four-in-hand tie, and stiff black silk. Little old Big Eyes was showing them out and I scanned his heavy eyelids for traces of his passionate tears. He greeted me with a joyful nod that implied mutual understanding.
“The ladies are in the bedroom. Madame Armand is still suffering from slight general fatigue, she thought you would be kind enough to excuse her receiving you so informally.”
He guided me through the studio, had a courteous word for my bunch of violets—“the Parma ones look so distinguished”—and left me on the threshold of the unknown room.
On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us—ah! what a dream, to live in that!—the other stifles us at the first breath. In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness. Without containing any monstrosity, the total effect of the room where Madame Armand was enjoying her convalescence made me lower my eyes and I should not take the smallest pleasure in describing it.
She was resting, with her feet up, on the made-up bed, the same bed she had untucked to die in. Her eagerness to welcome me would have made her rise, had not Mademoiselle Devoidy restrained her, with the firm hand of a guardian angel. November was mild only out-of-doors. Madame Armand was keeping herself warm under a little red-and-black coverlet, crocheted in what is called Tunisian stitch. I am not fond of Tunisian stitch. But Madame Armand looked well, her cheeks were less parched and her eyes more brilliant than ever. The vivacity of her movements displaced the coverlet, and revealed two slim feet shod in black satin, embroidered—just as Mademoiselle Devoidy had described them to me—with a motif in jet beads.
“Madame Armand, a little less restlessness, please,” gravely ordered the guardian angel.
“But I’m not ill!” protested Madame Armand. “I’m coddling myself, that’s all. My little Exo’s paying a woman to come in and do the housework for me in the morning, Mademoiselle Devoidy’s made us a lemon sponge cake, and you bring me some magnificent violets! A life of idle luxury! You will taste some of my raspberry and gooseberry jelly with the sponge cake, won’t you? It’s the last of last year’s pots, and without boasting . . . This year I made a mess of them, and the plums in brandy too. It’s a year when I’ve made a mess of everything.”
She smiled, as if making some subtle allusion. The unvarying glitter of her black eyes still reminded me of some bird or other; but now the bird was tranquil and refreshed. At what dark spring had it slaked its thirst?
“In that affair, however many were killed and wounded, nobody’s dead,” concluded Mademoiselle Devoidy.
I greeted the sentence that came straight out of our native province with a knowing wink and I swallowed, one on top of the other, a cup of very black tea and a glass of sweet wine that tasted of licorice: what must be, must be. I felt ill at ease. One does not so quickly acquire the knack of conjuring up, in the straightforward light of afternoon, such a very recent suicide. True, it had been transformed into a purging, but it had been planned to prevent any return.
I tried to adapt myself to the tone of the other two by saying playfully: “Who would believe that charming woman we see before us is the very same one who was so unreasonable the other day?”
The charming woman finished her wedge of lemon sponge before miming a little confusion and answering, doubtfully and coquettishly: “So unreasonable . . . so unreasonable . . . there’s a lot could be said about that.”
Mademoiselle Devoidy cut her off short. She seemed to me to have acquired a military authority from her first act of lifesaving.
“Now, now! You’re not going to start all over again, are you?”
“Start again? Oh! Never!”
I applauded the spontaneity of that cry. Madame Armand raised her right hand for an oath.
“I swear it! The only thing I absolutely deny is what Dr. Camescasse said to me: ‘In fact, you swallowed a poison during an attack of neurasthenia.’ That infuriated me. For two pins I’d have answered him back: ‘If you’re so certain, there’s no point in asking me a hundred questions. I know perfectly well in my own mind that I didn’t commit suicide out of neurasthenia!’”
“Tsk, tsk,” rebuked Mademoiselle Devoidy. “How long is it since I’ve seen for myself you were in a bad way? Madame Colette here can certify that I’ve mentioned it to her. As to neurasthenia, of course it was neurasthenia; there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.”
The crochet coverlet was flung aside, the cup and saucer narrowly escaped following suit.
“No, it wasn’t! I think I might be allowed to have my own little opinion on the subject! I’m the person concerned, aren’t I?”
“I do take your opinion into account, Madame Armand. But it can’t be compared with the opinion of a man of science like Dr. Camescasse!”
They were exchanging their retorts over my head, so tensely that I slightly ducked my chin. It was the first time I had heard a would-be suicide arguing her case in my presence as if standing up for her lawful rights. Like so many saviors, heavenly or earthly, the angel tended to overdo her part. Her spangled eye lit up with a spark that was anything but angelic, while the color of the rescued one kindled under her too-white powder.
I have never turned up my nose at a heated argument between cronies. A lively taste for street scenes keeps me hovering on the outskirts of quarrels vented in the open air which I find good occasions for enriching my vocabulary. I hoped, as I sat at Madame Armand’s bedside, that the dialogue between the two women would blaze up with that virulence that characterizes feminine misunderstandings. But incomprehensible death, that teaches the living nothing; the memory of a nauseous poison; the rigorous devotion that tended its victim with a rod of iron; all this was too present, too massive, too oppressive to be replaced by a healthy slanging match. What was I doing, in this home timidly ruled by little old Big Eyes? What would remain to me of his wife, whom death had failed to ravish, beyond a stale, insipid mystery? As to Mademoiselle Devoidy, that perfect example of the dry, incorruptible spinster, I realized that I could no longer fancy she was anything of an enigma and that the attraction of the void cannot last forever.
Sorrow, fear, physical pain, excessive heat, and excessive cold, I can still guarantee to stand up to all these with decent courage. But I abdicate in the face of boredom, which turns me into a wretched and, if needs be, ferocious creature. Its approach, its capricious presence that affects the muscles of the jaw, dances in the pit of the stomach, sings a monotonous refrain t
hat one’s feet beat time to; I do not merely dread these manifestations, I fly from them. What was wrong in my eyes about these two women, who, from being gratitude and devotion incarnate, were now putting up barriers between them, was that they did not proceed to adopt the classic attitudes. There was no accompaniment of scurrilous laughter, of insults as blinding as pepper, of fists dug well into the ribs. They did not even awaken minute old grievances, kept alive and kicking by long stewing over and brooding on. Nevertheless, I did hear dangerous exchanges and words such as “neurotic . . . ingratitude . . . meddlesome Matty . . . poking your nose in . . .” I think it was on this last insult that Mademoiselle Devoidy rose to her feet, flung us a curt, bitter, ceremonious goodbye, and left the room.
Somewhat belatedly, I displayed suitable agitation.
“Well, really! But it’s not serious. What childishness! Who’d have expected . . .”
Madame Armand merely gave a faint shrug that seemed to say “Forget it!” As the daylight was going fast, she stretched out her arm and switched on the bedside lamp which wore a crinoline of salmon-pink silk. At once the depressing character of the room changed and I did not hide my pleasure, for the lampshade, elaborately ruched and pretentious as it was, filtered an enchanting rosy light, like the lining of a seashell. Madame Armand smiled.
“I think we’re both of us pleased,” she said.
She saw I was about to mention the disagreeable incident again and stopped me.
“Forget it, Madame, these little tiffs—the less one thinks about them the better. Either they sort themselves out of their own accord, or else they don’t, and that’s even better. Have another drop of wine. Yes, yes, do have some more, it’s pure unadulterated stuff.”
She leaped from her couch, deftly pulling down her dress. In those days, women did not let themselves slide off a sofa or out of a car revealing a wide margin of bare thigh as they do nowadays with such cold and barbarous indifference.