Act of Passion (11 page)

We got a table on the mezzanine, near a half-moon window from which we looked down on the umbrellas passing at our feet. A rather curious effect, in fact.

'A bottle of muscadet to begin with, Doctor?' Joseph, who had known me for a long time, suggested.

And she:

'So you're a doctor...'

You don't go to Francis's to stuff yourself but to enjoy good food. With
chevreuil aux morilles
, an old burgundy was indicated. After dinner we were served a special cognac in brandy glasses. She talked all the time, she talked about herself, about the people she knew and who, as though by chance, were all important persons.

'When I was in Geneva...'

'Last year at the Negresco, in Nice ..

I knew her first name, Martine. I also knew that she had met Raoul Boquet by chance in some bar in Paris - Raoul is a pillar of bars - and that at one o'clock in the morning he had engaged her as his secretary.

'The idea of living in a little provincial city intrigued me ... Do you believe that? ... Can you understand that? ... As for your friend, I warned him that I would not go to bed with him...'

At three o'clock that morning, your Honour, I was the one who was in bed with her, loving her furiously, so furiously that she could not help at times giving me a surreptitious glance, in which there was not only curiosity and amazement but real terror as well.

I don't know what came over me. Never had I worked myself into such a frenzy before.

You have just seen how stupid our meeting was. And what happened after that was even stupider.

There was a moment, perhaps several, when I must certainly have been drunk. For example, I have only a blurred recollection of leaving Chez Francis. Before then, with the excuse that it was there I had celebrated my doctor's degree, I insisted - talking much too loudly and gesticulating - that old Francis should come in person to drink with us. Then I seized upon one of the chairs like all the other chairs in the house and swore that I recognized it as the very chair I had sat upon that famous evening.

'I tell you this is the one, and I can prove it - that nick there on the second rung ... Gaillard was there ... Gaillard, that jerk! ... He'll be angry with me for not dining at his house tonight... You won't tell him I was here, will you, Francis? ... Word of honour? .. .'

We walked. It was I who insisted on strolling in the rain. The streets were almost empty, with puddles of water, puddles of light, and enormous drops falling from the cornices and balconies.

She had some difficulty walking because of her high heels and clung to my arm; from time to time she would have to stop to put on her shoe, which kept coming off.

'I don't know if it still exists, but there used to be a little bistro in this neighbourhood, run by an enormously fat woman ... It isn't far from here...'

Obstinately, I persisted in trying to find it. We kept on paddling through the wet. And when finally, with our shoulders dripping with rain, we entered a little café which was perhaps the one I was looking for and perhaps not, the clock over the bar said a quarter past ten.

'Is your clock right?'

'It's five minutes slow.'

Then we looked at each other and after a second we both burst out laughing.

'What are you going to say to Armande?'

I must have been talking about Armande. I don't know exactly what I could have said, but I have a vague idea that I tried to be witty at her expense.

In fact, it was in this little café, where there wasn't another soul, where a cat was curled up on a chair near a big iron stove - it was in this café, as I say, that I first realized that we were saying
tu
to each other.

She announced as though it were a choice entertainment:

'We must telephone Armande ... Have you a telephone, Madame?'

'In the hall, to the left.. .'

A narrow hall with walls painted a sickly green led to the lavatories and was impregnated with their smell. The telephone was. attached to the wall. There were two receivers, and Martine took possession of one of them. We were touching each other, or at least our wet clothes were touching, and our breath smelled of the calvados we had just drunk at the bar.

'Hello, give me 12-51, please... Will I have to wait long? ...'

We were told to stay on the wire. I don't know why we were laughing, but I remember that I was obliged to hold my hand over the mouthpiece. We heard the operators calling each other.

'Give me 12-51, dear ... Is it raining as hard there as it is here? ... What time are you through? ... Hello! ...Is this 12-51?... One moment... Nantes calling ... Hello, Nantes... go ahead.. .'

And all this amused us, God knows why — it all seemed excruciatingly funny.

'Hello ... Is that you, Armande?'

'Charles?... Are you still in Nantes?'

Martine poked me with her elbow.

'I've been detained - there were complications. I had to go back to the hospital to see my patient ..

'Did you have dinner with the Gaillards?'

'That is . . .'

Martine was leaning against me. I was afraid she was going to burst out laughing again. I wasn't very proud of myself, as you may imagine ...

'No ... I didn't want to bother them ... I had shopping to do ...'

'Did you find my buttons?'

'Yes... and the toys for the children .. '

'Are you at the Gaillards' now?'

'No ... I'm still in town ... I've just left the hospital .. .'

'Will you spend the night with them?'

'I wonder ... I'd almost rather go to the hotel ... I am tired and with Gaillard it will mean staying up till one o'clock in the morning again ...'

Silence. All this seemed odd to my wife. I swallowed hard when she asked:

'You're alone?'

'Yes ...'

'You're telephoning from a café?'

'I'm going to a hotel...'

'To the Due de Bretagne?'

'Probably. If they have a room.'

'What have you done with the packages?'

'I have them here with me ...'

'Well, don't lose them ... By the way, Mme Gringuois came this evening ... She said she had an appointment for nine o'clock ... She still has pain and insisted on waiting ...'

'I'll see her tomorrow morning.'

'You'll take the first train?'

What else could I do? The six thirty-two, in the dark, in the cold, in the rain! And very often, as I knew, the carriages weren't heated.

'Until tomorrow ...'

I repeated:

'Until tomorrow .. .'

I had hardly hung up when Martine exclaimed:

'She didn't believe you... It was what you said about the packages she didn't swallow...'

We drank another calvados at the bar and plunged once more into the wet darkness of the streets. We were in the gay stage of intoxication. Everything made us laugh. We made fun of the few people we passed in the street. We made fun of Armande, of my patient, Mme Gringuois, whom I must have told her about.

Music coming from behind a façade brightly illuminated with neon lights attracted us, and we found ourselves in a little night club, narrow and red all over. The lights were red, red the velvet covering of the benches, red the walls on which nude figures were painted, red the soiled dinner-jackets of the five musicians who made up the orchestra.

Martine wanted to dance and I danced with her. That was when I noticed the nape of her neck, very close and very white, with skin so fine that the blue veins showed, and little tendrils of wet hair.

Why did her neck move me? It was, in a way, the first human thing I discovered about her. It had nothing to do with a magazine cover, with a young woman who thought herself very smart. It was the nape of a sickly girl and, as I danced, I began brushing it with my lips.

When we sat down at our table again, I looked at her face with different eyes. She had dark circles under her eyes. The lipstick no longer covered her lips evenly. She was tired, but refused to give in. She wanted, at any cost, to enjoy herself.

'Ask them if they have any whisky.. .'

We began drinking whisky. Somewhat unsteadily she went over to the musicians to ask for some song I didn't know, and I could see her gesticulating.

Another time, she left to go to the Ladies' Room. She was gone a long time. I wondered if she were sick. I didn't like to go to find out.

I realized now that she was simply a woman and nothing else, a girl, about twenty-five probably, who was bent on showing off. It was at least a quarter of an hour before she returned. For a second time, as she came into the room, I saw her face in repose and it was tired and lined; then immediately she began to smile again. She had hardly sat down when she lighted a cigarette and emptied her glass, but not without a slight retch which she tried to cover up.

'Feel sick?'

'I'm better ... It's all right now ... I'm not used to dinners like that any more ... Won't you order something to drink?'

She was nervous, on edge.

'These last few weeks in Paris have been difficult... I quit my job, stupidly ...'

She had got rid of her dinner. And now she was drinking again. She wanted to dance. And, as she danced, her body kept pressing against mine.

There was something sad, something forced, about her excitation which somehow moved me. Little by little, I could feel desire growing in me, and it was a kind of desire I had never met before.

You see, your Honour, she was exciting herself. Do you understand?

It wasn't I, it wasn't even the male that counted. I understood later. But, at the moment, I was troubled and baffled. Her desire, in spite of my presence, was a solitary desire.

And her sexual excitement was a laboured excitement. She clung to it as though to escape a void.

At the same time, paradoxical though it may seem, it mortified her, made her suffer.

Once, I remember, just after we had returned to our table and the Orchestra was playing the haunting music she had asked for, she suddenly dug her nails into my thigh.

We had drunk a great deal, I don't know how many drinks. We were finally the only customers left in the place and the staff were waiting for us to go so that they could close up. In the end they politely put us out.

It was after two o'clock in the morning. I didn't like to take her to the Duc de Bretagne, where I was known and where I had stayed with Armande and the children.

'Are you sure there's no other place open?'

'Nothing but a few little dumps round the harbour.'

'Let's go ...'

We took a taxi which we were a long time finding at that hour. And this time, in the darkness of the taxi, brusquely she glued her lips to mine in a kind of spasm, without tenderness, without love. She did not repulse my hand which was on her hip, and I could feel her body so thin, so burning hot, through her wet garments.

What happened was what always happens in such cases. Most of the places were closed or closing as we arrived. We went into a cheap dance hall, and I saw Martine's nostrils quiver because all the men stared at her and she probably sensed danger.

'You want to dance?'

She challenged them with her glance, with her half-open mouth, pressing her thigh harder and harder against mine as she imagined their lust for her.

We were served some horrible brandy that nauseated us. I was anxious to leave. But I was afraid to insist too much, because I knew what she would think.

In the end we went to a second-class hotel, or more exactly, a fairly good hotel, banally dull, where there was still a light showing and where the night porter, fumbling with the keys hanging on a board, murmured:

'A room with two beds?'

She said nothing. Nor did I. I simply asked to be called at quarter to six. I had no baggage. Martine's suitcases were still in the baggage room at the station and we had not bothered to go for them.

As soon as the door closed, she said:

'We'll each sleep in our own bed, won't we?'

I promised. I was firmly decided on that. There was a tiny bathroom and she went in at once, admonishing me:

'You go on to bed ...' We were saying
vous
again.

Hearing her moving about, opening and closing the taps, suddenly, your Honour, I had a strange sensation of intimacy. A sensation of intimacy, believe it or not, that I have never had with Armande.

I wonder if I was still drunk. I don't think so. I got undressed and slid under the covers. As she seemed to be taking a long time and I thought she might be sick again, I called out:

'Are you all right?'

'Yes,' she replied. 'Are you in bed?'

'Yes.'

'I'm coming ...'

I had discreetly turned out the light in the room, so that when she opened the bathroom door she was lighted only from behind.

She seemed to me smaller and even thinner. She was naked and was holding a towel up in front of her, without, I must admit, the least ostentation, even with genuine simplicity.

She turned to switch off the light in the bathroom and I saw her naked back with each vertebra sticking out and her tiny waist, but hips much larger than I had imagined. It was only a matter of seconds. But that image has never left me. I thought something to this effect:

'A poor little girl.. .'

I heard her groping in the dark for her bed. She murmured gently:

'Good night...'

Then remarked:

'It's true we haven't much time to sleep. What time is it now?'

'I don't know ... Wait, I'll turn on the light ...'

I had only to stretch out my bare arm. My watch was on the bedside table.

'Half-past three ...'

I saw her hair spread out against the stark whiteness of the pillow. I saw the outline of her body lying with her knees curled up. I even noticed, in spite of the covers, that, like so many little girls, she slept with her hands clasped between the intimate warmth of her thighs. I repeated:

'Good night...'

'Good night...'

I turned out the light, and yet we did not sleep. Two or three times within a quarter of an hour she turned over in her bed with a sigh.

I swear, your Honour, there was nothing premeditated about it. At one moment I even thought I was falling asleep, I began to feel drowsy.