God Speed the Night (17 page)

On the washstand she found a square of soap and, by the cup of fresh water, Marc’s tube of toothpaste where he had left it. She squeezed some on the corner of the towel and rubbed her teeth and gums. She put the latch on the door and washed thoroughly, even her head. Marc had put out all Rachel’s things on the chair, one change only, except for two sweaters. Gabrielle chose the one that seemed likely to cover the most of her, a dark blue with a turtleneck collar; when she put it on, however, and especially because she wore Rachel’s brassiere which was tight on her, her breasts stood out like bishops’ miters. No amount of stretching seemed to remedy the situation. Finally, she took off the brassiere and bound herself round with the second of Rachel’s scarves. Throughout she was aware of the mirror over the dresser, but avoided it steadfastly, catching only the glimpse of her arm motion as she passed to and fro.

Marc knocked on the door and identified himself: Jean. She opened it and for a moment he stood, his eyes wide as though he were seeing a stranger—or perhaps Rachel, she thought, turning immediately away.

“I have brought you breakfast,” he said. “It is real coffee.”

“Thank you…Jean.”

He set the tray with the bread and preserve and coffee on the dresser. “You slept well?”

“Yes.”

“And you had good dreams.” He watched her in the mirror.

“How did you know that?”

“You smiled.”

“You must not look at me,” she said. Then realizing he had covered her, she added, “But I thank you for the blanket.”

“It was nothing,” he said, but time and again since dawn when he had awakened and covered her with the blanket he had gone over in his mind the way she looked, the little smile and the pursing of her lips. He had lain awake himself then, wondering what the tenderness meant that it evoked in him. He had turned his thoughts to Rachel, but he had turned them, they had not flown there, and he had remembered chiding Gabrielle in the early hours of their vigil together: Is that what it’s like, being a nun, to always think of something else?

He went to the door and looked into the hallway, for he had come upstairs to discover the dwarf trying to see through the keyhole. He did not tell Gabrielle, he just made sure the small one had not returned.

“Please have your breakfast while the coffee is hot. I shall not watch you.”

“It’s all right. I ate among the others, and I drank wine last night.”

“Was that a sin? I forced you to it if it was. Therefore the sin was mine.”

“I don’t know. So much is new.”

“Only the wine is old,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know exactly, but I was thinking that if there is such a thing as sin, we have found new ways of doing it in our time.”

“Do you not believe in sin?” Gabrielle sipped her coffee.

“I do not believe in rewards for good deeds and punishment for bad, let’s put it that way. I see no scale of balance in this world, and nothing in it argues for me for another world just to sum things up. Is it wrong of me to talk this way to you?”

“What is ‘wrong’ to you, monsieur?”

He smiled. “Jean. You must remember! It is a good question, Marie. Dishonesty with oneself: I guess that’s the best way of putting it.”

“So,” she said, with a kind of belligerence that delighted him, “dishonesty with others does not matter.”

“I did not say that. I only say that unless one is honest entirely with oneself, there can be no honesty with others either. One’s first obligation is to oneself.”

“Of course. One must save one’s own soul. We believe in the same thing.”

“Perhaps we do. Now. Marie, Marie, Marie. We must find a way to get you out of here quickly.” He gave her their work papers on which his and Rachel’s photographs appeared side by side, and her I.D. card which he had insisted Madame Fontaine return so that his wife could go out to do some necessary shopping. “Do not smile for the photographer. Try to look as serious as Rachel was on the day that likeness was taken.”

Gabrielle licked her fingers and turned the card to where she could see it better. “What do you think was on her mind when it was taken?”

Marc was slow to answer. “Actually, she was very happy, I think.” He returned to the issue at hand. “The machinery will go out first. They say now we’ll be here till noon, but I’m sure we’ll have a processing of some sort, either the Germans or the police. I will try to make friends while you’re gone.”

“Just do not make enemies,” she said, remembering René.

Marc grinned. There was in every woman something of the wife even if she were the bride of Christ. “I’ll remember that.”

Gabrielle’s face was on fire. “Forgive me, monsieur. It was wrong of me to have spoken so.”

He wanted to take her by the elbows and shake her. Instead he delivered a short lecture: “It was right. You spoke the truth of my nature, and therefore for my own good. It was right…Marie.”

“Yes…Jean.”

“Now you must be prepared if you are questioned about visiting a photographer’s shop: you will say that your twenty-first birthday is a few weeks off—it says so on your I.D. card—and you want to have a likeness to send to your parents in Marseille. It is believable, don’t you think?”

She nodded. “And I have a sister living in Marseille.” “And there is something you must purchase while you’re in the neighborhood of shops, something you would call decent in which to sleep.”

“I will wear my same clothes at night,” she said.

“No, that will not do.” He gave her money and the clothes ration book that René had given him. “Something less than a tent that will nonetheless satisfy your modesty.” He turned from her and stared out the window. “I don’t know how to say this to you, gentle friend, but if you find yourself in deeper trouble than you can manage, surrender to the police and tell them who you are. Then say nothing more until they bring you to the Reverend Mother of your convent.” “It is possible she would not accept me now.” “She would be a great fool not to, and I do not think that of her,” Marc said.

Gabrielle slipped out of the
pension
a few minutes later. The only attention paid her came from Jacques, who was propped against a tree in the sun, his beret over his eyes but not so far over them as to shut out that which he wished to see. He whistled softly as she passed which in turn brought the policeman at the gate to attention. The policeman saluted, bending to be closer to
la petite mariée
, the little bride, as she had been spoken of that morning, and would probably be called henceforth among the workers.

She walked with an air of confidence as Marc had bade her, and with Rachel’s pouch handbag swinging from her wrist she became aware of giving pleasure to those who saw her. Men made way for her to pass. Shopkeepers called out greetings. The giving of such pleasure might not be a sin, but the awareness of giving it was a lack of discipline to say the least. This sunniness, as it was called when she was a child, was a part of her from birth, and the nuns had carefully nurtured the joy while tamping down the exuberance. It troubled her also that she was no longer so much afraid of being in the street alone and unprotected by the religious habit, but what that was really was the relief of being away from Marc and the pretense of an intimacy she tried not to think about, while at the same time knowing that the very purpose for which she was there would succeed only if she made the pretend-life seem real to the others. Now, alone, no matter what she wore, she was herself in God, and by some act of mortification she could atone for vanity, for pride, and perhaps lay up a little strength against temptation. She walked imagining herself in the boned stays of the convent corset, in the chafing coarseness of its linens, and in the concentrated heat of the serge habit. She could almost feel the starched binder around her head, and as in the days when she had suffered headaches from it, she wondered again if it was not intended to suggest to those who followed Christ the thorns with which His head was crowned.

Her world was all so terribly upside down: here she was conjuring a headache whereas the true act of piety would be to accept the headache one could not avoid, and seek through it some small understanding of Christ’s sufferings and their meaning. But she had not achieved this piety. The trouble had always been that the worse the headache, the less the understanding. But that was because she had not advanced very far in the religious experience yet.

She went by way of the railway station and followed Marc’s directions from there. But when she reached Number 12, Rue de Michelet, the shop was closed, the shades drawn. The confidence that had brought her boldly to the door fell off at once. She tapped on the window most tentatively, not wanting to call the attention of the passers-by. All the benevolence she had felt in the people she had met seemed to have vanished: now they were hostile strangers. Her suffering was brief but a grave lesson. Almost as soon as she knocked René came to the door and opened it to her. Then he raised the shade.

“You are late, madame, but it did not matter. There were no other customers.”

“If there had been customers I would have said what my husband told me to say.” Gabrielle spoke with a deliberateness that made it seem by rote. And rote it was, her having particularly rehearsed the words “my husband.” “For my twenty-first birthday I wish to have a photograph to send my parents in Marseille.”

René nodded and rubbed his hands together. “We shall take that picture first. It is my pleasure to serve you, madame,” he said with some cheer. He expected to be paid for the photographs.

He led her through a neat but shabby shop, past the counter with its samples of his portraits. “Weddings and First Communions, what would I do without them?” He posed her first in a chair against a courtyard backdrop, draping her round with black velvet and insisting that for the portrait she must remove the scarf from her head. “We must be as authentic as we can. For your parents you would want as chic a picture as possible. Yes?”

She said nothing, removing the scarf.

René straightened her shaggy hair with his fingers. By her stiffness he might be applying a match to it. “Weddings and First Communions,” he repeated, hoping to relax her, “it would seem to me the occasion would be its own celebration and therefore memorable. The taking of a photograph should be an event in itself.”

Quickly then, having glanced again at the identity shot he would be replacing, René bade her put on the scarf and stand against a silvery screen. “I will need an hour, and as steady a hand as I can manage.” He took her to the front of the shop. “It is better that I lock the door so that no one walks in on me. Come back when you see that the door is open.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

Gabrielle walked along Rue de Michelet until she came to a shop advertising dresses and lingerie. A bell rang as she opened the door. A mannequin stood, hand extended; a sign propped in the fingers told the price and the number of ration tickets. Gabrielle was a second or two realizing that it was not a person but a dummy on which hung what seemed to her an enormously expensive dress. A woman came from the curtained room at the back.

“It is beautiful, is it not, mam’selle?” She corrected herself: “Madame.” She had seen the ring on Gabrielle’s finger. She calculated the customer to be a girl from the countryside, newly come in town to work, conscripted perhaps to the box factory. She would have ration coupons galore. “It is worth every coupon in your book. What else do you need if you have a dress like that? You could go all week in your shift and wear that on Sunday and be the envy of every woman in church…”

Gabrielle listened without understanding. Or, more precisely, she could have understood without listening. She did not like the sales person. With her cheeks rouged and her lips painted, the woman was as false as the dummy. When she finally paused, Gabrielle said, “I would like to buy a nightgown, madame. It must be cheap and large and have long sleeves.”

The woman batted her eyes, to what purpose Gabrielle had no idea. “It is a gift perhaps for someone older?”

“Do you have such a garment, madame?”

“I do not know that such a garment exists. Perhaps if madame would tell me how much she wishes to pay…”

“I have enough money,” Gabrielle said. She had no notion in the world how much money a nightgown should cost, but Marc had given her five hundred francs and that seemed a lot of money indeed. She did not intend to spend half of it.

On the hunch that this was a strange, shy girl who had been married off to an old man with money—and who in such bloom would not under the circumstances conceal herself as much as possible?—the proprietress ventured: “I have remembered something that might just suit madame. Please be seated for a few minutes.”

“I must hurry,” Gabrielle said, wanting only to be out of the shop as quickly as possible.

“Believe me, madame, he will have a glass of wine and forget the time.” She laid her hand with the painted nails on Gabrielle’s arm. Gabrielle felt her muscles grow taut but she did not pull away from the touch. She smiled as falsely as the woman. And when the woman left her, Gabrielle said, “Forgive me, Lord, but it will help me save his money and he needs it.”

She sat down and calmly watched the shopkeeper go to the cupboard at the back wall and fumble through the garments stacked there. It was essential to the bargain, Gabrielle felt, that she not take her eyes off the woman, that she advance the position she had established by the fact that she had money. And that became something too that she wanted to think about later: there was in this a personal lesson for her on the merits of poverty, and the reason therefore it was part of religious commitment.

The woman brought a large white, if yellowing, garment and shook it out of its folds. It was a beachrobe left from the happier days when the better class of people from St. Hilaire went to the sea in August. Gabrielle was satisfied in the roughness of the towelcloth and the fact that it buttoned from throat to toe. The woman held up the dolman sleeves and Gabrielle was reminded of angel costumes in school pageants. The woman began to unbutton it. “You will see in the mirror how becoming it is, madame. Beautiful lines, and white. It is very chaste, no?”