Moreover certain days of the month, those days on which a woman becomes irritable and bemoans these reminders of her sex, left her in a state of lethargy. On days such as these she would debate with herself whether to go or not, groaning: ‘I’m not feeling very well, I’m tired, if I don’t go, I’ll tell him tomorrow that I was ill.’ She would look at herself in the mirror, would imagine she had dark rings round her eyes and a pallid complexion, she longed to be in bed, would attempt to cough, thinking she was done for. She would say to herself: ‘Now come on, buck yourself up!’ And she’d hope the doorbell would ring, a visit of some kind that would justify her not going out, allow her to believe that she couldn’t have done anything else but stay at home. But no one would come, so she’d open the door, go downstairs, look up and down the road, and when no one she knew appeared, she would finally decide to set off.
On those evenings, inevitably, she’d be in an irritable mood, barely letting herself be kissed, replying to her lover, who seeing her so careworn and pale would ask: ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?’ with a sullen ‘No’, then she’d get angry if he insisted: ‘But I’ve just told you, there’s nothing wrong with me!’ And then ten minutes later, shivering, she’d complain about being cold, and even though he’d order her a hot drink to revive her, she would just sit there silently, distracted, and when, worried at seeing her like this, Auguste suggested he take her home she didn’t insist on staying.
After having left her he would return home feeling empty. He would have liked to be returning to a warm bedroom, to a wife who’d rouse from her sleep with a gentle and affectionate query; he’d have liked, on lighting a candle, to see the woman who’d fallen asleep waiting for him smile at his arrival; he recalled, word for word, the image of well-being, of happiness, that Céline had evoked the day she urged him to marry her sister. When he passed some belated stragglers walking briskly along the Boulevard de Mazas, he envied them thinking: ‘They’re going back to a comfortable house, they’ll be able to recount all they’ve seen, all they’ve done to those waiting for them.’ He longed for the tranquillity of domestic life, the peaceful union of two people whose thoughts and interests are sometimes the same.
At night especially, when he was in bed and the room was dark, all his melancholy thoughts obsessed him, and even though he closed his eyes firmly he couldn’t sleep. Sometimes he tried to cast off his sorrows, saying to himself: ‘But after all, I’ve nothing to complain about, I’m happy here with my good mother.’ Nevertheless, he had to admit that this placid affection, these lukewarm embraces from an old woman, left him feeling annoyed and unmoved; at times he was horrified with himself, fearing that he loved his mother less.
Then the image of Désirée would haunt him again and he’d waste his time in useless regrets, repeating to himself: ‘Oh, if I hadn’t joined the army I’d now be earning eight francs a day carving pipes, I could afford to get married.’ And he sought to console himself, reminding himself that if he’d practised a different trade, he’d never have gone to Débonnaire & Co. and met Désirée. He daydreamed about changing his profession, adopting one that would pay more, but had to admit that he didn’t know how to do anything else, that he at least earned a modest living at the bindery, that it would be madness to throw himself into the uncertainties of another profession.
As for Désirée, her thoughts were less tormented and less bitter, she was gradually slipping into a sort of listless apathy. The Boulevard Saint-Michel, which had diverted her at first with its luxurious shop windows and its noisy crowds, now bored her. The frisson given to their meetings by Vatard’s ill will no longer spurred her on; now that he allowed her to go out, she felt the cold more, was sensitive to the wind, was vague about the times of her rendezvous, sometimes going there too early, gripped by a sudden impatience and a need to walk, but more often arriving too late, as if she were fulfilling some onerous duty.
On rain-sodden days, as they had agreed, she didn’t go any further than the tavern, but even on days when the streets were dry, when a brisk wind invited long walks, she no longer went to find Auguste down by the embankment.
Two weeks went by, two weeks during which, hour by hour, one could follow the progressive stages of her weakening resolve; one day she only went halfway down the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the next she didn’t go any further than the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Michel; as each evening passed she ventured correspondingly less and less far. She finally reached the point where, no matter what the weather was like, she would meet him only in the front room of the tavern.
When Céline had finished her dress and tried it on she was as happy as a madwoman, she danced around her bedroom, cricked her neck trying to look at it from the back, found it gave her a ravishing figure, a certain elegance even. Cyprien was less enthusiastic when, rushing into his studio, she plonked herself in front of him in search of compliments. He limited himself to making the observation that the dress didn’t show off her waist, that the old one, threadbare though it was, fitted her better, made her look more curvy and more sinuous.
These remarks, expressed with such conviction, had an effect on Céline like a couple of slaps. She was stunned for a moment, then she launched into a bitter retort. As he wasn’t in the mood to argue, he confined himself to saying that he was teasing her. At which her good mood returned and she strutted around again with a satisfied air in front of the mirror.
This dress became the subject of perpetual arguments and affronts.
Céline would arrive on Sunday morning saying: ‘I’ve come for a stroll.’ He, keeping up the pretext of having too much work and having already determined not to go, did everything he could not to accompany her. So then she’d stretch out on the sofa, grumbling and fidgeting until he lost patience with these ruses and finally consented to take her out.
She wanted to walk through fancy areas, the Tuileries, the Champs-Elysées, somewhere where she could show off her new dress. He’d resist and propose instead going to the Moulin de la Galette, to Montmartre, down the Boulevard d’Italie or to the Gobelins, somewhere more easygoing where he could smoke his pipe.
‘It wasn’t worth my while putting on a new dress to visit places like that,’ Céline would complain.
He’d reply: ‘Then why didn’t you wear your ordinary dress?’
‘Thanks a lot! When else am I supposed to put on my new dress then if not on a Sunday?’
He tried to make her understand that there was no reason to dress better on a Sunday than on any other day of the week. But it was like banging his head against a brick wall.
One afternoon he nevertheless decided to drag her along to the Champs-Elysées. He made her sit on a dusty bench, her back to the road, and they watched that merry-go-round of fools who prance about in their new clothes, between the Place de la Concorde and the Cirque d’Été. He felt sick at seeing this herd of idiots surge past. As for her, she gazed wide-eyed, imagining that they were admiring her dress, her bearing, her charms.
He swore never again to take her to that carnival of glad rags, and he hauled her off on the Bateaux-Mouches as far as Bercy, led her to a spot near the Place Pinel, behind the abattoir, where, without her even realising he was making fun of her, he praised the funereal hideousness of its boulevards, the dilapidated depravity of its streets.
All this did little to cheer her up; she didn’t need a well-heeled lover in order to go and see sordid quarters like those. Certainly, it was difficult for them to see eye to eye. She was becoming very critical of his artistic whims, and he had the urge to leave her whenever, with that common way she had, she’d say she couldn’t bear gentlemen who sported monocles, or she’d examine the fingers of every woman sitting next to a man to see if they were wearing a ring and then whisper to Cyprien: ‘She’s not married, you know.’
And yet, on other days, he was tormented by remorse. He’d resolve to be kinder to Céline and he’d take her in his arms when she arrived, playing with her like a puppy, he’d smoke a cigarette with her, each of them taking a drag in turn, and, as they sat by the stove, he’d let her tell stories about her family, or the quarrels she’d had with her friends.
Sometimes she’d give vent to a terrible sadness, crying with little sobs, and Cyprien, in spite of his resolution to be more gentle, would end up hurting her with his barbed comments. One time, when he begged her to save her tears for days when she didn’t come to see him, she replied: ‘Who do you want me to tell my problems to if not to you?’
But where their love really began to crack was on those tempestuous days when the painter was getting dressed to go out to a soirée or a ball. To her, a salon was just a kind of high-class joint where you picked up women. It was no use him saying to her: ‘But it’s not like that at all.’ She’d shake her head with a mistrustful air, and the working-class woman’s hatred for those in the middle class would burst out in a stream of crude words. With a heavy heart she’d help her lover to get ready, prowling round him, admiring his white tie and tailcoat suit, gazing respectfully at his opera-hat, making it expand and flatten, going into raptures over its black silk lining, over the gold letters that were stitched onto it.
On such evenings she wanted to sleep at his place at all costs, in order to be sure that he would come back, and she couldn’t understand the irritableness of the painter who, feeling obliged to go to people’s houses because they might buy one of his canvases, would swear like a cabdriver as he struggled with his starched shirt and with the buttons on his gloves. She would say to him: ‘So don’t go. You’ll see, we’ll have fun here.’ And Cyprien, exasperated, would shout: ‘What the devil! Do you think it’s for my own amusement that I’m having to spend two francs for a cab and be bored to death in some bourgeois household?’ But she’d retort: ‘Oh, just go then, I know you’re really going there to find a woman.’ And the painter would end up replying: ‘Well, I’d prefer it if I was!’ Then she’d slap him angrily; he’d get annoyed because she was rumpling his shirt, and he would finally leave, overwhelmed at the prospect of standing by a doorway for the next two or three hours without being able to smoke.
He would neither dance nor play cards, would stand there like an imbecile, part of that lamentable group of men who contemplate the ceiling and, in order to mask their embarrassment, check if their cravats are straight every ten minutes. Generally, he’d take refuge in the cardroom, where other men, strangers like him to the pleasures of playing cards and dancing, would sigh, regretting their slippers and their place by the fire at home, imagining that they’d no longer be able to hail a cab at this hour and would have to escort some tired and irritated woman on their arms to some distant quarter.
He’d slink away as soon as possible and return home, but no matter how careful he was Céline would wake up and angrily interrogate him.
‘You smell of powder! You’ve had enough of me, I know it!’ And she’d shout: ‘Go on then, go off to your society tarts! Oh yes, they’re all so posh, that goes without saying. Pretty little carcasses with their stuck up airs, and nothing but skin and bone on ’em! That’s a nice thing to look at when you wake up in the morning, that’s what’s under all that fine taffeta, coughing and whining, gulping down codliver oil and going on about how healthy it is!’
And when he tried to interrupt this deluge of insults, she’d fling back even more angrily:
‘I know what I’m talking about, look you bloody idiot, look at me, it’s not fancy clothes and trinkets that make a woman. If they were here in their nightgowns, like me, oh that’d be a right sight. Then you’d see. They’re nothing compared to me. No, without all their finery they’re nothing compared to me, do you hear?’And she’d pat her alluring breasts and shout: ‘Here, this is better than anything they’ve got!’ gesticulating in bed, her eyes smouldering, her hair tumbling like a sheaf of straw round her bare shoulders.
Slumped in an armchair, Cyprien would smoke cigarettes without answering. He was forced, for the sake of some peace, to threaten that he wouldn’t come back at all on nights like these. Then she’d go quiet, but she’d become very jumpy, she’d start to have anxiety attacks and was even more troublesome than when she was standing in front of him and barking in his face.
He tried another method. He would read, letting her writhe and hurl herself about, tearing her handkerchief with her teeth.
His indifference resulted in a cessation of these crises; calmer, though still out of sorts, Céline now contrived, using every possible means, to please her lover, to make him love her.
Seeing him always painting heavily made-up women, one evening when he was out she shook a powder-puff over her face, dabbed some flour on her nose, took a pastel crayon and rouged her cheeks. These daubings, applied without style or practice, made her look like a savage. When the painter returned and saw her all mottled like this, he laughed; she became angry, started to cry, and rubbed her face with her fingers, smudging the colours on her smeared and grotesque cheeks, staining her hands, her lips unblemished in spite of everything amid this mess of pink goo.
After that, she despaired of ever subjugating this man. Nevertheless, he did become more indulgent and more patient. As long as she didn’t moan or cry, he considered himself lucky. He’d come to feel a sincere sympathy for Céline, only he realised after a certain amount of time that it was a mistake not to be always on his guard with her. Céline had a heart of gold, but she needed to be tamed, whenever she no longer felt the leash, she’d revert to her former, more tempestuous, more unruly self.
In any event, the kind of uneasy affection she felt for the painter was beginning to change. The pride she’d had in possessing a gentleman for a lover had vanished. The charm of having a new lover was gone. Now she thought about the good times she’d had in her previous affairs; after a tempestuous day with the painter, yapping at his heels and kicking up a fuss, maddened by his silence and his disdain, thoughts of Anatole would come into her mind.