Auguste, feeling very annoyed at the scene he was going to have with Désirée, dragged his heels as he made his way to the meeting. He had a lunchtime rendezvous with his fiancée. He would have to explain bluntly to Désirée what his intentions were and end it. He’d have given a hundred sous for it all to be over.
Désirée, feeling very emotional, arrived a little early with her sister, determined, like him, to end it. When they got to the embankment, the young man was nowhere to be seen.
They retraced their steps and, having nothing better to do, stopped in front of a photographer’s window. Désirée was choking with emotion. There could be no more shilly-shallying now. When the wine’s been poured…so for this last visit with her lover it was just a question of being firm, and she forced back the tears that came to her eyes when she thought of Auguste’s weeping face. Céline was seething, she had wanted to start the attack straightaway; moreover, she was absolutely determined to cut short any tearful discussions, any recriminations, to settle the matter quickly, to make a clean break.
While stopped in front of the black wooden frames, Désirée felt her heart beat out a death knell and she kept scanning the entrance of the bridge in terror; Céline lost herself in contemplation of the display. She thought the poodle seated on a chair with a curtain as a backdrop, and the droopy, languid woman braiding coronets of flowers on a balcony, were wonderful; she went into raptures over the images of curly-haired men with twisted moustaches, whose boorish expressions and self-satisfied faces, whose triumphant airs and distinguished poses, held for the length of an exposure, wilted before the camera lens; she gawped in front of faded portraits, the sitter’s heads surrounded by dirty white patches that were speckled as if with flyshit: portraits of women, of roly-polies in low-cut dresses spilling enormous breasts, their faces like those on the look-out in dark doorways, who whisper ‘psst! psst’ down alleyways at night; of fifth-rate actresses in cotton bathing suits and with taffeta flowers in their hair; of housemaids with aprons over their bellies and chilblains on their fingers; of newlyweds, the woman seated with her hands on her knees, the man leaning against an armchair and with a discreetly knowing look on his face; of dazed first communicants stuffed with food; of infantrymen looking surprised and foolish. But what really took her breath away was the portrait of a family consisting of a mother, a father, a child and a cat, taken near a window, between a pot of dried mignonette and a geranium dropping its leaves; the mother, common-looking, heavy-jowled and puffy-faced, in an ill-advised white camisole; the father, easy-going and stout, with the mug of an amiable, drunken carpenter; the kid, a little rogue grown too big for his clothes; the cat, blurred in movement, as if shrouded in a mist.
Céline communicated her thoughts to her sister, but this particular morning Désirée wasn’t interested in all these people frozen in pretentious or idiotic poses; the later it got the more she felt as if she might faint.
‘Well that’s great, he’s late,’ said Céline, who stationed herself directly opposite the bridge. ‘It makes you think that he’s not exactly thrilled at the prospect of seeing you again.’
And while, tired of walking on one side of the pavement they were crossing the road to go along the other, Désirée thought of the times she’d made Auguste wait; she attributed all the blame for this break-up to herself, and the courage she’d promised herself to have when she saw him evaporated.
Céline vaguely thought it would be useful to distract her sister and to prevent her from anticipating Auguste’s arrival; she dragged her in front of a bric-a-brac shop, a rag and bone merchant’s piled with rusty andirons, dented lamps, dusty seashells, enema pumps with their pipes and spigots missing, Legion of Honour medals, rabbit skins, old tea boxes, military breastplates, grease pans, boots, binoculars with missing lenses, candle-snuffers, and vases of artificial flowers on red chenille bases covered by dirty glass domes.
Céline was squinting at a sliding-top bedside table, a piece gleaming like the sun with its newly-veneered mahogany, when Auguste appeared on the bridge.
‘There he is,’ sighed Désirée, all agitated. Then, as if they’d only just arrived that minute, they went off, without hurrying, to meet him.
Désirée stayed a few paces behind her sister. When Céline had finished a series of noncommittal acknowledgements, they stood opposite each other, speechless. Auguste, who’d sworn to be forceful, didn’t even have the courage to ask his girlfriend for a kiss. Unconsciously each of them sensed they were no longer loved. A growing awkwardness held them there, eyes downcast, mouths dry. Céline broke the silence. ‘Why don’t we go and get a vermouth, eh? Is that all right with you, Auguste?’
The other two welcomed this proposition as a deliverance. They settled themselves in the café at the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Quai de la Tournelle, and since they had to talk about something Auguste inquired about Madame Vatard’s health. She was doing well. This conversation lasted five minutes, after which there was another long period of silence.
‘Look!’ Auguste suddenly shouted, ‘there’s our friend from the Rue du Cotentin.’ They called her over and Auguste invited her to have a drink with them, but she was in a hurry. They asked her about her boyfriend. She shrugged in an offhand way. ‘I don’t know…he must be still at the garrison in Dax; he wrote to me several times, but I’ve moved and I didn’t give him my new address and I forgot to go and collect his letters. He should be in good health, at least there’s no reason for him to be ill, but excuse me I’ve got to go, I’m expected.’
‘Ah yes, that’s always the way it is with love,’ Céline declared. Désirée and Auguste didn’t dare look at one another. Céline continued in an aggressive tone: ‘Listen to me, you two, we’ve got to clear this up. Auguste, father certainly doesn’t want you to marry Désirée, and my sister can’t hang on to her virtue forever, and to be fair to you, you can’t stay in the waiting room any longer if the ticket counter’s not going to open for you. Well, there you are, between ourselves, if you give each other your freedom, if each of you were to marry someone else, that would probably not be the most stupid thing you could do!’
Désirée gasped; she looked up at Auguste. He didn’t look particularly like someone who had received a sudden shock.
He said, in his turn, that after all Céline was right; that breaking up was certainly hard, that as for himself he was heartily sorry for it, but at the end of the day…
‘So Chaudrut was telling the truth,’ Céline interrupted, ‘go on admit it, you’re taking this so well because you’re planning to get married.’
He blushed, stammered a bit, and confessed. Désirée mumbled that she too was on the point of doing the same thing. Then they looked at each other. They asked each other about their plans, saying tactfully that they’d have preferred to stay together, but they nevertheless had to be realistic, that they weren’t children anymore and couldn’t just do as they pleased, and both quivering with emotion they added: ‘All the same, do you remember the good times we spent together? Do you remember the first time you came to the workshop…the day when I met you at the gingerbread fair…the walks on Sundays when we were both free…that nice meal under the trees at La Belle Polonaise?’ And both of them recalled the winks they’d exchanged in shops, their arm-in-arm strolls through the Gaité quarter, their kisses in darkened streets; then they suddenly stopped and blushed. An image of the moment when, if he’d been bolder, she would have fallen into his arms, surged up in their minds at the same time; they shivered, each lost in their thoughts, thinking that they would no doubt be married now if that evening had ended differently.
Auguste tried to chase away the melancholy regret this memory conjured up, and he said very gently to Désirée that he’d always remember their relationship with pleasure; and then, a little embarrassed, smiling with tears in her eyes, she replied: ‘I haven’t always been kind to you; you’re not angry with me anymore are you?’ But he insisted that it was he who was to blame, that he’d been beastly, that it was her, not him, who should be complaining.
Céline wanted to put a stop to these effusions, which were threatening to revive their barely dormant affections.
They stared at each other in silence, putting all their tenderness, all their pity, into their looks.
‘I hope you’ll be very happy with her,’ stammered Désirée.
He squeezed her hand across the table and, thanking her, he in his turn wished her every kind of happiness.
Céline held her tongue, amazed. Never had she seen a break-up take place like this, with neither insults nor blows. ‘How kind you both are,’ she exclaimed, clasping her hands together, and they both sat there, opposite one another, smiling, their hearts brimming with emotion. Auguste was impatient to escape. He was beginning to choke. Désirée for her part was trembling and making every effort not to cry. The memories they’d stirred up were throwing their hearts into turmoil. ‘Let’s go,’ said Céline, ‘come on, let’s go Désirée, we’ve got to get back to prepare lunch.’They got up and, out in the street, without saying a word, Auguste held out his hand, but Désirée proffered her cheek and they kissed quickly and then fled, gripped by an immense sadness at the thought that their whole former way of life had collapsed and that they would have to try, each in their own way, to rebuild another.
The worry and fear they’d suppressed until this moment overcame them now they were left alone to face the unknown, an unknown which they were committing themselves to with no possibility of retreat.
The two sisters trudged down the boulevard. Désirée, tired and shaken, Céline, moody and fretful: ‘This is all very fine, but now I’ve finished worrying about you, I’ve got to start thinking about me, or rather about my painter. He’ll see the friendly manner in which I dump him, he will!’And she made a threatening gesture, revealing a glimpse of the mass of turpitude and infamy that a woman can unleash on a man she has once loved and now hates.
When Céline made up her mind, she made up her mind. Her affair with Cyprien was far too turbulent, far too acrimonious. Any last minute hesitations she might have had evaporated at the sight of Anatole who, strutting his charms, had greeted her with a wary politeness one morning when he met her on her way back from the artist’s studio.
She unburdened her soul that day. At times pent up, exploding in fury at others, she told him about her disillusionment with the painter, the complete emotional turmoil in which she found herself.
Anatole twisted his moustache, deliberately affecting an air of surprise. His woman had already practically abandoned him. He’d had enough of her anyway. She was as lazy as a snake, she was a bad investment, and the less she worked the more demanding she became.
Besides, deep down he had a certain affection for Céline; he considered her as wholesome as bread, as suave as silk, a decent worker, amusing and amenable. He could ask for nothing better than to take up with her again; except that he didn’t want to make the first move, he wanted to appear hesitant, to only seem to yield because he was moved by her plight, overcome by a pity that disarmed him.
‘Well, what about you?’ Céline asked him, ‘what’s happened to you since we split up?’
‘I let myself be seduced,’ Anatole replied negligently, ‘by a corset maker, a woman as smooth as a glass of brandy and as warm as toast! Ah, a fine figure of a woman, a tasty morsel fit for a king. But, anyway, you must have seen her that day we met, an angel wearing a new hat, you saw her didn’t you?’
Céline claimed she hadn’t noticed her.
‘Anyhow, that’s beside the point,’ he continued, ‘some people are lucky and others aren’t, that’s all there is to it. Me, I was lucky; you, you fell in with a dauber who treated you like the leftovers of a meal. Why were you as soppy as that? You should have marinated him in the brine of your temper, that would have softened him up.’
But Céline didn’t try to defend herself, just cast him imploring glances; then a sudden gleam came into her eyes. The memory of the final insult Cyprien had inflicted on her came to mind and made her wince.
One evening when they were in bed the painter had sniffed and made a face. He looked at Céline in a funny way but didn’t say a word. Surprised, she demanded an explanation, then he said: ‘Have you been eating garlic? The bed reeks of it.’ This remark had more cruelly wounded her than all the bitter ripostes, all the cutting words he’d so often lashed her with. ‘I can’t help it,’ she cried, ‘at home they smother the lamb roasts with shallots and garlic; that’s the way father likes it. I can’t stop eating because I’m meeting you in the evening.’ Cyprien didn’t deny she had a right to eat the lamb, but nonetheless he himself couldn’t bear smells like that. That pungent herb, heated by her breath and multiplied tenfold by the heat of the bedcovers, made him feel sick. Céline’s resentment revived every time she thought of that night. Anatole became aware, without understanding the cause, of the flush of anger burning on her cheeks. The moment seemed to have come; he decided to play his trump card. ‘Ah well, kiddo,’ he said, ‘I’m glad to have seen you again; I’ll say it again, leave your paint merchant and get yourself a real man, someone who has a bit of this,’ and he tapped himself on the left side of his chest, and just as he made a move to leave her she grabbed his arm, no longer thinking to make vague hints, resolved now to put aside all pride and ask him bluntly to take her back. He seemed hesitant, but gradually yielded. ‘Shall we play a little trick on him together?’ she ended by saying. Anatole smiled in agreement. The idea of being disagreeable to this man who wasn’t from his world and above all revenge himself for the fear his leaded cane had caused him when he was following Céline, pleased him immensely. They agreed to meet on Sunday at the Gaité music hall. Céline would go there with Cyprien. During the intermission she’d arrange it so that he’d be left there guarding their seats, or else she’d lose him in the crowd and then go and join Anatole near the door, out in the street.