La Chamade Read online

  'Have you seen the play?'

  'No. I never go to the theatre. And you?'

  'Very rarely. Last time, I saw that charming English comedy at the Atelier, with an actress who was later killed in a car accident. What was her name? I've forgotten.'

  'Sarah,' he said softly, and laid both hands flat on the tablecloth.

  His expression petrified Lucile for a second. She thought suddenly: 'My God, he's really unhappy!'

  'Forgive me,' she said.

  He turned toward her and asked, 'What?' in a dreary voice. He no longer saw her. She could hear him breathing, unevenly, like a man who had received a shock and the idea that she had caused it, although unintentionally, hurt her deeply. She took no pleasure in being insolent, and even less in being cruel. 'What are you dreaming about, Antoine?' Diane's voice had a strange sound, just a shade too light, and created a silence. Antoine did not answer: he seemed blind and deaf.

  'He really is dreaming and no mistake,' said Claire, laughing. 'Antoine, Antoine ... '

  Nothing. Now there was a dead silence. Forks in hand, motionless, the guests watched the pale young man as he sat staring at a not very interesting decanter in the centre of the table. Lucile quickly laid her hand on his sleeve and he stirred: 'What did you say?'

  'I said you were dreaming,' replied Diane curtly, 'and we wondered what about. Is it indiscreet?'

  'It's always indiscreet,' interposed Charles. He looked attentively at Antoine now, like everyone else. Antoine had arrived as Diane's latest lover, possibly her gigolo, and now suddenly he had become a young dreamer. A gust of envy, of nostalgia, passed over the table.

  And, in Claire's mind, a gust of spite. After all, this was a dinner for the happy few, the well-known, brilliant, amusing, in touch with everything. The young man should have listened, approved, laughed. If he was dreaming of a dinner with some schoolgirl in a Latin Quarter snack-bar, he had but to leave Diane, one of the most charming and fashionable women in Paris. And one who bore well her forty-five years. Except tonight; she was pale and watchful. If she had not known her so well, Claire might have imagined Diane to be unhappy. She continued:

  'I bet you were dreaming about a Ferrari. Carlos bought the latest model. He took me for a ride in it the other day and I thought my last hour had come. And Heaven knows he's a good driver!' she added with a shade of surprise, for Carlos was heir to some throne or other and she thought it exceptional that he should be able to do anything but sit in the Crillon lobby, waiting for the return of the monarchy.

  Antoine turned to Lucile and smiled. He had light brown, almost yellow eyes, a straight nose, a wide handsome mouth, and a certain virility that contrasted with the fairness of his hair.

  'Please forgive me,' he said in a low voice. 'You must think me very rude.'

  He looked at her squarely, his eyes did not wander idly over her shoulders or the tablecloth, as men's usually do, and he seemed to exclude completely the rest of the table.

  'We've exchanged three sentences and begged each other's pardon twice,' said Lucile.

  'We're beginning at the end,' he answered gaily. 'Couples always end by asking pardon, or at least one of the two does. "I beg your pardon but I don't love you anymore." '

  'That's still quite elegant. Personally, what irks me is the honest approach: "I beg your pardon, I thought I loved you, I was mistaken. It's my duty to tell you so." '

  'That can't have happened to you often,' said Antoine.

  'Thank you very much!'

  'I mean that you can't have given many men the chance to say it. Your bags would have been packed and waiting in a taxi.'

  'Particularly since my luggage consists of two sweaters and a toothbrush,' said Lucile with a laugh.

  He paused, then: 'Oh? I thought you were Blassans-Lignières' mistress.'

  'What a pity,' she thought quickly. 'I thought he was intelligent.' For her there was no possibility of coexistence between gratuitous malice and intelligence.

  That's true,' she replied, 'you're quite right. If I left now, it would be in my car, with lots of dresses. Charles is very generous.'

  She had spoken calmly. Antoine lowered his eyes.

  'Forgive me. I detest this dinner and this group.'

  'Then don't come here anymore. At your age, it's dangerous anyway.'

  'You know, little one,' said Antoine, suddenly irritated, 'I'm most certainly older than you.'

  She broke into laughter. Diane and Charles regarded them fixedly. They had been placed next to each other at the other end of the table, facing their 'protégés': the parents on one side, the children on the other. Children of thirty who refused to play at being grown-up. Lucile stopped laughing: she did nothing with her life, loved no one. If she were not so happy to be alive, she would have killed herself.

  Antoine laughed. Diane suffered. She had seen him laugh with another. He never laughed with her. She would have even preferred that he kiss Lucile. It was frightening, that laugh, his suddenly youthful expression. What were they laughing about? Diane glanced at Charles, but he was watching them fondly. Charles had become idiotic in the last two years. Lucile had charm and very good manners, but she was neither a beauty nor an intellectual phenomenon. Nor was Antoine, for that matter. She had had other men better looking than Antoine, and mad about her. Yes, mad. But it was Antoine that she loved. She loved him, she wanted him to love her, and someday she would have him at her mercy. He would forget that dear, departed actress and she, Diane, would be everything to him. Sarah ... how often she had heard that name: Sarah. He had spoken of her at first, until one day, exasperated, she had told him that Sarah had been unfaithful to him, that everyone knew. He had said blankly: 'I knew it too.' And they had never mentioned her name again. But he whispered it in his sleep. Soon ... soon, when he turned over in his sleep and stretched his arm over her body in the dark, it would be her own name he would whisper. Suddenly, she felt her eyes fill with tears. She began to cough and Charles patted her gently on the back. This dinner seemed endless. Claire Santrè had drunk a little too much, as happened to her more and more frequently. She discussed paintings with an assurance that far surpassed her knowledge, and Johnny, a connoisseur, was visibly suffering.

  'Well,' said Claire in conclusion, 'when this young fellow showed up with that thing under his arm, when I turned it to the light, thinking my sight was failing me, do you know what I said?'

  The guests wearily shook their heads.

  'I said: "Monsieur, I thought I had eyes to see with, but I was mistaken; I see nothing on your canvas, Monsieur, absolutely nothing." '

  And with an eloquent gesture, no doubt intended to illustrate the picture's emptiness, she upset her wine glass on the tablecloth. Everybody seized the opportunity to get up, Lucile and Antoine with heads lowered to hide their uncontrollable laughter.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There can never be enough said of the virtues, the dangers, the powers of a shared laugh. Love can no more do without it than can friendship, desire or despair. Between Antoine and Lucile, it was the impromptu laugh of students. The two of them, desired, pampered, loved by serious adults, knowing they would be punished in one way or another, gave in to their helpless laughter in a corner of the drawing-room. Parisian etiquette, even if it separates lovers during dinner, nonetheless calls for a short truce afterward, when one recovers his bedmate for an exchange of gossip, loving words or reprovals. Diane waited for Antoine to rejoin her and Charles had already taken the first step in Lucile's direction. But the latter obstinately continued to look out the window, her eyes filled with tears, and the moment her glance fell upon Antoine standing nearby, she quickly turned away while he hid his face behind a handkerchief. Claire tried to ignore them, but it was evident that an atmosphere of jealousy and rancour now dominated the drawing-room. She sent Johnny on his way with a nod of her head that signified 'tell those children to behave themselves or they won't be invited again', a nod of the head that, unfortunately, was seen by Antoine who, overcome anew
, was forced to prop himself against the wall. Johnny assumed a gay expression:

  'For Heaven's sake, tell me what it's all about, Lucile, I'm dying of curiosity.'

  'Nothing,' said Lucile. 'nothing, absolutely nothing, that's what makes it so terrible.'

  'Terrible,' echoed Antoine. He was completely dishevelled, youthful, splendid, and Johnny felt a moment of violent desire.

  But Diane arrived. She was angry and anger was becoming to her. Her superb bearing, her celebrated green eyes, her extreme slenderness made her a spirited war horse.

  'What can you have found to say to each other that is so funny?' she asked in a voice tinged with doubt and indulgence, but especially doubt.

  'Us? Oh, nothing,' said Antoine innocently. And the 'us' that she had never obtained from him for any project, for any memory, brought Diane's fury to a climax.

  'Then stop conducting yourselves in such a vulgar manner. If you aren't amusing, at least be polite.'

  There was a short silence. Lucile thought it normal that Diane scolded her lover, but the use of the plural seemed slightly excessive to her.

  'You're losing your head,' she said. 'It's not your business to forbid me to laugh.'

  'Nor me,' said Antoine slowly.

  'Excuse me, I'm tired,' said Diane. 'Good night. Could you escort me?' she asked poor Charles, who had approached them.

  Charles assented and Lucile smiled at him:

  'I'll join you at home.'

  Their departure caused the sort of hubbub that follows a flare-up, everyone speaking of something else for several minutes before concentrating on the details, and Lucile and Antoine remained alone. She leaned on the balcony and looked at him pensively. He calmly smoked.

  'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I should have controlled my temper.'

  'Come,' he replied, 'I'll accompany you before it becomes dramatic.'

  Claire, with an understanding expression, saw them to the door. They were quite right in leaving, but she remembered so well what it was to be young. They formed a charming couple. She could help them... but no, there was Charles; where was her mind tonight?

  Paris was black, glowing, seductive, and they decided to walk home.

  The relief they first felt on seeing the door shut on Claire's look of false conspiracy changed suddenly into a desire to leave, to know, in any case to finish with a sort of violence, this disjointed evening.

  Lucile had no intention, not even for a second, of playing the rôle so tacitly insinuated in the expressions of the others when she had said goodbye: that of the young woman who deserts her ageing protector for a handsome young man. She had told Charles one day: I shall make you unhappy, perhaps, but never ridiculous.' And, in fact, the few times that she had been unfaithful to him he could have suspected nothing.

  This evening was absurd. What was she doing in the street with this stranger? She turned to him and smiled.

  'Don't look so gloomy,' he said. 'We'll stop for a drink on the way.'

  But they had several. They stopped at five bars, avoiding two because it was obviously unbearable for Antoine to enter with someone other than Sarah, and they talked. They crossed and recrossed the Seine as they spoke, up the Rue de Rivoli as far as the Concorde, entered Harry's Bar and left again. The morning wind had begun. Lucile reeled from sleepiness, whisky and his kindness.

  'She was unfaithful to me,' said Antoine. 'The poor thing thought that to sleep with producers or journalists was the thing to do. She lied to me continually, and I despised her as I played the proud, the ironic, the judge. By what right, dear God? She loved me, yes, she must have loved me, because she had nothing to gain ...'

  'That night, the eve of her death, she almost begged me to stop her from leaving for Deauville. But I told her: "Go ahead, go if it amuses you !" What an ass, what a conceited ass I was?'

  They crossed a bridge. He questioned her.

  'I've never understood anything about anything,' said Lucile. 'Life seemed logical enough until I left my parents. I wanted to take a degree in Paris. I dreamed. Since then, I'm looking for parents everywhere, in my lovers, in my friends. I'm content having nothing of my own, not the smallest plan, not the tiniest worry. I'm in tune with life. It's strange, I don't know why, something in me harmonises with life the moment I awaken. I shall never change. What can I do? Work? I'm not talented. I must fall in love, perhaps, like you. Antoine, Antoine, what are you doing with Diane?'

  'She loves me,' said Antoine. 'And I like women tall and slim. Sarah was short and fat and it made me weep with sympathy. Can you understand that? And what's more, she bored me.'

  Fatigue became him. They walked slowly up the Rue du Bac and entered a brightly-lit café. They gazed at each other frankly, without a smile, without a frown. The juke box played an old Strauss waltz, and a drunkard attempted, lurchingly, to dance at the other end of the bar. 'It's late, it's so late,' whined a small voice inside Lucile. 'Charles must be mad with anxiety. Go home, you aren't even interested in this boy.'

  And suddenly she felt her cheek against Antoine's coat. He held her against him with one arm, his head touching her hair, and he said nothing. She felt a strange tranquillity steal over them. The proprietor, the drunkard, the music, the lights had always existed; or, perhaps, she had never existed herself. She didn't understand anything anymore. They took a taxi to her door and they said goodbye politely, without another word.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  But they were soon to see each other again. Diane had made a scene, and after that not a woman present at the dinner would have imagined inviting Diane without Charles, or more exactly, Antoine without Lucile. Diane had changed camps: she had left the tyrant's camp, where she had played such an able part for twenty years, to join the victims. She was jealous, she had shown it, she was lost. Quiet rumours of the kill floated on the spring air. By one of the curious turnabouts so typical of her set, the things that had contributed to her force and her prestige had now become liabilities: her beauty 'not like when she was young', her jewels not 'enough' (when the least among them would have been more than enough for any one of her friends the week before), down to her Rolls-Royce 'at least she has that'. Poor Diane: envy had turned itself inside out like a glove; she would wear out her face with cosmetics, bruise her heart against her diamonds, go riding with her Pekingese in the Rolls. At last, at last she could be pitied.

  She was aware of all that. She knew Paris well and had had the good fortune, at thirty, to have married an intelligent writer who had pointed out the workings of the machinery before fleeing, horrified himself. Diane had a certain courage that was due to her Irish ancestry, a sadistic nurse who had brought her up, and a private fortune that permitted her to do as she pleased without bending to anyone. Say what you like, adversity humbles the spirit, especially of a woman. And Diane, who had more or less escaped all passion, had never looked at a man except in the measure that he looked at her, now saw herself with horror spying on Antoine. And already she was thinking of other means than passion to bind him to her.

  What did he want? He wasn't interested in money. His publisher paid him a ridiculous salary and he flatly refused to take her out when he couldn't afford it. That meant that they often had dinner, the two of them, at her flat, an idea that would have been unthinkable only six months earlier. Fortunately there were the first nights, suppers and dinners, the festivities offered gratuitously to the rich in Paris. Antoine sometimes said vaguely that books were his only interest, and that one day he would succeed in the publishing business. And, in fact, at the dinners he only came alive if he found someone willing to discuss, rather gravely, literature with him. As literary lovers were the fashion that year, Diane, stimulated slightly, had spoken to him of the Prix Goncourt, but he had insisted that he didn't know how to write and, more important, that the contrary was indispensable in producing a book. She had been persistent just the same: I'm sure that if you really wanted ...' 'Think of that young X ...' 'Oh, no, no!' had cried Antoine, who never raised his voice. No, he
would finish his life as a reader at Renoard's, with two hundred thousand francs a month and would still be mourning Sarah fifty years later. Meanwhile, Diane loved him.

  She had spent a sleepless night after Claire's dinner: Antoine had returned at dawn, probably drunk, and gone straight to his room. She had telephoned him every hour, ready to hang up at the sound of his voice. She only wanted to know where he was. At six-thirty he had answered at last, murmuring simply: 'I'm sleepy' without even asking who it was. He must have made the round of bars at Saint-Germain, perhaps with Lucile. She wouldn't speak to him of Lucile; one must never give a name to that of which one is afraid.

  The next day she telephoned Claire to apologise for having left so abruptly: she had had such a terrible headache all the evening.

  'I noticed that you didn't look very well,' said Claire, always understanding and affable.