La Chamade Read online

  And Lucile, amused by Antoine's confused expression, laughed with her. They gave the impression of conspiracy, and a masculine anger flared up in Antoine: 'What! I've just left the arms of one, I'm going to sleep with the other, and together they're making fun of me! It's really too much!'

  'Just what did I say that was so funny?' he asked.

  'But not a thing,' answered Diane. 'You seem to show an elaborate concern for Destret's bad temper, when you know as well as I that he's always in a rage. It amuses us, that's all.'

  She walked out first and Lucile followed, making a contemptuous and disgusted grimace for Antoine's benefit. He hesitated, then smiled. She had said, 'I love you for keeps' only two hours earlier and he remembered her voice when she said it. She could be as impertinent as she pleased now.

  In the drawing-room, Lucile fell upon Johnny who was feeling bored and, consequently, hurried up to her with a drink and guided her toward the window.

  'I adore you, Lucile,' he said. 'With you, at least, I'm at ease. I know you won't tell me what you think of the guests' morals, or rant about the latest play.'

  'You tell me that every time.'

  'Be careful,' he said brusquely. 'You look insolently happy.'

  She absently ran her hand over her face, as though happiness were a mask that she had forgotten to remove. For indeed, that day she had said 'I love you' to someone who had answered 'I do, too'. Did it show so much? All of a sudden, she felt that she was the centre of attraction, that every eye was fixed on her. She blushed, gulped down the almost undiluted whisky that Johnny had given her.

  'It's just that I'm in a good humour,' she said feebly, 'and think that these people are charming.'

  And Lucile, who so seldom made an effort at parties, suddenly decided to apologise for her beaming face, just as certainly ugly women talk unceasingly in order to make people forget their plainness. Lucile went from group to group, amiably, confused, going so far as to congratulate the astonished Claire on her wonderful dress. Charles' eyes followed her, intrigued, and he had almost decided to take her home when Diane took him by the arm.

  'This is the first nice evening of spring, Charles. We're going dancing. No one feels sleepy, and Lucile least of all.'

  She gave Lucile a kindly, amused glance and Charles, who knew her jealousy and who, besides, had seen her draw Lucile aside for a few minutes, suddenly felt reassured. Lucile must have forgotten Antoine. And without saying so, it was a sort of gala, a festivity in honour of peace, that Diana had offered him. He accepted.

  They were all to meet in a night club. Charles and Lucile were the first to appear, they danced, they talked gaily, for Lucile, once started, chattered like a magpie. All of a sudden she stopped. She saw in the doorway a tall man, a little taller than the others, with a dark blue suit and his eyes were yellow. She knew that man's face by heart, every scar under the dark blue suit and the shape of his shoulders. He came up to them and sat down. Diane was downstairs making-up her face and he asked Lucile to dance. The pressure of his hand on her shoulder, the touch of his palm against hers and the strange distance he kept between his cheek and Lucile's, a distance that Lucile recognised to be that of desire, stirred her so deeply that she even pretended to look slightly bored in order to deceive a public that took no notice of her. This was the first time that she had danced with Antoine, and they danced to one of the lilting, sentimental tunes played everywhere that spring.

  He took her back to her table. Diane had returned and was dancing with Charles. They sat on the banquette, at some distance from each other.

  'Did you have a nice time?' Antoine asked, looking furious.

  'Why, yes,' answered Lucile, surprised. 'Didn't you?'

  'Not at all,' he said. 'I never have a good time at that sort of party and, unlike you, I have a horror of false situations.'

  The truth was that he had been unable to talk to Lucile during the whole evening and he wanted her. The idea that she would leave with Charles in a few minutes filled him with bitterness. He lapsed into a kind of virtuous exclusiveness that is so often caused by frustrated desire.

  'You're made for this sort of life,' he said.

  'What about you?'

  'I'm not. Some men exhibit their virility by navigating between two women. My virility prevents me from having pleasure in making them suffer.'

  'If you had seen yourself in Diane's room!' exclaimed Lucile. 'You looked so sheepish...'

  She began to laugh.

  'Don't laugh,' said Antoine, controlling his voice. 'In ten minutes you'll be in Charles' arms, or alone. In either case, far from me...'

  'But tomorrow...'

  I've had enough of tomorrows,' he replied. 'You must understand that.'

  Lucile was silent. She tried unsuccessfully to look grave. Alcohol made her feel unreasonably happy. An unknown young man asked her to dance but Antoine curtly sent him away, much to her annoyance. She would have been glad to dance, talk, or even run away with someone else, she felt freed of every obligation, except that of enjoying herself.

  I've had a little too much to drink,' she said plaintively.

  'That's obvious,' answered Antoine.

  'Perhaps you should have done the same, you're surely not amusing.'

  This was their first quarrel. She looked at his childlike, obstinate profile and softened.

  'Antoine, you know very well...'

  'Yes, yes, that you love me for keeps.'

  And he got up. Diane came back to their table. Charles seemed tired. He gave Lucile an imploring glance and asked Diane to excuse them: he had to be up early the next morning and the place was really too noisy for him. Lucile did not protest and followed him. But in the car, and for the first time since she had met Charles, she felt like a prisoner.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Diane was removing her make-up in the bathroom. Antoine had turned on the pick-up, sat down on the floor and listened, without hearing, a Beethoven concerto. Diane saw him in a mirror and smiled. Antoine always sat in front of the pick-up, as he might have before a pagan image or a wood fire. She had wasted her time in explaining to him that the sound from the new loud speakers came from both sides of the room, converging in the centre on a level with her bed, he always settled down in front of the apparatus, as though fascinated by the record's black, shining rotation. She carefully took off her day time make-up then applied another for the night, specially prepared to conceal wrinkles without deepening them. It was out of the question to let her skin breathe (as advised by women's magazines) any more than she could allow her heart to breathe. She hadn't the time now. She considered her beauty indispensable in holding Antoine, and for that reason, she did not try to save it for a future without interest. Some characters, the most generous ones, concentrate only on the present and burn the rest. Diane was among them.

  Antoine stiffened as he heard faint noises in the bathroom: the tearing Kleenex and the swish of a hairbrush more than covered the violins and brasses of the concerto. Another five minutes and he would have to get up, undress and slip into those so soft sheets, next to that so exquisitely groomed woman, in this so lovely room. But he wanted Lucile. Lucile had come to his room and fallen on the landlady's rickety bed, Lucile had undressed at top speed and vanished as quickly, she was elusive, his little thief, his guest. She would never settle down, he would never wake at her side, she was a transitory being. What was more, he had ruined her evening; he felt his throat tighten with an adolescent despair.

  Diane appeared in her blue dressing-gown and for a second studied the back, the rigid neck that she refused to consider hostile. She was tired, she had, exceptionally, drunk a little, she was in a good humour. She wanted Antoine to talk to her, laugh with her, tell her about his childhood without holding anything back. She did not know that he was obsessed by dissimulation, by the moral obligation of their love-making which he incorrectly thought to be the only thing she wanted of him. So when she sat down and slipped her arm through his in a friendly way, he thought: '
yes, yes, just a second,' with a mental caddishness that was most unusual in him. For even in his shabbiest adventures, he had always preserved a certain respect for love, like the minute of silence, before laying his hand on a woman.

  'I like that concerto,' said Diane.

  'It's very pretty,' agreed Antoine in the polite tone of someone lying on the beach, who has been disturbed to remark on the blue of the Mediterranean.

  'The party was quite a success, wasn't it?'

  'With all of the fireworks,' he replied, and stretched out on the carpet, his eyes closed.

  He seemed immense as he lay there, more solitary than ever. He still heard the sarcastic, unkind intonation of his own voice and hated himself for it. Diane remained motionless, 'handsome, old and painted'. Where had he read that? Pepys' Diary?

  'Were you so bored?' she asked.

  She stood up, walked about the room, straightened a flower in a vase, ran her hand fondly over a piece of furniture. He watched her through his lashes. She loved these things, she loved these damned things, and he was one of them, the prize piece of her collection, he was a kept young man. Not really kept, of course, but he dined with 'her friends', slept in 'her flat', lived 'her life'. It was easy enough for him to judge Lucile. At least Lucile was a woman.

  'Why don't you answer? Were you that bored?'

  Her voice. Her questions. Her dressing-gown. Her perfume. He could stand it no longer. He rolled over on his stomach, his face in his arms. She knelt by him.

  'Antoine... Antoine...'

  There was such desolation, such tenderness in her voice that he turned over. Her eyes were shining a bit too much. Looking away, he drew her to him. Her movement was awkward, frightened, as she lay down by him, as though she were afraid of breaking something or had a touch of rheumatism. And by a lack of love for Diane, he suddenly wanted her.

  Charles had left for New York, alone, the trip reduced to four days. Lucile wandered through the hazy blue streets of Paris in the open car. She awaited summer, recognised its approach in every scent, in every shimmer of the Seine. She imagined already the smell of dust, trees and earth that would soon invade the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the night, the tall chestnut trees outlined against the pink sky and all but concealing it; the street lamps always lit too early, their professional pride humbled by changing from valuable guides in winter to summer parasites—squeezed between the lingering nightfall and the dawn already impatient on the horizon. The first evening, she roamed about Saint-Germain-des-Prés, met friends from the university and from later days, who greeted her with shouts as though she was the ghost she soon felt herself to be. After the exchange of a few jokes, a few memories, she realised that their lives were dominated by a profession, money worries, girl friends, and that her own unconcern was more of an annoyance to them than a distraction. One broke through a money barrier as one did through a sound barrier: each word spoken returned a few seconds late, too late, to the speaker.

  She declined to dine with them at the old bistro on the Rue Cujas; she went home at eight-thirty, a little depressed. An approving Pauline cooked a steak for her in the kitchen, and she lay down on her bed, the window wide open. Night spread rapidly over the carpet, street noises died away and she remembered the morning wind of two months before. Not a settled, languid wind like the present one, but a brash, swift and frisky wind that had forced her to get up, just as this one lulled her to sleep. Between the two, there had been Antoine; and life. She was to dine with him next day. Alone, for the first time. It troubled her. She was more afraid of boring than of being bored. But, on the other hand, life was so kind to her, there was such sweetness in lying on her bed gradually being hemmed in by the shadows, she so much approved of the idea that the world was round and life complicated that it was impossible to imagine anything unfortunate happening to her, for any reason.

  There are moments of perfect happiness, remembered sometimes in loneliness and more important than any others, which can save you from despair in a crisis. For you know that you have been happy, alone and without reason. You know that it is possible. And happiness—which seems so closely connected with someone who makes you unhappy, so irrevocably, almost organically dependent on this person—reappears to you as a thing smooth, round, intact, free and in your power (remote, surely, but possible). And this memory is more comforting than that of a happiness shared before, with someone else, for this someone, no longer loving, is seen in error and the happy memory based on nothing.

  She was to call for Antoine at six o'clock the next day. They would take Lucile's car and drive to the country for dinner. They would have the whole night to themselves. She fell asleep smiling.

  The gravel crunched under the waiters' feet, bats swooped about the terrace lights and at the next table, a congested-looking couple silently devoured an omelette flambée. It was about ten miles from Paris, it had turned rather cool and the proprietress placed a shawl over Lucile's shoulders. The inn was one among a dozen others that offered a more or less sure chance of discretion and fresh air to adulterous or weary Parisians. The wind had ruffled Antoine's hair, he laughed. Lucile told him about her childhood, a happy one.

  'My father was a notary. He had a passion for La Fontaine. He used to walk along the banks of the Indre reciting his fables. Later, he wrote some himself, changing the characters, of course. I'm surely one of the only women in France who knows by heart a fable called The Lamb and the Crow. You're lucky.'

  'I'm very lucky,' said Antoine, 'I know it. Go on.'

  'He died when I was twelve, and my brother was stricken with polio. He is still in a wheelchair. My mother was seized with a devouring passion for him, of course. She never leaves him. She's rather forgotten me, I think.'

  She paused. When she came to Paris, she managed, not without difficulty, to send some money to her mother every month. For the past two years, Charles had sent it, without ever mentioning the fact.

  'My parents hated each other,' said Antoine. 'They refused to divorce only so that I might have a home. I would have infinitely preferred to have two, I assure you.'

  He smiled, reached across the table and squeezed Lucile's hand.

  'Do you realise? We have the whole evening, the whole night.'

  'We'll go slowly back to Paris with the car open. You'll drive very slowly because it's cold. I'll light your cigarettes so you won't have to take your hands off the wheel.'

  'We'll go slowly because you want me to. We'll go dancing. Then we'll get into bed and tomorrow morning you'll know at last whether I take tea or coffee and how much sugar.'

  'Dancing? We'll run into everyone we know.'

  'So what?' asked Antoine dryly. 'You don't imagine that I'm going to spend my life hiding, do you?'

  She looked down, without answering.

  'You'll have to make a decision,' said Antoine gently. 'But not tonight, don't worry.'

  She raised her head, so obviously relieved that he could not help laughing.

  'I already know that the slightest delay enchants you. You only live in the present don't you?'

  She did not reply. She was perfectly happy with him, perfectly natural, he made her feel like laughing, talking, making love, he gave her everything and it frightened her a little.

  She woke up early the next day, and opened her bewildered eyes to the untidy room, and the long arm sprinkled with blond hairs that prevented her from stirring. She shut her eyes immediately, rolled over, smiled. She was next to Antoine, she knew what was meant by the expression 'night of love'. They had gone dancing and had met nobody. Afterward, they had returned to his room and talked, made love, smoked, talked, made love until broad daylight found them in bed, drunk with words and action, in that deep, exhausted peace that follows excesses. They had thought a little of dying that night, in their violence, and sleep had come to them like a marvellous raft on which they had climbed and stretched out before fainting, still holding hands as a last complicity. She looked at Antoine's averted profile, his neck, the stubble on h
is cheeks, the blue shadows under his eyes and it was inconceivable to her that she could have ever awakened with anyone else. She was glad to find him so dreamy and nonchalant in the daytime, so violent and precise at night. As though love roused in him a carefree pagan whose one inexorable law was pleasure.

  He moved his head, opened his eyes and gave her the babyish, half-hesitant, half-surprised glance that men have in the morning. He recognised her and smiled. His head, warm and heavy with sleep weighed on Lucile's shoulder, she looked amusedly at his big feet sticking out of the tangle of sheets at the other end of the bed. He sighed and muttered something plaintively.

  It's incredible, your eyes are an even paler yellow in the morning,' she said. 'They look like beer.'

  'How very poetical you are,' he replied.

  He sat up quickly, caught Lucile's face and turned it to the light.

  'Yours are almost blue.'

  'No, they're grey. Greyish-green.'

  'Braggart.'

  They sat in bed, face to face, naked. He still held her face in his hand, a searching expression, and they both smiled. His shoulders were very broad and bony, she freed herself and laid her cheek against his body. She listened to his heart beating wildly, as wildly as her own.

  'Your heart is thumping,' she said. 'Are you tired?'

  'No,' he answered, 'it's beating la chamade.'

  'What is a chamade, exactly?'

  'You'll have to look it up in the dictionary,' he said. 'I haven't time to explain now.'

  And he stretched lazily across the bed. It was broad daylight.

  At noon, Antoine telephoned his office, explained that he was feverish but would be there in the afternoon.

  'I know it's a schoolboy's excuse, but I don't want to be kicked out. No question of that, it's what's called my daily bread.'

  'Do you earn much money?' asked Lucile idly.

  'Very little,' he replied in the same tone. 'Do you think that it's important?'

  'No, I think that money is convenient, that's all.'

  'Convenient to the point of being important?'