Inevitable (23 page)

S
HE STAYED AT HOME
for a day, tired, and deep inside, almost unconsciously, nevertheless frightened of meeting him. But Mrs Uxeley, who would not hear of sickness or exhaustion, was so upset that the following day Cornélie accompanied her to the Promenade des Anglais. Acquaintances came up and talked to them and thronged about their chairs; and among them was Rudolf Brox. But Cornélie avoided all familiarity. A week later, though, he appeared at Mrs Uxeley’s at-home day, and in the round of the formalities—these were courtesy calls after the party—he was able to speak to her alone for a minute. He approached her with that smile of his, as if his eyes, as if his moustache, were smiling. And she collected her thoughts, so as to be strong with him.

“Rudolf,” she said in an aloof tone. “It’s simply ridiculous. If you don’t find it tactless, then at least try to find it ridiculous. It tickles your sense of humour, but just think what people would say about this in Holland … The other day at the party you took me by surprise and—I don’t know how—I found myself giving in to your strange desire to dance with me and lead the
cotillon
figures. I freely admit I was confused. Now I can see everything plainly and clearly and I’m telling you: I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to turn the high seriousness of our divorce into farce.”

“You know from before that that lofty tone gets you
nowhere with me, these airs and graces and that grand manner, and on the contrary it prompts me to do exactly what you don’t want …”

“If that’s the case, I’ll simply tell Mrs Uxeley about my relationship with you and ask her to deny you access to her house …”

He laughed. She got angry.

“Do you intend to act like a gentleman? Or like a blackguard?”

He went red and his fists clenched.

“Damn!” he hissed into his moustache.

“Would you like to strike me and abuse me perhaps?” she went on contemptuously.

He controlled himself.

“We’re in a full drawing-room at the moment,” she continued, taunting him. “What if we were alone? Your fist is already clenching! You’d beat me as you did once before. Brute! Brute!!!”

“And you’re brave in that full drawing-room!” he laughed, with that laugh of his that drove her into a fury, if she was not held in check by it. “No, I wouldn’t beat you,” he went on. “I’d kiss you …”

“This is the last time you’ll ever talk to me!” she hissed in fury. “Go away! Go away! I don’t know what I’ll do, I’ll make a scene!”

He sat down calmly.

“Go ahead,” he said quietly.

She stood in front of him trembling, powerless. People talked to her, the servant brought round tea. She was in a circle of gentlemen, and controlling herself she joked with a shrill, nervous kind of jollity and flirted
more provocatively than ever. There was a small court around her, with the Duke di Luca the most forward of all. Rudolf Brox sat close by drinking his tea, ostensibly calm, as if biding his time. But his powerful, domineering blood was seething wildly. He could have killed her and was apoplectic with jealousy. That woman was his, whatever the law said. He would no longer shrink from any scandal. She was beautiful, she was as he wanted her and he wanted her, his wife. He knew how he would win her back and once he had he did not want to lose her again: then she would be his, for as long as he chose. As soon as it was possible to speak to her alone, he turned to her again. She was about to go over to Urania, whom she saw sitting with Mrs Uxeley, when he spoke in her ear, severe, brusque, gruff, “Cornélie …”

She turned round involuntarily, but with her haughty look. She would have preferred to walk on past, but she could not: something prevented her, a mysterious power and superiority, which sounded in his voice and sank into her with a bronze weight that drained and paralysed her energy.

“What is it?”

“I want to speak to you alone for a moment.”

“No.”

“Oh yes. Listen to me calmly for a moment if you can. I’m calm too, you can see, There’s no need to be afraid of me. I assure you I won’t mistreat you, or even swear. But I must speak to you, alone. After our meeting, and after the ball last week, we can’t part just like that. You don’t even have the right to throw me out any more after talking to me and dancing with me the other day.
There’s no reason or logic in that. You got worked up … But don’t let either of us get worked up any more. I’d like to talk to you …”

“I can’t: Mrs Uxeley doesn’t like me to leave the drawing-room, when people are here. I’m dependent on her.”

He laughed.

“You’re even more dependent on her than you once were on me. But you can allow me a moment, in the next room.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to talk to me about?”

“I can’t say that here.”

“I can’t talk to you alone.”

“Shall I tell you something? You’re afraid.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes you are, you’re afraid of me. For all your airs and graces and snootiness you’re simply afraid to be alone with me for a moment.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Yes you are. You’re not sure of yourself. You received me with a nice speech that you rehearsed in advance. Now you’ve said your piece … it’s over and you’re frightened.”

“I’m not afraid …”

“Come with me for a moment then, brave writer of the Social Position … how did it go again? Come on, come with me for a moment. I promise you, I swear to you that I’ll be calm, will say calmly what I have to say to you and you have my word of honour that I won’t strike you … What room can we go into …? Don’t you want
to? Listen: if you don’t come with me for a moment, it won’t be the end of it. Otherwise it might be … and you’ll never see me again.”

“What can you have to say to me.”

“Come with me …”

It was because of his voice, not what he said.

“But no more than three minutes.”

“No more than three minutes.”

She took him into the corridor and into an empty drawing-room. “What is it?” she asked, afraid.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, with his smiling moustache.

“Don’t be afraid. I simply wanted to say to you …
that
you’re my wife.
Do you understand? Don’t try to contradict me. I felt it the other day at the ball, when I had you in my arms, waltzing with you. Don’t try to deny that you pressed yourself against me for a moment.
You’re my wife.
I felt it then and I feel it now. And you feel it too, though you’re trying to deny it. But it won’t do you any good. You can’t change what has been and what has been … is still inside you. Try and tell me that I’m not speaking politely and tactfully now. You won’t hear a single curse or a word out of place from my lips. Because I don’t want to upset you. I just want to get you to admit … that what I’m saying is true: and
that you’re still my wife
. That law means nothing. There’s another law that governs us. There’s a law that governs you in particular. A law that brings us back together, without our ever having imagined it, even if it is by a strange roundabout route that you, you especially, took. That law governs you in particular. I am convinced you’re still in love with me. I feel it, I’m
sure of it: don’t try to deny it. None of it will do you
any
good, Cornélie. And shall I tell you something else? I’m still in love with you too and more than before. When you flirt with those fellows, I feel it. I could strangle you and give those fellows a good hiding … Don’t worry. I shan’t do it: I’m not in a rage. On the contrary, I wanted to talk calmly to you and show you the truth. Can you see it in front of you … so ir … re … vo … cably? You see, you’ve nothing to say against it. It is as it is. Are you going to throw me out? Are you going to speak to Mrs Uxeley? I wouldn’t if I were you. Your friend, the princess, knows who I am: let that suffice. Had the old girl never heard my name, or had she forgotten it? Must have forgotten it. Don’t prod her old memory now. Let it be. It’s better if you say nothing. No, the situation is not ridiculous and it’s not funny. It’s become very serious: the simple truth is always serious. It’s strange, though, I would never have thought it. It’s a revelation for me too … And now I have said all I wanted to you. Less than five minutes by my watch. They will scarcely have missed you in the drawing-room. And now I’m going, but first give your husband a kiss, because I’ll always be your husband.”

She stood before him trembling. It was his voice, pouring into her soul, into her body like molten bronze, draining her strength and paralysing her. It was his persuasive voice, his persuasive, seductive voice, the voice that she remembered from the past that forced her to bow to his will. Beneath that voice she was like an object, a thing that belonged to him, after he had first left his imprint on her as his wife. She was helpless to expel him
from within her, to shake him off, to erase the brand of possession from her. She was his, and everything that was hers had deserted her. There was no more memory or thought in her brain.

She saw him approaching and putting his arms around her. He hugged her slowly but so firmly that it was as if he were taking complete possession of her. She felt herself melting away in his arms as if in a warmth-giving flame. She felt his mouth on her lips, his moustache pressing, pressing, pressing, till she closed her eyes, half fainting. He went on speaking softly into her ear with that voice, beneath which she counted for nothing, as if she were nothing, as if she existed only through him. When he let go of her, she swayed.

“Come on, pull yourself together,” she heard him saying, omnipotent and sure of himself. “And accept things as they are. That is just how it is. There’s nothing to be done. Thank you for letting me say my piece. Everything’s right between us now, I’m sure of it. And now good-bye for now.
Au revoir
…”

He kissed her again.

“Give me a kiss in return,” he asked, with that voice of his …

She threw her arms round him and kissed him on the mouth.

“
Au revoir,
” he said again.

She saw him smiling, that smiling moustache, and his eyes smiled at her with a golden flame, and he went. She heard his steps descending the stairs, then ringing on the marble of the hall, with the power of his firm tread … She stood there, her mind a blank. In the drawing-room,
next to the room she was in, there was a loud buzz of laughing voices. She saw Rome before her, Duco, in a short lightning flash … It had gone … And sinking onto a chair, she let out a stifled cry of despair, covered her face with her hands and gave a muffled sob—keeping her helplessness hidden from all those people—as if she were suffocating.

S
HE HAD ONLY ONE
THOUGHT
: to flee. To flee from his mastery, to flee the emanation of his dominance, which mysteriously but inexorably erased every trace of will, energy, self, with his embrace. She remembered she had felt the same before: rebellion and anger when he became angry and coarse, but an annihilation of herself when he embraced her, an inability to think when he laid his hand on her head, a swooning into a single great nothingness, when he took her in his arms and kissed her. She had felt it from the first time she had seen him, that he stood in front of her and looked down at her with that hint of irony in his voice and his moustache, as if he were enjoying her resistance—then still in the form of flirtatiousness, later irritability, later passion and rage—as if he were enjoying her vain woman’s attempts to escape his domination. He had seen at once that he dominated this woman. And she had found in him her master, her sole master. No other man oppressed her like this with this majesty that stemmed from blood and flesh. On the contrary, she was usually the superior one. She had a cool indifference about her, which always prompted her to destructive criticism. She had a need for jokes, for a merry conversation, for coquettishness and flirting, and being never lost for an answer she created openings for ripostes, but apart from that she did not have a high opinion of men, and saw the ridiculous side of everyone:
this one was too small, that one too tall, this one gauche, the other stupid; in everyone she found something that provoked her laughter and criticism. She would never be a woman who gave herself to many men. She had met Duco and given him her love totally and unconditionally, as a great, indivisible, golden gift, and after him she would never love again. But before Duco she had met Rudolf Brox. Perhaps if she had met him after Duco, his mastery would not have dominated her … She did not know. And what was the good of puzzling about that? It was as it was as it was. In her blood she was not a woman for many: in her blood she was all wife, spouse, mate. In her flesh, in her blood she was the wife of the man who had been her husband, she was his wife, even without love. Because she could not call this love; love was only that exalted, tender feeling, that deep perfection of harmonious existence, that progression together along a golden line, merged from two glistening lines … But as if in a cloud the hands had loomed up around them, and mysteriously, fatefully forced their golden line apart, and hers, a winding arabesque, had sprung back like a trembling coil and had crossed a dark line from her past, a gloomy path from the past, a dark avenue of unconsciousness and fateful slavery. Oh, how strange, how infinitely mysterious and strange those lifelines were: they could be curled back, forced back to their starting point! Why had it all been necessary?

She had only one thought: to flee. She did not see the gradualness of things, and the fatefulness of those paths, and she did not want to feel the force of the ghostly hands. She wanted to flee, to turn back along the dark
path, back to the point of division, back to Duco, and fight with him, wrestle those two paths that had gone astray back into a single pure direction, back into a single line of happiness …

To flee, to flee. She told Urania that she was going. She begged Urania to forgive her, since Urania had recommended her to an old woman whom she was now suddenly deserting.

And she told Mrs Uxeley, without worrying about her anger, her fury and her abuse. She admitted that she appeared ungrateful. But there was a matter of life and death that obliged her to leave Nice suddenly. She swore that it was true. She swore that she feared disaster and doom if she stayed. She explained to Urania in a few words. But she did not explain it to the old woman, and left her in a state of helpless fury that contorted her body with rheumatic pains. She left behind everything that she had received from Mrs Uxeley, her sumptuous wardrobe of dependency. She put on an old dress. She made her way furtively to the station, trembling at the possibility of meeting him. But she knew that at this time of day he was always in Monte Carlo. Still, she went in a closed cab, and bought a second-class ticket to Florence. She sent a telegram to Duco. And she fled. She had nothing but him. She could no longer count on Mrs Uxeley, and Urania too had been cool, unable to understand this sudden flight, because she did not understand the simple truth: Rudolf Brox’s dominance. She thought Cornélie was making life difficult for herself. In the circles in which Urania moved, her sense of social morality had been wavering since her liaison with the Chevalier de Breuil. Surrounded by the
whispered Italian law of love according to which love is as simple as a rose that opens, she could not understand Cornélie’s struggle. She no longer blamed Gilio for anything and on his side, he left her free. What was Cornélie thinking of? It was so simple, if she still loved her ex-husband! Why was she running away to Duco, and making herself ridiculous in the eyes of all their friends! And she had said goodbye coolly, but still missed her friend. She was the Princess di Forte-Braccio and recently, for her birthday, Prince Ercole had sent her a large emerald from the carefully preserved family jewels, as if she were slowly becoming worthy of them, stone by stone! But she missed Cornélie, and she felt alone, dreadfully alone, despite her emerald and her lover …

Cornélie fled: she had nothing but Duco. But in him she would have everything. And when she saw him in Florence, at Santa Maria Novella station, she threw herself into his arms, as if he were a cross of salvation, a Saviour and a sanctuary. He took her sobbing to a cab and they drove to his room. Once there she looked round nervously, exhausted with the strain after her long journey, constantly thinking that Rudolf would pursue her. She told Duco everything, she opened herself completely to him, as if he were her conscience, her soul, her god. She nestled against him like a child, she stroked him, she caressed him; she said he had to help her. It was as if she were praying to him; her fear rose up to him like a prayer. He kissed her, and she knew that way of comforting, she knew that soft caressing. She suddenly collapsed against him inertly, and stayed there and closed her eyes. It was as if she were sinking into a lake, a blue sacred lake, mystical
as the lake of San Stefano at night when the world was asleep, powdered with stars. And she heard him say that he would help her. That her fear meant nothing. That the man had no power over her. That he would never have power over her if she became his, Duco’s wife. She looked at him and did not understand. She looked at him feverishly, as if he were suddenly waking her, while she was sleeping blissfully in the blue calm of the mystical lake. She did not understand, but exhausted hid in his arms and fell asleep.

She was worn out. For several hours she slept on his chest, motionless, breathing deeply. When he shifted his arm she stirred for a moment like a flower on a limp stalk, but went on sleeping, with her hand in his. She slept as she had not slept for days, weeks.