The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles) (10 page)

This gallery designed for frightened children who, waking, listen to the creaking dark,
who dare not traverse certain corridors, this monstrosity, this lumber room was
Michael’s sweetness, his vein of poetry, his Achilles’ heel; betraying
some quality endemic to his nature, something innate, not borrowed from the children,
that was to make him worthy of them both. His fitness, had they known it, for election
to the Room, his marriage and his tragic fate, were here prophetically made manifest.
Here lay the answer to what had seemed so baffling: Elisabeth had chosen him, not for
his fortune or his animal spirits or his well-cut suits, not even for his sex appeal; it
was for his death that she had chosen him.

And it was in the nature of things that the children, in ransacking the whole house to
find their Room again, should overlook the gallery. Back and forth between their rooms
they drifted, like souls in torment. No longer were their nights transparent, a light
wraith vanishing at cockcrow, but an unquiet ghost, brooding above them. Having at last
achieved their separate rooms, they were determined to hang on to them, and either shut
themselves up and sulked, or went shuffling defiantly from one room to another,
tight-lipped, with daggers in their eyes.

They knew, half-fearfully, that the gallery was singing to them in a siren voice. They
stood on the threshold, hesitating, listening, taking stock.

One of the room’s peculiar properties, and not the least attractive, was its
likeness to a ship at anchor, moored by a single cable, swinging freely.

No sooner out of it than one found it quite impossible to locate; back one came, only to
find that every other room had shifted its original position. The sole clue, and that a
feeble one, was a faint sound of washing-up from the direction of the kitchen.

And all combined to weave a spell, to recall the drowsy magic of old childhood holidays
in Swiss hotels when, drunk with the thrill of riding in the ski-lift, one lay relaxed,
staring sheer down at the whole world, and at the glacier opposite—a palace made
of crystal, so close, so close … (if you were to lean—to stretch your hand
out, you could almost touch it).

The hour had struck for Michael to become their guide, to pick up the golden wand, to
trace the boundaries and lead them to the destined place.

O
NE NIGHT, when
Elisabeth’s insistent attempts to prevent Paul from going to sleep had been as
usual sulkily resisted, he suddenly jumped up, slammed the door and made a dash for the
gallery.

Deficient though he was by nature in powers of observation, he was intensely receptive to
emanations, knowing by instinct how to assimilate them and turn them to his purpose.

No sooner folded in these tenebrous vistas, these alternating panels of light and
darkness, no sooner trapped amid the litter of this derelict film set, than he became a
cat, wary, his every sense alert. His eyes began to glitter. He went padding here and
there, stopping, snuffing, not consciously aware of recognition, unable to elucidate the
double images—the Cité Monthiers hidden in the room, the floor of snow
beneath this midnight silence—but feeling along his nerves the subterranean
tremors of a buried life.

He sat down to inspect the study, got up again, dragged some screens over, set them up
round his armchair to be his boat, lay down, put his feet up, and bent himself
beatifically to the Game. But the bark put out for the dim flood and left him
stranded.

He was perturbed. His pride was injured. His vengeance upon Dargelos in the guise of a
young girl had been a hopeless flop. He was in thrall to Agatha. And instead of
realizing that he loved her, that it was her gentle nature that subdued him, that he
should surrender, he reared and plunged in a fierce struggle to shake off this incubus,
for so he saw her, avert this evil doom.

To drain the contents of one barrel into another through a length of rubber tubing
depends upon one simple operation—the turning of a tap.

Next day Paul started building himself a primitive sort of hut, without a roof, with
screens for walls, and settled in. Both in its outer eccentricity and its inner chaos,
this curious enclosure seemed integrally designed to fit the unearthly aspect of the
room. Paul brought along books, empty boxes, treasure and plaster bust to furnish it.
His dirty linen began piling up. The scene was reflected in an enormous mirror. The
armchair was replaced by a camp bed. The piece of bunting bestrode the reading lamp.

Elisabeth, Agatha and Gérard began by paying him formal calls; but presently,
unable to resist the spell of this upholstered landscape, they migrated in a body on
Paul’s heels.

Life began again. They pitched camp. Moonbeams and shadows were their company.

By the end of a week, thermos bottles were doing duty for the Café Charles, and
the screens had been extended to form a single room—a desert island in a sea of
linoleum.

The sense of discomfort resulting from the separate rooms had caused Paul and Elisabeth
to give way to sour ill-humor. Agatha and Gérard attributed the change to the
disturbed atmosphere caused by their alien presence. It made them feel unwanted; they
drew closer and started going out together. A common ailment formed the immutable basis
of their friendship. Agatha worshiped Paul, as Gérard worshiped Elisabeth. They
dared not voice their love and suffered it in silence. Lowly they stood before a double
altar; Agatha before the youth snow-shrouded, Gérard before the Iron Maiden,
lifting eyes of adoration.

Never would it have crossed their minds to aspire to more than a vague benevolence in
return. They marveled at the tolerance vouchsafed them, and fearing to presume upon it,
or to fail in tact, assiduously withdrew from the charmed circle at every
opportunity.

Elisabeth kept forgetting that she had several cars at her disposal. The chauffeur was
obliged to jog her memory. One night, when she had gone out for a drive with
Gérard and Agatha, leaving Paul locked in his self-chosen dungeon, he stumbled
suddenly upon the truth: he was in love.

His head in a whirl, he had been staring at the photograph, that counterfeit of Agatha,
when the discovery felled him like a thunderbolt. The scales dropped from his eyes. He
was like one who, after prolonged poring over a monogram, suddenly sees letters stand
out clearly in what had formerly seemed mere tracery devoid of meaning.

The screens were hung with all his old trophies from the rue Montmartre, after the manner
of an actor’s dressing-room. Instantly, like a Chinese swamp studded with lotus
exploding amorously into flower at dawn, the screens unfolded all their many faces.
Emerging from multiplicity—here through a gangster’s features, there
through an actress’s—the prototype took shape. First glimpsed in Dargelos,
pursued through the murk and glimmer of the casual streets, focused on the brittle
screens, it crystallized at last in Agatha. How many tentative designs, how many rough
sketches for the face of love before the final portrait! He had imagined himself in
thrall to an accidental likeness between a schoolboy and a girl; but now he knew with
what deliberation Fate first picks its weapon, then lifts it, aims it, finds the
heart.

And this time there had been no question of Paul’s secret predilection for a
certain type: fate and fate alone had selected Agatha out of the whole world of girls to
be Elisabeth’s companion. Who knows?—it may have been in that grim kitchen,
by the lethal gas stove, that the knot had first been tied.

Paul marveled at the fact of their encounter; but his sudden clairvoyance was confined to
one sole area, that of love. Otherwise a greater marvel might have felled him utterly:
namely, Fate the lacemaker implacably at work, holding upon her knees the cushion of our
lives, and stuffing it with pins.

Without one solid plank beneath his feet, adrift within his room, Paul dreamed of love.
For a time Agatha remained an abstract figure, disembodied; he, isolated in his ecstasy.
Looking in the glass, he saw with a shock that all the tension had faded from his face
and was ashamed of his past folly and its mask of sullenness. He had wished to return
evil for evil. Now, however, evil had become his good. Not one more moment would he
waste now before returning good for good. Could he succeed? He was in love; it did not
follow that he was loved, or ever would be.

He never dreamed that Agatha could feel a deep respect for him—not only that, he
mistook her feeling for aversion. His was a positive emotion, quite unlike that stubborn
resistance masquerading as spirited independence that she had hitherto aroused in him.
It was a total invasion of his being, a gnawing hunger that could not be appeased. It
harried him incessantly, spurred him to take action…. But what action? Never
would he dare to tell his love. Besides, there would never be an opportunity. The formal
pattern of their Faith, its schisms no less than its shared dogmas, made it well-nigh
impossible to conduct a love affair; and so little did their public mode of life allow
of private and particular communication, that even were he to bring himself to speak,
she might not take him seriously.

A letter seemed the best solution. Fate had flung a pebble, the quiet pool was shaken;
now, blindly, he would fling another, let it fall at random. He would drop his letter
(special delivery) into the void, to take its chance. It would land secretly at the feet
of Agatha, or in full view, and noisily; from one or other of these two alternatives the
rest would follow logically.

He would conceal his agitation, pretend to retire for the evening in a fit of sulks, thus
saving his face and achieving the necessary privacy for composition.

T
HE OUTCOME of this
stratagem was to exasperate Elisabeth and discourage poor Agatha entirely. She feared
that Paul had turned against her and was deliberately avoiding her. Next day, she
declared that she was ill, took to her bed and refused to appear for the evening
meal.

Elisabeth dined dismally
tête-à-tête
with Gérard. She
then dismissed him, with instructions to get into Paul’s room at all costs, work
on him, force him to come clean. She herself, meanwhile, would look after Agatha.

She found her prostrate on her bed, in floods of tears, her head buried in the pillow.
Elisabeth was beginning to look haggard. Some unquiet spirit was abroad, still faceless,
but she sensed its threat in some unawakened layer of her spirit; some mystery, still
nameless, but she could apprehend it. She was beside herself with anxious curiosity.
Taking the unhappy creature in her arms, she rocked her on her breast and let her pour
her heart out.

“I love him, I adore him,” sobbed Agatha. “He doesn’t care a
rap for me.”

So she was in love! … in love, of course, with Gérard. Elisabeth
smiled.

“Silly girl,” she said. “What makes you think he doesn’t care
a rap for you? Has he told you so? Of course not. Very well then. He doesn’t know
his luck, the silly ass! If you want him, you must marry him; he’ll have to marry
you.”

Reassured, melted, anesthetized by this undreamed of outcome, by the simplicity of
Elisabeth’s acceptance where at best she had expected mockery, Agatha
murmured:

“Lise,” her face against this sisterly, this understanding bosom.
“You are an angel. But I’m sure he doesn’t love me.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“He couldn’t, not possibly.”

“Gérard’s awfully shy, you know,” went on Elisabeth, still
drenched with Agatha’s tears, still rocking and consoling; when all of a sudden
Agatha sat bolt upright.

“But … Lise … I didn’t mean Gérard. I meant
Paul!”

Elisabeth rose to her feet.

“Forgive me,” stammered Agatha, “please forgive….”

Staring ahead of her, her arms slack along her sides, once more Elisabeth felt herself
begin to heel, to founder. As once, before her eyes, her mother had become an unknown
woman, dead, anonymous, so now the very mask of treachery confronted her instead of the
known, tear-stained face of Agatha. A thief was in the house.

But she must control herself. She must know all. She came and sat down beside the
bed.

“Paul! I’m staggered. I’d absolutely no idea….”

In honeyed tones she added:

“Well, how extraordinary! It seems so odd. It’s staggering. Tell me all
about it.”

Once more she started to coax and cozen her, hoping to trap her into confidences and
bring dark matters flocking to the light.

Agatha dried her eyes, blew her nose; she was only too ready to let herself be lulled
once more into security. The floodgates were opened, and Elisabeth became the recipient
of more hopes and longings, even, than the love-sick girl had ever dared inwardly
avow.

Holding her clasped against her neck and shoulder, Paul’s sister listened to the
voice of love, of artless, boundless love. Had she, the speaker, but seen, so close
above her, above the automatic hand stroking, stroking her hair, the graven face of
adamantine justice, she would have been struck dumb.