The Thibaults (69 page)

“But” —he ventured at last to intervene— “surely it won’t take you so very long?”

“That depends.”

“How long? A month? More than that … two months?” There was a tremor in his voice. “Or three months?”

“Yes.”

“Less, perhaps.”

“Hardly less. Why, it takes a month to get there!”

“Supposing we could find someone to send instead? Someone you could depend on?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“How could I rely on anyone during the month or so he’d be out of my control? With my rivals over there only too ready to grease his palm!”

There was no arguing against the logic of it. As a matter of fact, a word had been hovering on his lips ever since she began her explanation—the query: when? All other questions could bide their time. He made a timid move towards her, and murmured in a humble voice which curiously belied the masterful set of his features:

“Lulu dear, you’re not thinking of leaving me at once, are you? Do please tell me.”

“No, not at once. But quite soon.”

He mustered up all his courage.

“When?”

“When I’ve got everything ready. I can’t say exactly.”

Their fixity of purpose wavered in the ensuing silence. Antoine could read on Rachel’s haggard face that she was near her breaking-point, and he too felt his will-power ebbing. He went up to her, pleaded with her again.

“You don’t really mean it, do you? You’re not going to … go away?”

She strained him to her breast and drew him stumblingly towards the bed; they fell across it, locked in each other’s arms.

“Don’t speak,” she whispered. “Don’t ask me anything. Say nothing more about it … nothing at all—or I shall go away at once, without a word of warning!”

Desolate and defeated, he kept silence, and now, in his turn, fell to weeping, crushing his face upon her loosened hair.

RACHEL kept her word, and for a whole month turned a deaf ear to any further questions. Whenever she detected a certain flicker of anxiety in Antoine’s eyes, she looked away. It was a terrible month; life went on its usual way, and yet no act, no thought, but had its repercussion on their suffering.

On the day after she broke the news to him, Antoine had summoned up all his strength of mind to see him through, but it had failed him; he was appalled to find his grief so poignant, ashamed of having it so little under control. A disturbing suspicion had crossed his mind: “Can it be that I’m …?” and, close on its heels, another thought: “Anyhow, I mustn’t let others see it.” It was as well for him the duties of his calling gave him no respite, and daily, as he crossed the precincts of the hospital, professional instinct got the upper hand again and saw him through the day; at each bedside his thoughts were only for the patient. But in his spells of leisure—between two visits, or at the family table (for M. Thibault was back in Paris and, since the beginning of October, their domestic life followed the old routine)—the mood of irremediable gloom, for ever brooding in the background of his mind, bore down on him, and he grew inattentive, quick to take offence; it seemed that all the energy on which he used to pride himself could find its only outlet now in fits of temper.

He spent his evenings and every night with Rachel; joyless evenings, joyless nights. All that they said, even their silences, were poisoned by unuttered thoughts, and their embraces quickly wore them out, yet never slaked their almost hostile craving each for each.

One evening at the beginning of November when he was about to enter Rachel’s flat, Antoine found the door wide open. Bare walls. A carpetless floor. The whole aspect of the hall had changed. He rushed into the flat. His footsteps echoed emptiness, and in the pink bedroom the alcove gaped, a meaningless recess.

He heard sounds in the kitchen and ran there, panic-stricken. He saw the concierge on her knees, fumbling with a pile of discarded garments. Antoine snatched from her hand the letter she held up to him. His heart began to beat again once he had read the first few lines; no, Rachel had not left Paris yet, she was waiting for him in a neighbouring hotel and would not be leaving for Le Havre till the following night. At once he fell to planning a campaign of lies that would enable him to take the night and morning off, and see Rachel on board her boat.

He spent most of the following day in unsuccessful attempts to arrange this, and it was not till six o’clock that everything had been settled, a substitute provided, and he was free to go.

He joined Rachel at the station, where she was busy registering a pile of brand-new trunks. She looked pale, much older, and wore a tailor-made costume that he had not seen before.

It was not till the following morning, at the Havre hotel, when he was trying to steady down his throbbing nerves in a boiling hot bath, that something he had vaguely noticed yesterday flashed through his mind, vivid as lightning and as startling: Rachel’s luggage was marked “R.H.”

He sprang out of the water, flung open the bathroom door.

“You … you’re going back to Hirsch!”

To his utter bewilderment Rachel’s face lit up with a tender smile.

“Yes,” she whispered, but so faintly that he caught only a far-off sibilance; then he saw her eyelids flutter an avowal, and she nodded twice.

He sank into a chair. Some minutes passed. No word of reproach rose to his lips, and it was not grief or jealousy that bowed his shoulders now, only a sense of his own powerlessness, the crushing load of life; they were puppets in the hands of fate.

A shivering fit reminded him that he was wet and naked.

“You’ll catch cold,” she said. So far no word had passed between them.

Hardly aware what he was doing, Antoine dried himself and began to dress. She remained standing there, as she had been when he burst in, leaning against the radiator, a nail-file in her hand. For all their sorrow, both of them, he hardly less than she, were conscious of a vague relief. How often during the past month had Antoine felt that something was being kept back from him! Now, at least, the truth in all its stark reality lay bare before his eyes. And Rachel, shaking off the irksome trammels of her lie, could feel her sense of dignity return, and be herself again.

At last she broke the silence.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have told a lie!” Love shone on her face, and pity, unshadowed by the least remorse. “What a lot of silly notions one has about jealousy—false, conventional ideas! Anyhow, I assure you, it was only for your sake—to spare you—that I lied; personally, it only made me more miserable than ever. But now I’m glad I haven’t got to go away with a lie between us.”

He made no comment, but stopped dressing and sat down.

“Yes,” she went on, “Hirsch has asked me to return, and I am going back to him.”

She paused again and, now she understood his silence was deliberate, all the thoughts she had kept back so long clamoured for utterance.

“It’s sweet of you, Toine dear, not to say anything—thank you! For, oh, my darling, don’t I know all that might be said? I’ve been arguing it out with myself for weeks and weeks. It’s pure madness, what I’m doing—but nothing could stop me from doing it. I suppose you think it’s Africa that tempts me, the call of the wild, as they say. Well, there’s something in that, of course; sometimes that call’s so urgent that I’m positively sick with longing. But that, by itself, wouldn’t have been enough. Or perhaps you think I’m acting from mercenary motives. There’s some truth in that, too. Hirsch is going to marry me; he’s immensely rich and at my age—you may say what you like—marriage has its importance; it’s pretty hard spending all one’s days on the outside edge of things. But there’s more in it than that. I really think that I’m a bit above such considerations, so far as anyone who’s a Jew, or half a Jew, can be above them. Here’s a proof of it: you’re a rich man, or will be one; well, you might ask me to marry you tomorrow, but I wouldn’t give up my plan of going away.

“I know I’m hurting you, Toine darling, but do be brave and hear me out; it does me good to tell you everything. For your sake, too—it’s better for you to know all. … I thought of killing myself. Morphine gives you a quick death, with no fuss, no pain. I even bought the bottle; I threw it away yesterday before leaving Paris. I want to live, you see; I never really, really wished to die. You never seemed jealous when I spoke of him—and you were right. It’s he, as you very well know, who should be jealous of you. I love you, dear, I love you as I’ve never loved anyone before; and—I hate him! Why shouldn’t I own to it? I hate him. He’s not a man, he’s a … I don’t know what. I hate him and he terrifies me. Time after time he’s beaten me. And he’ll beat me again—kill me, who knows? He, anyhow, is jealousy itself. Once on the Ivory Coast he bribed one of our porters to strangle me. Do you know why? Because he imagined his boy had come to my hut one night, to see me. No, he’d stop at nothing!

“At nothing!” she repeated in a brooding voice. “But one can’t stand up against him. Listen to this—I’ve never dared to tell you about it before. You remember when I went to Pallanza after the tragedy—when he sent for me? Well, that’s when it all began. Yet I’d guessed the truth and I was scared to death of him. One day I didn’t dare to drink a cup of tea he’d made for me, because of the queer smile on his face when he brought it. And yet, in spite of that, in spite of all … Do you understand? No, you simply can’t conceive the curious fascination of that man!”

Antoine shivered again. Rachel wrapped a dressing-gown round his shoulders and went on in a cool, unemotional voice:

“Don’t imagine he had to use threats, or force. He had only to bide his time; that was all and he knew it, he knew his power. Why, it was I who went and knocked at his door! And it as only on the second night that he opened it to me. Then I gave up everything to go away with him; I didn’t return to France. I followed him everywhere, like a dog, like his shadow. For two, nearly three, years I put up with everything—blows, exhaustion, ill-treatment, prison … everything! For three years I couldn’t look a day ahead without being terrified of what might happen. Sometimes we had to stay in hiding for weeks on end, without daring to go out of doors. At Salonika there was a terrible scandal, we had all the Turkish police hunting us down; we had to change our names five times before we could make the frontier. Always the same story, trouble over his … propensities. In one of the London suburbs he managed to buy up a whole family—a prostitute from the slums, her two sisters, and her little brother; his ‘mixed grill,’ he called it. One day the police surrounded the house and nabbed us. We had three months in the lock-up over that. But he managed to get us off in the end. Oh, if I started telling you everything …! The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve been through!

“I can see you saying to yourself: ‘Now I know why she left him.’ Well, you’re wrong; it wasn’t I who left him. I told you a lie. I could never have done it. It was he who told me to go. He roared with laughter. ‘Clear out!’ he said. ‘When I want you, you’ll come back right enough!’ I spat in his face. Now, do you want to hear the truth? Since I came back, I’ve never been able to stop thinking of him. I’ve been waiting, waiting. And now at last he has told me to return. Now do you understand why I’m going?”

She went to Antoine and knelt before him, resting her head on his knee, sobbing. He gazed down at her shoulders, shaken with sobs. He, too, was trembling.

“How I love you, my darling!” she murmured, closing her eyes.

All day, as though they had made a pact of silence, they spoke no more of all these things. What good would it have been? At lunch they had to sit face to face, and now and again his eyes and hers, haunted by a like obsession, drew together, then resolutely turned aside. What good would it have been?

She had some small purchases to make and lingered over them as long as possible, feigning to be interested. Rain-squalls, sweeping inland from the sea, sluiced down the streets and hissed along the house-fronts. Antoine followed her meekly from shop to shop till it was dinner-time. She did not even need to book a berth in the mail-steamer, as she was travelling by the
Romania
, a freighter which carried some passengers, and put in at Le Havre on her way from Ostende at about five a.m., sailing an hour later. Hirsch was to meet her at Casablanca. There had not been a word of truth in her story about the Congo oil-refinery.

They spun the dinner out as long as possible; the prospect of retiring to their bedroom and being alone together for this final night made cowards of them both. The cafe into which they drifted consisted of one huge, crowded room, noisy and brightly lit; drinking-hall, billiard-room, and dance-floor were combined in one and, in a blue haze of tobacco-smoke, the click of. billiard-balls fretted the languid throb of waltzes. When it was nearly ten a troupe of strolling Italians made a sudden entry; there were a dozen of them, red-shirted, white-trousered fellows, flaunting Neapolitan fishing-caps whose tassels dangled on their shoulders. They jigged and capered with demoniac glee, yelling at the top of their voices, and playing, as they danced, on violins and castanets, guitars and tambourines. Antoine and Rachel watched them gratefully, glad of this foolish respite from the bane of thought; but, when the merry-makers had sung their last and passed the hat round, their grief flared up with new intensity. They rose and, shivering in the downpour, walked back to the hotel.

It was midnight. Rachel was to be called at three a.m. Flurries of wild November rain beat on the iron balcony, and, huddled side by side like two forlorn, lost children, they spent their last, brief night together, without a word … without desire.

Once only Antoine spoke.

“Are you cold?”

She was trembling violently.

“No,” she replied, and nestled up against him, as though even now he still might rescue her, might save her from herself. “No, I’m frightened.”

He let it pass, for he was almost tired of trying, always in vain, to understand her.

There was a knock at the door and, springing from the bed, she cut short their last embrace. He was grateful to her, for each depended on the other’s fortitude to see it through.