Women's Barracks (9 page)

Ginette was a pure type of Paris
midinette.
She was coarse, logical, practical, intelligent, and goodhearted when she wanted to be. Her husband had beaten and deceived her. He was a handsome lad, a champion cyclist. Ginette had divorced him at nineteen. She had worked as a salesgirl and supported her parents, who were old and sick. She had become hardened by life, she was afraid of no one, and she knew how to get along. At the barracks she was in the good graces of all her superiors, and even Machou feared her a little. Everybody said that she would be promoted to private first class at Christmas. Petit had confidence in her and often assigned her to special tasks.

Somewhat to our surprise, Ginette advised Mickey against taking the great step.

"Marry as a virgin, Mickey, it's better," Ginette declared, though with the air of someone who expects that her advice will not be taken, and indeed, would be just as pleased. "If you begin by sleeping with some fellow, you won't be able to stop, and you'll go to bed with everybody."

Mickey studied herself in the little mirror on the wall of the Virgins' Room. She thought, I'm making myself ready for my wedding night. And it seemed to her comical to see herself in a khaki uniform with cotton stockings, and wearing a necktie, instead of being dressed in a long white gown. It seemed so comical to her that she began to laugh out loud; although at the bottom of her heart she suddenly felt sad. There were so many romantic dreams that little girls had when they were fifteen, when they went walking and stopped in front of the shop windows to study the mannequins dressed in white satin and tulle. Now she had definitely to separate herself from those dreams. It was a bit terrifying and sorrowful to pass in this way from girlhood to womanhood. In this way, all alone, and without ceremony. And, Mickey thought, without love, either. No, she was quite sure that she didn't love Robert. She only wanted him. She wanted him, and she wanted to know, and besides, it would be so agreeable to have a lover, like a real woman. And yet she said to herself, I hope I'll love him afterward.

Slowly she climbed the stairs. She knocked at the door.

Robert opened it. He was in civilian clothes, and it was odd to see him dressed so; he appeared a little less cruel. His green eyes covered Mickey with caresses. Without saying a word, he seized her in his arms and began to kiss her. Mickey freed herself and began hurriedly to undress. She wanted to seem experienced. Robert watched her, probably astonished. Things were going almost too fast. But she was already nude, and he was good enough to praise her, as a connoisseur. Long-muscled narrow limbs, a supple, well-built body with handsome shoulders, scarcely any hips, and small pointed breasts. He undressed just as quickly, flinging his clothes over a chair.

His body was cold when he lay down next to her. He was very bronzed and very hairy. He kissed her again, but hurriedly. Mickey looked about her. The hotel room was violently lighted by a bare electric bulb. There were jonquils fading in a vase. She felt alone, utterly isolated from this man who was going through a ritual that did not affect her.

He was astonished to encounter a physical barrier. He had not believed her to be a virgin. When he hurt her, Mickey uttered a short cry. It was all so quick, so strange, she felt disappointed. Nothing but that! All that fuss about such a little thing.

Robert still had said scarcely anything, nor had she. And now it seemed that there was even less reason to talk.

Robert arose; he was very handsome, with his air of arrogance. He smiled at her and said, "Come to the bathroom, honey." His suddenly intimate manner of speech gave her a sensation of horror. There was no reason for his now assuming the right to say
tu
instead of
vous.
Why did he use the intimate form of address as soon as she had made love with him?

They dined almost in silence in the hotel restaurant, like strangers exchanging banalities. Nevertheless, Mickey felt better. She was freed now from that storm within herself—from that thirst and from desire. She felt herself calm and appeased. It was done. She was a woman.

Mickey returned to Down Street. Faithfully, almost as though she had gone through the experience in order to tell us about it, she recounted the scene. She felt disappointed, but like all of her feelings, this didn't penetrate deeply. "It's life," she concluded, and she was satisfied.

That night, when the phonograph had finally become silent, and when the last bed-to-bed whisperings were over, Mickey could not get to sleep. The roaring planes above the barracks and the regular explosions of the bombs didn't disturb her; she was used to all that. But she was thinking of Robert, of the hotel room, of the faded jonquils in the vase.

I was on fire-watch duty that night on the roof, and suddenly I found Mickey sitting beside me on the parapet in the dark; a pensive Mickey, who talked almost as though to herself.

"It's life," she repeated musingly, and then she told me what she had been thinking, and somehow she was led back to a childhood memory, a very distant memory. It was of the time when she had first realized that lies were a part of life, that it was necessary to lie.

One summer she had been in the mountains with some of her father's family in France. Mickey had then been six or seven years old. One day in August her uncle and aunt had taken her along on an excursion. Mickey loved the mountains, and she loved these walks.

Toward midday they had picnicked in a little clearing at the edge of a stream, in bright sunlight. They were all alone in the sunlit silence of the mountain.

They had finished the lunch of boiled eggs, potatoes, and fruit that her aunt had prepared. Mickey's uncle, a thin little man, jaundiced and bad-tempered, was standing looking at the slope across the valley. His sharp silhouette was outlined against the cloudless sky. He pointed with his cane to something in front of him and said, "Look at the goats over there."

Mickey's aunt rose, joined her husband, shaded her eyes, and said, "Where?" And following her husband's directions, she finally discovered the goats, tiny black and white spots, going down the opposite slope of the mountain.

Then Mickey too rose and slipped to her uncle's side, trying to see what he saw. She sought everywhere, inspecting every rock, every tree, every bush, following his every indication, but she couldn't find any goats. At first her uncle had tried to help her out. "But look, look there, right in front of you. You see the tree, the small round tree, you see it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now look to the right, and down a little. You see the white stone? Good. To the right now, a little lower, you'll see them, eight goats with a black one in front. You see them now?"

Mickey saw nothing.

Then her aunt had joined in, adding her explanations. "But pay attention to what you are told, my dear. Don't you see the rock that your uncle showed you? And the three trees in a diagonal line? Then drop your eyes six feet to the right, and you'll see a white stone. And still to the right, a sort of reddish spot—you see the red spot? There, there, a whole flock of goats!"

Mickey tried desperately to see them, her eyes searching in all directions, going up, going down. She didn't see any goats anywhere at all. There was nothing to be done.

Her uncle lost his temper. "She's doing it on purpose!" he shouted. "She's making fun of us. Why, it's impossible! She's not blind."

And then, in order to put an end to the shouting, and simply to please them and to have some peace, Mickey told a lie. She announced that she saw the goats at last. "Oh, yes, there! Of course! To the right. I see them now."

Her uncle and aunt smiled upon her again, and her aunt gave her chocolates. For the first time in her life, and at the age of seven, Mickey had discovered that in the world of grownups, it was necessary to lie. She was astonished and a little sad. She had just discovered that the world was different from what she had thought until then, and that life was different. People had always told her, "You mustn't lie." And that itself was false, because it was necessary to lie. Therefore probably everything that she had been told was false.

From that time on, she had listened with skepticism to the moral counsels of her parents. Besides, they were both so old, as old as other children's grandparents. And her aunt and uncle were also aged. Mickey did not like old people. She was always wanting to laugh, to have fun, and that made noise. And so she was always in rebellion. But among the things that she still believed in at the age of eighteen, there had been love with a capital L, such as one read about in novels.

That night she decided that love, too, was like the rest. Still another lie. And she laughed in the dark.

"Oh, after all, it's not important. One can be satisfied with what it is and have fun. It's not serious."

She didn't want to pity herself like an old woman. She declared, "Since it's necessary to lie and to say that it's wonderful, I'll learn to do it. I'll learn to make love."

She didn't yet know how she was going to go about this, but she knew that she was going to begin on the very next occasion. She wanted to get to be like Ginette, like Claude. And already, her scene with Robert, as she remembered it, seemed less sad. Robert was handsome. The jonquils hadn't been so faded after all.

I was thankful to Mickey that night, not only because I felt she had at last shown me her true self, but because, in a way, she had been through something for me, for every one of us, and perhaps she had spared me pain.

It was the first Christmas of the war. A huge fir tree had been set up in our assembly room, and the chaplain was celebrating Mass in the barracks chapel. More than two hundred of us were there. Our captain stood in the front row, with her officers beside her. Then came the two warrant officers, Petit and Morvan, the sergeants, and the corporals. Ann, Ginette, and several others had just received their stripes. Claude had made quite a scene, for she had not even been promoted to private first class. She was furious, and refused to sing in the choir. Still, she had come to Mass like all the others.

Every woman had her eyes fixed on the little manger with its figurines of the Holy Family, and on the priest with his slow beautiful movements. We listened to the tinkling of the bell, and each of us wanted to weep, wanting to be pure and clean and small—to be a little girl, to be in France.

Before coming to the service, Claude had had one of her moments of warmth and candor, when she could be so touching. I had been in her little telephone room with Ursula, and admired the sprigs of green that Claude had put on the walls of the narrow chamber and over her switchboard. And suddenly Claude had told us that for years she had been promising herself every Christmas to return to the faith, to have no more lovers, neither men nor women. She would again become the pure little girl that she once had been. We had come together to Mass.

"Les anges dans les campagnes,"
sang the choir, and Claude, sitting beside me, bowed her head and clutched her missal till her knuckles shone white through the thin skin of her lovely hands, and a tremor passed through her. Then with a little sigh she relaxed and raised her eyes. Seeing me watching her, she gave a little smile and shrugged.

Jacqueline was staring straight ahead of her, a look of intense concentration on her face. But I knew it wasn't the Mass that Jacqueline was concentrating on. Jacqueline could think of little these days but her fated love. In these last days her back had been paining her more than ever, and early this evening she had complained that the pain was intolerable. She took it as a punishment in advance, as an exchange for what she so desperately wanted. As the choir sang, she suddenly bent her head in prayer, and I thought I could divine her prayer. "Dear God, give him to me. I love him, I won't do anything to hurt him. There's a war, and it will be a long time before he'll see his wife again. She won't know anything at all about what happens here. I don't want him to leave her for me. I only want to have him once. At least once. I want it to be with him. That will be enough for me. Forgive me, I know it's bad, but what can I do? Forgive me, help me."

Ursula had no religion. No one had thought of providing her with anything of the kind. She had been given neither education nor faith. She must have felt a stranger to what was taking place here, and yet been drawn into the wondrous prayerful atmosphere that had been created by all these women, her comrades.

All at once everyone had changed. All the faces had suddenly become peaceful. As I watched Ursula scanning the altered faces of her friends, I knew she was wondering what the feeling of this religion could be. Was it something so good? Would she never know it? She studied Petit, her arms folded like a man's, her eyes closed. It was strange that Petit too was religious. She had to ask someone—as she asked me later—whether someone like Petit weren't disowned by her religion. And she herself, Ursula reflected—was she like Petit? Was she too disowned?

Claude had rented a little room in the city, and several times Ursula had gone there to be with her. She adored Claude more than ever, and permitted herself to be bullied, without the slightest resistance. Claude was never in the state of humor that one expected to find, and Ursula always felt herself to be walking a tightrope with her. One day, Ursula knew, she would fall and hurt herself badly.

As the singing voices rose, Ursula felt doomed. She was lost, there was no hope for her, she would end up like Ann. She wanted to cry, for she would never love anyone other than Claude. Not even someone like Michel—for she knew his name now, Michel Levy. He was so generous, so intelligent, so calm, and so gentle. He had never even tried to kiss her. Ursula felt secure in his presence, and yet she was sure that she was not in love with him. She didn't like his small hands and his chubby body. He bored her sometimes, and he was timid. She preferred the caprices, the angry moods, and the phantasies of Claude. She was ready to endure anything for the pleasure of half an hour of Claude's gaiety and charm.