Bel-Ami (Oxford World's Classics) Page 14

  He felt confined by his mediocre job as a reporter, isolated in it, with no possibility of escape. He was appreciated, but the respect accorded him was proportionate to his rank. Even Forestier, for whom he performed countless little services, no longer invited him to dinner, and treated him in every way as an inferior, although he still addressed him familiarly, like a friend.

  It was true that from time to time Duroy saw his chance and had a little piece published. As reporting news snippets had given him a facility with words and a sense of what was appropriate that he lacked when he wrote his second article on Algeria, he no longer risked having his work on current affairs rejected. But there was as much difference between that kind of writing, and reporting on whatever he fancied or authoritatively reviewing political issues, as there was between driving along the avenues of the Bois as a cabbie, and driving yourself in a carriage of your own. What humiliated him most was to feel the doors of society closed to him, to have no connections whom he could treat as equals, to have no close relationships with women, although occasionally various well-known actresses had, for reasons of their own, made themselves accessible.

  Moreover, he knew from personal experience that all these women, whether society ladies or third-rate actresses, felt a peculiar attraction towards him, an instantaneous liking, and because he did not know any who might ensure his future success, he felt as impatient as a hobbled horse.

  He had often considered visiting Mme Forestier, but he was stopped by the thought of their last, humiliating encounter; and moreover he was waiting for her husband to invite him. Then he remembered Mme de Marelle and that she had invited him to come and see her, so he called on her one afternoon when he had nothing to do.

  ‘I’m always at home until three o’clock,’ she had said.

  He rang her doorbell at two-thirty.

  She lived in the Rue de Verneuil,* on the fourth floor. At the sound of the bell the door was opened by a maid, an unkempt little servant-girl who was tying on her cap as she replied: ‘Yes, Madame’s at home, but I don’t know if she’s up.’

  And she pushed open the drawing-room door, which was standing ajar.

  Duroy went in. The rather large room was inadequately furnished, and had a neglected air. The armchairs, shabby and old, stood in rows along the walls in an order determined by the maid, for nowhere could you detect the elegant touch of a woman who loves her home. Four second-rate pictures, depicting a boat on a river, a ship at sea, a mill on a plain, and a wood-cutter in a wood, hung in the centre of the four wall panels from cords of different lengths; all four were askew. You could tell that they had been hanging like that for some considerable time, beneath the casual gaze of a woman quite indifferent to such things.

  Duroy sat down and waited. He waited a long time. Then a door opened and Mme de Marelle hurried in, dressed in a pink silk Japanese kimono embroidered with golden landscapes, blue flowers, and white birds; she exclaimed:

  ‘Just imagine, I was still in bed. How nice of you to come and see me. I was sure you’d forgotten me.’

  With a gesture of delight she offered him both her hands, and Duroy, put at ease by the scruffy appearance of the apartment, took them and kissed one, as he had seen Norbert de Varenne do.

  She asked him to sit down and then, looking him over from head to foot: ‘How you’ve changed! You’ve got more of an air. Paris is doing you good. Come, tell me all the news.’

  At once they began to chat as if they were old friends, feeling an immediate mutual sympathy develop, conscious of the birth of one of those currents of trust, intimacy, and affection that in five minutes can make friends out of two creatures of similar character and type.

  The young woman suddenly broke off what she was saying, and remarked in astonishment: ‘It’s odd how I feel about you. It’s as though I’ve known you for ten years. I’m sure we’re going to be good friends. Would you like that?’ He replied: ‘Of course’—with a smile that said more.

  He found her utterly enticing in her dazzling, soft kimono, less subtle than the other one in her white negligé, less tender, less delicate, but more exciting, spicier.

  When he had been close to Mme Forestier, with her steady, gracious smile which simultaneously attracted and restrained you, which seemed to say: ‘I like you’ but also: ‘Be careful’, and the true meaning of which you never fathomed, he felt above all the longing to prostrate himself at her feet, or to kiss the exquisite lace of her bodice and slowly breathe in the warm, fragrant scent that surely came from there, sliding between her breasts. When he was close to Mme de Marelle, he was conscious of a coarser, more specific desire in himself, a desire that made his hands tremble as he watched the moulded contours of the thin silk.

  She was still talking, sprinkling each sentence with that facile wit at which she was so adept, just as a craftsman acquires the knack of carrying out a task widely held to be difficult, and which other people find astonishing. He listened to her, thinking: ‘I must remember all this. One could write a delightful “Paris Diary” by listening to her gossip about what’s going on.’

  But someone was knocking softly—very softly—on the door through which she had entered, and she called: ‘You can come in, darling.’ The little girl came in, went straight to Duroy, and offered him her hand.

  The astonished mother murmured: ‘You’ve really made a conquest. I can hardly recognize her.’ The young man kissed the child, sat her down beside him, and, his manner serious, enquired kindly about what she had been doing since they had last met. She answered him with her little piping voice, in her solemn, adult way.

  The clock struck three. The journalist stood up.

  ‘Come often,’ said Mme de Marelle, ‘and we’ll chat just as we’ve done today, I’ll always be glad to see you. But why do you no longer go to the Forestiers’?’

  He replied: ‘Oh, no reason. I’ve been very busy. I certainly hope that we’ll meet there again one of these days.’

  He left, feeling full of hope, although he could not say why.

  He told Forestier nothing about this visit.

  But the memory of it lingered throughout the days that followed, more than the memory, a kind of awareness of the intangible yet persistent presence of this woman. He felt as if he had brought something of her away with him, the image of her body still present in his vision, and the flavour of her personality still present in his heart. He remained obsessed by her image, as occasionally happens when you have spent a delightful interlude with someone. You feel as if you are bewitched by a very private spell that is strange, ambiguous, and disturbing, exquisite in its mystery.

  A few days later he paid her a second visit.

  The servant showed him into the drawing-room, and Laurine immediately appeared. This time she offered him not her hand, but her forehead, and said: ‘Mama told me to ask you to wait. She’ll be a few minutes, because she’s not dressed. I’ll keep you company.’

  Duroy, amused by the little girl’s ceremonious manners, replied: ‘Certainly, mademoiselle, I’ll be delighted to spend time with you, but let me warn you that I’m am not in the least serious. I play all day long; so what about playing a game of tag?’

  The child seemed very surprised, then she smiled, as a woman would have done, at this idea that she found somewhat shocking, and also astonishing, and she murmured:

  ‘Flats aren’t for playing in.’

  He said: ‘I don’t mind. I play everywhere. Come on, try to catch me.’ And he began going round and round the table, urging her on to chase him, while she followed behind, still smiling with a kind of polite condescension, and occasionally reaching out her hand to touch him but never going so far as to run.

  He would stop and crouch down, and when her tiny hesitant steps brought her close, he would spring into the air like a jack-in-the-box, then give a great leap to the other end of the drawing-room. This struck her as funny and after a while she started to laugh; growing excited, she began trotting along behind him, giving happy, fea
rful little cries whenever she thought she was on the point of catching him. He moved the chairs about, turning them into obstacles, making her dodge back and forth round the same chair for a moment, and then, abandoning that one, would seize another. Laurine was running now, surrendering herself completely to the pleasure of this new game and, her face rosy red, springing forward with all the eagerness of a delighted child at each retreat, each ruse, each feint made by her companion.

  Suddenly, just as she thought she was going to catch him, he seized her in his arms, lifted her up to the ceiling and exclaimed:

  ‘Got you!’ The delighted little girl was thrashing her legs about, struggling to escape, and laughing with all her might.

  Coming into the room, Mme de Marelle cried in astonishment: ‘Ah! Laurine… Laurine’s playing… You’re a sorcerer, M. Duroy’

  He put the child down, kissed the mother’s hand, and they sat down with the child between them. They tried to chat; but Laurine, normally so silent, was over-excited, and talked all the time; they had to send her to her room.

  She obeyed without a word, but there were tears in her eyes.

  As soon as they were alone, Mme de Marelle lowered her voice: ‘Let me tell you something, I’ve a special plan, and you’re involved. It’s this: as I have dinner every week at the Forestiers’, from time to time I return their hospitality at a restaurant. I don’t like entertaining here at home. I’m not organized for it, and in any case I’m no good in the house, no good in the kitchen, no good at anything. I like living in a topsy-turvy way. So now and again I take them to a restaurant, but it’s not very lively when there’s just the three of us, and my own friends aren’t their type at all. I’m telling you this to explain a somewhat unconventional invitation. What I mean is, I’m inviting you to join us on Saturday, at the Café Riche,* seven-thirty. Do you know the place?’

  He accepted with pleasure. She went on: ‘We’ll be just a foursome, two men and two women. That sort of little party is such fun for us women who don’t often get the chance.’

  The chestnut brown dress she was wearing clung to her waist, her hips, her breasts, and her arms in a tantalizing, alluring way, and Duroy was aware of a feeling of perplexed astonishment, almost of embarrassment, the cause of which eluded him, at the contrast between this fastidious, refined elegance and her obvious indifference towards the home she inhabited.

  Everything that clothed her body, everything that touched her flesh directly and intimately, was delicate and fine, but her surroundings were no longer of any importance to her.

  He left her, retaining, like the other time, the impression of her continuing presence, in a sort of hallucination of the senses. And he awaited the day of the dinner-party with ever-increasing impatience.

  Having again rented a black suit—for his means did not yet enable him to buy evening dress—he arrived first at the restaurant, a few minutes before the time they’d agreed.

  He was shown up to the second floor, and ushered into a small private dining-room* draped in red; its solitary window gave onto the boulevard.

  A white tablecloth, so glossy that it might have been varnished, was spread over a square table on which four places were set; the glasses, the silverware, the chafing dish glittered brightly in the light of a dozen candles in two tall candelabra.

  Outside, you could see a great splash of pale green, made by the leaves of a tree illuminated by the brilliant light from the private dining-rooms.

  Duroy sat down on a very low sofa, red like the walls; its worn-out springs gave way beneath him, so that he felt as if he was falling down a hole. He could hear, throughout the huge building, an indefinable noise, that soft hum of a big restaurant, that clatter of china and silverware, the sound of the waiters’ rapid footsteps muffled by the carpets in the corridors, and of doors being opened momentarily, letting out the murmur of voices of the diners enclosed in all those small rooms. Forestier came in, shaking his hand with a cordial familiarity that he never showed him in the offices of La Vie française.

  ‘The two ladies are coming together,’ he said. ‘Aren’t these dinners fun!’

  Then he studied the table, asked for a gas light that had been left burning dimly to be extinguished completely, closed one of the shutters because of a draught, and selected a sheltered seat for himself, remarking: ‘I have to be very careful; I felt better for a month, but now I’ve been sick again these last few days. I must have caught cold on Tuesday when I was leaving the theatre.’

  The door opened and the two young women appeared, followed by the head waiter. Discreetly veiled and cloaked, they had that alluring air of mystery that women assume in the kind of place where they are likely to have around them, or meet, disreputable individuals.

  When Duroy greeted Mme Forestier, she scolded him severely for not having been back to see her, then she added, turning to her friend with a smile: ‘I know what it is, you prefer Mme de Marelle to me, you’ve plenty of time for her.’

  Then they all sat down, and as the head waiter presented the wine-list to Forestier, Mme de Marelle exclaimed: ‘Give these gentlemen whatever they want; as for us, we’ll have some chilled champagne, the best you have, a sweet one of course, nothing else.’ When the man had gone, she declared with an excited laugh: ‘I feel like getting tipsy tonight, let’s have a fling, a real fling.’

  Forestier, who seemed not to have heard, enquired: ‘Would you mind if the window was closed? My chest’s not been too good the last few days.’

  ‘No, not at all’

  So he went and closed the window that had been left ajar, and returned to his seat, his expression more composed and relaxed.

  His wife sat silently, apparently lost in thought; her eyes fixed on the table, she was smiling at the glasses with that vague smile which seemed always to tender a promise that was never fulfilled.

  Ostend oysters were served, dainty plump oysters like tiny ears encased in shells, that melted between palate and tongue like salty bonbons.

  Then, after the soup, came a trout with flesh as pink as a young girl’s; and they all began to chat.

  They talked first about a bit of scandal that was going round, the story of a woman of high social standing who had been caught, by a friend of her husband’s, having supper in a private dining-room with a foreign prince.

  Forestier laughed heartily at the story; the two women were of the opinion that the tactless gossip-monger was nothing but a craven cad. Duroy agreed with them, declaring loudly that it’s a man’s duty to bring to these sorts of affairs—be he protagonist, confidant, or just an onlooker—the silence of the grave. He added: ‘How full of delights life would be if we could rely on one another’s absolute discretion. What often, very often, almost always stops women, is the fear of having their secret revealed.’

  Then, smiling, he went on: ‘Come, isn’t that so? How many women are there who would not indulge a passing fancy, a sudden, fierce, momentary passion, an amorous fantasy, if they weren’t afraid that this brief, unimportant happiness would cost them irremediable scandal and bitter tears!’ He spoke with infectious conviction, as if he were pleading a cause, his cause, as if he were saying: ‘With me you’d have no reason to fear such dangers. Try it and see.’

  They were both gazing at him, approving with their eyes, thinking that he spoke well and that he was right, admitting by their friendly silence that the flexible morality of Parisian wives would have accommodated anything, given an absolute assurance of silence.

  And Forestier, who was almost lying on the sofa, with one leg doubled under him and his napkin tucked into his waistcoat to protect his coat from stains, suddenly declared, with the laugh of a confirmed sceptic: ‘Oh! yes, they’d have a good time if they were sure of secrecy. My God, yes! The poor old husbands!’

  And the conversation turned to love. Without admitting that it might be eternal, Duroy believed that it could last, creating a bond, a kind of tender friendship, a mutual trust. The union of the senses was just a seal set upon th
e union of two hearts. But he waxed indignant about the storms of jealousy, the dramas, scenes, and anguish that almost always accompany the end of an affair.

  When he fell silent, Mme de Marelle sighed: ‘Yes, it’s the only good thing in life, and we often spoil it by asking the impossible.’

  Mme Forestier, who was playing with a knife, added: ‘Yes… yes… it’s good to be loved…’ And she seemed to be pursuing her dream further—to be thinking of things she did not dare put into words.

  And because the first entrée was slow in coming, they kept sipping champagne and nibbling bits of crust torn from the little rolls. And, slowly and insinuatingly, the thought of love took hold of them, intoxicating them in the same way that the pale wine excited their blood and confused their minds, as it slipped down their throats drop by drop.

  Lamb cutlets were brought in, tender and delicate, lying on a deep bed of tiny asparagus heads.

  ‘My God! This looks good!’ exclaimed Forestier. They ate slowly, relishing the choice meat and the soft, buttery vegetable.

  Duroy continued: ‘When I’m in love with a woman, everything in the world vanishes but her.’

  He spoke with conviction, carried away by the thought of the pleasures of love in his enjoyment of the pleasures of the table.

  Mme Forestier murmured, in that detached way of hers, ‘Nothing is as wonderful as the first time one hand presses another, when one person asks “Do you love me?” and the other replies “yes, I love you”.’

  Mme de Marelle, who had just drunk a fresh glass of champagne in a single gulp, said brightly as she put down her glass: ‘I’m not quite so platonic’

  And, their eyes gleaming, the others all began to snigger, concurring with this remark.

  Forestier stretched out on the sofa, leant back with his arms on the cushions and said in a serious tone: ‘Your frankness does you credit, and proves that you are a practical woman. But may one enquire what M. de Marelle thinks of this?’