Bel-Ami (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

  ‘It seems really funny that you’re my wife.’

  She seemed surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just seems funny. I want to kiss you, and I’m amazed that I should have that right.’

  Calmly she offered him her cheek, which he kissed as he would have kissed the cheek of a sister.

  He went on: ‘The first time I saw you–you know, at that dinner Forestier invited me to–I thought: “God!, if only I could find a woman like that.” Well! I’ve done it. I’ve got her.’

  She said softly: ‘That’s nice.’ And she gave him a straight, penetrating look, her eyes smiling as usual.

  He thought: ‘I’m being too distant. I’m being stupid. I ought to be moving faster than this.’ And he asked: ‘So how did you meet Forestier?’

  She replied, mockingly provocative: ‘Are we going to Rouen to talk about him?’

  He blushed: ‘I’m an idiot. You make me very nervous.’

  She was delighted: ‘Who, me? Surely not! Why should I?’

  He had sat down beside her, very close. She exclaimed: ‘Oh! A stag!’

  The train was travelling through the forest of Saint-Germain,* and she had seen a frightened deer spring clear across a path. Duroy, who had bent forward while she was looking through the open window, gave the hair on her neck a prolonged kiss, a lover’s kiss.

  For a few moments she remained motionless, then, raising her head: ‘Stop it, you’re tickling me.’ But he did not stop, gently moving his curly moustache over the white flesh in a tantalizing, protracted caress.

  She roused herself: ‘Do stop it.’

  He had seized her head with his right hand which he had slipped round her, and was turning her towards him. Then he fell upon her mouth like a sparrow-hawk on its prey.

  She was struggling and pushing him away, attempting to free herself. Finally succeeding, she repeated: ‘Do please stop.’

  He no longer listened to her, but clasped her in his arms, kissing her with avid, trembling lips, trying to push her down onto the carriage cushions.

  With a great effort she freed herself and, standing up quickly: ‘Oh, really, Georges, stop that. After all, we’re not children any more, we can perfectly well wait till Rouen.’

  Very red in the face, he remained in his seat, chilled by these reasonable words; then, having regained some self-possession: ‘Right, I’ll wait,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but I shan’t be capable of stringing twenty words together until we get there. And remember, we’re only now passing through Poissy.’*

  ‘I’ll do the talking,’ she said. And she sat down quietly at his side.

  She spoke, in great detail, of what they would do on their return. They were going to keep the apartment that she had occupied with her first husband, and Duroy would also inherit Forestier’s responsibilities and salary at La Vie française.

  Moreover, Madeleine herself, before their marriage, had settled all the financial details of their union as confidently as any businessman. The settlement stipulated that they each administer their separate properties, and every eventuality was foreseen: death, divorce, the birth of one or several children. Duroy claimed to be contributing four thousand francs, but of this amount fifteen hundred were borrowed. The remainder came from savings made during the year, in expectation of the marriage. The young woman brought forty thousand francs that Forestier, she said, had left her.

  She returned to the subject of Forestier, citing him as an example: ‘He was very thrifty, very steady and hardworking. He would soon have made a lot of money.’

  Duroy was no longer listening; his mind was on other matters.

  She would stop, from time to time, to pursue some private fancy, then begin again: ‘Three or four years from now, you may easily be earning thirty to forty thousand a year. That’s what Charles would have made, if he’d lived.’

  Georges was beginning to tire of being lectured, and replied: ‘I didn’t think we were going to Rouen to talk about him.’

  She gave him a little pat on the cheek: ‘I’m in the wrong, I’ll admit it.’ She laughed.

  He was making a show of keeping his hands on his knees, like a good little boy.

  ‘You look so silly, like that,’ she remarked.

  He replied: ‘It’s my role, as, indeed, you’ve just reminded me, and I won’t depart from it again.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you’re the person responsible for managing the household, and even for managing me. Indeed, as a widow, that’s your responsibility!’

  Astonished, she enquired: ‘What exactly do you mean?’

  ‘That you, with your experience, must dispel my ignorance, and with your practical knowledge of marriage enlighten my bachelor’s innocence–so there!’

  ‘That’s a bit much!’ she exclaimed.

  He answered: ‘That’s the way it is. I myself don’t know women, whereas you, being a widow, do know men–so there! You’re the one who’s going to instruct me… tonight… and you can even start right away, if you want to… so there!’

  Highly amused, she cried: ‘Oh, well now, really, if you’re counting on me for that!’

  He replied, in the tone of a schoolboy reciting his lesson: ‘Oh yes… I’m counting on you. I’m even counting on you to give me a solid course of instruction… in twenty lessons… ten for the elementary stuff… reading and grammar… ten for more advanced subjects and refinements of style… I myself don’t know anything… So there!’

  Finding this very entertaining, she exclaimed, using the familiar ‘tu’: ‘What an idiot you are.’

  He went on: ‘Since you’ve started calling me “tu”, I shall follow your example, and tell you, my love, that I adore you more every second, and I’m beginning to find Rouen a long way off!’

  He was speaking, now, with an actor’s intonations and comic grimaces; this amused Madeleine, who was accustomed to the manners and humour of the bohemian world of writers.

  She gave him a sidelong glance, finding him altogether delightful, feeling the urge we have to eat a fruit straight from the tree, while common sense tells us to wait until dinner, and eat it at the proper time.

  So then she said, blushing faintly at the thoughts running through her head: ‘My little student, trust to my experience, my broad experience. Kisses in a railway carriage are no good. They turn sour.’

  Then she blushed even more, murmuring: ‘You should never harvest unripe corn.’

  He sniggered, excited by the ambiguity of the remarks slipping out of that pretty mouth; and, making the sign of the cross, he moved his lips as if mumbling a prayer, and announced: ‘I’ve just put myself under the protection of St Anthony, patron saint of temptation. I’m made of stone, now.’

  Night was falling softly, enveloping the vast plain stretching over to the right in translucent shadows, like a gauzy mourning veil. The train was travelling along the Seine, and the young people began watching as, on the river that unwound beside the track like a broad ribbon of burnished metal, glints of red appeared, patches fallen from a sky that the departing sun had daubed with tones of purple and flame. These glimmers were gradually fading, turning a deeper shade, growing dark and sad. The plain was sinking into blackness with an ominous shudder, that shudder of death which every twilight visits upon the earth.

  Through the open window, the melancholy of evening permeated the souls of the newly weds, who, for all their recent high spirits, were now silent. They had moved closer to one another to watch the dying moments of the day, this beautiful bright May day. At Mantes,* the tiny oil lamp had been lit; it cast its yellow, flickering light over the grey cloth of the head-rests. Duroy had his arm round his wife and was holding her close. The intense desire he had just felt was turning to tenderness, a languid tenderness, a soft yearning for small comforting caresses, the kind of caresses with which you soothe a child.

  He murmured very softly: ‘I’m going to love you very much, my little Made.’

  The gentleness of this voi
ce moved the young woman, sending a quick tremor though her flesh, and she gave him her mouth, bending over him, for he had rested his head on the warm cushion of her breasts.

  A very long kiss, silent and deep, was followed by a start, a sudden, frenzied embrace, a short, breathless struggle and a violent, clumsy coupling. Then they remained in each other’s arms, both a little disappointed, weary and still full of tenderness, until the train whistle announced the approach of the next station.

  Smoothing the tousled hair on her temples with her finger tips, she declared: ‘That was very silly. We’re behaving like kids.’

  But he was kissing her hands, moving from one to the other with feverish speed, and he replied: ‘I adore you, my little Made.’

  Until Rouen they sat almost motionless, cheek to cheek, their eyes on the dark window where the lights of passing houses were sometimes to be seen; they were sunk in dreams, happy to be so close to one another, in the ever-growing expectation of a more intimate, freer embrace.

  They put up at an hotel whose windows overlooked the waterfront, and went to bed after a very quick bite of supper.

  The chamber maid woke them the next morning, just after eight o’clock had struck.

  When they had drunk the cups of tea left on the night table, Duroy looked at his wife, then suddenly, with the joyful impulse of a happy man who has just found a treasure, he grasped her in his arms, stammering: ‘My little Made, I feel so much love for you, so much… so much…’ With that trusting, contented smile of hers she murmured, as she returned his kiss: ‘And I for you… I think…’

  But he was still anxious about that visit to his parents. He had already warned his wife several times; he had prepared her, lectured her. He felt he should do so again.

  ‘They’re peasants, you know, real country peasants, not out of a comic opera.’

  She was laughing: ‘But I know that, you’ve told me often enough. Come on, get up and let me get up as well.’

  He jumped out of bed, and, as he put on his socks: ‘We’ll be very uncomfortable in the house, very uncomfortable. There’s only an old pallet bed in my room. They’ve never heard of bed-springs, in Canteleu.’

  She seemed delighted. ‘All the better. It will be lovely to sleep badly… with… with you… and be woken up by the cocks crowing.’

  She had put on her negligé, a commodious garment made of white flannel, that Duroy instantly recognized. He found the sight of it disagreeable. Why? His wife possessed, as he knew very well, a full dozen of these early morning garments. She couldn’t just destroy her trousseau and buy a new one, could she? No matter, he would have preferred that her intimate garments, those she wore at night, for love, were not the same as with the other one. He felt that the velvety, warm cloth must have preserved something of its contact with Forestier.

  And he walked over to the window, lighting a cigarette.

  The sight of the port, of the broad river filled with slender-masted vessels and squat steamers which derricks were very noisily unloading onto the quay, stirred him, although he had long been familiar with it. He exclaimed:

  ‘My God! It’s beautiful!’

  Madeleine hurried over, put both hands on one of her husband’s shoulders and, leaning towards him in a movement of loving abandon, was filled with delight and emotion. She kept repeating: ‘Oh! How lovely! How lovely! I didn’t know there would be as many ships as that!’

  They left an hour later, for they were to lunch with the old people, who had been forewarned some days before. They made the journey in an open, rusty carriage with rattling metalwork. They followed a long, rather ugly boulevard, crossed fields through which a river ran, then began to climb the hill. Madeleine, who was tired, had dozed off under the penetrating caress of the sun, which was warming her deliciously where she sat at the very back of the ancient vehicle, as if she were resting in a tepid bath of light and country air.

  Her husband woke her up: ‘Look,’ he said.

  They had just halted two thirds of the way up, at a spot famous for the view, to which every tourist is taken.

  They were looking down over the immense valley, wide and long, across which the limpid river flowed in sweeping, shallow curves. They could see it approaching from the distance, dotted with numerous islands and swinging round before it crossed through Rouen. Then the city appeared on the right bank, lightly veiled by the morning mist, with flashes of sunlight glinting on its roofs, and its thousand airy belfries, pointed or squat, delicate and highly wrought like giant jewels, its square or round towers crowned with heraldic decorations, its belfries and its turrets, the throng of Gothic church-tops, dominated by the cathedral’s narrow spire, an amazing needle of bronze, ugly, bizarre, and excessive, the tallest in the world.

  But opposite, on the other side of the river, rose up the thin, round chimneys, bulging out at the top, of the factories of the vast suburb of Saint-Sever. They were more numerous than their siblings the belfries, and their tall brick columns appeared even in distant fields, puffing out into the blue sky their black, coal-laden breath.

  And, tallest of them all, as tall as the Cheops pyramid,* second highest of the man-made peaks and almost the equal of her proud counterpart the cathedral spire, the great flaming chimney of La Foudre* seemed to be the queen of the labouring, smoky horde of factories, just as her neighbour was the queen of the pointed throng of sacred monuments.

  Over beyond, behind the industrial part of the city, stretched a forest of pine trees; and the Seine, after passing between the two towns, continued on its way, skirting a large, undulating hillside wooded along the top, with occasional bare patches of chalky ground showing like white bones, then the river disappeared into the horizon after tracing another long, rounded curve. They could see ships moving up and down the river, drawn by steam boats the size of flies, belching forth a viscous smoke. There were islands spread out along the water, always either lined up one immediately behind the next, or else leaving a large gap in between, like the unevenly strung beads of a verdant rosary.

  The cab driver waited until the travellers had finished enthusing. He knew, from experience, how long the admiration of every kind of tourist would last.

  But when he set off again, Duroy suddenly noticed, at a distance of several hundred metres, two old people approaching, and he jumped out of the vehicle, crying: ‘It’s them. I recognize them.’

  Two peasants, a man and a woman, were walking along with an irregular, lurching gait, their shoulders occasionally bumping. The man was short, stocky, red-faced, and slightly pot-bellied, still vigorous despite his age. The woman was tall, dried-up, bent and sad, the typical farm woman-of-all-work, who has laboured since childhood and never laughed, while her husband would be drinking and swapping jokes with his customers.

  Madeleine, who also had got down from the carriage, watched with an aching heart, with a sadness that she had not foreseen, as these two pitiful creatures drew near. They did not recognize their son in this fine gentleman, and would never have guessed that this fine lady wearing a light-coloured dress was their daughter-in-law.

  They were walking fast, not talking, to meet their son, never sparing a glance for these city folk who were being followed by a carriage.

  They were going past. Georges called out laughingly: ‘Morning to you, old Duroy.’

  Both of them stopped dead, at first amazed, then struck dumb with astonishment. The old woman recovered first, and, without moving, stuttered: ‘It ain’t you, son?’

  The young man replied: ‘Yes, it’s me, mother Duroy!’ And striding up to her, he gave her a son’s hearty kiss on both of her cheeks. Then he rubbed his face against his father’s, the latter having removed his cap, which was made in the Rouen style, of black silk and very tall, like those worn by cattle merchants.

  Then Georges announced: ‘This is my wife.’ And the rustic pair gazed at Madeleine. They gazed at her the way people gaze at a curiosity, with an uneasy fear, tinged, in the father’s case, with a sort of satisfied ap
proval, and, in the mother’s, with jealous hostility.

  The man, whose natural high spirits were enhanced by being steeped in sweet cider and alcohol, felt emboldened to ask, with a mischievous gleam in the corner of his eye: ‘All right if I gives her a kiss?’

  The son replied: ‘Good Lord, yes!’ And Madeleine, ill at ease, offered both cheeks to the noisy salutes of the old man, who wiped his lips with the back of his hand, afterwards. The old woman, in her turn, kissed her daughter-in-law with cold reserve. No, this was not the daughter-in-law of her dreams, the plump, fresh farm girl, red as an apple and round as a brood mare. She looked like a tart, this lady did, with her furbelows and her musk. For the old woman, every scent was musk.

  And they set off again, following the cab carrying the newly weds’ trunk. The old man took his son’s arm, holding him back, and enquired with interest:

  ‘So, how’s business? Doin’ nicely?’

  ‘Yes, very nicely.’

  ‘Well, fine, good. Tell me, your wife, she well fixed?’

  Georges replied: ‘Forty thousand francs.’

  His father gave a little whistle of admiration and could only mutter: ‘Christ!’ he was so impressed by the sum. Then, with profound conviction, he added: ‘By God, but she’s a fine-looking woman.’ For he found her very much to his taste. And he was said to have had an eye for the ladies, in the old days.

  Madeleine and the mother were walking side by side, not saying a word. The two men joined them.

  They were coming to the village, a little village that bordered the road, with ten houses on either side, some solid and brick-built, others dilapidated farm structures made of clay, the former with slate roofs, the latter thatched. Old Duroy’s bar, A la Belle Vue, a small, poky building composed of a ground floor and a garret, stood at the approach to the village, on the left. A pine branch tacked over the door indicated, in the old style, that thirsty people would find a welcome there.