Women Page 9

  SIX

  It’s late, isn’t it? Too late for regrets and reproaches. If Andrei hadn’t come along…Well, let’s face it, I don’t know what might have been had Andrei not come along. He occupied my existence so completely, filled it up as you’d furnish an abandoned house. His silhouette, like a boxer’s, has blocked so many doorways that might have led elsewhere, toward other people and situations, that now when I try to imagine what might have been without him, all I see is an immense void. I sense I wouldn’t have been so weary and wouldn’t have had this feeling of desolation that I use as a shield, but beyond that, beyond Andrei’s absence, I can see nothing. I’ve tried sometimes, and am trying tonight, after your extraordinary declaration yesterday evening, to compose myself somewhat and to judge coldly my love for this person, whom I of course know and have no illusions about. I have a sharp sense of what’s proper and what’s not, a kind of instinct for simple justice between people, and I told myself there’s something unfair in my relationship with Andrei, that there are things in me that would have flourished in the hands of another, qualities I have that are neither stunning nor invaluable but that might have brightened the life of the man I loved. I tell myself that all these things are too heavy or too light for Andrei, that he has no use for them, and that by staying with him I’m wasting a life that could be of value somewhere else, to somebody else, and that this perhaps knocks the entire universe out of kilter, because in the final account this missing stock of love will be discovered.

  Silly, isn’t it? But not as silly, if you can believe it, as being overwhelmed by the fear of losing my true vocation. Sometimes, in Andrei’s company, I find myself terrified of the thought of finding that I’m a prisoner and that somewhere, I don’t know where, but far away in any case, another existence with somebody else awaited, but that I unwittingly interrupted that other life on that August night five years ago when, out of frivolity and laziness, I became Andrei’s mistress.

  I’ll be completely honest and tell you that in such moments it’s you I think of. I don’t want to talk nonsense, and especially not now, after what happened last night, but why didn’t I meet you six months before I did? Perhaps everything would have been different. Without your suspecting it, you have been perhaps the only thing I’ve been able to rely upon. I’ve enjoyed knowing you, apart from my affair with Andrei, apart from all we’re involved in together, because, beyond the despair and comedy there, I knew that there was something else, a neutral space, an island of peace at the shores of which fear and suspicion and uncertainty fell away. I congratulated myself for not giving in to the temptation to speak to you and I was grateful to you for never asking me anything—precisely because in this way any confusion between my love for Andrei and my friendship with you was avoided and they remained two discrete domains. I hope you will believe me when I tell you that I never thought I would have to choose between them.

  Why have you ruined a perfectly good arrangement? Now look how complicated things are getting, how confused! Yesterday I felt like a small catastrophe was unfolding and I wondered in panic if there was any escape. Still today, as I began writing to you, I was embarrassed and didn’t really know what to tell you, afraid you’d misunderstand me or I’d express myself badly, and afraid above all that the path between us would always be blocked by this cruel accident, one so hard to see clearly and involving so many feelings that confuse me and pull me in contrary directions.

  But now, having told you this, and through the act of telling, I’ve begun to see more clearly and I think I can say in all honesty that nothing has been lost: let’s resume where we were before you disturbed everything yesterday and see what happens. We can do it. Listen to me, believe me, it can be done. Let me carry on with Andrei, with whom I have a past and an understanding and issues which can’t be disposed of in a day or two or even a year. I’ve gone too far just to turn back, I’m too tired to reach the end. I think a love affair is such a complicated matter, such an exacting and sensitive mechanism, that I’m unable to extricate myself from its cogs alone, to cut the delicate ties that bind me, to break the siege of all the details which have grown out of it and now imprison me.

  There are physical bonds between Andrei and me, similarities in how we see things, and though I may have lost the taste for or forgotten our common habits, I can’t just break them, because at the very moment I do that they will make me suffer, just like an injured arm that gives you no trouble while you keep it still but will rack you with pain the moment you accidentally move it. I fear opening this old wound called love and feel that it is immeasurably better to leave my regrets and rebellions alone where they lie quietly today. Because, at least where I stand now, I’m an old friend of theirs and I feel at home with them in a way. The day I know that Andrei will never again ring my doorbell—that short, imperative sound that I could tell from a thousand others—I’ll find myself disoriented once and for all. Understand this weakness and forgive me for it. Above all understand that nothing of what lies beyond that, what we share—our long conversations when you visit me for tea, our strolls through galleries, our disagreements about paintings and books, evenings at concerts, the way in public we can communicate with our eyes that we are in agreement about something that’s happening—is of central importance in my life. And perhaps it’s not central to yours either. But it’s all that gives me back my self-respect and it’s the only situation in which I’m able to see what Andrei’s role in my life has been. He is the man who got the address wrong and knocked on the wrong door, an error which has lasted for five years and will last another five. But, in the end, it’s a mistake I will live with. By which I mean, it’s not one that I’m responsible for and need atone for.

  You will come on Monday, won’t you?

  ONE

  I turned down another offer today. I hope it’s the last one. J. K. L. Wood, a correspondent and editor at the New York Herald, looked at me in frank amazement, ripped up the check that had been sitting on my desk for half an hour, and said drily, “Sir, you’re no businessman.” No, I’m not. But the idea of writing up a story in which I have a personal involvement for an illustrated magazine strikes me as ludicrous. I haven’t been forgiven for robbing the music hall of a sensational act, Arabella and Partner, J. K. L. Wood has told me. We used to earn 620 dollars per show, plus travel expenses. The public wants to know how I could turn down such remuneration. It wants to know where Arabela is and—if possible—why Arabela loved me or why I loved her.

  In the drawer on the right I have a photograph of her from our first summer together. It must have been in late August, in Talloires. (I should sort out my papers someday and date my photographs, where possible.) She’s in a very light blue dress with an open white, flat collar, and wearing sandals, no socks, no hat, no face powder, but looking fresh and pale in the sunlight. The photograph catches her with her hand suddenly raised toward me—a nervous gesture in which she is not herself, because I think she wanted me to wait another moment before taking the picture. The thought of this little photograph appearing in a newspaper makes me shudder. It’s not modesty or prejudice or sentimentalism, but I’m very private when it comes to certain things and the gesture captured in the picture is still startlingly immediate to me today.

  * * *

  It’s astounding how the days when something remarkable happens in your life are pretty much the same as uneventful days—no signs or warnings. On that November evening I was to meet the press attaché of a friendly legation in place Pigalle to discuss some notes we had to edit together. He never showed. I couldn’t face going home early. I walked up to Medrano. I love the smell of the circus ring, the violent red of the curtains at the back, from behind which you can hear the neighing of the horses awaiting their turn, the vulgarity of the female entertainers, the cavalryman-director’s old-fashioned mustache, and the hearty, contagious laughter of the crowd. The pleasures of a disillusioned aesthete. But pleasures all the same.

  It was w
ell under way. It was silent as I entered. The silence, at a circus, that precedes potentially deadly acrobatics numbers. I glanced at the program.

  TRIO DARTIES

  Dikki et Miss Arabella

  Two acrobats dressed in red, one on either side of the ring, were swinging on bars at great height, in synchronicity. In the center was a wooden bar, suspended from the ceiling by two ropes. In the ring, a kind of sleek-bald clown communicated what was about to happen with broad gestures. The acrobats in red had to fly through the air at the same time, from right and left respectively, to grasp the bar in the center with one arm simultaneously, and then each to swing onto the bar from whence the other had come. A double leap over a great distance at a height of about thirty meters, without a net.

  The lights had gone down. Four spotlights, each a different color, shone up toward the acrobats. One light illuminated each person. A white spotlight shone on the empty bar between them, which gave its oscillations above the ring a sinister air. The fourth light was blue and shone weakly, higher up, and revealed the presence of another person, whom I had not noticed until that point—a woman, on a silk swing. She was dark, decked out in a silver maillot with a bracelet with big jewels on her right arm, and sat with her legs crossed, looking out with an attitude of utter indifference, the trace of a smile in the left corner of her mouth.

  There was a sudden drumroll. Around me, nobody breathed. Then the steady pounding of a larger drum, and the acrobats flew through the air. Four arms grasped the central bar, it swung about once, and—it was all over. The bar again swung empty high above the ring and the two acrobats smiled, having swapped places, and the woman continued staring off into nothingness.

  It was a mediocre number. That’s what I thought then, with only my taste as a dilettante to go on. And that’s my opinion still, after so many tours and much success. It was a mediocre number. Interesting, sure, and dangerous, but badly presented, with superfluous elements, and a fairground look and a theatrical style that I dislike. Later, in my peregrinations through the music halls of Europe, I learned that virtuosity and simplicity are two sides of the same coin. That’s what Rastelli told me one evening in Hamburg, where we both happened to be performing; he with his balls, batons, and balloons, I with Arabela.

  But I digress. The above passage should really be deleted. The stupid habits of a performer who can never stop thinking about his act and talking shop. So back to that November evening, when I was just the technical adviser to the Ministry of Health of Romania in its relations with the International Commission for Medical Cooperation. The number was over. The two gentlemen in red were standing in the middle of the ring, thanking the audience. A third man had appeared between them, also dressed in red, though he was younger and skinnier than them. I don’t know where he’d been hiding up to that point. The bald clown described wide circles around them with a kind of grotesque, unamusing dance. While above us all the woman in the silk swing gazed out as though at the smoke of an imaginary cigarette. Almost imperceptibly, she flexed her feet like a ballerina at rest. She descended when the applause had ended, alternating arms as she gripped the rope in a slow, lazy motion downward, landing on her toes in the middle of the ring. Then she walked off, without haste and without a bow, between those two rows of servants in livery.

  During the interval, as usual, I slipped off to look at the horses. They were grooming them for the show in open stalls in a gallery in the back. There was a smell of sand and manure and blood and perfume—a complex, deranged odor which I’ve only ever come across there and which I recall vividly. Elegant women wandered from stall to stall, caressing a black mane, wiping a foal’s forehead clean, offering sugar bought at the door to a favorite horse.

  In one corner, astride the wooden bar of a stall, the woman in the silver costume was talking to a black horse, a comradely arm over its neck. (I see a picture from one of those old greeting cards which they sent a long time ago, when I was a kid, for New Year’s, with an Amazon and a horse gazing into each other’s eyes beneath a horseshoe of flowers.) Later I learned that Miss Arabella wasn’t there that evening because it gave her any pleasure; her contract required her to hang around in the interval in her show clothes, along with the conjurers and clowns, to flatter any spectators into thinking that they were witnessing behind-the-scenes action.

  I wandered up to her casually. By which I mean, with no clear intention in mind. I offered her a cigarette. She accepted it, then remembered that smoking wasn’t permitted there, and, as we’d ended up with unlit cigarettes in our mouths, she invited me back to her dressing room to smoke.

  —Look, it’s nearby. First door on the left.

  I followed her, surprised at the ease with which she’d made the proposal. She talked to me as if we were old acquaintances, with a mix of indifference and friendliness, which is her natural manner in fact. But then—because we didn’t know one another—I thought this manner was meant especially for me.

  The second act of the show had begun, but was nothing remarkable, at least as far as the first few numbers were concerned, and the thought of chatting with this woman in a silver costume, in her role as a performer, appealed to me. It felt like a scene from a movie.

  Still, I hesitated at the doorway. When she opened the door, I was startled to see that we weren’t alone and that her three partners were already there, each in his own corner, gruff and immersed in the rigors of their toilet and ignoring us completely. I went in hesitantly, not sure if I should acknowledge them and put off, above all, by their hostile silence. They dressed slowly, morosely, without speaking, putting on shirts and trousers without prudishness. From time to time they’d send a towel or a comb or a shoehorn sailing over our heads. The only one to glance at me, looking up from the basin he was washing at, was the youngest one—the skinny boy who’d appeared at the end of the act.

  —Beb, said the woman, addressing him.

  Then she waved me over to her dressing table. She lit my cigarette, then lit hers from mine. She started to undo the buttons of her straps, but gave up so that she could smoke in peace and sat there with her back naked and one breast half-exposed beneath a top that wasn’t quite loose enough to slip off her. I was surprised to see that she smoked awkwardly.

  —Why do you hold the cigarette between your thumb and index finger?

  —Don’t know. I just do.

  Neither of us spoke. I didn’t know what to say and regretted having come. I was ridiculous among those three men, who carried on with their dressing as though I were invisible.

  —Your number is very interesting, I finally said, limiting myself to this platitude, glad just to break the awkward silence.

  —Interesting? I don’t know. It’s tiring. Isn’t it, Beb? Tiring. She clasped her hands behind her neck and rocked her head between her arms. “And I don’t even do anything. I just watch from up there while they work. But the lights, that rickety apparatus, the laughter from the gallery…If you knew how stressful it all is…”

  There was a note of deep weariness in her voice and she spoke with long pauses and watched the wraiths of smoke from her cigarette. But I was struck by the simplicity of those few words. Meanwhile, the men had finished dressing, and then something happened that was so unexpected that I think I would have burst out laughing had I not felt embarrassed. They lined up in front of Arabela, stopping with a certain bashfulness at about one pace from her. She looked at each of them in turn, inspecting their attire critically and making detailed observations.

  —Change your collar tomorrow. I told you, never wear a collar for more than one day. And why aren’t your boots polished? And why are you wearing your hat tilted back over your neck?

  They took these criticisms like timid students, with the shy smiles of children who know they’ve done wrong and promise with their eyes to correct their mistakes. She dealt with the first two quickly (the two acrobats in red who’d performed the perilous leap). She ordered one to ar
range the handkerchief in his pocket properly, as it was falling loose. She pointed out to the other that he had a vague stain on his lapel.

  —I don’t want to see that tomorrow!

  She opened a drawer and took out a wad of money and divided it up. Each received his share with a submissive nod and left without counting it.

  It was a little more complicated with Dikki, the bald clown, now a mere man with his face ruined with makeup, because Arabela spent more time getting his appearance in order. When, on receiving his cash, he asked for extra, Arabela replied severely:

  —You’d better get moving! You have to be back early and no drinking, do you hear me? Beb, you stay! Look, your coat’s missing a button.

  The young man stood by the door while Arabela sewed a button on, gazing at him with a tenderness that struck me as comical in that place, and between two fully grown adults. All this was so unexpected that I could think of nothing to say when I was finally on my own with Arabela. I should have found the family scene I’d witnessed amusing, yet I found I was affected by it all: that young woman’s tyrannical persona and the childlike docility of her comrades, their frightened respect for her, and the ironic, bossy way she dealt with them. She was younger than them—or possibly nearly their age—but she acted like an older sister and I couldn’t reconcile her matronly demeanor with her tired adolescent expression.

  —Don’t you want to go back to the circus? she finally asked. “You shouldn’t miss the equestrian number. It’s good!”

  I changed the subject with a sudden question.

  —Do you like this life?

  —What life?

  —The one you’re leading.

  —You ask such questions…

  She undid the laces of her white shoes and attended gravely to her stockings, dress, and powder as though to an important ceremony. She didn’t ask me to look away or to turn off the light or to leave. She dressed in front of me with an utter lack of prudery, and yet there was something inexplicably chaste in the indifferent way in which she moved, something which prevented me from getting any ideas.