Betty, page 10
‘“Is your sister ill?” I asked him.
‘Because I know from the letters she sends him that she lives in Rouen.’
‘What did he reply?’
‘He didn’t reply. He looked frightened. When I inquired whether he would be away for long, he shrugged.
‘“You can dispose of the room.”
‘That was it! I assume he won’t be back. Seeing as the rent is paid in advance, I had no right to stop him, especially because the taxi arrived almost immediately and he gave me a generous tip.’
Betty had no idea what time it had been at that point, and from then on, for three days and three nights, she would lose track of time, of when she’d last eaten or slept.
She had cried as she walked the dark streets, without thinking about which direction she was taking, and she sometimes talked to herself.
‘It’s not fair. I should have told him.’
She found herself in Avenue Mac-Mahon, then, still choosing poorly lit streets, she had reached Porte Maillot.
She had walked into a bar, the smallest and gloomiest. She ordered a whisky. There wasn’t any. She drank a brandy with water and a woman with a fat behind wearing a great deal of make-up and wobbling on stiletto heels, stared at her, trying to figure her out.
She must have been getting drunk. She wasn’t aware of it and was still bent on finding Philippe. She had gone in the wrong direction. She would have to retrace her steps. It didn’t occur to her to take a taxi and, besides, Philippe didn’t start work until midnight.
It couldn’t be that late. He must have had to drop off his suitcase somewhere before going to his cabaret. He had been afraid of Guy, which was only natural.
She was impatient to reassure him. She was free now. She wouldn’t impose herself on him. He was too young to saddle himself with a wife. But, all the same, he’d be able to see her whenever he wished.
She walked, trying not to lose sight of the Arc de Triomphe. She had no idea how much money she had in her bag. If Philippe needed money, there was the cheque, which she was prepared to give him.
She had had to stop somewhere else. A man had grabbed her by the arm, saying filthy words, and she had felt panic-stricken.
The nightclub where Philippe worked was called Le Taxi. Betty had never been there and she couldn’t find it. She looked at the neon signs one after the other and in the end it was the doorman from another cabaret who pointed out the sign to her – the least bright, in tiny, dark-red letters, the very last one in the street.
The atmosphere inside was suffocating. The place was smaller than the drawing room at Avenue de Wagram and full of smoke and loud music. Clusters of men stood around the bar and, a few feet from them, a woman was performing a striptease under the spotlight.
The musicians wore light-blue dinner jackets. She tried to seek out Philippe but couldn’t see him.
‘Is Philippe here?’ she asked the bartender, rising on to her tiptoes.
‘Which Philippe? The sax player?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know. I can’t see him. He must have got someone to replace him.’
A man wanted to buy her a drink and already had his hand on her thigh.
Not yet. Not here. Philippe had given up his lodgings and had not come to work. That meant he had done the same as Schwartz.
Evaporated. Vanished in Paris. If she wanted to find him, over the coming days she would have to go from cabaret to cabaret, from Étoile to Montmartre and Montparnasse, and seek him in all the music venues.
‘As soon as you have an address …’ her husband had said.
The sensible solution was to go and book herself into a hotel before having her belongings sent. But how could she have shut herself away alone, between four walls, crawled into a bed and slept?
Another bar. She hadn’t had anything to drink at Le Taxi. She needed to get drunk as fast as possible. She recalled different lightings, nearly always a mirror behind the glasses and bottles, often girls, next to her, who eyed her as if she was a threat.
‘A whisky … A double …’
The word ‘dirty’ had come back into her mind, because of her mud-stained shoes and her wet feet.
She was beginning to be dirty. She had a growing urge to see this through to the bitter end. Since she hadn’t succeeded in being the cleanest, was it not better, while she was about it, to become the dirtiest?
She didn’t want to sleep. What she wanted was not to be alone.
Already, she was no longer alone. A man paid for her drink and took her by the arm, pushing her on to the pavement in a quiet street where the light of a hotel could be seen. They walked in through a glazed door. A redheaded woman, sitting at the desk, watched them go past and, raising her head, yelled up the staircase:
‘Is number three free, Maria?’
‘Right away, madame.’
‘You can go up.’
A narrow corridor with a worn carpet. An unfamiliar smell. An open door into a room where the bed wasn’t unmade but the chambermaid was hastily changing the towels.
‘It’s a thousand francs, excluding service.’
Betty was so drunk that, once the woman had left, she sank on to the bed fully clothed and almost fell asleep. She barely remembered the man’s face. He was quite fat, with blue eyes, and he wore a big red-gold wedding ring.
‘Get undressed.’
She tried, failed and relapsed into her drowsy state. He didn’t stay long. Looking embarrassed, he had placed a banknote on top of Betty’s handbag.
She slept at last, plunging quickly, like a lift whose cable has snapped.
Someone was shaking her shoulder.
‘Get up, girl.’
She didn’t understand what was wanted of her, why she was being harassed.
‘Come on! Don’t act the innocent. The half-hour’s up.’
‘I want to sleep.’
‘You’ll sleep somewhere else. If you don’t get out right now, I’ll call Monsieur Charles.’
He came, in shirtsleeves and slippers.
‘What is Maria telling me? That you’re refusing to leave the room?’
He stood her up, but she was swaying and her gaze was vague.
‘I see what this is. I don’t like that here. What’s more, I bet your papers aren’t even in order. I don’t want any trouble and I need the room.’
In the street, she stumbled. There were big gaps in her memory. She had eaten hard-boiled eggs and drunk coffee that had a foul taste, and then thrown up in a filthy toilet.
A man almost as drunk as her, with a foreign accent. She no longer knew if it was that night or the next.
If it was the next, she was incapable of saying how the first night had ended up.
They drank together in a place where the customers were pressed up against one another and he fondled her rump and her breasts in front of everyone, with a smug air of ownership. Someone had said something to him and a fight nearly broke out.
Outside, it was still raining and they walked arm in arm. She talked to him about Philippe, trying to explain that it was a misunderstanding, that he had taken fright for nothing, because he was very young and above all very gentle.
‘A poor creature, you understand? I have to find him. It’s of the utmost importance, because he won’t dare show himself. He reckons Guy is angry with him. Guy didn’t even look at him and would be incapable of recognizing him in the street. The truth, if you want the actual truth, is that Guy already knew everything. Do you see? No fool, Guy!’
She was drunk. But she didn’t think she was mistaken. Already, before, it had sometimes occurred to her. Quite early on, Guy had stopped asking her how she spent her afternoons.
Who knows whether he didn’t prefer that solution? Who knows even how things would have turned out if his mother hadn’t been with him when he’d returned home and caught Philippe and her on the drawing-room sofa?
There was no point asking herself these questions. He had never attached any importance to her past. He loved her in his own uncomplicated way, with a comfortable love. He didn’t want to know what was going on in her head. At most, he would sometimes ask her, as if he knew the answer:
‘Is everything all right? Are you happy?’
So long as she replied yes, he didn’t probe any further.
She saw herself with the foreigner, bang in the middle of an avenue, with cars passing either side of them, drivers swearing at them and the man asking, suddenly suspicious:
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the one who’s taking me.’
‘Me? Where would I take you?’
They had had a confused argument.
‘You don’t know where we can go?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not a thief, I hope?’
He looked her in the eyes as if to hypnotize her.
‘Then we’ll try my hotel. I’m not sure they’ll let you in.’
They’d hailed a taxi, had asked it to stop somewhere outside a bar for a last drink. The hotel was next to Galeries Lafayette, with a marble staircase and a red carpet.
The man had drunk too much to get what he wanted. He still insisted, demanding help from his companion. Aching and dizzy, every few minutes she fell asleep, and he eventually dropped off too.
She could have slept all day and perhaps the next night too. She felt ill. She had the impression it was barely light when he forced her to get dressed because he had a flight to catch.
It was later than she thought. The streets were teeming with people, a sea of umbrellas above their heads.
She wandered through the crowd, ghost-like among the flesh and bone, and would occasionally stop in her tracks at the kerbside to watch the cars going past. She was no longer thinking about Philippe, or Guy, only sometimes about the letter, the shame of having signed a document selling her two daughters.
This became an obsession and she was muttering about it under her breath as she pushed open the door of a bar.
‘Come in. Don’t make a noise. I think she’s asleep.’
Mario had knocked on the door so discreetly that Betty hadn’t heard anything. But she could hear Laure’s whispering. She knew they were kissing.
‘I’ll go and check.’
She closed her eyes and felt a presence by her side, someone leaning over her then walking away, taking care not to make the floorboards creak, and then pulling the door to.
She could no longer make out the words, only the kind of murmur you can hear from a confessional. A bottle was uncorked. Glasses were being filled. The tone of the conversation was calm, even, with the occasional stifled laugh from Mario.
He hadn’t sat down but was pacing up and down the room, then the bed groaned lightly, as if Laure were reclining on it.
The light was fading. Laure must have talked about her, and Betty had the impression that at one point Mario came over to the door to peer through the crack.
In thousands of rooms, at that same moment, couples in the semi-darkness were chatting in the same way, smoking cigarettes and having a drink.
Why did that seem so extraordinary to Betty, lying in her bed? Mario was in the habit of visiting Laure in her room; he was her lover; they met up every evening at Le Trou where Laure always ate her dinner.
They conversed in an undertone, in a simple, relaxed manner, she sprawled on the bed, he sitting in an armchair. And if later they felt the urge to make love, nothing would stop them. It wasn’t certain. It wasn’t essential.
They were happy like that, confident, light-hearted.
Insidiously, envy was born in Betty. Fate was unjust. She didn’t attempt to define the nature of the injustice, but she felt frustrated, as if something had been stolen from her, as if it were actually Laure who had stolen something from her.
Ultimately it was Laure who had chosen her from among all the strange characters, all the oddballs, who frequented Le Trou. The doctor with the little creatures had barely disappeared when she had come and sat down at her table, glass in hand.
Betty hadn’t called out to her, wasn’t even aware of her existence.
Did she not know, she who was a doctor’s wife, that Betty wasn’t supposed to drink, that she had already had too much, that she was physically and mentally at the end of her tether?
What had she done? She’d filled her glass, twice at least, perhaps more. She had brought her to the hotel without consulting her.
She had cared for her, of course, but she had given her more to drink, starting the next morning, so as to pump her, extract confidences from her, to add a story to her collection.
Betty lay there in the dark without moving, weak and listless, knocked out by whatever drug the doctor had injected into her. Meanwhile, next door, the pair of them were chatting away like two people who understood each other through half-spoken words.
Why did Laure deserve to be happy? Because already, before, she had been happy for twenty-eight years with her husband – she had boasted of it. She hadn’t remained on her own for long, a year she’d said, and she had found Mario almost immediately.
Why her, when Betty had tried so hard? Nothing bothered Laure. She came and went in life, relaxed, considering others with indulgence.
She considered Betty with indulgence too, and indulgence was the word, the kind of indulgence Betty didn’t want. What she wanted was what she was entitled to as a result of her efforts.
There was no justice. In a few days or in a few hours, room 53 would be empty, Betty elsewhere – it didn’t matter where – and, in the next room, Laure and Mario would carry on meeting as evening fell.
‘What else did she tell you?’
‘She told me so much that I’m forgetting some of it. You see, she’s a sad creature. She’ll spend her life running after something without ever knowing what.’
‘She has the eyes of a lost animal.’
‘She might end up finding a good soul who’ll give her a home, like a stray dog.’
Those weren’t necessarily the words they would use, but she didn’t think she was imagining things. She was convinced that it was true in substance, that that was what would happen. Laure would give Mario a smug, assured look, because, Betty gone, he was not likely to let himself take pity on her.
They fell silent now, and she soon understood why.
Would she herself still be capable of making love after what she had been through these past three days and three nights?
The two of them, flesh against flesh, saliva mingled, taking their pleasure in silence, motionless, and Betty stared at the grey sky and the black trees in the mirror, digging her nails into her skin. She wanted to scream, to make them stop, so that they would stop being happy.
She was tempted to get dressed and leave, so that, later, they would be mortified and shamefaced on seeing the empty room.
She didn’t have the energy. Besides, as soon as she appeared in the lobby, wouldn’t the concierge hasten to inform Laure? Had she not given instructions to that end? It was she whom the doctor had spoken to in the corridor, delegating his authority to her, in a way.
He had allowed Betty not to go into hospital on condition that she didn’t leave the room, didn’t move and didn’t receive any visitors.
The crack in the door lit up. The bedside light had just been turned on in the next room, and Mario was saying:
‘Do you think she’s still asleep?’
‘If you’re worried, go and have a look,’ replied Laure, still on the bed. ‘But first, give me a light.’
‘I find it strange.’
‘What?’
‘That she spends so much time sleeping.’
His footsteps came closer, retreated, then came closer to the door again, which he ventured to open a little wider.
He moved soundlessly, the way parents enter a child’s bedroom at night, trying to make out Betty’s face in the dark. To see her more clearly, he stepped forward, leaned over, saw her open eyes and the finger placed on her lips.
She smiled at him knowingly, as if she were putting her trust in him, and he smiled back, batting his eyelids to signal his agreement, and withdrew as silently as he had come, pulling the door to behind him.
‘Well? Is she asleep?’
‘She seems to be.’
He wasn’t exactly lying, merely cheating.
‘What did I tell you? Pour me a drink, will you?’
Betty had at last closed her eyes and was breathing regularly.
7
Laure hadn’t spoken to her about Mario’s visit. She wasn’t accountable to her, of course. This was still significant, though, and Betty was quite glad to have a grievance, small as it was, against her companion.
She didn’t like people who always appeared too perfect. She mistrusted them. After throwing herself on her, Laure was already beginning to feel a little weary, to long to have her own life back, especially since Betty was bedridden and the doctor had forbidden her to go out or to drink.
‘Did you sleep well?’
She too was cheating when she replied that she had.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll have your vegetable broth brought up. Which do you prefer: dim or bright light?’
She didn’t care. She lay there, inert, and derived a secret pleasure from doing so. Laure lit the lamps, flitting between the two rooms. The soup arrived and Betty sat up in bed.
For both of them, it felt as if things were dragging on. Time was passing slowly this evening, as if each had something else on her mind.
Laure, in her room, got changed and didn’t know what to do with herself. Her voice was slightly different and she seemed to be fussing even more than usual.
‘Was it a bit tasteless? Wait while I plump up your pillow. Would you like the chambermaid to come and make your bed? Do you want to freshen up?’
All those words, all those sentences, and finally:
‘Would you mind very much if I left you alone for a couple of hours to go and have dinner out? It’s not very charitable of me to say this when you’re confined to bed, but I need some air, some life. If you want anything, ring the bell. I’ll leave instructions for Louisette. She’ll telephone me if necessary and I’ll be here within a few minutes. You’re not annoyed? You don’t feel as if I’m abandoning you?’
