Her Lover (121 page)

CHAPTER 97

She closed the door behind her, approached him slowly, and stopped at the foot of the bed. He sensed from her tightly clenched hands and the solemn way she stood that she had steeled herself to take an unprecedented step. She stared at the floor, very tense, and asked if she could He down by his side. He moved to make room for her.

'I've something serious to say,' she said, and she took his hand in hers. 'It's a secret. I can't keep it to myself any more. Darling, don't think too badly of me. I didn't love my husband, I used to think I wasn't normal, I was so alone. Can I tell you everything?'

He did not reply. A sudden rush of blood oppressed his lungs, interfered with his breathing, prevented his speaking. He knew that she was waiting for some word of encouragement before going on, but he also knew that if he said anything she would be frightened by the snarl in his voice and wouldn't say another word. He nodded a yes and stroked her shoulder.

'Tell me, darling, things won't go all sour between us afterwards, will they?'

He nodded a no and squeezed her hand. But he sensed that he was going to have to say something to reassure her, to ensure that she told him everything. After taking several deep breaths to calm himself, he smiled.

'No, darling, things won't go sour between us.'

'You'll listen like a friend?'

'Yes, darling, like a friend.'

'It was before I met you, you know.'

He felt repelled by the body lying next to his. But he stroked her hair.

'I dare say life with a man you didn't love must have been pretty miserable.'

'Thanks for understanding,' she said, and she gave him a wan, dignified, hurt little smile which irritated him beyond endurance.

'And it lasted how long?' he asked, still caressing her hair.

'Till the day after the Ritz. Naturally I wrote and told him it was all over.'

'Have you seen him since?'

'Never!' she exclaimed.

Teeth on edge, he bit his lip to divert his anger. As if all this wasn't enough, she was allowing herself the luxury of virtuous indignation! She wasn't going to get away with any of this.

'When was the last time you saw him?'

She did not speak but took his hand in hers. Her noble silence filled him with fury. But patience. First the facts.

'I wasn't to know,' she said, looking away.

'The day we met at the Ritz?' he asked gently.

'Yes,' she breathed, and she gripped his hand tightly.

'What time that day?'

'Is it really all right for me to talk?'

'Of course, my love.'

She looked at him, gave him a faint, grateful smile, and kissed his hand.

'Just before I left Cologny. I rang him just to say hello, to tell him I had to go to the Ritz to be with my husband. He wanted me to come, begged me to go round and see him, just for a moment.'

'And you went?'

'Yes.'

'And what happened?'

She did not answer and looked away. He pushed her out of bed and she fell on the floor, where she remained in an absurd sitting position, the skirt of her dressing-gown gaping and exposing her half-opened thighs. Her sex revolted him: it had been used, others had been there.

Without getting up, she straightened her dressing-gown, and he bunched his fists and closed his eyes. Embarrassed! She dared to be embarrassed! So by the time they'd met that night at the Ritz she had already been to bed with this other man, and three hours later she'd had the effrontery to kiss his hand, the hand of a stranger, for a perfect stranger is what he had been then, and her lips still wet with the other man's kisses! Slept with him, she had slept with him, and three or four hours later, when they had gone back to her house, in the little sitting-room, she'd sat down all maidenly modesty at the piano and played him a chorale, the music of purity, and only four hours earlier she who now tinkled Bach's keys had been on her back with her legs open! 'Leave me, leave me to think about what's happening to me,' she had said, the easy virgin had had the nerve to say, that night as they separated, and had accompanied the words with an expression of noble fervour. A virgin sacred and untouchable who had been touching God knew what just five hours before! Oh, how modestly she wrapped herself in her dressing-gown!

'Open it up!'

'I won't!'

'Open it! Just like you did for him!'

'No!' she said, and she looked at him stupidly, slack-jawed.

She stood up and fastened the belt of her dressing-gown. He gave a bitter laugh. The lady covered her nakedness for him alone! Only he was not entitled to see her in the flesh! Leaping out of bed, he grabbed her flimsy wrap and yanked till it ripped from top to bottom. He tore away the flapping remnants and saw her beat a buttock-bobbing, humiliated retreat. He followed her-into her room at once and was filled with pity for her distress as she clumsily donned another dressing-gown, a creature of weakness, a victim fingered by fate. That was all very well, but the other man had seen her delectable rump too, the same rump, she. hadn't been fitted with a new one in the meantime. 'Always,' she had whispered to him in the Ritz as they danced. And only three hours before she'd been all welcoming thighs and beckoning smiles!

'Had you just slept with him the night we met at the Ritz?'

'No.'

'But you were his mistress?'

She shook her head stubbornly, mulishly, and opened her eyes
wide. Losing control had been a mistake, he shouldn't have kicked her out of bed. She was scared now, and wouldn't admit anything else.

'Tell me you were his mistress.'

'I wasn't his mistress.'

Like an animal playing dead. It hurt him to see her so abject. But there had been kissing at the very least, just three hours before! Just three hours before the most beautiful moment in the whole of their life together!

'So you weren't his mistress?'

'No.'

'In that case, why did you say you had something serious to tell me?'

'Because it's serious that there's been something in my life.'

Something? He pictured a colossal phallus, and recoiled from the bestial spectacle. And here she was, at this moment, so pure of face, so demure, so poised! It was horrible!

'Go on. Explain what you mean.'

'There's nothing to explain. We were just friends, maybe a bit too close, but that's all.'

'You said: "Can I tell you everything?" And would this everything be just that you were very close friends?'

'Yes.'

'You went to bed with him!'

'No! As God is my witness!'

Her solemn fervour made him feel sick to his stomach. Why did women attach such enormous importance to carnimality! And why drag God into the chafings of the flesh! Why set their itches and urges before the Almighty!

'Did he ever come to your husband's house?'

'Sometimes. Not often.'

He shuddered. Oh the slut! She'd had the nerve to show her lover off to her husband! Whereas with him, that first evening, it had been all Bach, raptures over a nightingale, solemn words, and the awkward rumblings of the beginner as their lips first met, and on the evenings that followed there had been all sorts of oh-so-sublime posturing when he arrived and a great deal of kneeling. And this same woman had coolly introduced her lover to the husband she was deceiving! That was probably what was meant by the Mystery of Woman.

'Did you go to his place? (She looked up at him and coughed. Giving herself time to think, he mused.) Did you go to his place?'

'In the beginning, yes. Later on I wouldn't. We used to meet in town, in cafes.'

He whirled his beads. Oh how much more mouth-watering those secret rendezvous must have been than a long dull day at Belle de Mai! Oh the trouble she must have taken getting ready to meet her man! Oh the way she'd walked into the cafe and, seeing him from a distance, had smiled!

'Why did you stop wanting to go to his place?'

'Because the third time I went he got a bit too ... attentive.'

Attentive! He was lost in admiration. She certainly had a way with words, genteel words, words which papered over the cracks. Attentive was innocent, it suggested minuets and admirers and gentlemanly courtships and Mozart. She never forgot her manners, not even with sex. And, besides, it was a way of ennobling the other man's lust, it was part of the revolting way women had of tolerating male lechery.

'You said you thought you loved him, yet you stopped wanting to go calling? (She looked at him and then at the floor. Had she really said that she thought she loved him?) Come on now, surely you realize how implausible that sounds.'

After a silence she looked up again.

'I was scared to tell the truth because you'd have assumed I was his mistress. Yes, I used to go to see him. But I wasn't his mistress.'

'We'll come back to that. Who exactly was this self-restraining but attentive friend?'

'Oh God, what's the point?'

'Tell me his name! I want his name and I want it now!'

His heart raced as he waited for the enemy to make his entrance. Afraid to see him. Had to know.

'Dietsch.'

'Nationality?'

'German.'

'Just my luck. Christian name?'

'Serge.'

'Why "Serge"? Serge isn't a German name.'

'His mother was Russian.'

'I see you have it all at the tips of your fingers. What does he do?'

'He conducts orchestras. He's the maestro.'

'You mean he's a maestro.'

'I don't understand.'

'Ah, very quick to defend him aren't we?'

'I've absolutely no idea of what you are implying.'

'Why so hoity-toity with me?'

'Sorry, but I really don't know.'

'That's better. I don't suppose you were hoity-toity with Dietsch. Well, darling, I'll explain. In your book he's
the
maestro. In mine, though I do not know Urge, sorry Serge, he is merely a maestro, a conductor. Compare Einstein the physicist! Freud the psychoanalyst!'

Nostrils flaring and wearing an expression of glee on his face, he strode round the room, the ends of his dressing-gown flapping in his slipstream. Suddenly he stopped, turned, and lit a cigarette.

'Poor kid, you're so clumsy,' he began, to soften her up.

'Clumsy in what way?'

'Like that for example: asking in what way you've been clumsy. It proves you know you're on shaky ground. Anyway, though you weren't aware you were doing it, you've told me on seven separate occasions that you were his mistress.'

'I haven't said I was his mistress.'

'That makes eight! If you really weren't his mistress, then instead of saying that you never said you were his mistress you'd have made do with saying that you weren't his mistress. (He clapped his hands.) Gotcha!'

'No, no! I swear it's not true! We were just good friends!'

'You've admitted it eight times,' he smiled, and he twirled his cigarette between his fingers. 'The first time was when you came to my room, so noble and contrite, and you mentioned a secret you couldn't keep to yourself any more. Tell me, what's so terrible about being just good friends? Second admission: when I asked you if you'd been to bed with him that evening just before we met at the Ritz, you said "No". What did that "No" mean? It meant that you'd slept with him lots of times before! Otherwise your reaction would have been not to answer "No" but to say "I've never ever slept with him"! I'll put the rest of your admissions in cold storage, though they're there if you want them. Ergo you were his mistress. Actually I'm fully aware that you intended to admit it at the start. But I made the mistake of kicking you out of bed. But, come to think of it, why did you want to tell me about this man?'

'So I wouldn't have anything to hide from you.'

He felt a surge of pity. Poor girl, she genuinely believed that was the real reason. It was quite true: women were driven by their unconscious.

'So this man kisses you forty times, this way, that way, all ways, and you let him, and there's a smile on your face. (He wanted her.) In the receiving and giving of kisses of every variety, even the category of what Michael calls the inside reverse double-columbine, you raise no objections and even say thank you for every columbine you get! But if he starts getting attentive, as you nobly put it, by which I mean he has a mind to proceed to the logical sequel to the forty kisses, you take umbrage, you come over all virtuous, you shy away from the sequel! Come now, Ariane, earn my good opinion! Tell me the truth! You were his mistress! You know it, and so do I!'

He had spoken so quickly that she had not understood everything, a circumstance which convinced her that what he said must therefore be true. Besides, he had spoken with such certainty. And since it was patently obvious that he knew, she might as well make a clean breast of it.

'Yes,' she breathed, head bowed.

'Yes what?'

'Yes to what you said.'

'His mistress?'

She nodded a yes. He closed his eyes as he registered the shock, and realized that it was only now that he believed it. A hairy man, a man with a tail, crouching over the woman he loved!

'But only once,' she said.

'We'll come back to that later. Did you?'

'No,' she breathed.

How quickly she caught on! Oh, so sly! So shameless! He put the question more clearly. She blushed, and he lost his temper. What right did she have to blush? Indefatigably he repeated his question, and on each occasion she said no. But when he put the question for the twentieth or thirtieth time, defeated and with tears brimming in her eyes she shouted 'Yes, yes!' 'But not much,' she added after a pause, and she burned with shame and felt foolish. Outside, an amorous tom-cat wooed his lady-love. 'That's enough, DietschF shouted Solal. A she-cat responded in an assertive contralto. 'That's enough, Ariane!' shouted Solal. At this point she decided to cry properly, which she did without having to try very hard, for she had only to feel sorry for herself, which was something that came to her easily.

'Why are you crying? We've been talking about a passing moment of happiness and that makes you cry?'

'Yes.'