The Diary of a Chambermaid (37 page)

My questions did not seem to have upset her, and she was becoming more confident.

‘And what about you?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t your parents beat you?’

‘Why, yes … Of course they did. That’s the way things are.’

Louise had stopped picking her nose; her hands with their bitten nails were spread out flat on her lap. What with all the whispering that was going on around us, all the laughter and quarrelling, the others could not hear what we were saying. After a silence, I asked:

‘But what brought you to Paris?’

‘Well you see, last summer there was a lady from Paris at Saint-Michel-en-Grève, who used to go bathing with her children. I suggested working for her, because the servant she brought with her was caught stealing, and got the sack … And then she brought me to Paris with her, to look after her father … an old man, an invalid, with paralysis of the legs …’

‘Then what made you leave? In Paris it’s not easy …’

‘Oh no,’ she interrupted violently, ‘I should never have left. It wasn’t that … Only you see things didn’t work out.’

Her lustreless eyes lit up with a gleam of pride, and she drew herself up. ‘It was impossible,’ she continued. ‘The old man turned out to be a filthy old swine …’

For a moment I was utterly dumbfounded … Could it really be possible. Could anyone, even a sordid, miserable old man, feel the slightest attraction to this shapeless body, this monstrosity of nature? Imagine anyone trying to kiss her, with those terrible decayed teeth and that foul breath … Oh, what absolute beasts men are … I looked at Louise, but the light had already died from her eyes, and once again they had become grey, lifeless smudges …

‘Was that a long time ago?’ I asked.

‘Three months …’

‘And you haven’t had another situation since?’

‘Nobody seems to want me, I don’t know why. When I go into the office, as soon as the ladies see me, they say, “Oh no, she certainly won’t do” … Somebody must have put a curse on me … After all, it isn’t as though I were ugly. I know how to do housework … I’m very strong … and I’m willing. If I’m too small, that’s not my fault … No, I must be under a curse.’

‘But how do you manage to live?’

‘I’m in a lodging house … I do all the rooms, and mend the linen and so on … and they give me a mattress in one of the attics and a meal every morning …’

The thought that here, at least, was someone worse off than myself, revived my sympathy for her.

‘Listen, Louise, dear,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound gentle and convincing. ‘It’s very difficult finding work in Paris. There are a lot of things you have to know, and the employers are much more difficult to please than they are in the country. I’m worried about you … if I were in your place I should go back home.’

But the idea seemed to terrify her.

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘never! If I went home, they’d say I’d been a failure … that no one would have me … And everybody would laugh at me. No, no, it’s impossible … I’d rather be dead!’

At that moment the door of the waiting room opened, and the harsh voice of Madame Paulhat-Durand called out ‘Louise Randon.’

‘Is it me she’s asking for?’ asked Louise, trembling with fear.

‘Yes, it was you … Hurry up. And this time, make up your mind you’re going to succeed.’

She got up, striking me in the chest with one of her elbows, stumbled over my feet, knocked into a table and, swaying on her short legs, she disappeared through the door to an accompaniment of boos.

I climbed up on to the bench and pushed open the fanlight, anxious to see what happened … Never had Madame Paulhat-Durand’s office seemed to me so utterly dreary, though God knows it used to freeze my heart every time I went into it. All that ghastly furniture covered with worn blue rep, and the big registration book in the middle of the table, with its cloth of the same blue material, covered with inkstains … And that desk, where Monsieur Louis’ elbows had made pale, shining patches on the blackened wood … And, at the far end, the sideboard, with its hideous array of glassware brought from abroad, and old-fashioned dishes … And on the mantelpiece, between two bronze lamps, among all those fading photographs, that infuriating clock, that seemed to make the time pass even slower with its maddening ticking … And the dome-shaped cage, with its two home-sick canaries puffing out their drooping feathers … And the mahogany filing cabinet, with its scratched sides … But I wasn’t there just to make an inventory of this lugubrious, tragic room. In any case, I knew it only too well unfortunately, and often my crazy imagination used to see its bourgeois smugness as a fitting showcase for the display of human flesh … No, what I was there for was to see how these slave-dealers would treat poor Louise…

There she stood, near the window with her back to the light, quite still, her arms hanging at her sides. A heavy shadow cast a thick veil over the ugliness of her face, but emphasised the stocky, massive deformity of her body, and the hard light that lit up the falling strands of her hair at the same time revealed the twisted outline of her arm and throat, before losing itself in the black folds of her deplorable skirt … An old lady, sitting in a chair with her back turned towards me—a hostile, savage back—was examining her attentively … All I could see of this old woman was a black hat with ridiculous feathers, a black cloak trimmed round the bottom with grey fur, and the hem of a black dress, forming a circle on the carpet. What I noticed particularly was the hand, lying on her knee in a black silk glove and contorted with athritis, the fingers slowly extending and contracting, plucking at her dress like the claws of a bird of prey … Near the table stood Madame Paulhat-Durand, stiff and dignified.

There was really nothing very special about all this … three commonplace people in this commonplace setting. It was in no way particularly striking or moving … Yet, to me, the sight of these three people, silently observing one another, held all the elements of a tremendous drama … I felt that I was watching a social tragedy, more terrible, more agonizing, than any murder … And my throat was dry, my heart was beating furiously.

Suddenly the old lady said:

‘I can’t see you properly, my dear … Don’t just stand there … I can’t see you, I tell you … Walk to the other end of the room, so that I can get a proper look at you!’ And then, in an astonished voice, she exclaimed: ‘Good God, how tiny she is!’

As she said this, she turned her chair a little so that I could now see her profile. I should have expected her to have a hooked nose, with long projecting teeth and the round yellow eye of a hawk. But not at all … her face was tranquil, almost friendly. As a matter of fact, her eyes expressed nothing at all, neither good nor evil… She might have been a retired shopkeeper. In business, people acquire a special gift for controlling the expression on their faces, so that it is impossible to tell what is going on inside their minds. The more callous they become, the more the habit of making quick profits develops their ambition and all their lower instincts, the gentler, or rather the more neutral, becomes their expression. All the evil in them, whatever might make their customers distrustful of them, is either concealed within the depth of their being or else finds some totally unexpected physical expression. The hardness of this old woman’s heart was not apparent in her eyes, her mouth, her forehead or the slack muscles of her face, but was all concentrated in the back of her neck … That was her real face, and it was a terrible one.

In obedience to the old lady, Louise had moved to the other end of the room. Her desire to please made her truly monstrous, utterly disheartening, and directly the light fell upon her the old lady exclaimed:

‘Oh, but how ugly you are, my dear!’ And turning to Madame Paulhat-Durand she added: ‘Is it possible? Can such hideous creatures really exist?’

Solemn and smug as usual, Madame Paulhat-Durand replied: ‘Certainly she’s no beauty … but the girl is quite honest …’

‘That may be so,’ said the old lady, ‘but she’s really too ugly … Such ugliness is really quite offensive … What’s that you’re saying?’

Louise had not uttered a word. She had merely blushed a little, and lowered her head. A thread of scarlet had appeared, circling her lustreless eyes. I thought she was going to cry.

‘Still, I suppose we’d better see …’ the old lady went on, her fingers working furiously, tearing savagely at her dress.

She questioned Louise about her family, the situations she had been in, her experience of cooking, housework, sewing. Louise merely replied ‘yes’ or ‘no’, in her harsh, jerky voice, but the mean, meticulous, cruel cross-examination went on for some twenty minutes.

‘Well, my girl,’ the old woman concluded, ‘one thing’s perfectly clear: you are completely untrained … I shall have to teach you everything … It will be at least four or five months before you are of the slightest use to me … And then your looks … They can hardly be called prepossessing … That mark on your nose, was it the result of a blow?’

‘No, ma’am, I have always had it …’

‘Well, it’s certainly most unattractive … What wages do you expect?’

‘Thirty francs, ma’am … and free laundry and wine,’ Louise declared in a determined voice.

The old woman almost leapt out of her chair.

‘Thirty francs,’ she screamed. ‘But have you never looked at yourself in the glass? You must be insane! Why, nobody will employ you … If I take you on, it will simply be out of the goodness of my heart, because I’m sorry for you. And you ask for thirty francs! Well, there’s one thing, you’re not lacking in cheek. If that’s the advice your friends out there have given you, you’d do better not to listen to them …’

‘Quite true,’ commented Madame Paulhat-Durand, approvingly. ‘The trouble is, they all egg each other on …’

‘Well then,’ proposed the old woman, ‘I shall pay you fifteen francs, and you’ll pay for your own wine … It’s really much too much, but I don’t want to take advantage of your being so ugly and hard up …’ And, lowering her voice so that it sounded almost kindly, she added: ‘You must realise, my dear, this is a unique opportunity for you, such as you won’t find elsewhere … I’m not like the others, you see. I’m quite alone … no family, no one. I look upon my maid as my family, and all I ask of her is to show me a little affection … She lives with me, shares my meals … Oh, I make a regular fuss of her … And then, when I die—and I’m a very old woman, and often ill—you can rest assured I shan’t forget her, provided she has looked after me properly, been devoted to me … You’re ugly, horribly ugly. Well, I must just get used to that … Besides, some of the pretty ones are wicked creatures, who are simply out to rob you. So perhaps your ugliness will be a guarantee for your behaviour … At least you’re not likely to have men running after you … You see, I mean to be fair with you, and what I’m offering you, my child, is a fortune … more than a fortune … a family.’

Louise was shaken. Clearly the old woman’s words had raised unexpected hopes, with her peasant greed, she was already dreaming of coffers filled with gold, fabulous legacies … And then, the thought of sharing her life with such a good mistress, eating at the same table with her, going for little outings with her in the town and neighbouring woods … all this dazzled her. But at the same time it all scared her, for her deeply ingrained mistrust cast a shadow of doubt over these shining promises … She could not make up her mind what to say or do … I longed to call out to her ‘No, don’t accept’, for I could easily imagine the kind of existence that was being offered her, shut away, overwhelmed with work, continually scolded, never enough to eat … all the everlasting, brutal exploitation of the poor, patient defenceless creature … ‘No, come away, don’t listen to them …’ But I never uttered the cry that was on my lips.

‘Come a little closer, my dear,’ the old lady ordered. ‘Anyone would think you were afraid of me … Come now, there’s nothing to be frightened of … It’s a curious thing, you know, but already you seem to be less ugly … I’m already getting used to that face of yours …’

Louise slowly approached, holding herself stiff in a desperate attempt not to knock anything over, trying hard to walk elegantly, poor creature. But as soon as she came near the old woman pushed her away.

‘My God,’ she cried, screwing up her face, ‘whatever’s the matter with you? What makes you smell so terribly? … This odour of decay … it’s frightful, unbelievable! … I’ve never known anybody smell like this … Have you got cancer? … Your nose, your stomach, perhaps?’

Madame Paulhat-Durand made a noble gesture.

‘I did warn you, Madame,’ she said. ‘It’s her one great defect … the only thing that has prevented her from finding a situation.’

But the old woman went on muttering: ‘Oh my God, my God! Is it possible? Why, you’ll poison the whole house … I couldn’t bear you near me … This makes all the difference … And there was me, growing so fond of you! No, no. I may be kind-hearted, but it’s simply not possible.’

She took out her handkerchief and began waving it in front of her face as though to purify the air, at the same time repeating: ‘Oh, really, it is simply impossible.’

‘Come, come,’ Madame Paulhat-Durand intervened, ‘make an effort … I’m sure this unfortunate girl will always be extremely grateful to you …’

‘Grateful indeed! That’s all very well, but gratitude isn’t going to cure this terrible infirmity … No, indeed! In fact, the very most I could pay would be ten francs, not a penny more … You can take it or leave it …’

Up to this point Louise had succeeded in restraining her tears, but now she broke down.

‘No, no,’ she sobbed, ‘No, I won’t take it, I won’t.’

‘Listen, young lady,’ observed Madame Paulhat-Durand drily, ‘either you accept this situation or I shall take no further responsibility for you … You will have to go to some other registry office. I have done what I can for you, and you’re certainly not much credit to my business …’

‘That’s perfectly true,’ the old woman agreed. ‘You ought to be only too grateful that I’m prepared to pay you ten francs … I offer them because I am sorry for you … Don’t you understand that it’s an act of charity, that I may well be sorry for later on.’