The Diary of a Chambermaid (6 page)

‘Well, I don’t exactly know, Father,’ she said, highly embarrassed. ‘But it seems there are certain caresses …’

‘Certain caresses? But my child, surely you know that such caresses are a mortal sin?’

‘That’s just why I’m asking the Church’s permission, Father.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well … But how often?’

‘My husband is a very robust man, a healthy man, Father. Perhaps twice a week …’

‘Twice a week? That’s much too often … sheer debauchery. However robust a man may be, he doesn’t need certain … certain caresses twice a week.’

Then after pondering the question for a moment or two, he added: ‘All right then, I will authorize it twice a week … but on certain conditions. Firstly, that you yourself get no pleasure from it …’

‘Oh, but I swear I shan’t, Father!’

‘Secondly, that you donate the sum of 200 francs every year to the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin.’

‘Two hundred francs?’ gasped Madame, ‘just for that? Why, it’s out of the question!’

And she has never bothered her confessor again.

The draper’s wife, who told me this story, concluded by saying: ‘How on earth can such a decent man as Monsieur Lanlaire be such a coward with his wife, when she refuses to give him, not only money, but even pleasure? If it was me, I’d soon bring her to her senses … and that’s a fact!’

So what happens? When Monsieur Lanlaire, who is a vigorous man and as fond of a bit of stuff as the next, wants to stand himself a little treat in that line, or even just to give some poor creature a present, he is reduced to the most ridiculous expedients … every kind of wangling and fiddling. And, when Madame finds out, it results in the most terrible scenes, rows that often go on for months at a time. So the master wanders about the countryside like a madman, waving his arms in the air, grinding clods of earth under his heel and talking to himself, come wind, rain or snow. And then, when he gets home in the evening, he’s more timid than ever … more scared, more obsequious, more utterly crushed.

The most curious, and also the saddest, part of this story is that, despite all the recriminations of the draper’s wife, despite all the infamous revelations, all the shameful filth that is hawked about from mouth to mouth, from shop to shop and house to house, I feel that the people of the village envy the Lanlaires even more than they look down on them. Despite their criminal idleness and all the harm they do to society, despite everything that is crushed beneath the weight of their monstrous wealth, it is precisely their money that gives them a halo of respectability, even of importance. People are prepared to bow down to them, to greet them more readily … and how complacently they speak of this wretched dump, where they live in such spiritual squalor, as The Castle. If a visitor were to ask what places of interest there were to see in the neighbourhood, I feel convinced that even the draper’s wife, despite all her hatred of them, would reply: ‘We have a fine church and a fine fountain, but best of all, we have the Lanlaires, the Lanlaires who are worth a million francs and live in a castle. They are atrocious people, but we are very proud of them.’

The worship of money is the lowest of all human emotions, but it is shared not only by the bourgeoisie but also by the great majority of us … little people, humble people, even those who are practically penniless. And I, with all my indignation, all my passion for destruction, I, too, am not free of it. I who am oppressed by wealth, who realize it to be the source of all my misery, all my vices and hatred, all the bitterest humiliations that I have to suffer, all my impossible dreams and all the endless torment of my existence, still, all the same, as soon as I find myself in the presence of a rich person, I cannot help looking up to him, as some exceptional and splendid being, a kind of marvellous divinity. And in spite of myself, stronger than either my will or my reason, I feel, rising from the very depths of my being, a sort of incense of admiration for this wealthy creature, who is all too often as stupid as he is pitiless. Isn’t it crazy? And why … why?

When I had left this horrible woman and her curious shop (where in any case I hadn’t been able to match my silk), I thought despairingly of everything she had told me about my employers. It was drizzling, and the sky was as foul as the soul of this scandalmonger. I slipped on the muddy pavement and, furious with her and with my employers, furious with myself, furious with this provincial sky, with the mud in which I felt that my heart as well as my feet were immersed, furious with the incurable sadness of this little town, I kept repeating to myself: ‘Oh well, so this is where you have landed up! This is really the last straw! Hell!’

Yes, I had made a proper mess of things. But there was worse to come. Madame dresses herself and does her own hair. She locks herself into her dressing-room, and even I am scarcely allowed in. God knows what she does there for hours and hours. This evening, unable to stand it any longer, I peremptorily knocked at the door and the following conversation ensued between her ladyship and myself:

‘Knock, knock.’

‘Who’s there?’

Oh, that shrill, yapping voice … I’d like to shove it down her throat with my fist.

‘It’s me, Madame.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I was going to do the dressing-room.’

‘It’s been done. Go away, and don’t come back until I ring for you.’

Which means that I’m not even a chambermaid here … I don’t know what I am, or what I’m supposed to do. Dressing and undressing them, and doing their hair is the only part of the job I enjoy. I love laying out their nightdresses and playing with the frills and ribbons, fiddling about with their underclothes, their hats and lace and furs; rubbing them down after a bath, helping them to dry, powdering them, pumice-stoning their feet, perfuming their breasts—in short, getting to know them from top to toe, seeing them in all their nakedness. Like that, they cease to be just your mistress, and become almost your friend or accomplice, often your slave. Inevitably, in all sorts of ways, you become the confidante of all their sorrows and vices, of their disappointments in love, of the most intimate secrets of their married life, of their illnesses … not to mention the fact that, if you are clever enough, you acquire a hold over them in a thousand little ways that they don’t even suspect. And there’s much more to it than that: it can be profitable as well as entertaining. That’s my idea of a chambermaid’s duties. You would never imagine how many of them are—how shall I put it?—how many of them are really crazily indecent in their private lives, even those who, in society, are regarded as being most circumspect and severe in their behaviour, most inaccessibly virtuous. But in their dressing-rooms, when they let their masks fall, even the most impressive facades reveal themselves as cracked and crumbling.

I remember one woman I used to work for who had the most curious habit. Every morning before putting on her chemise, and every evening after taking it off, she used to stand naked for a quarter of an hour at a time, minutely examining herself in front of the mirror. Then, thrusting out her bosom and stretching back her neck, she would throw her arms in the air to make as much as possible of her flabby drooping breasts, and say: ‘Look Célestine, they’re still quite firm, aren’t they?’

It was difficult not to laugh especially as Madame’s body was really the most pathetic sight. By the time she had taken off her corsets, brassière and girdle and stepped out of her chemise, you almost expected it to dissolve all over the carpet. Belly, rump, breasts were like deflated wineskins, sacks that had been emptied, leaving nothing but fat, flabby folds of skin; and her buttocks were as shapeless and pockmarked as an old sponge. And yet, from all this formless ruin one pathetic element of charm survived, the charm, now little more than a memory, of a woman who had once been beautiful, and whose whole life had been devoted to the pursuit of love. Thanks to the providential blindness to which most ageing creatures are subject, she refused to accept the inevitable eclipse of her beauty. In a last appeal to love, she relied more and more upon expensive remedies and all the refinements of coquetry … And love responded … But what kind of love? That was the tragedy!

Sometimes she would arrive home just before dinner, out of breath and thoroughly embarrassed.

‘Quick, quick … I’m late … Help me to change.’

Where could she have been, with that face so drawn with fatigue and those dark rings under her eyes, and so exhausted that all she could do was to fall like a log on the sofa in her dressing-room? … And the state of her underclothes! … Her chemise crumpled and dirty, her petticoat hurriedly fastened, her stays all unlaced, her suspenders undone, and her stockings in corkscrews … In her uncurled, hurriedly pinned-up hair there were sometimes bits of fluff from a sheet or a feather from a pillow, and the thick makeup of her lips and cheeks smeared by kisses, so that the wrinkles in her face stood out like cruel wounds …

In an attempt to allay suspicion, she would moan: ‘I don’t know what came over me … But I fainted … suddenly, while I was at the dressmaker’s … They had to undress me … I’m still feeling terrible.’

Often, out of pity for her, I pretended to be taken in by these stupid explanations.

One morning while I was attending her the bell rang, and, as the footman was out, I went to open the door. It was a young man, a shady-looking specimen, gloomy and vicious, half worker, half layabout … one of those doubtful characters one sometimes runs into at the dance halls, who get their living from murdering people or from love … He had a very pale face, with a thin black moustache and a red tie. His shoulders were hunched up in a jacket too big for him, and he had the classical swaggering walk of his kind. With an air of troubled surprise he began by inspecting the luxurious furnishing of the hall, the carpets, mirrors, pictures and hangings … Then he handed me a letter for the mistress and, in an oily, drawling voice that was nevertheless a command, said:

‘And see I get an answer …’

Had he come to settle an account, or was he only a messenger? I ruled out the second hypothesis—if he was here on behalf of someone else he would scarcely have such an air of authority.

‘I’ll see if Madame is at home,’ I replied cautiously, twisting the letter in my hands.

‘She’s at home all right,’ he said. ‘I happen to know … So none of your monkey tricks. It’s urgent.’

As she read the letter Madame turned almost livid and, forgetting herself in her sudden terror, muttered, stammered:

‘He’s here in the house? … You left him alone in the hall? … How ever did he find out my address? …’

Then, quickly pulling herself together and speaking as casually as possible: ‘It’s nothing … I scarcely know him … He’s just a poor fellow, a very deserving case … His mother is dying.’

She hurriedly opened her desk, and with a trembling hand took out a 100-franc note: ‘Give him this … Quick, quick, poor fellow!’

‘Swine!’ I couldn’t help muttering under my breath. ‘Madame is very generous today … Some poor people are lucky.’

And I stressed the word ‘some’ as bitterly as I could.

‘Get along with you, quick,’ she ordered, scarcely able to stand still …

When I got back, Madame, who is not very tidy and often leaves her things lying about all over the room, had torn up the letter, and the last scraps of it were already burning in the fireplace. I never knew for certain just who this fellow was, and I did not see him again. But what I do know, for I saw it with my own eyes, is that that morning Madame didn’t stand looking at herself naked in the glass, nor did she want to know whether I thought her miserable breasts were still firm. She spent the rest of the day at home, restless and nervous, and obviously very scared …

From that moment, whenever Madame came in late in the evening, I was always terrified lest she’d been murdered in some brothel. And when I sometimes used to mention my fears in the servants’ hall, the butler, a cynical, very ugly old man, with a birthmark on his forehead, used to growl:

‘Well, so what? Of course that’s how she’ll end up sooner or later. What do you expect? Instead of chasing off after pimps, why doesn’t the old cow stay at home and fix things up with a man she can trust, someone she can count on?’

‘With you maybe?’ I sniggered.

To which, as everyone burst out laughing, the butler, puffing out his chest, replied: ‘And why not? I’d fix her all right… provided she paid me properly.’

He was really priceless, that man …

With my last mistress but one it had been a very different story … Oh, how we used to laugh about her, sitting round the table after the evening meal was finished. Nowadays I can see how wrong this was, for Madame was not really at all a bad sort. She was kind, generous and very unhappy … And she was always giving me presents … Sometimes, I must admit, we were really too beastly about her, but it’s always those who treat us best that suffer most for it.

This woman’s husband, a kind of scientist and member of some Academy or other, used to neglect her terribly. Not that she was ugly; on the contrary, she was extremely pretty. Nor that he ran after other women; in this respect his behavior was exemplary. But being no longer young, and presumably not very keen on lovemaking—maybe it didn’t even interest him—he used to let month after month go by without thinking of sleeping with his wife. She was in despair. Night after night I used to help her get ready for him … Transparent nightdresses … simply wonderful perfumes … everything. She used to say to me: ‘Perhaps this evening he might come, Célestine? Have you any idea what he’s doing?’

‘The master is in the library … working.’

And with the same despondent gesture she would sigh: ‘The library … always in the library! Still, perhaps he
will
come all the same …’

I used to finish titivating her, and proud of this sensual loveliness for which I was partly responsible, would look at her admiringly:

‘Well, if he doesn’t, all I can say is he’ll be making a big mistake. Why, just to look at you this evening, Madame, would be enough to make him forget all his worries!’