The House in Paris (25 page)

'My mother was there. She was as though she had fallen across the sofa, with eyes half shut and no colour in her face, but I looked at her with no pity.

'If she had not been conscious, my standing there made her so, and she looked at me. I saw then that all her life her power had never properly used itself, and that now it had used itself she was like the dead, like someone killed in a victory. Her lips were stiff and she could not speak at first; then she said: "Go after him," and when I still stood there she said: "You fool, he is dying." I thought she meant in the spirit. But she moved herself on the sofa and, with a frown like she has when someone spills wine or ink, made me look at the mantelpiece. The room is not light, and till then I had looked only at her. But then I saw his blood splashed on the marble, on the parquet where he had stood and in a trail to the door, smeared where I had trodden without knowing. I saw his penknife with the long blade open, fallen between where he had stood and where my mother sat. She said: "He cut his wrist across, through the artery, to hurt me." Her eyes turned up, going white, and I then ran to the street door. I saw then why they all stared at our step. Then a police agent pushed through the crowd quickly, to question me. A taxi stopped outside the crowd and the American girl who had your room then ran to me. When she saw our step she became faint. I said: "He is somewhere: quick, you must let me go." What you read in the papers is all the rest, Karen. When Max came out our street must have been empty; you know, for minutes together sometimes it is: so few people pass. He must have stood a minute on our doorstep; then, holding his wrist and muffling it, for there was no trace of blood in the street, crossed the street to the mouth of that alley between the two studio walls. At the end of that he fell down. As no trace led us there, when we came to him it was too late, which was as he wished.

'That evening I sent the American girls away. When that was arranged, I went back to my mother. She was not easy to be with. But even if the police had not delayed me, I could not have left her to come to you, as I had wished, next day.

That first night, she was more than herself, she was made of iron again; she made me go to bed but walked in my room all night. She kept stopping by my bed saying: "Weep — why don't you weep?" I had sent you the telegram, dreading (though I see now that this was foolish) the English papers next day. She had seen the telegram go; she said "Karen will weep." When I had lain some time I said: "Why did you reproach him?" She said: "It was commendation he could not bear. I was commending him when he took his knife out. He struck myself, himself, my knowledge of him." She said his attack on himself had been, however, so quiet that when it happened she did not understand. She had seen the knife in his hand but thought he was playing with it; he had been weighing it on his hand deliberately while he had been listening to what she said. The force he used took so little movement; she said: she only saw him frowning, then blood flowing. When she had told me this she stopped and smiled and said: "He needed so much to escape." After that she was calmer; she put out the light and lay down on the sofa at the foot of my bed. She said: "Weep if you can, sleep if you can; I will not leave you alone." But next day she was ill. She made me stay close to her, saying that till I could weep I ought not to be alone. For some days after that we did not go out, because of the people who came to stare. Since then, when we go out we walk together. My mother cannot be left but says, always, that it is I who must not be alone. The police inquiries were not too difficult for us. Max was found to be much in debt, and pressure of his work, since we had returned from London, had been like fever with him: I remember that when he came from work to see me his eyes used to be like a night-bird's forced into the light. They attributed what had happened to debt and strain. In the court, two colleagues of his said they believed his brain, though brilliant, to be unsound. A friend of his who was called said he believed Max incapable of repose and had for long anticipated a breaking-point. Pleasure itself fatigued him, his friend said. A woman who had at one time been his friend said she too often found him nervous and desolate.

She said one had hoped much for him from a marriage. Directed beforehand by my mother, I admitted anxiety as to his nervous health, but said there had been no trouble between us two. For the inquiry, I remained his fiancée. My mother said his nervous crisis had been precipitated by her pressing questions — with regard to my welfare in the approaching marriage — as to the exact state of his money affairs. She added that, though one could hardly reproach oneself for a mother's anxiety, she regretted not having seen he was already overwrought. Nothing found among his papers cast doubt on what we had all said. The police, satisfied, closed the inquiry.'

'Were you ill then, Naomi?'

'No; my mother was ill, which occupied me. All the time I had on my mind that I must get to you, and I could not.'

'I was all right,' said Karen — 'unless you were wanting me, too?'

'Yes, I was. That was it.'

'I have never helped you ... I see why there was no message, he did not expect...'

'No. It was not his will; it was a passionate act.'

'Yes, I see now.'

'Till he found her outside the door, he had foreseen nothing.'

'Even if he had foreseen, even if you had been with him — there would have been no message.'

'Surely, surely — for you?'

'Not after that. Whatever your mother said, it must have turned me to dust for him.
You
she couldn't have touched, but he had given you up. She turned everything he had left to dust; then, I expect, said: "You have done as you pleased." It may have killed him to see his love for me in her hands; but he had given you up by his own will. That was where she had him. I told Max once that she loved him; her age can only have made that more terrible for her, and made her more relentless. She saw him love you, then me: she only had her own power — No, I am wrong, though: it was her power she loved. That time it overreached itself; that was all
...
I did want you to tell me everything — but I wish you had not. Some of it, but not all. After all, it was lived through once: that is enough.'

'It all happened; I still cannot divide one part of it from another. Have I told you too much? I cannot tell where to stop, now I have become, myself, familiar with this.'

'If you bore it, I cannot see why I shouldn't. But, you see, I am going to have a child.'

Though Naomi stared at Karen, her already dilated eyes altered so little that Karen thought at first that she did not understand. This was not so — but Naomi's calm had, since her story began, been pitched so high that nothing more could affect her. The fatal house in Paris still so possessed her that nothing was real that happened outside that. If she saw Karen changed or pale, she saw this in a dream. Karen, who in these last weeks had fainted twice, saw that frightening edge of blackness begin to close round the room, and put a hand to her head. Naomi, with a quiet look, went past to open the window. 'Let us be quiet then; you must not be upset.' She instinctively looked round the room for something to offer Karen, but everything was dismantled, everything said: Gone, gone.

Karen said: 'No, I'm all right.'

Naomi paused for a minute to make certain. Then: 'What shall you do?' she said.

Karen said in a dry, matter-of-fact voice (already knowing her plans), 'Travel with you as far as Paris tomorrow. Then go on somewhere else, I am not quite sure where, yet; I think somewhere in Germany. I drew money out of the bank this morning, and can get more when I know where I shall be. From wherever I am, I shall write to mother, telling her I shall stay abroad for a year. I shall ask her not to ask why; if she does ask I shall tell her. I ought to feel more than I do, but I cannot feel. If there is anybody I cannot bear this for, it is my father. If mother knows she may help, so that he need not know. After all, she
is
my mother: surely one cannot have children without seeing that anything in the world may happen to them? Nothing makes life safe — I don't think this need hurt her from the outside; people she knows are not suspicious or prying; they take for granted everyone is all right. "Such things do not happen." They can think my engagement being off has upset me, and that I am travelling, or working abroad, to distract myself. Girls often do that. Or else ill — no, that would not do: love has never made anyone in our family ill ... When I say this, it all sounds ordinary, doesn't it? In ways, you know, Naomi, I should like very much to be ordinary again. But I cannot remember myself before this happened ... I am glad not to have to be here when Ray comes home.'

'I had been thinking you might marry him.'

'I began to think so, too, some days after your telegram. It began to be what I wanted most. But finding this is to happen makes that impossible. So I must not think of that any more: apart from anything else, with his future, Ray has to have an irreproachable wife. When he hears nothing more, and comes back to find me gone, he will have to see, I suppose, that my letter breaking things off did really mean what it said.'

'Does he not agree to "No"?'

'No,' Karen said wearily. 'Since I wrote last, his letters have been from a different man. He sees what he wants now. He used to force me to reason; now he won't let me, he refuses to listen. If he had made me feel
that
Ray from the first, what happened might not — Why do we talk about him? We might not have been happy.'

'I think you should tell him.'

'My dear Naomi ...'

'I think you should tell him.'

'Oh, you talk like a mystic: try and understand people! I want help so much. All we have been discussing is so immediate, just the next few months. I can see myself through that. But after that? This child, don't you see, may live seventy years. I want him to be born: if not, I suppose one could stop it. Now, his birth is what I want most: why should Max leave nothing? But I must see some way for him to live. I could go off and live with him somewhere, I suppose. Somewhere where no one knew us — I cannot even imagine such a place. But if he is like Max and me he would hate that — hate exile, hate being nowhere, hate being unexplained, hate having no place of his own. Hate me too, because of all that. He would be better without me, in any place he could believe was his.'

'Have you at all thought
how
you should like him to live?'

'Yes, with you.'

'That is impossible.'

'Why?'

'Because of my mother.'

'Must you live with her always?'

'I was not going to leave her even for Max, you know.'

'Oh, Naomi! What is the good of saying you make me humble, when you know I cannot feel anything now? When feeling does come back, I shall begin to dread you. I have expected and taken everything from you. But everyone has, always — Why should your mother come first, though? She doesn't love you.'

'If she does not love me more, that is because she needs me. She does not care to need anyone so much. She is all mind and will, but she cannot make a
tisane
without flames running round the spirit stove. In the same way, when I am not there she burns herself out for nothing. If I could ever have left her — which, even for Max, I did not ask myself — the shock she has had from Max's death now makes it impossible ... She and your child must not live in the same house.'

'No . . . What shall we do then?'

'We will think. Do you sleep well?'

'Only, I have bad dreams — Braithwaite is coming up; dinner must be ready. Mother told me to tell you that she is so sorry, only the kitchenmaid's left to cook for us.' Karen looked round the room, with its empty half-moon tables, in which the furniture sat so queerly on the floor. 'Doesn't the room look funny without flowers?' she said.

'I do not know it well.'

'I don't feel I do either.'

Karen picked up Naomi's dusty black overcoat from a chair and took her upstairs to wash. Naomi had been put to sleep in the spare room dressing-room, next door to Karen: a high press overhung the conventual narrow bed. As Karen left her to go to her own door, the idea of the night to come — darkness, comfort with Naomi in the echoing house — flooded her with peace for the first time.

On their way down, they passed Mrs Michaelis's door, open, and saw sheets on the mirror and on the bed.

Part 3
The Present

1

'Y
OUR
mother is not coming; she cannot come.'

Leopold looked with his dark eyes searchingly at Miss Fisher who with her arms round him still knelt on the floor. He stood stone still inside her embrace. After a moment more, having felt him offer, simply by staying still, violent resistance to her — she let him go. He stood with his chin up, disengaging himself from her and from everyone. Miss Fisher sat back on her heels, then slowly got up. But she did not, even to Henrietta, look foolish, as women disregarded so often do. She did not know she was she; her body moved itself — till, all at once, the glance she cast round the salon seemed to be torn from her.

As for Henrietta, she went flat. She would grow up to date her belief that nothing real ever happens from Leopold's mother's not coming this afternoon. In spite of having been told she was to be taken out to look at the Trocadéro, so as not to be there when Mrs Forrestier came, she had been certain she
would
come in on all this somehow. Leopold would mention her name, his mother would say: 'But do tell me, who is Henrietta?'... When Miss Fisher had let Leopold go, Henrietta dared hardly look at him. This will not make him like me any better, she thought. She felt it was like Miss Fisher to have been so incontinent with bad news.

Looking down at his feet as they took each step on the parquet, Leopold walked to the mantelpiece. With his back to it, he suddenly faced Miss Fisher. 'I suppose,' he said coldly, 'that
you
are sorry.'

'I had hoped to see her, yes.'