Women's Barracks (12 page)

A brief spring sunlight came through the windows. Mickey remembered a photograph of a woman, smiling in a frame. A man's glove lay open-handed on the floor.

In spite of everything, it was Claude whom the colonel preferred. Mickey probably reminded him too much of his daughter.

But, "He's handsome as a god!" Mickey declared. "He makes love marvelously. It was very amusing."

Ursula had listened without saying a word, sitting there with her bare feet swinging a little above the floor. She lowered her head, watching her feet so that we might not see anything in her eyes. But one could see into her heart. Ursula was pained, unable to accept this abandonment.

Ginette recounted the tale of her latest love, a Canadian. Two women whispered together, laughing. From the hall below came the sound of the record that was most often played after "Violetta,"
"Mon coeur a besoin d'aimer."
Ursula too went to bed. She buried her head in her pillow. Her heart beat fast. She told herself: She just used me for amusement. And all at once she recalled the black eyes, the melancholy eyes of Michel, and the thought came to her that Michel would never have made use of her. But he had left, gone out of her life. She herself had driven him away. A longing rose in her for the calm voice of a man, and for the security that a woman feels because of a man's being in love with her—a man like Michel. Until now she had been a little girl all alone. But after her experience with Claude, Ursula had come to know the need of another being. She no longer knew how to be alone; she was afraid to be alone. And yet she was not resentful of Mickey. It was not in her nature to be resentful, and she liked Mickey very much.

The idea of evil arose in Ursula's mind. No one had ever taught her what was right. Whatever morality she possessed was instinctive. When she felt happy, she had told me once, it seemed to her that her actions were good, and when she felt unhappy, she thought of evil. And it seemed to her that the fear and the sense of solitude and the suffering within her were the result of evil. She did not know how to cry. Her tears never emerged, but seemed to remain at the bottom of her throat. Once again Ursula felt herself crushed by this world of grown-up people who took little girls and covered them with lies that were disguised as shining words, and then discarded them. She felt no resentment against either Claude or Mickey. She resented only the gestures, the false gestures that were made in the name of love, and that were used by grown-up people in life as in a play. Every gesture she had made had been pure, but now her own actions were tarnished, because all that people did was tarnished.

The following evening we had gas-mask practice. We were all assembled in the dining room, and there was a great deal of whispering and laughing and nudging back and forth while a handsome officer, young and blond, solemnly explained how to make use of a gas mask, as though we had never been told before.

Each of us had to put on her mask and keep it on for half an hour. There were two hundred women in the large hall, and we might have been taken for a school of monsters from beneath the sea. The rubber tubes slanted comically in all directions. We talked to each other with our hands. Inside the masks, we felt hot, and a fine haze covered the glass panes.

Claude was sitting next to Mickey. It was one of her days of remorse in regard to Ursula. She had again decided not to have any more to do with the girl, and she had not even looked at her all through the evening.

Behind the little window of her mask, Ursula saw Claude and Mickey, pressed one against the other on a single chair. Their rubber tubes kept bumping, their masks had an air of laughter. Claude's arm was around Mickey to keep her from falling off the chair.

Ursula was sitting behind them, and it seemed to her that she was entirely enclosed and locked in a huge grotesque mask that isolated her from the rest of the world. She didn't know what to do, but she had to do something. She couldn't remain abandoned like this. She was too miserable. And then all at once, as she afterward confessed to me, Ursula had the idea of pretending to lose consciousness. If she fainted, the way Jacqueline used to faint, then Claude would be forced to notice her, to run to her, to pay attention to her. At the thought of such an action, she blushed in her mask. What if everybody understood that it was a fraud? What if everybody made fun of her? Worst of all, what if Claude didn't even come to her?

It doesn't matter, she told herself. I have to try. And overcoming all of her inner resistance, Ursula suddenly caused herself to slip from the bench to the floor. There was a turmoil around her. All the masks pressed against her, pulling and pushing at her. Petit roared in her commanding voice, "Quiet! Return to your places!" Ann had removed her own mask and was pushing away all the women who were crushing Ursula. Finally Petit leaned over and undid her mask.

Ursula immediately opened her eyes. Ann held Ursula's head in her lap and said, "It's nothing, baby. You were too hot, that's all. There, it's all over."

And Claude, Claude was there, her anxious face bent over her. It was marvelous. It had succeeded after all. Claude was there.

We helped Ursula upstairs to the dormitory. She lay down on her bed. Claude followed us and sat down by Ursula, calling her Ursulita and stroking her forehead. Ursula looked at her without saying anything. She felt tranquil, almost happy, but with a tiny point of contempt for Claude within her happiness. For it had been necessary to deceive her, and Claude had let herself be taken in the trap.

But at least Claude was paying attention to her. Ursula sighed and closed her eyes. For the first time in her life, she felt as though she had accomplished a grown-up action.

Nevertheless, this brought only a short respite. Several times Claude took Ursula out with her in the evening, but Ursula felt lost in the night clubs. Unlike Mickey, she didn't explode into laughter over the jokes of Claude's friends. She was not talkative. She didn't know how to drink. Men found her nice but dull. They rarely found her pretty. Her pale little face with its huge brown eyes had a sort of style, it is true. But in those years in London, what men wanted of women was to make them forget the war, forget their problems and their nostalgia, and Ursula, without wishing to, reminded them of all those things. They much preferred Mickey.

And for Ursula, these excursions were a torture. One evening, in a bar near Grosvenor Street, when a drunken soldier seized her in his arms and tried to kiss her, she let out a cry of terror that brought laughter to the entire club.

Summer had come, another rainy London summer. The only hope for breaking the tension and the monotony was to go on leave. But where? Some of the girls went as guests of English families. Ursula dreaded going to stay with strangers. And Claude was becoming more and more nervous. Claude had spells of violent rage for no reason at all. In the switchboard room the atmosphere was always tense and stormy. She swore at the other women. One day, in the middle of the dining room, Claude started an argument with Ginette and called her a slut. Ginette slapped Claude's face.

Every day Ursula told me that she was going to ask for her eight-day leave, and every day she held back, hoping there would be a change in Claude.

One evening it seemed to Ursula that the change had arrived, and that everything would be again as it had been. And as always, it was not because of a sexual need in Ursula for Claude; it was simply a thirst for tenderness, in which the sexual aspect was only incidental.

It was a Saturday evening, and Claude was off duty. A group of us had decided to go out on a hen party, just by ourselves, to have dinner somewhere and then go to a movie. Claude had invited Mickey and Ursula to come and spend the night at her place afterward. Ursula asked for week-end leave. Claude was in excellent humor, and as always when a party was in sight, she seemed to regain her youth.

The beginning of the evening passed well. We went to dinner at a place called Rose's, a little restaurant in Soho kept by a sort of witch—a fat Belgian woman who never served anyone she didn't like. At her place, the only dish was horse-meat steak with fried potatoes. Fifteen people at most could get into the restaurant. Most of the clientele consisted of sailors of Free France; sometimes there were a few Belgian officers, and occasionally there was a party of high society people in search of exotic atmosphere. The radio played, and people yelled and sang. On the wall there was a photograph of King Leopold, covered with grease spots. Rose served everybody herself, growling continuously. Beer had to be fetched from the pub across the street; it cost two shillings six. And the meal was finished off with a dish of apple sauce. It was always very gay there, and the food was quite good.

Claude performed imitations and sang
"Ah, que c'est done bete un homme!"
and Rose's large ill-tempered face wrinkled up in a smile. When Claude was in this mood, there was no one on earth who could resist her charm. Ursula ate with great appetite, and laughed with all her soul. And Claude was full of attention for her, refilling her plate with fried potatoes, asking her opinion about everything, treating her like an intimate friend.

Then someone suggested that it would be dull to go to the movies after this, so we decided to make a tour of the pubs and bars.

And then Claude began to drink.

At eleven o'clock all of us went off to the barracks, except for Mickey and Ursula, who were to sleep at Claude's. The next day, Ursula told me what happened.

The alert had sounded. Alerts had been rather rare the last few months. The searchlight swept the sky over their heads, but not a sound was to be heard. The three women walked home along the length of Hyde Park.

Claude was no longer paying attention to Ursula. She had taken Mickey's arm in the dark, and she talked only to Mickey. From time to time she stopped and kissed Mickey, and Ursula stopped too, not knowing what to do or say. It didn't occur to her to make a scene. It seemed to her that Claude was free to kiss whomever she liked.

They arrived at Claude's. Mickey went to take a bath. Claude followed her, laughing, and Ursula undressed and slipped into Claude's large bed. Like a suffering animal, she could think only of closing her eyes and burying her head in a hole. She rolled herself into a ball in the empty bed, and little by little the laughter of Claude and Mickey became more distant, and she fell asleep.

Ursula didn't know what awakened her. She found herself still alone in the bed. The room was dark except for a luminous circle on the floor, a reddish illumination shining from underneath the lighted gas heater. Ursula raised her head and looked about. Claude and Mickey were stretched on the carpet in front of the fire. They were nude, and the firelight gilded their bodies. They were extremely beautiful, both of them. Both very blonde, one with her slender young body and tiny little pointed breasts, the other with her womanly body and her round breasts, heavy and firm. There was a strange plastic beauty in these two sleeping women. Their arms and legs mingled until they looked almost as though they formed a single monster with two heads.

At that moment, Claude opened her eyes and looked at Mickey. Ursula clearly saw Claude's face. It was directly in the firelight. Her eyes seemed to be two dark holes, immense as chasms, and deep, deep within, there was a red burning light.

All at once a horrible terror hit Ursula. She said to herself, It's a demon! From the deepest part of her being, a primitive comprehension flooded her. This was a demon.

A kind of shiver mounted all through Ursula, shaking her. She slid back under the sheet, covering her head, terrified, her heart beating wildly. She stuffed her ears and bit the sheet, and for the first time since her very early childhood, tears began to flow.

Ursula finally fell asleep like that, hidden almost at the bottom of the bed, her face inundated with tears, all curled within herself, and feeling her body filled with pain, as though she had been battered by a demonic fist.

On Monday she asked for her eight-day leave, and left to visit one of the many English families that kindly opened their homes to the troops of other countries.

It was impossible that Ursula's leave should go by uneventfully. What happened to her seems to me quite beautiful, very strange, and rather mad. It could not have happened except during the war, and to Ursula. She told me all about it in detail, and I shall try to recall everything and to describe those days without the slightest change. I wish I could recover Ursula's very words.

She was visiting in a small harbor town that was forever filled with wind, a great wind that undid Ursula's hair, and that sometimes sent her flying into the arms of passers-by.

The family was charming. Ursula consumed great quantities of lamb, boiled cabbage, boiled potatoes, excellent meat pies, and rose-colored trembling gelatin. For two days she wandered around the port and the beach, amusing herself watching the boats, and thinking of Down Street as seldom as possible.

The port was a wonder to behold, and for childlike Ursula it was paradise. Bearded sailors, crates being unloaded, monkeys that the sailors were bringing home leaping about the gangways, people speaking in all sorts of languages, shops where one could buy the loudest Chinese silks and little rows of ivory elephants, trunk to tail, one behind the other on an ivory bridge. Urusla would have loved to buy herself a red and black kimono or an elephant or a monkey. But as she didn't have enough money, she contented herself with looking at these treasures.

In the evenings, the entire family took French lessons from her. The father repeated,
"La porte est ouverte. La demoiselle est jolie."
The mother, with great difficulty, managed to read a Free French newspaper, and the children had Ursula do their French exercises for them.

At night she slept with the three girls, and the mother came to hear them say their prayers and to kiss them all good night.

All the aunts, uncles, and cousins came to see the French girl, and to ask her if she liked England and if it were true that the French ate frogs.