The first time she saw Marcel Séverine hardly noticed him. He came in with Hippolyte, who attracted her attention immediately: even before she met him Séverine had been intrigued by the sense of evil which surrounded him.
“Now be nice to Hippolyte,” Mme Anaïs instructed, without looking them in the face.
“Don’t worry, we will,” Charlotte answered uneasily, “but I thought we’d got rid of him for good.”
With a sigh Mme Anaïs shrugged her shoulders.
“You never know with him. Maybe we’ll never see him again. Or maybe he’ll be here for a week on end. Anyhow, be nice to him, you won’t be sorry.”
In the hall Séverine asked, “Who is he?”
“She won’t tell us,” Mathilde murmured.
“Rich?”
“You kidding!” cried Charlotte. “He never pays a red cent.”
“Why not?”
“Mme Anaïs says so. At first we thought he was her lover, but he isn’t. My guess is he used to be and he still has a hold over her. Thank God he doesn’t come in much. Twice in eighteen months is plenty for me. Otherwise I’d get out of here.”
“Me too,” put in Mathilde.
They hesitated a moment when they reached the door to the big room. Séverine pressed them:
“Is he very passionate then? Brutal?”
“Not really—is he, Mathilde? He’s pretty quiet, not even dirty. But he scares the shit out of you, I can’t explain it.”
A few seconds later and Séverine understood. Hippolyte was a barbaric hulk of a man, bigger and taller than anyone she’d ever seen. True, there was nothing particularly cruel about his face, which was fat and very large. But there was something else, perhaps the contrast between his majestic, almost deadly immobility and the savage animal life that darkened his lips, closed his jaws like a trap, and turned his fists into hammers of flesh and bone. Perhaps it was the way he rolled his cigarettes and licked them together. Or perhaps it was the tiny gold ring he wore in his right ear. Like Charlotte, Séverine couldn’t say what it was; but fear slid slowly up her veins. Fascinated, she couldn’t take her eyes off this man with the color and size of some bronze idol.
Though Hippolyte continued to stare at some secret spot beyond the room, he noticed the three girls’ uneasy fear. He didn’t bother to comment on it, but said in a lazy voice loaded with scorn:
“Everything O.K., kids?”
Then he was silent. It was clear he didn’t like talking; silence—that dead water intolerable to most—didn’t worry him in the least. But Charlotte had to break it.
“And how are you, Monsieur Hippolyte?” she asked with false gaiety. “It’s been months since we’ve seen you.”
He didn’t answer, but took a drag at his cigarette.
“Why don’t you take off your clothes, it’s hot in here,” suggested Mathilde, who was also bothered by his silence.
Hippolyte made a short sign and she went and helped him off with his jacket. His shirt was of heavy silk; the muscles of his arms, shoulders and chest showed under it. They might have been of cast iron, designed for some immense labor.
“I brought someone with me,” said Hippolyte. “My friend.”
The tone in which he spoke the last word was noticeably at variance with the man’s superb nonchalance. Solemn and sonorous, that word seemed to be the only one that mattered, for Hippolyte, in the whole human vocabulary.
Séverine turned to look at the young man, who stood a little behind Hippolyte, as if shrunk into his shadow. She saw a pair of deep-set, glowing eyes fixed on her; but her attention was once more magnetized by the colossus, who was saying:
“We don’t have much time. I’ll pay for drinks some other day. Come here, you—the new one.”
Séverine started toward him but was stopped short by a hot drawl. “Let me have her,” said the younger man.
Charlotte and Mathilde stirred uneasily—it seemed to them so completely forbidden to try to oppose Hippolyte’s desires. But Hippolyte gave a massive, gentle smile, put his enormous hand on his companion’s shoulder—which, for all its seeming fragility, bore the burden lightly—and said:
“O.K., kid—have a ball. She’s your age.”
Séverine was attracted to Hippolyte; so she was surprised to realize that this cynical exchange didn’t relieve her excitement. For, in fact, the thin young man attracted her even more.
“I must like you pretty well to take you off my friend,” he said when she’d taken him to her room.
Ordinarily, a remark like that would have been enough to deaden Séverine’s senses: what they required was silence, haste, and rage. But she was amazed to find that this man’s patient desire disturbed her. She took a second look at the person to whom the immovable Hippolyte had surrendered her. His hair shone with thick pomade. His tie was expensive but very loud, his clothes were much too tightly cut, and a large diamond sparkled on his ring finger. There was something suspect about the whole ensemble, just as there was in the tough, tight skin of the man’s face, and in the eyes, at once anxious and inflexible. Séverine remembered how those narrow shoulders had remained unflinching under Hippolyte’s hand. A keen emotion took her in its grip.
“I’m telling you I like you,” the youth repeated without opening his mouth.
Séverine realized that what he said wasn’t simply a compliment; it was a kind of gift, and he was annoyed that she was not more grateful for it. She moved toward him, her lips half-parted. He pressed his mouth against hers with calculated intensity. Then he carried Séverine to the bed. She felt herself so light in those undeveloped arms! Hippolyte’s friend had only the appearance of weakness. She moaned with pain when he gripped her between his thin legs, and already an ecstasy more violent than she had ever known was invading her.
The young man took out an expensive cigarette-case, lit a cigarette, and inquired:
“What’s your name?”
“Belle de Jour.”
“What’s the rest?”
“That’s all.”
His lips creased with ironic indifference.
“Think I’m a cop or something?”
“And what’s your name, honey?” Séverine asked him, feeling a sensual pleasure at using the intimacy for the first time.
“I don’t have any secrets. They call me Marcel. Also the Angel.”
Séverine felt a slight thrill; the dubious nickname was just right for the cynical face sunk in the pillow beside her.
“And sometimes,” Marcel continued hesitantly, “well, they call me … let’s not be formal … they call me Gold Mouth.”
“Why?”
“Look.”
Only then did Séverine realize that he’d managed to keep his lower lip held close to the gum. He pulled it forward now, and she saw that all his front teeth were made of gold.
“All at one blow,” snickered Marcel, “and then, too.…”
He didn’t finish, for which Séverine was grateful. The sudden glimpse of that mouth had frightened her. Marcel dressed hastily.
“You’re going already?” she asked despite herself.
“Sure, I have to. I’ve got a friend.…”
He cut himself short with a sudden surprised irritation, and added, “Get that! I was going to make excuses to you.”
He left without bothering to look at her, but he returned alone the following day. Séverine was busy. Charlotte and Mathilde offered themselves.
“Get lost,” Marcel said. “I want Belle de Jour.”
He waited patiently. Time wasn’t measured in the ordinary way for him, or for Hippolyte. Marcel had an animal’s ability to relax and think with his body. What went on inside his head couldn’t be dignified by the name of thought.
Séverine’s footsteps banished this watchful torpor in an instant. She went to him radiantly, but he stopped her with a harsh gesture.
“Well, finally.”
“It was hardly my fault if you had to wait.”
He just managed not to shrug his shoulders. Had to wait! But how could he explain to this woman the cause of an anger he refused to admit to himself in the first place.
“O.K.,” he said roughly. “I’m not asking any questions.”
He kissed her lips. Since he didn’t bother to cover his gold jaw, Séverine felt both the heat of his mouth and the cold of the metal. She was never to forget the taste of that contrast.
Marcel stayed with Belle de Jour quite a while. He seemed to want to slake at a draught a disturbing thirst. And Séverine felt a sickening fear at the center of her soul: she enjoyed his embraces altogether too much, she felt much too contented beside him. More than once she had to resist the desire to stroke Marcel’s body, invisible in the twilight. Finally she could repress herself no longer, and brushed his shoulder. She withdrew her hand at once: she’d touched what seemed to be a sort of gap in his skin. Marcel gave a hiss of scorn.
“Not used to buttonholes? You’ll have to be soon.”
Taking Séverine’s wrist he led her fingers along his body. He was covered with scars: on the arms, thighs, back, belly.
Séverine exclaimed, “But how …?”
“You want to see my police record? Don’t ask questions.”
The sententious severity of his own voice acted on him like a signal.
“With which, good-night,” he said.
She didn’t watch him dress. She didn’t want to reckon up his scars in a look; it was as if she were afraid that the sight of all those virile and mysterious wounds might further tighten a knot she felt was already only too well tied.
She learned just how strong the bond was in the next few days; Marcel didn’t appear. She could measure how much she missed him by her constant anxiety and the strange, starved languor that spread through her. She was terrified of his not wanting her any more, and she worried that he hadn’t enough to pay Mme Anaïs and was staying away for that reason.
So when after a week she finally saw his welcome face, tautened in an evil grimace, she suggested, “Look, if you don’t have enough money, I could.…”
“Shut up,” he told her.
His breath came quicker, then with insulting conceit he said, “I know if I wanted to … any time … I’ve already got three of them supporting me, see … but you, that’s different. And that’s how it is … money, money, money here!”
He tossed a rumpled packet on the table. Hundred franc notes were mixed with smaller bills.
“I don’t even know how much there is,” he muttered scornfully. “And when that lot’s gone there’ll always be more somewhere.”
“So?” Séverine whispered.
“So what?”
“What’s kept you away?”
Once again, he had the sharp reaction which any question from Séverine seemed to cause him; he retorted, “That’s enough. I didn’t come here to talk.”
But there was a faint tremor in his voice.
From then on Marcel never missed a day. Fidgety at first, and taciturn, he gradually relaxed, as if no longer trying to fight a seduction stronger than himself. Each day he sank deeper into Séverine’s senses, each day she found it harder to shake off his image. So much so that the rampart which had till then so rigorously separated her two lives crumbled bit by bit. No doubt this breach had begun some time before she noticed it, but the following circumstances made Séverine realize what had happened to her:
Marcel had just left, and in her infatuation for him, she had lost all sense of time. Suddenly she remembered that she had to dine out with Pierre and friends, and realized that Pierre had undoubtedly got home by now and was probably worrying about her. But still broken and burning from Marcel’s kisses, she felt too indolent to accept the idea of going home. She dressed very slowly in order to turn her lateness into a definite obstacle, then telephoned Pierre to say she’d been kept longer than expected by a fitting and that she’d meet him at the restaurant. It would tire her less than rushing home, and in any case it was to be an informal evening and an afternoon dress would do.
So for the first time Séverine went without transition from the world of Mme Anaïs, of her girls and their customers, into her own respectable society. She felt a little inner shock when the waiting men rose as they saw her; in her mind’s eye she had a fleeting but intense vision of Mathilde taking off Hippolyte’s jacket.
The Sérizys had been asked out by two young surgeons. The darker of the two had the reputation of being quite a Don Juan. He moved with controlled sensuality, and the expression on his face was alternately tender and tough, which women found extremely attractive. Séverine was aware of this; the thought only made her feel ironically safe when he asked her for a tango. This friend of Pierre’s had always treated her respectfully, but this evening he must have sensed some strange aura about her, for throughout the dance he held her boldly close. Far from disturbing her, this audacity produced only an involuntary disdain on Séverine’s features. How polite seemed the desire of this individual celebrated for his bluntness! How pathetically bloodless he appeared beside the man to whom Belle de Jour now submitted daily! There was more despotic suggestiveness in a single one of Marcel’s spontaneous gestures, in one squeeze of those steel-hard hands, then in all the efforts of this rich-woman’s Casanova put together. No matter how he tried, he’d never attain the ingenuous savagery of a Marcel, laced with scars and with the price of love haughtily folded in his pocket.
At that moment Séverine was closer to the impure angel with the golden mouth than to the people around her. On her lips, intended for her dance-partner, lay the words she had one evening of obscure prescience hurled at Husson—“I’m afraid you weren’t cut out for rape.”
All that evening Marcel’s image refused to leave her. She was still bound to him by the dress she was wearing, and which he’d taken off; by the skin he’d caressed and which she’d had no time to purify. Séverine felt very beautiful that night, and she experienced a perverse intoxication at mixing the two women she now was. As they left the restaurant she kissed Pierre with a warmth not wholly meant for him.
But when she saw him start, and noticed during the drive back that something heavy and unexpressed separated them, Séverine was horrified. A second of thoughtlessness had compromised all her careful work. Once again she had hurt Pierre.
Séverine only fully realized the strength of her love for him at such moments of emotion or peril; but in those moments she felt it to the point of pain. She now recognized suddenly that she was no longer going to Mme Anaïs’ in search of an anonymous lust, but for Marcel. She knew then that her secret life, which had been so well contained within the walls of the rue Viréne, was overflowing into her other world which was dedicated to Pierre; and she knew too that she risked losing everything in that corrupt flood. She had to dam up the dike at all costs. The routine she’d gotten into with Marcel was what had caused this dangerous situation. She’d have to forget him. It would mean a sacrifice, but one she looked forward to as she contemplated Pierre’s solemn face in the darkness. She decided to set straight the course of destiny.
Mme Anaïs greeted Séverine’s resolution with a satisfaction in which there was an admixture of anxiety.
“Sure, I know how you feel, honey, you don’t want to see any more of him,” she said. “I don’t know anything about that guy, but frankly he’s someone I’d rather not see in my place. The only thing is, how’s he going to take it? One of Hippolyte’s friends, you know … well, I’ll tell him you’re sick. He’ll get tired of waiting.”
Four days later when Séverine left the house a figure barred her path. She knew who it was before she made out his features: that body was so massive it seemed to shut out the evening light.
“I’ll walk you to the end of the road,” Hippolyte said quietly.
Séverine was paralyzed with terror, at first. But once past the rue Virène—Mme Anaïs’ antichamber—and onto the square of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, a cry rose within her. What was she doing! Here she was out in that world where she represented only virtue, health —where she was Pierre’s wife—with a man from Anaïs’ house. And what a specimen! She’d given up the most vivid passion of her secret, cloistered life in order to keep her two worlds separate; and here was that life stretching its tentacles toward her quite literally, with none other than Hippolyte for its agent.
Her trembling terror arose not so much from her present situation as from a realization that fate, which she had thought she could bend to desires, was utterly out of her control. Then her fright gave way to an instinct of self-perservation. Rigid, ready to shriek for help, Séverine ran toward a passing cab. She made no more than a sort of stumble: Hippolyte’s hand fell on her and Séverine knew the dull shock of a convict taking his first step at the end of a chain. The weight of that hand drained all her strength.
“No hurry,” said Hippolyte without raising his voice. “I want to talk with you. Somewhere quiet O.K.? Come on.”
He walked toward a small wine-store on the square. Although he’d let go of her, in fact wasn’t even looking at her, Séverine followed him.
The tiny room was empty. There was just one workman downing a glass of wine at the stained counter. He did so with such relish, however, that he gave Hippolyte the idea. He waited till his drink had been brought before turning toward Séverine.
“Listen to me,” he said, “because I don’t want to say this again. And if you want to know how I keep my word, ask around in Montmartre or Les Halles about Hippolyte the Syrian. What I’m saying is, if you don’t want any trouble”—the mildness of his expression sent a shiver through Séverine—“then don’t play around with Marcel.”
Slowly he drank his wine, and reflected, for it was clearly an effort for him to develop an idea.
“Now you, you seem to be a nice kid, a good kid,” he went on, “so maybe I better tell you how it is. See, Marcel’s a guy once saved Hippolyte’s life. Get that straight. That’s more than if he were my son, I mean. Only thing, he has one weakness—women. Last year, for instance, without telling me … well, I don’t have to tell you all that. I never thought he was going to start all over again when he picked you out—but you never know. In the beginning he kept himself going pretty good … he’s a man even when he’s acting like a damn fool. And then … see, he’s so simple, he lets them take him. But, you don’t really think he swallowed that story you were sick, do you? If I didn’t stop him it’d be Marcel you were seeing tonight, kid. But I didn’t want that. No. He gets too excited.”
Hippolyte seemed to lose himself in a heavy reverie. For a second Séverine thought he’d forgotten her.
“What I mean is,” he said eventually, “I think you’ve got the idea.”
He put his hand on her shoulder again, gave her the full stare of his immobile eyes, and said, “Fix it up. Only fast, see. It’s giving me a headache.”
From the other side of the window Séverine saw the huge, blurred shadow slumped in front of an empty glass. And though she was free again she turned her head away sharply. That shadow fascinated her. She had to do something right away, every one of her maddened nerves told her that. One more day and she’d be completely in the power of that pair; she didn’t know which of the two scared her most. And behind them she sensed other dangerous men, ready to obey them. She returned quickly to the rue Virène.
“I’m going away,” she told Mme Anaïs.
“Had a talk with your friend, is that it, dear? He’s taking you off on a vacation?” A total break with the house was incomprehensible to the madame.
“Yes, yes, that’s right,” Séverine said, to avoid having to explain.
If Mme Anaïs’ guess was not what decided Séverine, it certainly relieved her of any further hesitation. She had already, during the interview with Hippolyte, felt a blind desire to escape. But escaping the house on the rue Virène was not enough. Séverine couldn’t—wouldn’t—breathe the same air as her tormentors. She had to put distance between herself and Marcel, between herself and Hippolyte. Summer was starting. As a rule Pierre liked to take his vacation later on. He’d put up objections about the hospital, the clinic, about the doctors’ fixed roster for vacations. But Séverine knew herself sufficiently hardened by suffering now to win him over. Once again her love made her unite her feelings of deepest tenderness with her most wretched writhings.
As she’d suspected, she was easily able to persuade Pierre, arguing her health and her longing to be alone with him. A week after Hippolyte’s warning the Sérizys left Paris by train for a little beach near Saint-Raphaël.
Even on the platform Pierre and Séverine were nervous, each for different reasons. Pierre was worried about the way this sudden departure would interfere with his work; Séverine was in dread of seeing the evil gold thread of Marcel’s smile, or the monstrous shadow of Hippolyte. The first jolts of the train shook up and carried off these worries. The wonderful isolation of private sleeping compartment enveloped Pierre and Séverine. The same pristine pleasure shone in both their eyes. They felt their love as fresh as on their honeymoon, and considerably stronger. Above all, Séverine was moved by the nearness of gentle, quiet days ahead—stretching on, so it seemed to her, into eternity.
They were indeed among the happiest days of her life. The weeks she’d just lived through, together with the threat hanging over her life, increased her capacity for happiness. And that capacity, which had sufficed Séverine so long, was deep and powerful. So she proceeded to extract from all the elements around her—sea, sand, sunlight, hunger and sleep—their most intense essence. The sky was a clear blue. The air overhead was like a delicate, precious balm. It bathed her body—a body which began to forget the touch of many hands, began to belong to her again, as it chastely unfolded.
Pierre too was happy. He loved the relaxation, the beloved countryside, and above all he adored the sight of the young woman who was all his joy in the fullness of her innocence. They swam together. When they hired a boat their oars dipped together easily. They played like two schoolboys on the sand. It was in this sort of life that Séverine felt truly close to Pierre. In Paris, his patients, his books, and his learned articles all came between them; but here every game they played—vigorous, innocent exercise at which she was almost as good as he—served to unite them in common contentment.
How sweet, how beloved Pierre was to her during those matchless days. How she pitied and despised herself for risking the ruin of such total harmony.
After some hurt or moral shock too strong for the system, certain vices so frighten their victims that they become horrified by their addiction, and, as a result, think they’ve freed themselves from it for ever. So it was with Séverine. In the heat of her new-found happiness and resurrected love she would have considered it mad even to think of the house in the rue Virène. Since she no longer felt the sting that drove her to that shadowed house, she was amazed—and disgusted—to remember her enslavement to it. She’d got away in time. There would be no trace left of her visits. Nobody—not even Hippolyte—would know where to find Belle de Jour. She held her safety in her own hands. And what could keep her from feeling invulnerable as she lay under a July sun, at the edge of a gentle sea, protected by Pierre?
But her own weapons turned against her. Her self-assurance had been won too rapidly, too totally. Distance had served to reduce to human proportions what in Paris had haunted her like a nightmare. As soon as Séverine had begun to be realistic, and could see Mme Anaïs’ apartment as an apartment, Mathilde as just a poor kid, Marcel as the pimp he was; and when Hippolyte himself had turned into a sort of inarticulate wrestler: then Séverine thought she was safe. And her best guard—her sense of mystical terror fell. Only reason was left to protect her. Crouching in her carnal depths, the enemy became quick with life.
One morning it rained. Later, Séverine thought that if only the weather had been good that day everything would have been all right; as if the powers that drove her could have remained indefinitely patient, those powers that had waited so many years for their sweet sad prey.
The bad weather kept Pierre and Séverine in. He took advantage of the rain to revise an article on surgery. Mechanically she picked up the illustrated magazines she’d bought on leaving Paris but hadn’t bothered to read during the trip. They’d lain on a table since. She glanced through a couple, opened the third. The stories and the illustrations were equally boring. She turned to the ads. All at once her eyes stumbled on a sequence of lines which at first made no sense to her. Then the letters turned into words she could understand:
9b rue Virène
Mme Anaïs receives daily
in her intimate home
surrounded by her three Graces
Elegance, Charm, Specialties
Séverine read it over and over again. For a moment she imagined she’d given her name away. Then she remembered that all she’d left behind in the rue Virène was a nickname. She gave a frightened glance at Pierre—but he was studiously working away—then she looked out of the window. Sea and sky were growing brighter.
Briskly she said, “Let’s go out. It’s clearing up.”
But neither the bathe nor a run on the beach allowed her to forget that greasy insert. At night she took up the magazine again and, folding it so that Pierre couldn’t see the page, gave the advertisement a dull scrutiny. It was the tally-ho of the whore-house keeper, the rallying cry to Belle de Jour’s bed … and how different the printed name, Mme Anaïs, seemed when it was—spoken. Her house, her girls, eventually Séverine herself, stood transformed and debased by euphemisms dirtier for their insipidity than honest filthy language.
Intimate home … the three Graces … Specialties.
Séverine’s mouth filled with the strange baleful taste of a drug both familar and new. A shameful, bountiful heat spread through her. She calculated, and realized that Pierre’s vacation was almost over. And she felt sorry for him, not for herself.
How did Marcel know immediately that Belle de Jour was back? He never told her; but Séverine hadn’t been in the rue Virène more than an hour when she heard his voice. Her head swam. She’d expected to see Marcel, but that he was there so quickly testified to both his tenacity and his methods of getting information. But she didn’t have long to think about it. The door slammed angrily. In front of it stood Marcel, white in the face, trembling with a fury built up by days of waiting.
“So you’re by yourself,” he said almost inaudibly. “Too bad. I’d have liked to have caught a man here.”
Without realizing it, Séverine had retreated to the wall.
“I had to go away,” she murmured, “I’ll tell you why.”
The gold jawline snickered.
“You’ll tell me why! Just wait, I’ve got something to tell you, too.”
He took off the belt that enclosed his narrow waist. Then he locked the door. Séverine watched him like an idiot, uncomprehending. Swung by that angry hand, the lash whistled through the air.
Séverine never knew where she managed to find the agility, the strength, to dodge the cut and cling to his belt—nor indeed where the savage energy came from that held Marcel back as she said, “Don’t make a move or whatever you do, any of you, you’ll never see me again.”
They stayed like that for some time, separated by the width of the room. Their panting breath filled the silence. Gradually they grew calm and gradually also there vanished for Séverine the ghastly image that had hurled her into action—Pierre staring at a squalid welt across her face. As this picture faded so did her will-power. She needed it no longer. Head low, Marcel was saying:
“You’re different from the others. I don’t care what Hippolyte says.…”
A thud made him look up. Séverine had fallen to the floor. He ran and carried her to the bed. Semi-conscious, she raised her arms to protect herself.
“Don’t be scared, don’t be scared,” he muttered in bewilderment.
He didn’t touch her that day. There was something deeper than desire on the face of that fallen angel.
But by the next day he’d recovered and went in to Séverine with his usual sneer. But when he took her in his arms, an imperceptible watchfulness in his muscles showed that he was afraid of hurting her, and that he wanted to please her. Consequently, she enjoyed their love-making less than usual. And her enjoyment continued to decrease as she became more and more aware that their union was no longer purely sensual.
Before Belle de Jour’s flight Marcel had suggested going out with her one evening. Naturally she had flatly refused. At that time he’d wanted to keep up his reputation as a tough guy, and so had simply shrugged and dropped the subject. Now he persistently returned to it. In a confused way he’d sensed something strange and unknown to him in his new mistress, and he wanted to be linked to her by something more subtle than daily meetings in a public brothel.
On her side Séverine was victim of the fatal laws of that purely physical pleasure which, as it loses its sharpness, pushes its pursuer into seeking it out by ever more factitious means. In order to stimulate her desire for Marcel she had increasingly frequent recourse to imagining the dangerous and mysterious circles in which his young life moved. But her imagination soon wore out this resource. She became more amenable to the idea of going out with him. She hoped to watch him in the underworld and revive in herself, if only for a while, the sense of fear which was at the core of her sensuality. She got all the more pleasure from imagining such an evening because she knew it to be impossible. How could she ever get out late at night without Pierre?
But unconsciously she was watching for just such an opportunity. It came, as it always will for those whose secret self is waiting for it. An operation in the country took Pierre out of town for twenty-four hours.
Marcel and Hippolyte waited for Séverine in the wine-store near Saint-Germain-l’ Auxerrois. As was usual when they were together, they didn’t speak; but tonight the deep security that usually fed their silence was lacking. Hippolyte wasn’t worried by the fact that Marcel wanted to take a woman out. Their customary consorts knew their place, and didn’t interrupt when the men were talking or thinking. But it was wrong for Belle de Jour to be his date. How could Marcel confer on that woman the honor of spending a whole evening with them, after she’d insulted him by going away like that without his permission? And Hippolyte felt sure he hadn’t even punished her properly. It made him unhappy, for Hippolyte recognized a hint of cowardice quite foreign to his friend in this behavior, just the sort of thing he’d watched break up really good guys, loyal and brave as you could ask for.
“Oh hell,” growled Hippolyte, “and to think I was the one to take him to Anaïs to start with.”
Then out of the wisdom of his unfathomable past he rolled a cigarette and thought how good it’d be to eat, since he was hungry.
Séverine arrived ahead of time. A sign of respect that mollified the colossus somewhat. He was equally pleased with the casual way Marcel remarked to Belle de Jour, “You look all right in a hat.”
But in his unbounded joy the youth knew he’d never have achieved that tone without Hippolyte beside him.
The latter now inquired, “Where are we going to eat?”
Marcel suggested some well-known restaurants on the boulevards. Séverine turned them down one after another.
“Shut up,” Hippolyte told her, “Marcel was talking to me.” To his friend he added, “Your big mouth. We’ll do it up good at Marie’s. The guys will be there.”
When Hippolyte made a decision he wasted no time over having it accepted. He paid and went out. The two others followed, but not without Marcel throwing Séverine a look. Hippolyte’s animal awareness intercepted it.
“You go on ahead, Belle de Jour,” he ordered.
Alone with Marcel the menace in his voice combined oddly with a note of request— “If you don’t want me to get rough, act like a man, see … at least while I’m around.”
The restaurant Hippolyte had singled out lay at the start of the rue Montmartre. They walked there. In a bad dream Séverine accompanied the two silent men leading her God knew where. They crossed the empty market of Les Halles. If Marcel had been by himself she would have gone no further; but Hippolyte’s padding footsteps were enough to drive away all her will-power. And in any case the room they finally went into reassured her. Like everyone ignorant of the secret life of Paris, Séverine thought that since her companions led marginal existences they must spend their time in gangster joints. This small restaurant, however, was clean and welcoming. A counter shone brightly by the entrance. A dozen freshly laid tables completed the scene.
“Marie’ll be pleased to see you two,” said the man behind the counter; he wore a wool vest and his eyes were kindly.
While he was hospitably greeting Séverine a ball of a woman in a skirt and blouse shot out of the door that led to the kitchen; a strong smell of garlic and herbs came with her.
“You crooks, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” she exclaimed, planting vigorous kisses on the two men. “Four days without coming to see Marie.”
Her southern accent was quite touchingly warm and youthful and Séverine smiled as the woman looked her over. Her fine black eyes were so filled with goodness, and they were still huge, despite the fat that had made her face prematurely shapeless.
“Hello, sweetheart,” said Marie. “Whose are you?”
“Wait a minute,” declared Hippolyte gravely. “Let me do the honors here. My good friend, M Maurice”—he indicated the man behind the counter—“and Mme Maurice”—this was Marie. Then drawing Séverine forward he pronounced, “Mme Marcel.”
“I thought so,” Marie said maternally. “That Marcel, what a guy.”
Then she became serious and inquired confidentially: “Now what are you going to have? My stuffed cabbage, to start. And afterwards?”
Hippolyte ordered for them. Maurice threw in aperitifs free.
Marcel drew Séverine close. She yielded almost tenderly, since everything in the room had a strong, virile and somehow forbidden quality.
Men came in. They shook hands with Maurice, and Hippolyte, and Marcel. They greeted Séverine. A very few were followed by women, who didn’t stop by the counter but went and sat down discreetly at the table indicated by their escort’s glance or some brief word. These men might differ as to breadth of shoulder, dress, or accent, but they all bore an indefinable sign: that of leisure. Time lay on their gestures, on their words, their manner of holding their heads, on their lively idle eyes. Their conversation revolved about the turf or matters they spoke of by allusion.
The stuffy room grew hotter. The rich heavy dishes, highly spiced by Marie, and the heady wines added lively internal warmth. And though everyone in the place was highly “regular”—as Hippolyte liked to put it—the ponderous manner in which the men ate, the curve of their shoulders, even the bend of their necks gave Séverine the feeling of some dangerous, clandestine repast. She tried not to look around, tried not to hear the drawn-out conversations at nearby tables, nor even the one going on between Hippolyte and Marcel. She was held in a state of suspended, sensual well-being by all the anonymous suspect lives surrounding her—“free” was Marcel’s expression for them. She knew what he meant. It all had the effect of some powerful potion on her.
No one seemed in a hurry to leave, except the women, who drifted off one by one.
To do what? Séverine asked herself with a faint shudder, as a tide of images more luridly sensual than even those of the rue Virène flowed over her.
“Time to go,” announced Hippolyte all of a sudden. “We’ll have a nightcap somewhere else.”
Marcel paused, whispered, “I can’t … Belle de Jour.”
“Say, Maurice,” Hippolyte raised his voice, “if there was the chance of trouble for you in a certain place, would you take your wife there with you?”
“She’d make me take her.”
Hippolyte got up. Then Marcel, and Séverine. Out in the street Hippolyte deigned to give Belle de Jour his arm.
“Looks like you’ve got guts.”
His shoulders slid up and he added to Marcel, “But after all, for all the danger there is …”
Séverine was in an agony of mortal fear, not so much at the idea of some unknown peril as at the crazy promiscuity she was letting herself get into. But there was a strange contagion in Hippolyte’s touch, as there had been about the bistro they’d just left, and her terror lay dormant.
Hippolyte led them to a little all-night bar opposite the vegetable market in Les Halles. This was more like the low life: soiled tables, trash on the floor, a sense of emptiness in the room, and a queer light, dim but tiring. Séverine felt her heart catch. Slow carts passed by outside, piled with obscure plunder and drawn by gleaming horses in charge of sleepy men who wore huge boots and were armed with big whips. There was something barbaric about the place.
Hippolyte and Marcel settled for cheap brandy and gave up any interest in the outside world. But Séverine gripped her lover’s hand when she saw the group come in; for a second he seemed her sole protection against a ghastly threat.
“Take it easy,” he got out between his teeth. “It’s a good thing I came. All three of them.”
The men sat down peacably at Hippolyte’s table. The smallest, a seedy individual with a pocked face, cast a quick look at Séverine.
“Marcel’s wife,” explained Hippolyte. “Don’t worry.”
Séverine’s head was a dull void, but in any case she’d never have understood the talk that took place then, so mysterious and rapid. She was sitting between Hippolyte and the pockmarked man, each of whom was backed up by the silent presence of his own men. Suddenly Séverine heard the little man growl—“Thief.”
Marcel’s hand flew to his coat pocket and his three adversaries followed suit. But Hippolyte’s fist was wrapped around Marcel’s hand.
“We don’t want any trouble here, my friend,” he said softly, “not with these double-crossers.”
Pushing the table aside he gripped the pocked man’s wrist and dragged it from the pocket in which it was buried. The fingers were curled round a revolver. Hippolyte directed the barrel at his own belly and said, “It’s a little better like that, I think.”
For a second it seemed the man might fire, then his eyes faltered under Hippolyte’s gaze.
“All right, let’s have it,” said Hippolyte. “I know you’ve got it on you.”
As if hypnotized the pocked man took a small package from his other pocket and handed it to Hippolyte.
“The weight’s O.K.,” commented the latter. “You can go now.”
The three got to the door. Marcel shouted after them, “For what you called me, don’t worry, I won’t shoot you in the back. We’ll settle that later.”
“Your man’s doing O.K. tonight,” Hippolyte remarked proudly to Belle de Jour.
Séverine’s mind whirled, but no longer with fear. Her widened eyes grew even more beautiful as they fastened on Marcel’s. He saw that she recognized his courage, and the fact that he’d been the first to unleash death.
“I’ll get that guy,” he said, “just like I did the other one, even if I have to follow him to Valparaiso to do it.…”
Hippolyte broke in gruffly, “You don’t have to tell stories to look big. You go to bed, I’ve got work to do.”
He turned to Séverine.
“You were all right. Want any, by the way?”
She hadn’t the faintest idea what he was offering, but she refused.
“Sure,” said Hippolyte, “that’s only for street whores, correct. Have yourselves a ball, kids.”
Alone with Marcel again Séverine asked, “What was it he wanted to give me?”
“Cocaine,” her lover replied with marked distaste. “The little guy just now gave him a few kilos’. You saw it. He’s going off to get rid of it somewhere, and we’re rich for a month.”
Séverine didn’t want to go to Marcel’s place, nor even leave the part of town they were in. She felt that the rue Virène, the wine-store, Marie’s restaurant and the bar they were leaving were the only places suitable for her excesses. But excited by all she’d just seen, she began to feel a burning desire for Marcel. She let him take her to a dirty hotel nearby; in a vile room, she knew unutterable joy.
Dawn had scarcely begun to show when Séverine slipped out of bed.
“I have to go.”
Marcel, reverting to his usual self, said threateningly —“You’re kidding.”
“No, I have to,” said Séverine.
As on the day when she’d grabbed his belt, he felt behind her some nameless invincible power.
“O.K.,” he muttered, “I’ll go with you.”
“No.”
Once more that unbearable stare of someone fighting for life. Marcel gave in. He got Séverine a taxi and let her go. As long as he could see the cab’s rear lights he stayed in the street as if spellbound. Then he cursed horribly and went to consult Hippolyte.
Only when she was safe in bed could Séverine think about what might have happened had Hippolyte’s reflexes been slower, or if the pockmarked man had fired. She began to shiver as if in fever.
Pierre came back a few hours later, his face drawn with fatigue.
“Please don’t leave me alone,” Séverine begged him. “I can’t live without you.”
For several days Marcel didn’t put in an appearance at the rue Virène. It didn’t bother Séverine; she didn’t want any more from him. When he did come he said immediately, “We’re going out tonight.”
She refused quite calmly. She had the feeling that he was now a harmless stranger. And, in fact, Marcel showed no violence. In an almost gentle tone he asked, “Would you kindly tell me why not?”
“Everyone here knows I’m not free to do as I like.”
“Then get free. I swear on my word of honor you’ll have everything you want.”
“No, it’s impossible,” Séverine answered.
“You’re in love with him, then?”
She was silent.
“O.K.,” said Marcel. And he left.
She thought she’d finally subdued him. All the same, on the way out she glanced back several times to see whether Marcel or Hippolyte were following her. Not noticing anything suspicious she continued on home.
That evening Hippolyte and Marcel drank silently in a bar off the Place Blanche. A young man joined them.
“I have the whole story, Monsieur Hippolyte,” he began deferentially. “I got in as an electrician.”
He gave the address, apartment number and real name of Belle de Jour.
Hippolyte released his spy and turned to Marcel.
“There you are, then. Whenever you want it.”
But if he had known the fate he was preparing for the only being in the world dear to him, Hippolyte —though he in fact detested bloodshed—would have murdered his pallid young informer before he had ever opened his mouth.