To wake in the little enclosed room with its dark, stained walls was to wake in the cabin of a sailing ship. No early nurse to drag in the day’s anguish on the heels of her institutional shoes. Only Mme. Anniette (or her assistant Pierre) with a tray of scalding, aromatic coffee, toast and home-made cherry jam.
Mme. Anniette was small, broad and meridional, with generous eyes and wide features. The death of her father (a carpenter in the employ of a sanatorium) had forced her, many years earlier, to turn the family châlet into a pension. Pierre, tall, timid, ragged and fleshless (a doctor had once said: “Don’t put him in the X-ray cabinet—just hold him in front of a strong light!”), had passed five years in bed and five years convalescing in the Châlet Anniette. Money spent, health unrestored, he had continued a further twenty years in the châlet, aiding Mme. Anniette in return for his keep.
Besides Paul there were two other lodgers—an ex-army sergeant in his fifties and a young German-speaking electrician from Alsace. Both were former invalids who had subsequently found work in the mountains. At lunch and dinner the three men shared a rexine-topped table in the small salle à manger.
Paul kept very much to the routine which he had learned at Les Alpes. Mme. Anniette was enthusiastic and cooperative. “Faut bien vous reposer,” she would say, coming to ask him, as he lay on the divan, what he wanted for lunch or dinner. When she had agreed with Paul the modest sum which she asked for board and lodging, she had omitted to mention that it included flowers, plates of fruit, chocolate, glasses of port, cups of coffee and indeed anything which lay to hand whenever she encountered him. “Il faut manger” was the phrase most constantly on her lips.
Initially Paul and Michèle felt strangely inhibited—for the first time since they had known each other there was no danger that the door would suddenly open and a nurse or doctor walk into the room. (“It’s like a hut on the edge of the world. One feels a million miles from anywhere,” Michèle had said when first she had looked out of the window across the darkening valley.)
She came to the châlet each morning (at the end of the cure), always—as Mme. Anniette daily attested from her window—running the last twenty paces to the side entrance which led to Paul’s room. Her straight, slender body superbly moulded by ski-jacket and trousers, her skin glowing and her eyes bright, she looked now as if she had never been ill in her life. If Paul were lying reading on his divan, she would put a hand over his eyes, toss aside his book and throw herself beside him; if he were looking morose she would simulate his facial expression, press two fingers in imitation of the muzzle of a gun to her forehead, say in English, “It is the end,” then roll her eyes and fall over sideways; whatever Paul’s mood he would never be able to restrain himself and both would burst into uncontrollable laughter.
They went for long walks beneath the burning February sun, penetrating ever more deeply into the surrounding countryside, reaching vantage spots which to Paul, from his bedroom at Les Alpes, had seemed as unattainable as the mountains of the moon. In the village they never failed to encounter someone whom they knew. Joining up perhaps with one couple, they would go to drink hot chocolate in a café and there discover, grouped about a table strewn with sun-glasses, cigarette packets, ashtrays and aperitifs, another half-dozen former inmates of Les Alpes.
Once every two weeks Paul called at the Universel and Dr. Vernet, taciturn and unsmiling, put a needle between his ribs and injected him with air. From the day that he had announced to his patients the decision of the Société, Dr. Vernet had reverted to his former standards of thoroughness and efficiency; many suspected that up to that moment still graver issues had been in the balance. Nevertheless, though still faithfully attended by Sœur Miriam and his two assistants, he was finding life less congenial. At the Universel he had no official status. No attention had been paid to his request that all his patients should be accommodated on the same floor, and so when he made a medical round with his assistants, he was forced to travel from one extremity of the building to another, often encountering and re-encountering the Universel’s médecin chef and his assistants, also engaged in the same practice. Sometimes both sets of doctors became confused as to which rooms contained their respective patients, and not infrequently a patient just recovering from the effects of one concerted visit would find his door flung open for a second time and himself subjected to another.
The days were accounted for. After his evening meal Paul would return to his room and either read or listen to the wireless. Although he was invariably tired and fit for nothing more arduous, the solitude induced in him an indefinable uneasiness—it was as though in the preceding year he had developed a faculty for anxiety which now, though no longer relevant to his situation, continued to exercise itself on its own account. Accordingly he tended not to hurry his dinner, and when it was at an end he often passed the remainder of the evening in Mme. Anniette’s little bed-sitting-room in company with the other members of the châlet.
At times his sleep was very troubled. He had a recurrent dream that something was standing at the side of his bed, and he would try desperately to scream, indeed—as one day Mme. Anniette confirmed to him—frequently succeeded to his full capacity. Trembling, he would wake and turn on the bedside lamp, rush in his pyjamas to the side door of the châlet, throw it open and draw up incredulous when he saw that instead of the tracks which he had anticipated, the surface of the snow was smooth and unbroken.
It was not in Michèle’s nature to resist, to assert her will in opposition to her love, to cavil or to refuse. The caresses which she repulsed were also the caresses which she sought, and all her desire was to give herself completely. And yet there were reasons for abstention, reasons most valid to a young girl’s heart, compacts with God, promises and resolves, concepts which could not be repeated to a man without belief and a decade older than herself.
There were times when she tried to explain herself to Paul. Their common future, their continued well-being (as had been true of their meeting and of their survival) depended upon their faith and their capacity for keeping faith. To err or to retreat from this condition was wantonly to put all in hazard. “Faith with what?” Paul would demand, only refraining from pursuit of the question when he saw the distress which it caused Michèle. However, the situation was one which by its nature could not be protracted indefinitely.
They saw each other twice a day. At the end of the morning cure Michèle came to Paul at the châlet. At the end of the afternoon cure Paul called for Michèle and they would go out for tea. On Sundays Michèle was excused the morning cure and went to mass in the village. After mass she climbed up to the châlet and she and Paul would go and explore the mountain paths.
On the last Sunday in February there was a blizzard with freezing winds from the east. Michèle came into Paul’s room after the mass, her snow-boots in one hand, her missal in the other. They sat together looking out of the window until the panes became frosted over.
Paul insisted that Michèle should not leave the châlet until the wind had dropped. At midday she tried to telephone the Universel to say that she could not get back to lunch, but the storm had put the system out of operation. Mme. Anniette very willingly laid an extra place at table. At the end of the meal Michèle said that she must get back to the sanatorium in time for the cure de silence.
But the wind had grown more violent—it was with difficulty that they forced open the front door. In the few yards to Paul’s entrance the snow penetrated their hair and clothing.
They removed their jackets and dried themselves in front of the stove. The compulsive need for afternoon rest (intensified by having missed the morning cure) began to possess them. They lay down beside each other on the divan. In a moment both were asleep.
Paul woke the first. It was already dark. In order not to disturb Michèle, he lay motionless, listening to the soft, sweet sound of her breathing. Then he stretched his arm about her waist. He pressed his lips first lightly, then crushingly against her own. She made no effort to restrain him as he got up to turn the lock in the door.