6

‘Come in, doctor.’

Dressed in navy blue and gripping his black bag, he looked like one of those Frenchmen who march behind a flag on the Champs-Élysées, and he had thin ribbons of several colours in his buttonhole. It was clear that he took life seriously and thought about things, including the way to conduct himself in a patient’s bedroom.

‘So you’re feeling unwell,’ he stated, the way a musician tunes an instrument, still standing, looking Betty up and down. She did not even bat an eyelid in greeting. ‘Let’s have a look. May I wash my hands?’

He knew the way to the bathroom. He must know every room in the hotel. He came back, gently rubbing his palms, and pulled up a chair beside her bed.

‘Are you in a great deal of pain?’ he asked, seizing Betty’s wrist and taking her pulse.

She shook her head.

‘You’re not hurting anywhere? No headaches? No pains in your chest or your abdomen?’

She merely replied with gestures and he turned to Laure, who made to leave the room.

‘Please stay. Unless your friend objects. Her pulse is sixty now.’

He didn’t seem taken aback at his patient’s attitude, as if he dealt with similar cases every day. Placing his bag on the bed, he brought out the blood-pressure monitor, which seemed to be giving him some trouble.

‘Hold out your left arm … Not too stiff … Excellent … I’m simply checking your blood pressure …’

She saw him, his expression serious, gazing at the little needle on the gauge while she felt the blood pulsing in her artery. He took two, three readings.

‘Nine point five. Do you know if you usually have low blood pressure?’

And, turning to Laure, as if he were no longer relying on Betty to give him any information:

‘What did she take this morning? Did she have breakfast?’

‘She refused to eat or drink anything.’

‘Not even a cup of coffee?’

‘No.’

You could almost hear his mind working, following a familiar thought pattern, like a circus horse that automatically changes step at a certain point in the ring. With the same precise, meticulous movements, he put his monitor away and picked up the stethoscope, inserting the two earpieces into his ears.

‘Breathe in through your mouth … Good … Again … Keep going … Now cough …’

She obeyed, noticing that he had tufts of hair in his nostrils and in his ears.

‘Breathe in again … Not so hard … That’s fine … Can you sit up?’

Weary and listless, she raised herself up with more difficulty than she had expected.

‘This won’t take long …’

He applied the metal disc to two or three places on her back, lingered on one spot, the highest, as if he had found something abnormal.

‘Hold your breath … Good … Breathe in … You can lie back down …’

On her chest, he returned to a point that probably corresponded to the one on her back that had concerned him. When he listened like that, his gaze became fixed and expressionless, like that of a hen.

‘Do you see your doctor often?’

‘Not very often.’

She had spoken without realizing it, in spite of herself, because she had promised herself to submit to this examination without taking any part in it.

‘Have you had any serious illnesses?’

‘Scarlet fever, when I was three.’

He wore the stethoscope around his neck and with his bare hand he felt her upper chest, pressing his fingers between her ribs.

‘Does that hurt?’

‘No.’

‘What about here?’

‘A little.’

‘Like this?’

‘More.’

‘Do you sometimes feel pain here?’

‘Not anywhere in particular. In my whole chest.’

Drawing back the covers, he felt her stomach through her nightdress.

‘Have you moved your bowels this morning?’

‘No.’

‘What about yesterday?’

‘I don’t remember. No. Not yesterday either.’

Still grave, he selected another instrument, a little nickel hammer.

‘Don’t be afraid.’

She knew what he was going to do. This wasn’t the first time she’d been examined in this way. Then he scratched the soles of her feet with a pointed object, a metal toothpick he’d taken from his waistcoat pocket and which reminded her of Bernard and his rabbits.

‘Can you feel anything?’

‘Yes.’

‘And now?’

‘Yes.’

He exchanged a glance with Laure, whom he treated rather like her mother, her elder sister or a nurse. The last thing he did before putting away his instruments was to push up her eyelids.

‘Do you sometimes feel giddy?’

‘I have these past few days.’

‘Badly enough to lose your balance?’

‘No.’

‘Have you recently had an emotional shock?’

She did not reply and it was Laure who nodded.

‘Besides,’ added Laure, ‘we both had a lot to drink. Last night I gave her two 100mg phenobarbital tablets. She slept peacefully. She was woken up by the telephone and she’s been like this ever since.’

He turned to Betty and tapped her forearm.

‘First of all, let me reassure you, madame, that you do not have any kind of organic illness and that your functional disorders will resolve themselves with quiet and complete rest.’

His eyes seemed to be asking for Laure’s advice before continuing.

‘My friend is alone here, doctor. She is going through a rough period.’

‘I understand! I understand! The best thing, of course, would be a spell in hospital. Is there any reason why not?’

Without looking at him, Betty said:

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Mind you, I’m not insisting. If you have the strength to take care of yourself, and above all to be strict with yourself, you’ll recover just as well here as anywhere else. Do you receive any visits?’

‘None,’ replied Laure on her behalf.

‘That’s good. No going out either, for four or five days at least, and then, only short strolls in the hotel grounds. Nothing to eat until tomorrow morning; otherwise, this evening, perhaps a light vegetable broth.’

He had taken a notebook from his pocket and was conscientiously writing down everything he said. No visits. No outings for five days. A liquid diet until … He paused to remind himself of the day … Until Saturday morning …

‘You’re not afraid of injections?’

He was treating her like a child, or an idiot.

‘I’ll give you one before I leave and, tonight, you’ll take one of the tablets I’m going to prescribe. Continue every evening for three days. And, twice a day, a little dose of reserpine with your midday and evening meals.

He removed a sterilized syringe from a metal tin with sticking plaster wrapped around it and filed off the end of a vial. His movements and his voice reminded her of a ritual, a religious ceremony.

‘Turn over slightly … That’s enough …’

He pinched her nightdress to raise it while being careful not to uncover her lower abdomen.

‘That didn’t hurt too much?’

That was it. He was putting his things away.

‘Madame Lavancher will telephone me, should you need me before tomorrow evening. Otherwise I’ll drop by after my surgery, between six and seven o’clock.’

He cast around for his hat, which he had left in Laure’s room, and all of a sudden, while he was conversing with Laure in the corridor, Betty regretted having let him leave.

He had only carried out professional procedures, spoken words she knew so well that she could have predicted what he would say next, and yet for a brief moment he had enveloped her in a world that was comforting.

For a quarter of an hour someone had taken care of her, as if she were worth it, as if her life mattered.

What was he saying to Laure? A doctor’s wife, she had read on his face the hypotheses he ruled out one by one. Was she telling him what had happened to Betty, or at least what she knew of it?

Because she didn’t know the whole story. She knew nothing of the worst part. Besides, in spite of everything, Laure had belonged to their world. Whatever she did, she was still a little bit on their side, as was the doctor.

There would have been no point in talking because they wouldn’t have understood.

‘Would you like to rest?’

Her eyelids flickered again.

‘I can reassure you, in all honesty. The doctor spoke to me in the corridor. At one point, when he was examining you, I could tell he was concerned. He might have feared neuro-circulatory asthenia, which, incidentally, isn’t serious but is a nuisance.

‘Having examined you, he is categorical. You are suffering from the repercussions of your emotional upheaval of the past few days. I’m the person who is going to take care of you, and I warn you, I’ll be strict.’

Her cheeriness misfired. Betty did not react.

‘You’ll probably doze off for two or three hours. That’s the effect of the injection. I’ll instruct the kitchen staff to make you a vegetable broth. I’ll leave you for the time being. See you later, Betty.’

Maybe she was wrong to refuse to go into hospital? She would have been sent to one of those convalescent homes on the outskirts of Paris where the newspapers regularly report that such-and-such a star is being treated. That sounded grey and dreary. Here too was dreary, but it was possible for her to leave without asking anyone’s permission. When she felt less exhausted, she would go.

She heard the telephone ringing in the next room, Laure’s hushed voice.

‘Yes … Yes … No … She’s fine … She’s in bed, yes … The doctor came … I’ll explain … Not straight away … What? … Let’s rather say two … That’s right … See you later …’

Mario was on the other end of the line, she was positive. Mario wanted to come in an hour’s time and Laure had asked him to wait for two, to be certain that Betty would be asleep.

But she knew that she wouldn’t be asleep. The drug she’d been injected with was numbing her body, making her burning eyelids heavy, but was not inducing sleep.

She continued to think, especially in images, and all the images were of the same grey, with less contrast than that morning, less dramatic substance.

She unspooled them wearily, the way a person turns the pages of a book they have to leaf through to the end. She felt it was important, that she had a duty to face up to it.

In her mind, words didn’t have their full, everyday meaning, but for her they were clear, and that was the main thing.

She had to face up to things instead of always trying to run away. But drinking to give herself the illusion of courage, then talking to Laure in a breathless voice and finally collapsing wasn’t facing up to things.

She had always known instinctively that everything would end in disaster, even before meeting Guy. As a child, she would watch the other little girls as if they had something that she didn’t. It is true that at other times she was happy, if not proud, to be herself, because then she had the feeling that she was the one who was the most complete.

The question no longer arose. It had happened. She had said nothing to them as she made her way to the door, all four of them standing there in the drawing room, watching her leave. Had she been ashamed? She would have liked, after the event, to have convinced herself that she hadn’t been ashamed, because, if she had, it would prove that they were right and she was wrong.

She couldn’t remember whether she had hung her head or whether she had looked them in the eye. She must have looked at them because she could clearly picture the expression on each of their faces.

Why had she signed without protest? Out of pride? Out of indifference?

And yet, once outside in the rain, she had started to run, keeping close to the walls of the buildings, as if seeking refuge. Then, breathless, she had gone into a lit-up bar on the corner of Avenue de Wagram and Place des Ternes.

There were a lot of people, a red-copper counter, trays laden with glasses of beer passing by her head and, at the tables, men and women eating.

‘A whisky.’

‘On the rocks?’

‘Yes. Make it a double.’

‘Soda?’

‘I don’t mind.’

She almost snatched it from the bartender’s hands and gulped it down, and some people around her looked at her disapprovingly.

‘Pour me another.’

She rummaged in her bag for some money, and the cheque almost fell into the sawdust on the floor. She caught it as it fluttered down. Would she have bent down to retrieve it from between people’s legs? Perhaps not.

She drank and left, still walking hurriedly, raindrops on her face. Weaving in and out of the cars, she arrived in Rue de Montenotte, her heart thumping as she raced towards the lift.

The concierge opened the glazed door of her lodge.

‘He’s not there, my little lady.’

‘Did he not come home?’

‘I mean he came home about half an hour ago, but ten minutes later he was back down with his suitcase and his instrument. He asked me to call him a taxi. He seemed in so much of a hurry that I thought he had a train to catch.

‘“Is your sister ill?” I asked him.

‘Because I know from the letters she sends him that she lives in Rouen.’

‘What did he reply?’

‘He didn’t reply. He looked frightened. When I inquired whether he would be away for long, he shrugged.

‘“You can dispose of the room.”

‘That was it! I assume he won’t be back. Seeing as the rent is paid in advance, I had no right to stop him, especially because the taxi arrived almost immediately and he gave me a generous tip.’

Betty had no idea what time it had been at that point, and from then on, for three days and three nights, she would lose track of time, of when she’d last eaten or slept.

She had cried as she walked the dark streets, without thinking about which direction she was taking, and she sometimes talked to herself.

‘It’s not fair. I should have told him.’

She found herself in Avenue Mac-Mahon, then, still choosing poorly lit streets, she had reached Porte Maillot.

She had walked into a bar, the smallest and gloomiest. She ordered a whisky. There wasn’t any. She drank a brandy with water and a woman with a fat behind wearing a great deal of make-up and wobbling on stiletto heels, stared at her, trying to figure her out.

She must have been getting drunk. She wasn’t aware of it and was still bent on finding Philippe. She had gone in the wrong direction. She would have to retrace her steps. It didn’t occur to her to take a taxi and, besides, Philippe didn’t start work until midnight.

It couldn’t be that late. He must have had to drop off his suitcase somewhere before going to his cabaret. He had been afraid of Guy, which was only natural.

She was impatient to reassure him. She was free now. She wouldn’t impose herself on him. He was too young to saddle himself with a wife. But, all the same, he’d be able to see her whenever he wished.

She walked, trying not to lose sight of the Arc de Triomphe. She had no idea how much money she had in her bag. If Philippe needed money, there was the cheque, which she was prepared to give him.

She had had to stop somewhere else. A man had grabbed her by the arm, saying filthy words, and she had felt panic-stricken.

The nightclub where Philippe worked was called Le Taxi. Betty had never been there and she couldn’t find it. She looked at the neon signs one after the other and in the end it was the doorman from another cabaret who pointed out the sign to her – the least bright, in tiny, dark-red letters, the very last one in the street.

The atmosphere inside was suffocating. The place was smaller than the drawing room at Avenue de Wagram and full of smoke and loud music. Clusters of men stood around the bar and, a few feet from them, a woman was performing a striptease under the spotlight.

The musicians wore light-blue dinner jackets. She tried to seek out Philippe but couldn’t see him.

‘Is Philippe here?’ she asked the bartender, rising on to her tiptoes.

‘Which Philippe? The sax player?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know. I can’t see him. He must have got someone to replace him.’

A man wanted to buy her a drink and already had his hand on her thigh.

Not yet. Not here. Philippe had given up his lodgings and had not come to work. That meant he had done the same as Schwartz.

Evaporated. Vanished in Paris. If she wanted to find him, over the coming days she would have to go from cabaret to cabaret, from Étoile to Montmartre and Montparnasse, and seek him in all the music venues.

‘As soon as you have an address …’ her husband had said.

The sensible solution was to go and book herself into a hotel before having her belongings sent. But how could she have shut herself away alone, between four walls, crawled into a bed and slept?

Another bar. She hadn’t had anything to drink at Le Taxi. She needed to get drunk as fast as possible. She recalled different lightings, nearly always a mirror behind the glasses and bottles, often girls, next to her, who eyed her as if she was a threat.

‘A whisky … A double …’

The word ‘dirty’ had come back into her mind, because of her mud-stained shoes and her wet feet.

She was beginning to be dirty. She had a growing urge to see this through to the bitter end. Since she hadn’t succeeded in being the cleanest, was it not better, while she was about it, to become the dirtiest?

She didn’t want to sleep. What she wanted was not to be alone.

Already, she was no longer alone. A man paid for her drink and took her by the arm, pushing her on to the pavement in a quiet street where the light of a hotel could be seen. They walked in through a glazed door. A redheaded woman, sitting at the desk, watched them go past and, raising her head, yelled up the staircase:

‘Is number three free, Maria?’

‘Right away, madame.’

‘You can go up.’

A narrow corridor with a worn carpet. An unfamiliar smell. An open door into a room where the bed wasn’t unmade but the chambermaid was hastily changing the towels.

‘It’s a thousand francs, excluding service.’

Betty was so drunk that, once the woman had left, she sank on to the bed fully clothed and almost fell asleep. She barely remembered the man’s face. He was quite fat, with blue eyes, and he wore a big red-gold wedding ring.

‘Get undressed.’

She tried, failed and relapsed into her drowsy state. He didn’t stay long. Looking embarrassed, he had placed a banknote on top of Betty’s handbag.

She slept at last, plunging quickly, like a lift whose cable has snapped.

Someone was shaking her shoulder.

‘Get up, girl.’

She didn’t understand what was wanted of her, why she was being harassed.

‘Come on! Don’t act the innocent. The half-hour’s up.’

‘I want to sleep.’

‘You’ll sleep somewhere else. If you don’t get out right now, I’ll call Monsieur Charles.’

He came, in shirtsleeves and slippers.

‘What is Maria telling me? That you’re refusing to leave the room?’

He stood her up, but she was swaying and her gaze was vague.

‘I see what this is. I don’t like that here. What’s more, I bet your papers aren’t even in order. I don’t want any trouble and I need the room.’

In the street, she stumbled. There were big gaps in her memory. She had eaten hard-boiled eggs and drunk coffee that had a foul taste, and then thrown up in a filthy toilet.

A man almost as drunk as her, with a foreign accent. She no longer knew if it was that night or the next.

If it was the next, she was incapable of saying how the first night had ended up.

They drank together in a place where the customers were pressed up against one another and he fondled her rump and her breasts in front of everyone, with a smug air of ownership. Someone had said something to him and a fight nearly broke out.

Outside, it was still raining and they walked arm in arm. She talked to him about Philippe, trying to explain that it was a misunderstanding, that he had taken fright for nothing, because he was very young and above all very gentle.

‘A poor creature, you understand? I have to find him. It’s of the utmost importance, because he won’t dare show himself. He reckons Guy is angry with him. Guy didn’t even look at him and would be incapable of recognizing him in the street. The truth, if you want the actual truth, is that Guy already knew everything. Do you see? No fool, Guy!’

She was drunk. But she didn’t think she was mistaken. Already, before, it had sometimes occurred to her. Quite early on, Guy had stopped asking her how she spent her afternoons.

Who knows whether he didn’t prefer that solution? Who knows even how things would have turned out if his mother hadn’t been with him when he’d returned home and caught Philippe and her on the drawing-room sofa?

There was no point asking herself these questions. He had never attached any importance to her past. He loved her in his own uncomplicated way, with a comfortable love. He didn’t want to know what was going on in her head. At most, he would sometimes ask her, as if he knew the answer:

‘Is everything all right? Are you happy?’

So long as she replied yes, he didn’t probe any further.

She saw herself with the foreigner, bang in the middle of an avenue, with cars passing either side of them, drivers swearing at them and the man asking, suddenly suspicious:

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the one who’s taking me.’

‘Me? Where would I take you?’

They had had a confused argument.

‘You don’t know where we can go?’

‘No.’

‘You’re not a thief, I hope?’

He looked her in the eyes as if to hypnotize her.

‘Then we’ll try my hotel. I’m not sure they’ll let you in.’

They’d hailed a taxi, had asked it to stop somewhere outside a bar for a last drink. The hotel was next to Galeries Lafayette, with a marble staircase and a red carpet.

The man had drunk too much to get what he wanted. He still insisted, demanding help from his companion. Aching and dizzy, every few minutes she fell asleep, and he eventually dropped off too.

She could have slept all day and perhaps the next night too. She felt ill. She had the impression it was barely light when he forced her to get dressed because he had a flight to catch.

It was later than she thought. The streets were teeming with people, a sea of umbrellas above their heads.

She wandered through the crowd, ghost-like among the flesh and bone, and would occasionally stop in her tracks at the kerbside to watch the cars going past. She was no longer thinking about Philippe, or Guy, only sometimes about the letter, the shame of having signed a document selling her two daughters.

This became an obsession and she was muttering about it under her breath as she pushed open the door of a bar.

‘Come in. Don’t make a noise. I think she’s asleep.’

Mario had knocked on the door so discreetly that Betty hadn’t heard anything. But she could hear Laure’s whispering. She knew they were kissing.

‘I’ll go and check.’

She closed her eyes and felt a presence by her side, someone leaning over her then walking away, taking care not to make the floorboards creak, and then pulling the door to.

She could no longer make out the words, only the kind of murmur you can hear from a confessional. A bottle was uncorked. Glasses were being filled. The tone of the conversation was calm, even, with the occasional stifled laugh from Mario.

He hadn’t sat down but was pacing up and down the room, then the bed groaned lightly, as if Laure were reclining on it.

The light was fading. Laure must have talked about her, and Betty had the impression that at one point Mario came over to the door to peer through the crack.

In thousands of rooms, at that same moment, couples in the semi-darkness were chatting in the same way, smoking cigarettes and having a drink.

Why did that seem so extraordinary to Betty, lying in her bed? Mario was in the habit of visiting Laure in her room; he was her lover; they met up every evening at Le Trou where Laure always ate her dinner.

They conversed in an undertone, in a simple, relaxed manner, she sprawled on the bed, he sitting in an armchair. And if later they felt the urge to make love, nothing would stop them. It wasn’t certain. It wasn’t essential.

They were happy like that, confident, light-hearted.

Insidiously, envy was born in Betty. Fate was unjust. She didn’t attempt to define the nature of the injustice, but she felt frustrated, as if something had been stolen from her, as if it were actually Laure who had stolen something from her.

Ultimately it was Laure who had chosen her from among all the strange characters, all the oddballs, who frequented Le Trou. The doctor with the little creatures had barely disappeared when she had come and sat down at her table, glass in hand.

Betty hadn’t called out to her, wasn’t even aware of her existence.

Did she not know, she who was a doctor’s wife, that Betty wasn’t supposed to drink, that she had already had too much, that she was physically and mentally at the end of her tether?

What had she done? She’d filled her glass, twice at least, perhaps more. She had brought her to the hotel without consulting her.

She had cared for her, of course, but she had given her more to drink, starting the next morning, so as to pump her, extract confidences from her, to add a story to her collection.

Betty lay there in the dark without moving, weak and listless, knocked out by whatever drug the doctor had injected into her. Meanwhile, next door, the pair of them were chatting away like two people who understood each other through half-spoken words.

Why did Laure deserve to be happy? Because already, before, she had been happy for twenty-eight years with her husband – she had boasted of it. She hadn’t remained on her own for long, a year she’d said, and she had found Mario almost immediately.

Why her, when Betty had tried so hard? Nothing bothered Laure. She came and went in life, relaxed, considering others with indulgence.

She considered Betty with indulgence too, and indulgence was the word, the kind of indulgence Betty didn’t want. What she wanted was what she was entitled to as a result of her efforts.

There was no justice. In a few days or in a few hours, room 53 would be empty, Betty elsewhere – it didn’t matter where – and, in the next room, Laure and Mario would carry on meeting as evening fell.

‘What else did she tell you?’

‘She told me so much that I’m forgetting some of it. You see, she’s a sad creature. She’ll spend her life running after something without ever knowing what.’

‘She has the eyes of a lost animal.’

‘She might end up finding a good soul who’ll give her a home, like a stray dog.’

Those weren’t necessarily the words they would use, but she didn’t think she was imagining things. She was convinced that it was true in substance, that that was what would happen. Laure would give Mario a smug, assured look, because, Betty gone, he was not likely to let himself take pity on her.

They fell silent now, and she soon understood why.

Would she herself still be capable of making love after what she had been through these past three days and three nights?

The two of them, flesh against flesh, saliva mingled, taking their pleasure in silence, motionless, and Betty stared at the grey sky and the black trees in the mirror, digging her nails into her skin. She wanted to scream, to make them stop, so that they would stop being happy.

She was tempted to get dressed and leave, so that, later, they would be mortified and shamefaced on seeing the empty room.

She didn’t have the energy. Besides, as soon as she appeared in the lobby, wouldn’t the concierge hasten to inform Laure? Had she not given instructions to that end? It was she whom the doctor had spoken to in the corridor, delegating his authority to her, in a way.

He had allowed Betty not to go into hospital on condition that she didn’t leave the room, didn’t move and didn’t receive any visitors.

The crack in the door lit up. The bedside light had just been turned on in the next room, and Mario was saying:

‘Do you think she’s still asleep?’

‘If you’re worried, go and have a look,’ replied Laure, still on the bed. ‘But first, give me a light.’

‘I find it strange.’

‘What?’

‘That she spends so much time sleeping.’

His footsteps came closer, retreated, then came closer to the door again, which he ventured to open a little wider.

He moved soundlessly, the way parents enter a child’s bedroom at night, trying to make out Betty’s face in the dark. To see her more clearly, he stepped forward, leaned over, saw her open eyes and the finger placed on her lips.

She smiled at him knowingly, as if she were putting her trust in him, and he smiled back, batting his eyelids to signal his agreement, and withdrew as silently as he had come, pulling the door to behind him.

‘Well? Is she asleep?’

‘She seems to be.’

He wasn’t exactly lying, merely cheating.

‘What did I tell you? Pour me a drink, will you?’

Betty had at last closed her eyes and was breathing regularly.