He made as if to protest, but she silenced him, and, holding between her fingertips the bone of a partridge on which she nibbled daintily, she lowered her voice and added, “Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy. . . . Respectable woman that I am, when I’m bored and sin by dreaming impossible dreams, you can be sure that the things I come up with are a lot nicer than your Blanche Mullers.”
And with a grave air she concluded on a profound note of naïve cynicism: “It’s a matter of upbringing, don’t you see?”
She gently laid the small bone on her plate. The rumble of carriages continued, but no particular sound stood out from the dull roar. She was obliged to raise her voice so that he could hear her, and her cheeks grew redder. On the serving table there remained truffles, a sweet side-dish, and asparagus, unusual for that time of year. He brought everything to the table so as not to have to get up again, and since the surface was rather narrow, he set down on the floor between himself and Renée a silver bucket filled with ice and a bottle of champagne. In the end her appetite proved contagious. They sampled all the dishes and in high spirits emptied the bottle of champagne, proposing scandalous theories while leaning on their elbows like two friends letting themselves go after a bout of drinking. The noise from the boulevard died down, but to her it sounded louder, and at times all those wheels seemed to be turning round in her head.
When he asked about ringing for dessert, she got up, shook the crumbs from her long satin blouse, and said, “Go ahead. . . . You may light a cigar, if you like.”
She felt slightly dizzy. She went over to the window, drawn there by a peculiar sound she couldn’t account for. The shops were closing.
“Look,” she said, turning toward Maxime, “the orchestra is putting away its instruments.”
She leaned out again. Out in the middle of the street, cabs and omnibuses, rarer now and moving more rapidly than before, stared at each other with various-colored eyes as they passed. But along the sidewalks great pits of darkness had opened up in front of the closed shops. Only the cafés remained ablaze, striping the asphalt with streaks of light. From the rue Drouot to the rue du Helder Renée was thus able to observe a long series of white squares alternating with dark, from which the last stragglers emerged only to vanish again in the strangest way. The prostitutes above all, their long dresses alternately illuminated by a harsh light and then drowned in shadow, took on a ghostly air, like faded marionettes caught in the electric beam of some fantastic extravaganza. For a short while Renée found this game amusing. The puddles of light evaporated. The gaslights flickered out. The variegated kiosks stained the darkness more brightly than before. At intervals a crowd of people from some theater hurried past. Gaps began to open up in the flow, however, and groups of two or three men passed beneath the window and were approached by a woman. They stood and haggled. Some of what they said could be heard above the dying din. Usually the woman then went off on the arm of one of the men. Other streetwalkers moved from café to café, making the rounds of the tables, snatching forgotten cubes of sugar, laughing with the waiters, and staring steadily at the lingering customers with questioning looks and unspoken propositions. And Renée, who had been studying the nearly empty upper deck of a Batignolles omnibus, happened to recognize the woman in the blue dress and white lace, now standing at the street corner and turning her head from side to side, still on the prowl.
When Maxime came over to join her at the rail, where she stood lost in thought, he smiled at the sight of a half-open window in the Café Anglais. The idea that his father was having supper across the way struck him as comical, but this evening peculiar inhibitions subdued his usual banter. Renée was reluctant to leave the railing. An intoxication, a languor, rose from the more obscure depths of the boulevard. As the rumble of traffic faded and the bright lights dimmed, she felt a tender summons to sensuousness and sleep. The fleeting whispers she heard, the groups of men and women she saw loitering in dark corners, turned the sidewalk into a vast inn at the hour when travelers take to their beds for the night. The light and noise grew fainter and fainter, the city went to sleep, and soft breezes caressed the rooftops.
When the young woman turned around, light from the small chandelier made her blink. She was a little pale now, and a slight quivering was noticeable at the corners of her mouth. Charles laid out the dessert. He went out and came back in, leaving the door swinging slowly on its hinges as he went about his business in the phlegmatic manner of a proper gentleman.
“But I’m not hungry anymore,” Renée exclaimed. “Take all those dishes away and serve us coffee.”
The waiter, accustomed to the whims of the women he served, took away the dessert and poured the coffee. He filled the room with his importance.
“Please tell him to go,” Renée, feeling sick, said to Maxime.
The young man dismissed him, but no sooner had he vanished than he returned once more to hermetically seal the heavy window drapes in his discreet manner. When he finally withdrew, Maxime, also in the grip of impatience, got up and went to the door.
“Wait,” he said, “I’ll see to it that he leaves us alone.”
And he pushed the bolt shut.
“That’s that,” she replied. “Now at least we can make ourselves at home.”
They went back to sharing confidences and gossiping like old comrades. Maxime lit a cigar. Renée sipped her coffee and even allowed herself a glass of chartreuse. The room heated up and filled with bluish smoke. After a while she placed her elbows on the table and propped her chin on two half-clenched fists. Under this slight pressure her mouth grew smaller, her cheeks were lifted up a bit, and her eyes, narrowed somewhat, glowed more brightly. Distorted in this way, her small face looked lovely under the shower of golden curls that now dangled down to her eyebrows. Maxime stared at her through the smoke from his cigar. She was definitely an original. At times he was no longer quite sure of her sex. The large wrinkle across her forehead, the pouting protrusion of her lips, and the vagueness in her eyes because of her nearsightedness made her look like a nearly grown young man, particularly since her long black satin blouse went so high that a line of fleshy white neck was barely visible beneath her chin. She submitted to his stare with a smile, holding her head steady, staring vacantly, and keeping her lips sealed.
Then she woke abruptly. She went over and looked at herself in the mirror, which she had been eyeing vaguely for a short while. She raised herself on tiptoes and held on to the mantelpiece so as to read the signatures and risqué comments that had frightened her before the meal. With some difficulty she deciphered the syllables, laughed, and went on reading, like a schoolboy turning the pages of Piron’s obscene poetry3 inside his desk.
“Ernest and Clara,” she said, “and there is a heart underneath that looks like a funnel. . . . Ah! Here’s a better one: ‘I like men because I like truffles.’ Signed ‘Laure.’ Tell me, Maxime: was it the Aurigny woman who wrote that? . . . And over here we have the coat of arms of one of those ladies: a hen smoking a fat pipe. . . . And more names, a whole calendar of male and female saints: Victor, Amélie, Alexandre, Edouard, Marguerite, Paquita, Louise, Renée. . . . My, my! One of them even has my name.”
Maxime could see her ardent face in the mirror. She lifted herself up even more, and her domino, pulled taut in back, outlined the concavity of her waist and the curve of her hips. The young man followed the line of the satin, which stuck to her like a chemise. Now he too got up and threw away his cigar. He was uneasy and nervous. His customary nonchalance and naturalness were gone.