Jimmy’s dog ran toward her, leapt up, dampened her cheek with a hearty lick. For the few seconds that the dog’s eyes were level with Brulard’s, she had the brutal feeling that she could see her own anxious soul reflected or submerged deep inside them. The dark mirror of the dog’s pupils seemed to be showing her not her own miniaturized face but something else, unexpected, inexplicable — as if, Brulard told herself at a loss, her appearance had suddenly changed beyond all recognition, or as if the dog’s incomprehensible black eye were reflecting Brulard’s true, secret being, of which she herself had no notion, which she couldn’t describe, even on finding it thus revealed in the gaze of that pitiful creature.
“I brought you some things,” said Jimmy, suddenly close enough to brush against her.
And he went on, very quietly, his chin wrinkling up, his hairless, satiny face suddenly contorted:
“Oh, why did you go away? Tell me why?”
A moment later he got hold of himself. He stood up straight, twisted his mouth into a self-deprecating little grin. Good old Jimmy, thought Brulard gratefully, brave, thoughtful Jimmy. Unless what brought Jimmy here was something very different from what she assumed (her husband’s slightly fussy and excessive thoughtfulness). Was there not once again a sort of free-floating pity in the surreptitious glances he cast at her, at her body, her hair? She felt a surge of anger and fear. But, smiling, she gently shook her head. What’s happened? Who is my friend, my guardian? How I wish I could lie down for a few minutes, Brulard thought. To her deep chagrin, she felt an embittered wariness toward Jimmy taking root in her.
“Who was that on the phone?” he asked.
“I think. . it’s none of your business,” Brulard mumbled. With difficulty, she added:
“The fact is, I have no idea.”
They stood face to face, tense and still, but knowing each other so well in adversity that a sort of weariness fell over Brulard, and she told herself she’d been through all this before, in different circumstances.
“Needless to say, Lulu stays with me,” said Jimmy in a hard voice.
He went on:
“Forever, no matter what.”
“Forever?”
And Brulard could feel the smile on her frozen face, her exquisite, imperceptibly mocking smile, at which Jimmy would certainly not take offense, for he knew her as well as she knew him, and he knew that the more insulting, painful, and unjust was her meaning, the more overt and delicious Brulard’s smile would be, and the more carefree her voice.
“I’ll come and see Lulu whenever I can,” she nevertheless said, in a tone so sharp and unbridled that a sort of alarm, an unease softened Jimmy’s intractable gaze, as she thought to herself: he doesn’t know how terribly I need to sleep, everything’s different when you wake up, even Eve Brulard finds it hard to pursue me when I’m well rested.
She gave Jimmy a gentle cuff on the chin. He scowled. Defying him, but purring, wheedling, she asked:
“How did you find out where I was? Who told you? Oh, never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Lulu’s pale adolescent face suddenly drifted into Brulard’s memory, replacing the face that had occupied her every thought since the previous Saturday, that broad, serious face, thoughtful and worn, whose solicitous gravity Brulard’s unquiet mind ceaselessly summoned up, and each time she came back from the bank she reassured herself a little with the memory of that dignity, of that loyalty, just as she did when, every evening before slipping into the hotel’s narrow bed, she found herself forced to acknowledge that another day had gone by with no phone call — Lulu’s sweet face, round-cheeked, confident, and tender, which Brulard hadn’t seen one last time before she went away, Lulu having spent all that Saturday at a friend’s, and would she have left had Lulu’s eyes been upon her, would she have raced off toward an exciting new life? Yes, yes, Brulard told herself, paralyzed by melancholy, she most certainly would have, for can you forego the possibility of a windfall of fate, of a miraculous down payment on freedom from doubt and monotony? Who would willingly spurn such a grace bestowed without explanation, with no need for thanks or gratitude? Who? — except, in her day, old mother Brulard, whose immortality in the form of a stern mountain was perhaps her only reward for her many renunciations.
Brulard’s drifting thoughts came and went around Lulu. She felt a dribble of saliva on her chin and realized she was drooling. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, thinking: It’s the exhaustion. If I could only. . Who’s stopping me?
But was it even imaginable that Jimmy would let her sleep?
He was talking with the clerk. Eyelids pinched with exhaustion, she let her gaze linger on Jimmy’s slender back, oddly youthful in that bottle-green, scraped leather jacket — which was strange, she thought, because she’d seen it as burgundy just a short while before, and she’d thought: is burgundy a tolerable color for an article of clothing, and now she found it to be, or saw it as, the same conscientious green as the hotel’s armchairs, which several guests just out of the dining room were approaching, preparing to drop heavily into them, and now they were sitting there, exhaling deeply, murmuring gravely, waiting for the sun to warm the shores of the lake, as if they had a time without limit before them, a distended, opulent time. How wonderful it will be, Brulard thought, to be old. Oh, how wonderful it would be to be rich.
She backed very discreetly toward the elevator, eyes trained on Jimmy. He was bantering with the clerk, swaying his hips and slightly raising his shoulders, and Brulard told herself she would slip away to her room, lock herself in, and sleep till early afternoon. For all she knew Jimmy would be gone when she woke, and perhaps she would even have forgotten his coming, perhaps even, in an abrupt return of mystery and good luck, she might find, languishing in one of those armchairs, the man for the love of whom she was here, alone and needy under the watch of the hated mountain.
Jimmy’s dog barked after her. That filthy animal’s onto me, Brulard thought. Supple, feline, Jimmy immediately glided across the lobby to her side.
“There’s only one free room,” he said, his brow anxious. “You’re not going to. . ”
“Why not?”
She gave a feverish, incredulous little laugh.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m on vacation,” Jimmy said, with a strangely pleased air.
Sliding airily over the wooden floor, as if letting himself be wafted along unawares, he arrived at the side of the silent, apathetic Swiss couple in the armchairs. He tossed the cinema program that Brulard had left at the counter onto the woman’s thighs. In his low, cajoling voice, she heard him intoning:
“There. . That’s Eve Brulard, look. . She’s my wife, she has a part in this film. It’s a. . wonderful film. I recommend. . ”
She thought she could also hear him telling them of a lemon-yellow scarf that stayed stuck in a car door as it started off.
“What about your wife? Inside the car, or out?” the man asked, bending down to hear better.
Jimmy burst into a charming laugh. Suddenly alarmed, the dog began to bark. Jimmy didn’t seem to notice, and Brulard observed that the clerk, so brusque with her, so clearly distressed to be mixed up with her in anything slightly strange or ridiculous, scarcely glanced up at the dog, before, with an understanding, fraternal little smile, going back to his work.