It was this hospital I was reminded of — that and the rabies — when I landed up at the elegant house.
There wasn’t a large garden, but it was scented like a rural drugstore. They used to bring home strange herbs from abroad. Everything was from abroad there, you know, even the toilet paper! Don’t stare like that! They never went shopping like ordinary mortals, you know. They just rang the wholesaler, who brought them everything they needed — meat for the kitchen, shrubs for the garden, a new record for the record player, books, bath salts, scents, pomades whose smells were so dreamlike, so exciting, sweet, and tantalizing they made me dizzy and quite sick. I practically wept with emotion whenever I cleaned the bathroom after them and smelled their soap and cologne, every lingering smell and scent. And it was all on account.
The rich are strange, darling. As you know, I myself was pretty rich for a while. I had a maid to scrub my back in the morning. I even had a car, a convertible coupe, driven by a chauffeur. I had an open sports car, too, to race about in. And, believe it or not, I didn’t feel in the least embarrassed to be moving among them. I was not retiring or bashful. I made myself at home. There were moments I imagined I was really rich. But now I know that I wasn’t, not really, not for a second. I simply had jewels, money, and a bank account. I was granted these things by those who could afford them. Or I took it from them, when I had the opportunity. I was a clever little girl, you see. I learned in the ditch, in my childhood, not to be idle, to pick up whatever lay at hand, to smell it, take a bite of it, and to hide it — to hide everything that others threw away. An old enameled pot with a hole in it was just as valuable as a precious stone. I was just a slip of a girl when I learned that lesson. You can never be too industrious.
Now, these rainy days, that’s what I always ask myself. Have I been industrious? Have I given things proper attention? I don’t suffer from pangs of conscience. On the contrary, I worry in case I’ve forgotten to take anything I could have. Like you. For example, that ring of mine that you sold yesterday … you struck a really good deal, darling. I’m proud of you. I’m not just saying that — after all, no one knows better than you do how to sell jewelry. I don’t know where I’d be without you. I say “my” ring, but it was really the ring Her Old Ladyship used to wear. It was a present from the old man for their silver wedding anniversary. I found it by accident in a drawer after the old woman died. I was the lady of the house by then and felt entitled to it. I put the ring on and examined it. And I remembered how many years ago, after first coming to the house, I found a ring on the laundry table among other forgotten things while the old girl was happily splashing about in the bath: an old-fashioned, heavy ring with a fat gemstone in it. I put it on and examined it with such nervous excitement that I started trembling, threw the ring back onto the table, and ran to the toilet, because my whole body was seized with cramps, I felt so sick. It was all because of the ring. But this time, after Her Ladyship’s death, I said nothing to my husband. I just slipped it into my pocket. I didn’t steal it. It was mine by right, since after his mother’s death my husband gave me anything that even faintly sparkled. But it felt good just to take this one ring, the one she proudly wore on her finger, and to put it into my pocket without my husband knowing, without his permission. And I looked after it really well — that is, until yesterday, when you finally sold it.
What are you laughing at? Take it from me, that house was so particular even the toilet paper was imported from abroad. There were four bathrooms: the one for the old lady had pale green tiles, the young gentleman’s were yellow, the old boy’s dark blue. The fourth was used by the servants. All the bathrooms except ours had matching toilet paper, imported from America. There’s everything you want in America — vast industries and plenty of millionaires. I’d like to go there sometime. I heard my husband, the first one, the real one, went there after the war when he decided he wanted no more of the People’s Democracy. But I wouldn’t want to meet him now. Why? What would be the point? Sometimes it just happens that two people have said everything they could possibly say to each other and have nothing left to say.
Not that you can ever be sure of that. Some conversations go on forever. Wait, I haven’t finished!
. . .
It was a beautiful house and we servants had our own bathroom, but that just had ordinary white tiles. The paper we used was ordinary white too, a little rough, as I remember. It was a well-ordered house.
The old man was the mainspring of order. Everything went as smooth as clockwork, with the delicate precision of a fine lady’s watch bought not two weeks ago. The staff rose at six in the morning. The ritual of cleaning had to be as religiously attended to as mass at church. Brooms, brushes, dusters, rags, the window cloths, proper oils for parquet and furniture — the refined grease with which we treated the floorboards was like those highly expensive egg-based preparations beauty salons produce for the glamorous — and I mustn’t forget all the exciting machinery, like the vacuum cleaner, which did not merely suck the dirt from the rugs but brushed them too; the electric polisher that buffed the parquet so bright you could see your face in it. I used to stop sometimes and simply gaze at myself like those nymphs in the ancient Greek reliefs … yes, I’d lean over and examine my face, my eyes sparkling, just as absorbed, as startled as that half-boy, half-girl statue I once saw in the museum looking adoringly at his or her charming reflection.
We dressed for cleaning each morning like actors for a performance. We wore costumes. The manservant put on a vest which was like a man’s waistcoat turned inside out. Cook was like a nurse in an operating theater in her sterile white gown, her head covered in a white scarf, waiting for the surgeon and patient to turn up. I was like one of those peasant girls in the operetta chorus dressed for gathering berries at dawn in my traditional maid’s cap. I was obliged to understand that this dressing up wasn’t simply because it was pretty but because it was hygienic and clean, because they didn’t trust me, thinking I might be dirty, carrying a lot of germs. Not that they ever said as much to my face, of course! And they may not actually have thought it, not in so many words. It was just that they were wary, wary of everyone and everything. That was their nature. They were suspicious to an extraordinary degree. They protected themselves against germs, against thieves, against heat and cold, against dust and drafts. They protected themselves against wear and tear and tooth decay. They never stopped worrying, whether it was about their teeth or the state of the furniture, about their shares, their thoughts — the thoughts they adapted or borrowed from books. I was never consciously aware of this. But I understood that, from the moment I first stepped into the house, they wanted to be protected against me too, from whatever disease I carried.
Why should I be carrying a disease? I was young and fresh as a daisy. All the same, they had me examined by a doctor. It was a horrible examination; it was as if the doctor himself didn’t fancy doing it. Their local doctor was an elderly man, and he tried to joke his way through the minute, painstaking process. But as a doctor — indeed, the family doctor — he essentially approved of the exercise. After all, there was a young man in the house, still just a student, and it was not unlikely that sooner or later the young man would want to get familiar with the new scullery maid, who had, for all purposes, just been plucked out of the ditch. They worried in case he caught TB or the pox off me. I even suspected that the old doctor — an intelligent man — was faintly ashamed of this overscrupulous need for assurance, this just-in-case. Once there proved to be nothing wrong with me, they tolerated me in the house like a decently bred dog that would need no vaccinations. The young gentleman did not contract any infection from me, of course. It was just that — much later — he happened to marry me. That was the one danger they’d never thought to insure themselves against. Not even the family doctor could diagnose it. One has to be so careful, darling. I think the old gentleman, for one, would have had an apoplectic fit if it ever occurred to him that my disease might be transmitted by way of marriage.