Pierre had reached that point where he was no longer capable of expressing himself in sentences. Or else he no longer dared to.
He remembered something Regencrantz had said: “By moving so quickly, are you fleeing or pursuing?” “If I am fleeing,” he said to himself, “what exactly am I fleeing from?”
When he began to tackle this riddle, the fugitive found himself surrounded by question marks that held him back like hooks.
CHAPTER X
“ONE BEHIND MY NECK, really hot… One behind my left leg. This one’s cold and is freezing my right leg!”
Bonne de Boisrosé is surrounded by rubber hot-water bottles. She looks like a horse wading through a river on wineskins.
The table has been placed at the foot of the bed, a pretty little hexagonal chess table, lent by the uncle, on which the glasses touch one another, with a place laid at each of the six sides. The Boisrosé girls are serving at table, for the maid only comes in the morning. Maids have been solicited on several occasions by means of advertisements, but the concierge had painted such a colourful picture of the Boisrosé household beforehand that they never got beyond the entrance hall.
Fromentine has placed a white lotus flower in a celadon full of water in the centre of the table. Hedwige is putting the plates on top of the oven to warm. They have washed, for once discarding the bathrobes, morning coats, dressing gowns and other indoor clothes which they live in. Hedwige is wearing white: it’s Angélique’s dress. Angélique is in black: it’s Fromentine’s dress. Fromentine is in black and white: she has borrowed the dress from her elder sister and the tunic from her younger one; the gold necklaces are from her mother. Bonne de Boisrosé is wearing guipure, her bust resting on sheets trimmed with Valenciennes lacework, looking like a hairdresser’s model on a pedestal covered with ruffled material.
Pierre Niox is coming to dinner. He has been invited, ostensibly to thank him for his flowers, but in reality to discuss the sale of the Mas Vieux. Madame de Boisrosé had decided that this time it should be Angélique who would raise the subject, Hedwige not having proved up to the mark since she had allowed two opportunities to pass without reaching a conclusion.
Pierre rings the bell. It’s almost as if he is there already. He doesn’t open doors, it’s as though he were forcing his way in. He dashes through, striding past the entrance hall and the ritual introductions and into the drawing room where he is awaited, not without ceremony, since the presence of a stranger is fairly rare at Saint-Germain. Fromentine, who had opened the landing door to him, followed at a run, hoping, quite wrongly, that she would reach the drawing room at the same time as him. As soon as enters the room, Pierre exclaims:
“So much finery and so much beauty just for me!”
“In this way you are sure of being favoured,” Fromentine replied playfully. “Excuse me one moment, I’m going to find Hedwige.”
Pierre was left in private conversation with Angélique. She headed astutely straight for the Mas Vieux. Pierre gave her an enthusiastic description of it in a few words.
“I don’t know the house, unfortunately,” Angélique replied. “Father bought it when he was separated from Mamicha and he sold it without informing us. Poor Papa was very ill and was probably badly advised. So were we, we don’t have anyone to help us, we’re four women on our own who know nothing about business matters.”
Pierre interrupted her:
“I know what’s bothering you, but believe me, don’t worry. I have an idea… still unformed, but achievable. Your sister Fromentine teases me about my haste; this time, you see, I am taking my time.”
“Can I not know beforehand?” asked Angélique.
“Why do such beautiful women concern themselves with all this language of business and money? It’s for men like me to free them from their worries.”
He was so unaccustomed to these phrases of gentlemanly chivalry that he was astonished to hear himself utter them.
Fromentine returned, bringing Hedwige with her.
“Come and say hello to my mother. Forgive her for receiving you lying in bed, she’s not feeling very well today.”
Pierre feared disturbing Madame de Boisrosé and resisted; he resisted badly, because he was watching Hedwige as she spoke. He was mesmerized by women’s lips; he saw little else, initially. It was through their lips that he began to puzzle them out; it was the first real effect they made on him. Just as a deaf man uses the lips of the person he is conversing with to understand the words he is unable to hear, so it was from their lips that he interpreted their distinctive features, their affectations, the truths about them. It is the mouth, first of all, that gives her away. Pierre had had his fill of pretty, foolish mouths that never shut; despondent mouths that try to cheer themselves up by applying lipstick, but whose muscles slacken and droop; elastic, hysterical mouths that shoot off in every direction; restless mouths that muddle up the words to be spoken; tragic mouths, on stage and in speeches, looking rather like a black hole in Melpomene’s mask; fashionable mouths, advertisements for toothpaste; busy, harsh mouths that hold the purse strings; mouths that have disintegrated due to illness.
But Hedwige had a firm, well-balanced mouth that radiated serenity and contemplation; a mouth that was in harmony with her eyes and with every part of her face and her soul.
Fromentine was growing restless:
“Yes, yes, you must come and see Mother,” she said. “You will be obliged to go in there since we are having dinner at the foot of her bed. It’s what we call the little dining table.”
And she opened the bedroom door with a great shriek of laughter, pushing Pierre closer to the bed.
“I must compliment you on your daughters, madame,” he said with a bow.
“Three daughters, it’s a disaster. Don’t remind me, monsieur, that I have three daughters.”
“They’re very beautiful.”
“As far as that’s concerned, yes, they’re beautiful and they’re good,” said Madame de Boisrosé with such natural pride that it could no longer be termed pride. And with a wave of her hand she sought the agreement of her son-in-law Amyot and Monsieur de Rocheflamme, who were keeping her company.
Pierre thought it was charming to have dinner in the bedroom. He was fascinated by this intimacy of women in its purest state, without any affectation, cunning or social concerns. The cooking resembled some sort of leisure activity, the cutlery something of a conjuring trick; saucepans, plates, bottles protruded from every corner and they lent this tea party an atmosphere of make-believe and entertainment. Pierre was on the point of saying: “How much quicker it is than in a restaurant!”, but he preferred not to remind them of that disastrous first evening.
Vincent Amyot, Angélique’s husband, was a witty mind inside a ninety-kilo body. Although extremely intelligent in private, as soon as he wished to shine and make himself attractive to a stranger he lost his natural wit and expressed himself like a book, like a boring book. This former poly-technicien5 wrote articles on economic affairs for the weeklies that were brimming with authority and facile pessimism. He had tried his hand at writing detective novels and historical essays, and he wrote too much; but unlike the work of artists, musicians and orators, who overwhelm their friends and relations with exhibitions, concerts and conferences, the creations of a friend who’s a writer are always avoidable. And so no one was familiar with Amyot’s output. Apart, that is, from a few ministers of finance who, with the sensitivity peculiar to all politicians, did not absorb the lessons that he delivered with theoretical infallibility from on high, and which resulted, in practice, in a forecast of banking disasters. Pierre listened to the conversation, stock-still.