“The revolution that failed,” she said. “Why don’t they forget it?”
“Because it didn’t fail,” he said.
Another silence lay between them. She pushed out the cigarette in an ashtray next to her. She put the ashtray on the floor.
“Come to bed,” he said.
“No. Not yet. I want to sit here.”
“Jeanne,” he said.
“I never knew I could cry until you left me,” she said. Her words were soft but curiously without tone, as though they had come from some place in her so deep that all resonance had been lost.
“On the third day, William,” she said.
He waited. Her words were like blows.
“Police, I thought. They were only police. They came about seven, they surrounded the apartment. You know who was there: Verdun, a couple of others. I must have told you. They had men at the back, in the courtyard below. I heard them on the front stairs as well. We had some papers, we…well, I flushed them down the toilet, but the toilet stopped. And then they came in the rooms. I remember one, he was quite large. In uniform, of course. He came into the bathroom and he pulled me by the hair and I screamed. Then he pushed my head into the toilet and flushed it. I felt the water go down my nose, my mouth, I thought I was drowning. When he pulled me up, by the hair, I was screaming. He laughed at that. He struck me once, but he did not hit me again. I’ve thought about it a long time; I think he was not so bad. I think perhaps he was as frightened as I was. I mean, he seemed frightened of what he was doing and yet he seemed to have to do it in any case.”
He watched her eyes; he saw the soul shift, saw the eyes begin to glisten, not with tears but with the pain of memory.
“They put us in the patrol wagon and we waited for a long time. We could hear noises outside but we didn’t know what was going on. We stared at each other — Verdun and Le-Claire and the others — we felt ashamed. It was as though we had been playing a game and our parents had caught us. Do you know the feeling I am describing?”
But he did not speak.
“After a long time, the patrol wagon was driven away. We thought we were going to jail, to the magistrate’s court. When I saw Verdun, it was much later — my God, it was more than a year — and he had been taken to a cell in the Palace of Justice and beaten. And they had let him go, just like that. He had wondered what had become of me, he had instituted inquiries, but everyone professed not to know. I was ‘detained.’ That is what they told him. Only Giscard — poor Giscard, rest his soul — would not be turned away. I think if Giscard had not kept at them, they would never have released me. Some of my friends…”
She paused, her mouth turned down in bitterness.
“Friends. They say I married Giscard out of pity. Why is pity so despicable an emotion? We praise love, but love can betray, love can anger. Love can drive one to murder. But pity is yielding, gentle, pity is God’s kindness to us. Pity. I loved Giscard, perhaps differently from the way I love you, but I loved him. One man I loved and he left me; one man I loved and he died.”
“Jeanne,” he said at last. He sat up in the bed. “Come here.”
But it was as though she had not heard him, as though he did not even occupy the same dark room.
“They kept me in a cell inside the palace for three days. They did not feed me. There was a hole in the floor of the cell to defecate into. There was a bucket of water, it smelled foul. It was like some sort of a medieval dream. I couldn’t believe this had happened to me. I was Jeanne Clermont, I must be freed, I demand my rights. I even shouted these things, but there was only silence. On the third day, the matron came. She was a large woman. I’ll never forget her name — Clothilde.
“Clothilde took me to a white room and she wouldn’t talk to me. I kept asking her questions, I kept making demands. When we got to the white room, she told me to take my clothes off. I was wearing jeans then, I had a sweater. I refused. She hit me.
“I fought with her. She was so strong. I scratched her but she would not scratch me in return. She slapped me, and when I stopped fighting with her, she kept hitting me. There was blood in my mouth. I could taste it, and on my face. I took my clothes off as she had said. Do you know what she said? ‘No wonder they called you a whore. You are built well, like a whore.’ I will never forget that.”
Jeanne Clermont had lit another cigarette. Her arms were still folded across her breasts, her legs still crossed in the chair.
“She took me into another room and I waited a long time. There was only a bench. The room was cold. I thought I was being examined. She went away, but I knew that someone was watching me. After a time, they came into the room.”
“Who?”
“Two men. One was Claude de Fouchet. The second was Michel-Jon Rosset.”
He stared at her before she spoke. “How do you know their names?”
“They raped me. Perhaps that word is too strong; after all, I saw no reason to resist them. They wanted to use me; they wanted to humiliate me. Much later, I found out that it was not part of my conditioning, that the two men had been with the riot police the night they raided the apartment…after you left. Only three days after you left.”
“Jeanne.”
“It was rape, of course. It was against my will. But I did not resist them. I felt so broken; the large woman had hurt me badly. Do you know what they did?”
“Jeanne—”
“But I have to tell you everything.” For the first time, she turned to Manning. Her eyes were fixed on the past, he saw; she really did not see him. He was a mirage to her. “Everything.”
She turned away, back to the windows. “They raped me and then the first one, that was Claude de Fouchet, made me suck him. When he was done, the other wanted the same thing done to him. After a while, it didn’t matter. After I sucked them, they left me. They left me like schoolboys, as though I had shamed them. I said I was hungry, and Claude came back later and brought me a loaf of bread. I was permitted to take it back to the cell. Even the large woman who had beaten me seemed ashamed. She gave me a blanket. I slept on the floor beneath a blanket on the third night.”
“Why do you still remember their names?”
“They didn’t tell me their names, if that’s what you want to know.” She looked at him. “It took a long time. Poor Giscard. He helped me, of course, he would have done anything for me. He never knew about the incidents in the room. With those men. It would have wounded him too much.”
“My God,” Manning said.
“Yes,” Jeanne Clermont replied. “At times you must wonder, where is God in this? Why would He permit this to happen to me? Do you know I go to Mass every Sunday at Notre-Dame? I stand there and try to feel all the centuries in that place. When I was young — when you first knew me, William — I never prayed. I knew there was no God. It was comforting. Now that I am afraid there is a God, I am never comforted. He exists and yet He torments me. He permitted my imprisonment, my humiliation, He permitted them to beat me and rape me — He permitted me to despair — and yet He did not give me any solace.”
“I love you,” he said.
“Yes. William. I know that. I knew that when you went away. The first time.”
“It means—”
“What does it mean? Only that you love me. Nothing more.”
“It means everything.”
“Which is a way to say that it means nothing. We can only be certain of the specifics.”
“Jeanne.”
“William. They questioned me after that for days. First one, then the other. They kept at me. When I would not tell them what I knew, when I demanded my rights, when I accused those policemen of raping me, they took more drastic measures.