The Age of Reason (27 page)

The hall thrilled with responsive enthusiasm, there was a crackle of applause, and Boris seemed delighted.

‘They’re in a good mood tonight — this is going to be some show!’

Lola was leaning against the door: from a distance, her flattened, furrowed face looked like the mask of a lion, her shoulders, a quivering whiteness flecked with green, recalled a birch tree on a windy evening under the headlights of a car.

She advanced with long, calm strides, and a sort of nonchalant despair: she had the small hands and the loaded charms of a sultana, but there was a masculine lavishness in her approach.

‘She’s the goods,’ said Boris admiringly: ‘
she
won’t get the bird.’

It was true: the people in the front row were sitting back in their chairs, quite awed, as though they hardly dared look too closely at that famous head. It was the head of a tribune, the large commanding head of a public personage, with something of a politician air that thickened the features: a practised mouth, trained to open wide, and spit horror and disgust through out-thrust lips, in a voice that all can hear. Lola stiffened suddenly, Ivich’s neighbour heaved a thrilled, admiring sigh. ‘She’s got them,’ thought Mathieu.

He felt embarrassed: fundamentally, Lola was a noble and passionate character, but her face belied her a great deal; it merely simulated nobility and passion. She suffered; Boris drove her to desperation; but, for five minutes in the day, she took advantage of her singer’s gift to suffer beautifully. ‘Well, what about me? Aren’t I doing just the same in impersonating a wash-out to the accompaniment of a band? And yet,’ he thought, ‘it’s quite true that I’m a wash-out.’ Around him it was just the same: there were people who did not exist at all, mere puffs of smoke, and others who existed rather too much. The barman, for instance. A little while ago he had been smoking a cigarette, as vague and poetic as a flowering creeper: now he had awakened, he was rather
too much
the barman, manipulating his shaker, opening it, and tipping yellow froth into glasses with slightly superfluous precision: he was impersonating a barman. Mathieu thought of Brunet: ‘Perhaps it’s inevitable; perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all, or impersonating what one is. That would be terrible,’ he said to himself: ‘it would mean that we were duped by nature.’

Lola, without hurrying herself, looked round the hall. Her melancholy mask had hardened and set, it seemed to cling forgotten to her face. But, in the depths of her eyes, which alone showed signs of life, Mathieu thought he could descry a flame of harsh and menacing curiosity that was not feigned. She at last caught sight of Boris and Ivich and seemed reassured. She threw them a large, good-natured smile, and then announced with an absent air: ‘A sailor’s song:
Johnny Palmer
.’

‘I like her voice,’ said Ivich: ‘it reminds one of thick ribbed velvet.’ And Mathieu thought: ‘
Johnny Palmer
again.’

The orchestra played a few opening phrases and Lola raised her heavy arms — there she was, standing in an attitude of crucifixion, and he watched a crimsoned mouth open.

‘Who is it that’s cruel, jealous, hard?
Who cheats when he can’t hold a card?...’

Mathieu was no longer listening, this image of grief made him feel ashamed. It was only an image, he knew that quite well, but none the less...

‘I don’t know how to suffer, I never suffer enough.’ The most painful thing about suffering was that it was a phantom, one spent one’s time pursuing it, one always hoped to catch it, and plunge into it and suffer squarely with clenched teeth: but in that instant it escaped, leaving nothing behind but a scatterment of words, and countless demented, pullulating arguments. ‘There’s a chattering in my head, and the chattering won’t stop. Oh, how I wish I could be silent.’ He looked enviously at Boris; behind that dogged forehead, there must be vast silences.

‘Who is it that’s cruel, jealous, hard?
  Why, Johnny Palmer.’

‘I’m lying!’ His downfall, his lamentations — all were lies and from the void; he was thrust into the void, at the surface of himself, to escape the unendurable pressure of his veritable world. A black and torrid world that stank of ether. In that world, Mathieu was not a wash-out — not by any means, it was worse than that: he was a cheery fellow — a cheery doer of ill deeds. It was Marcelle who would be washed out if he did not find five thousand francs within two days. Washed out for good and all, and that was that: which meant that she would lay her egg, or run the risk of dying under the hands of an abortionist. In that world, suffering was not a condition of the soul and words were not needed to explain it: it was an aspect of things. ‘Marry her, you shoddy little bohemian, marry her, my dear fellow, why don’t you marry her?’ — ‘I bet it’ll finish her,’ thought Mathieu with horror. Everyone applauded and Lola deigned to smile. She bowed and said: ‘A song from a musical comedy: the Pirate’s Betrothed.’

‘I don’t like her when she sings that. Margo Lion was much better. More temperamental. Lola is too sensible, quite devoid of temperament. Besides, she’s too nice. She hates me, but with a good compact hatred, the healthy hatred of an honest human being.’ He listened absently to these light thoughts which scurried around like rats in a barn. Beneath them lay a dense and mournful slumber, a dense world that waited silently. Mathieu would drop back into it in due course. He saw Marcelle, he saw her hard mouth and distracted eyes. ‘Marry her, you shoddy bohemian, marry her, you have reached the age of reason, you must marry her.’

‘A high-pooped thirty-gunner,
  rolling into port.’

‘Stop! Stop! I’ll find some money, I’ll find it, somehow, or I’ll marry her, that’s understood, I’m not a rotter — but for this evening, just for this evening, I want to be left in peace and forget it all; Marcelle doesn’t forget, she’s in the room, outstretched on the bed, she remembers everything. She SEES me, she listens to faint sounds, within her, and what then? My name will be hers, my whole life if need be, but this night is mine.’ He turned to Ivich, and leaned eagerly towards her, and she smiled, but he felt as though his nose had come into contact with a glass wall, just as the applause broke out. ‘Encore!’ they cried. ‘Encore.’ Lola paid no attention to these appeals. She had another engagement to sing elsewhere at two o’clock in the morning, and she reserved herself accordingly. She bowed twice and approached Ivich. Heads were turned to Mathieu’s table. Mathieu and Boris got up.

‘How are you, my little Ivich?’

‘How are you, Lola?’ said Ivich in a toneless voice.

Lola tapped Boris on the chin with a light finger.

‘Well, you young rapscallion?’

Her calm, grave voice conferred a sort of dignity on the word ‘rapscallion’. It seemed as though Lola had purposely chosen it among the odd, rather touching words of her songs.

‘Good evening, Madame,’ said Mathieu.

‘Ah!’ said she. ‘So you’re here too?’

They sat down. Lola turned to Boris, apparently quite at ease.

‘It seems they couldn’t stick Ellinor.’

‘I gather so.’

‘She came to cry in my dressing-room. Sarrunyan was furious, it’s the third time in a week.’

‘He isn’t going to sack her?’ asked Boris uneasily.

‘He wanted to: she hasn’t got a contract. So I said to him she goes, I go with her.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That she could stay on another week.’

She surveyed the room, and said in a high voice: ‘It’s a foul crowd this evening.’

‘Well,’ said Boris, ‘I wouldn’t have said so.’

Ivich’s female neighbour, who was eyeing Lola with greedy, impudent eyes, gave a sudden start Mathieu wanted to laugh: he was rather fond of Lola.

‘It’s because you’re not used to the place,’ said Lola. ‘When I came in I saw at once that they had just done the dirty on someone, they looked so sheepish. You know,’ she added, ‘if that girl loses her job, she’ll have to go on the streets.’

Ivich raised her head suddenly, there was a wild look in her eyes. ‘Then let her go on the streets,’ she said savagely, ‘she’d do better there.’

She was making an effort to keep her head erect, and her dulled, pink eyes open. She had lost a little of her assurance, and added with a deprecating, harassed air: ‘Of course I quite understand that she must earn her living.’

No one answered, and Mathieu felt distressed on her behalf: it must be hard to keep one’s head erect. Lola eyed her composedly. As though she were thinking: ‘Nasty little rich girl.’ Ivich laughed lightly.

‘I don’t want to dance,’ she said slyly.

Her laugh broke, and her head fell forward.

‘I wonder what’s biting her,’ said Boris, quietly.

Lola gazed with curiosity at the top of Ivich’s head. After a moment or two she stretched out her small, plump hand, grasped a shock of Ivich’s hair, and lifted her head. And, with the air of a hospital nurse, she said: ‘What’s the matter, darling? Too much to drink?’

She drew aside Ivich’s blonde curls like a curtain, exposing a broad, pallid cheek. Ivich half-opened her expiring eyes, and let her head roll back. ‘She’s going to be sick,’ thought Mathieu indifferently. Lola was tugging at Ivich’s hair.

‘Open your eyes, will you! — Open your eyes! Look at me!’

Ivich’s eyes opened wide, and they shone with hatred. ‘There — I’m looking at you,’ she said, in a curt and icy tone.

‘Come,’ said Lola, ‘you aren’t as tipsy as all that.’

She let go Ivich’s hair. Ivich quickly raised her hands and smoothed her curls back over her cheeks, she looked as though she were modelling a mask, and indeed her triangular visage reappeared beneath her fingers, but a pasty, worn look still lingered round her mouth and in her eyes. She remained for a moment motionless, with the rather awesome look of a sleepwalker, while the orchestra played a slow foxtrot.

‘Are you going to ask me to dance?’ asked Lola.

Boris got up, and they began to dance. Mathieu followed them with his eyes, he did not want to talk.

‘That woman disapproves of me,’ said Ivich gloomily.

‘Lola?’

‘No, the woman at the next table. She disapproves of me.’

Mathieu did not answer, and Ivich went on: ‘I so much wanted to enjoy myself this evening... and look what’s happened! I hate champagne!’

‘She must hate me too because it’s I who made her drink it.’ He was surprised to see her take the bottle from the bucket and fill her glass.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think I’ve drunk enough. There’s a state one must get into after which one feels all right.’

Mathieu thought he ought to have stopped her drinking, but he made no sign. Ivich raised the glass to her lips, and grimaced disgustedly. ‘How nasty it is!’ she said, putting down her glass.

Boris and Lola passed close to their table — they were laughing.

‘All right, little girl?’ cried Lola.

‘Quite all right now,’ said Ivich, with a friendly smile.

She again picked up the glass of champagne and drained it at a draught without taking her eyes off Lola.

Lola returned her smile, and the pair moved away, still dancing. Ivich had a fascinated look.

‘She’s close up against him,’ she said in an almost unintelligible voice. ‘It’s... it’s ridiculous. She looks like an ogress.’

‘She’s jealous,’ said Mathieu to himself; ‘but of which?’

She was half drunk, smiling convulsively, and intent upon Boris and Lola, she was barely conscious of his presence, except as an excuse for talking aloud: her smiles, her mimicry, and all the words she uttered were addressed to herself through him. ‘I ought to find it intolerable,’ thought Mathieu, ‘but I don’t mind in the least.’

‘Let’s dance,’ said Ivich abruptly.

Mathieu was startled. ‘But you don’t like dancing with me.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Ivich. ‘I’m tight.’

She tottered to her feet, nearly fell, and grabbed the edge of the table. Mathieu took her in his arms and swung her away; they plunged into a bath of vapour, and the dark and perfumed throng closed round them. For an instant Mathieu was engulfed. But he promptly recovered himself, he stood marking time behind a Nigger, he was alone during the opening bars, Ivich had vanished, he no longer felt her presence.

‘How light you are.’

He looked down and caught sight of his feet. ‘There are many who don’t dance better than I do,’ he thought. He held Ivich at a distance, nearly at arm’s length, and did not look at her.

‘You dance correctly,’ she said, ‘but it’s plain that you don’t enjoy it.’

‘It makes me nervous,’ said Mathieu. He smiled: ‘You’re amazing, just now you could hardly walk, and you’re dancing like a professional.’

‘I can dance when I’m blind-tight,’ said Ivich. ‘I can dance all night, it never tires me.’

‘I wish I were like that.’

‘You couldn’t be.’

‘I know.’

Ivich looked nervously about her. ‘I don’t see the ogress anywhere,’ she said.

‘Lola? On the left, behind you.’

‘Let’s go up to them,’ she said.

They bumped into a nondescript-looking pair: the man apologized, and the woman threw them a black look. Ivich with her head half-turned, was towing Mathieu backwards. Neither Boris nor Lola had seen them come, Lola had shut her eyes, and her eyelids were two blue patches on her drawn face, Boris was smiling, immersed in angelic solitude.

‘What now?’ asked Mathieu.

‘Let’s stay here, there’s more room.’

Ivich had become almost a weight in his arms, she was scarcely dancing, her eyes were fixed on her brother and on Lola. Mathieu could see nothing but the tip of an ear between two curls. Boris and Lola circled up to them. When they were quite near Ivich pinched her brother just above the elbow.

‘Hullo, Hop-o-my-thumb.’

Boris stared at her, wide-eyed, with astonishment.

‘Hi!’ said he. ‘Ivich, don’t run away! Why did you call me that?’

Ivich did not answer, she swung Mathieu round so that she had her back to Boris. Lola had opened her eyes.

‘Do you understand why she called me Hop-o-my-thumb?’ Boris asked her.