The Unsettled Dust (24 page)

‘Animals often appear in here,’ said Madame A. huskily. ‘Dogs, cats, toads, monkeys. And occasionally less
commonplace
species. I expect it will have gone by now.’

I think I only stared back at her.

‘Sometimes my husband painted them.’ It was the only reference she had made to her husband, and it was one which I found difficult to follow up. She dragged down the front of her dress in her compulsive way.

‘I will talk to you,’ said Madame A., ‘about Chrysothème, my adopted daughter. Do you know that Chry so theme is the most beautiful girl in Europe? Not like me. Oh, not at all.’

‘What a pity I cannot have the pleasure of meeting her!’ I said, again trying to enter into the spirit of it, but wondering how I could escape, especially in view of what had just
happened
. On the instant, and for the second time, I regretted what I had said.

But Madame A. merely croaked dreamily, staring straight ahead. ‘She appears here. She stays quite often. For a quite long time, you understand. She cannot be expected to remain longer. After all, I am far from being her mother.’

I nodded, though it was obscure to what I was assenting.

‘Chrysothème!’ cried Madame A. rapturously clasping her hands. ‘My Chrysothème!’ She paused, her face illumined, though not her eyes. Then she turned back to me. ‘If you could see her naked, monsieur, you would understand
everything
.’

I giggled uneasily, as one does.

‘I repeat, monsieur, that you would understand everything.’

It dawned on me that in some way she meant more than one would at first have thought.

One trouble was that I most certainly did not
want
to
understand
everything. I had once even told a fortune teller as much; a big-nosed but beautiful woman in a tent when I was a schoolboy.

‘Would you like to see her clothes?’ said Madame A., quite softly. ‘She keeps some of them here, to wear when she comes to stay.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should.’ I cannot fully analyse why I said it, but I said it. Madame A. being what she was, I could claim that I was given very little voice in the matter. Perhaps I wasn’t. But that time it didn’t arise. I undoubtedly chose.

Madame A. took me lightly by the wrist and drew me out of the chair. I opened the big door for her, and then another big door which she indicated. There were two on the opposite side of the landing, and she pointed to the one on the right.

‘I myself sleep in the next room,’ said Madame A. on the threshold, making the very wall sound like an invitation. ‘When I can sleep at all.’

The room within was darkly panelled, almost to the ceiling. The corner on the left behind the door was filled by a panelled bed, with a coverlet of dark red brocade. It seemed to fill more space than a single bed, but not as much space as a double bed. From the foot of it, the plain, dark panelling of the wall continued undecorated to the end of the room. In the centre of the far wall stood a red brocaded dressing table, looking very much like an altar, especially as no chair stood before it. On the right was a window, now covered by dark red curtains, of the heavy kind which my Mother used to say collected the dust. Against the wall on each side of this window stood a big dark chest. There were several of the usual art nouveau lanterns hanging high on the walls, but the glass in them was so heavily obscured that the room seemed scarcely brighter than the dim landing outside. The only picture hung over the head of the bed in the corner behind the door.

‘What a beautiful room!’ I exclaimed politely.

But I was looking over my shoulder to see if the black dog had emerged through the open door on the other side of the landing.

‘That is because many people have died in it,’ said Madame A. ‘The two beautiful things are love and death.’

I went right into the room.

‘Shut the door,’ said Madame A.

I shut it. There was still no sign of the dog. I tried to postpone further thought on the subject.

‘Most of her clothes are in here,’ said Madame A. She pulled at the panelling by the foot of the bed, and two doors opened; then another pair; then a third. All that part of the bedroom panelling fronted deep cupboards.

‘Come and look,’ said Madame A.

Feeling foolish, I went over to her. All three cupboards were filled with dresses, hanging from a central rail, as in a shop. If they had been antiquarian rags or expectant shrouds, I should hardly have been surprised, but they were quite normal women’s clothes of today; as far as I could tell, of very high quality. There were garments for all purposes: winter dresses, summer dresses, and a great number of those long evening dresses which one sees less and less frequently. All the dresses appeared to be carefully looked after, as if they were waiting to be sold. It struck me that in that direction might lie the truth: that the dresses might never have been worn. Certainly the room looked extremely unoccupied. Apart from the dresses, it looked more like a chapel than a bedroom. More like a mortuary chapel, it suddenly struck me; with a sequence of corpses at rest and beflowered on the bier-like bed behind the door, as Madame A. had so depressingly hinted.

‘Touch the clothes,’ said Madame A., reading my mind. ‘Take them out and see the marks of Chrysothème’s body.’

I hesitated. Unless one is a tailor, one instinctively dislikes the touch of other people’s clothes, whoever they may be; and of unknown strangers’ clothes not least.

‘Take them out,’ repeated Madame A. in her commanding way.

I gingerly detached a random dress on its hanger. It was a workaday, woollen garment. Even in the poor light, the signs of wear were evident.

That point made silently between us, Madame A. showed impatience with my timid choice. She herself drew out an evening gown in pale satin.

‘Marvellous, exquisite, incomparable,’ she exclaimed
stridently
. I think that if she had been tall enough, she would have held the dress against her own body, as the saleswomen so curiously do in shops; but, as it was, she could only hold it out at the end of her long arms, so that most of it flowed across the dark red carpet like a train. ‘Kneel down and examine it.’ I hesitated. ‘Kneel,’ cried Madame A. more
peremptorily
.

I knelt and picked up the bottom hem of the dress. Now I was down on the floor, I noticed a big dark patch which the dark carpet was not dark enough to hide.

‘Lift the dress to your face,’ ordered Madame A. I did so. It was a wonderful sensation. I felt myself enveloped in a complex silky nebula. The owner, the wearer of that elegant garment, began, even though entirely without definition, to be much more present to me than Madame A.

Madame A. dropped the dress and on the instant was holding out another in the same way. It also was a long dress. It was made of what I believe is called georgette, and was in some kind of mottled orange and red.

The pale satin dress lay on the floor between us.

‘Kneel on it. Tread on it,’ directed Madame A., seeing me about to circumvent it. ‘Chrysothème would approve.’

I was unable to do such a thing, and crawled round the edges of the satin dress to the georgette dress. Immediately I reached the georgette dress, Madame A. threw it adroitly over my head, so that I had a ridiculous minute or two extricating myself. I could not but notice, and more than just notice, that the georgette retained a most enchanting scent. Her scent made the wearer of the dress more real to me than ever.

Away to my left, Madame A. now extended a third long dress; this time in dark blue taffeta, very slender and skimpy.

‘You could almost wear it yourself,’ cackled Madame A. ‘You like wearing blue and you are thin enough.’ I had, of course, not told her that I liked wearing blue, but I suppose it was obvious.

Madame A. twisted round a chair with her foot and laid the dress on it, with the low top hanging abandonedly over the back of it.

‘Why don’t you kiss it?’ asked Madame A., jeering slightly.

Kneeling at the foot of the chair, I realised that my lips were only slightly above the edge of the seat. To refuse would be more foolish than to comply. I lowered my face and pressed my lips against the dress. Madame A. might be ridiculing me, but I felt now that my true concern was with that other who wore the dresses.

When I looked up, Madame A. was actually standing on another chair (there were only two in the room, both originally in the corners, both heavy, dark, and elaborate). She was holding up a short dress in black velvet. She said nothing, and I admit that, without bidding, I darted towards her and pressed the wonderful fabric against my face.

‘The moon,’ gurgled Madame A., pointing to the pale satin dress on the floor. ‘And the night.’ She flapped the black velvet up and down and from side to side. It too smelt
adorably
. I clutched at it to keep it still and found that it was quite limp, inert in my grasp.

Madame A. had leapt off the chair with one flop, like a leprechaun.

‘Do you like my adopted daughter’s clothes?’

‘They are beautiful.’

‘Chrysothème has perfect taste.’ Madame A.’s tone was entirely conventional. I was still sniffing the velvet dress. ‘You must see the lingerie,’ Madame A. added, merely as if to confirm the claim she had just made.

She crossed to the chest at the left of the curtained window and lifted the unlocked lid. ‘Come,’ said Madame A.

The big chest was full of soft underclothes in various
colours;
not ordered like the dresses, but tangled and clinging apparently at random.

I suppose I just stood and stared. And the same scent was rising hypnotically from the chest.

‘Take off your blue jacket,’ said Madame A., almost with solemnity. ‘Roll up your blue sleeves, and plunge in your white arms.’

Without question, I did what she said.

‘Sink your face in them.’

I hardly needed to be instructed. The scent was intoxicating in itself.

‘Love them, tear them, possess them,’ admonished Madame A.

All of which I daresay I did to the best of my ability.
Certainly
time passed.

I began to shiver. After all, I had left a very over-heated room.

I found that all my muscles were stiff with kneeling; and I supposed with concentration too. I could hardly rise to my feet in order to rescue my jacket. As I rolled down my
shirt-sleeves
, I became aware that the hairs on my forearms really were standing on end. They seemed quite barbed and sharp.

‘Blue boy!’ exclaimed Madame A., waiting for me to make the next move.

I made it. I shut the lid of the chest.

‘The other chest contains souvenirs,’ said Madame A.,
dragging
at the neckline of her dress.

I shook my head. I was still shaking all over, and could no longer smell that wonderful scent. When one is very cold, the sense of smell departs.

And at that moment, for the first time, I really apprehended the one picture, which hung above the wide bed in the corner. Despite the bad light, it seemed familiar. I went over to it, and putting one knee on the bed, leant towards it. Now I was certain. The picture was by me.

But there were two especially strange things. Though I was quite certain that the picture could only be mine (my talent may be circumscribed, but it is distinctive), I could not
remember
ever having painted it, and there were things about it which could at no time have been put there by me. Artists, in their later years, do sometimes forget their own works, but I was, and am, sure that this could never happen in my case. My pictures are not of a kind to be forgotten by the painter. Much worse was the fact that, for example, the central figure which I might have painted as an angel, had somehow become more like a clown. It was hard to say why this was, but, as I looked at it, I felt it irresistibly.

My attack of shivering was turning to nausea, as one often finds. I felt that I was in danger of making a final fool of myself by being actually sick on the floor.

‘Quite right,’ said Madame A., regarding the picture with her vague eyes, and speaking as she had spoken in the other room. ‘Not a painter at all. Would have done better as a sweeper out of cabinets, wouldn’t you agree, or as fetcher and carrier in a horse-meat market? It is kept in here because Chrysothème has no time for pictures, no time at all.’

It would have been absurd and undignified to argue. Nor could I be sure that she was clear in her mind as to who I was.

‘Thank you, madame,’ I said, ‘for receiving me. I must detain you no longer.’

‘A souvenir,’ she cried. ‘At least leave me a souvenir.’

I saw that she held a quite large pair of silvery scissors.

I did not feel at all like leaving even a lock of my hair in Madame A.’s keeping.

I opened the bedroom door, and began to retreat. I was trying to think of a phrase or two that would cover my
precipitancy
with a glaze of convention, but then I saw that, squatted on the single golden light that hung by a golden chain from the golden ceiling of the landing, was a tiny fluffy animal; so very small that it might almost have been a dark furry insect with unusually distinct pale eyes. Moreover, the door into the big, hot room on my left was, of course, still open. I was overcome. I merely took to my heels; clattering idiotically down the bare, slippery staircase. I was lucky not to slide headlong.

‘Mais,
monsieur!’

I was struggling in the dark with the many handles, chains, and catches of the front door. It seemed likely that I should be unable to open it.

‘
Mais,
monsieur!
’
Madame A. was lumbering down after me. But suddenly the door was open. Now that I could be sure I was not trapped, a small concession to good manners was possible.

‘Good-night, madame,’ I said in English. ‘And thank you again.’

She made a vague snatch in my direction with the big, silvery scissors. They positively flashed in the light from the street lamp outside. She was like a squat granny seeing off a child with a gesture of mock aggression. ‘Begone,’ she might have said; or, alternatively, ‘Come back at once’: but I did not wait to hear Madame A. say anything more. Soon I found that I was walking down the populous Chausée d’Ixelles, still vibrating, and every now and then looking over one shoulder or the other.