Quartet

It was about half-past five on an October afternoon when Marya Zelli came out of the Café Lavenue, which is a dignified and comparatively expensive establishment on the Boulevard du Montparnasse. She had been sitting there for nearly an hour and a half, and during that time she had drunk two glasses of black coffee, smoked six caporal cigarettes and read the week’s Candide.

Marya was a blonde girl, not very tall, slender-waisted. Her face was short, high cheek-boned, full-lipped; her long eyes slanted upwards towards the temples and were gentle and oddly remote in expression. Often on the Boulevards St Michel and Montparnasse shabby youths would glide up to her and address her hopefully in unknown and spitting tongues. When they were very shabby she would smile in a distant manner and answer in English:

‘I’m very sorry; I don’t understand what you are saying.’

She crossed the boulevard and turned down the Rue de Rennes. As she walked along she was thinking: ‘This street is very like the Tottenham Court Road—own sister to the Tottenham Court Road.’

The idea depressed her, and to distract herself she stopped to look at a red felt hat in a shop window. Someone behind her said:

‘Hello, Madam Zelli, what are you doing in this part of the world?’

‘Good evening, Madame Zelli,’ said the patronne of the Hôtel de l’Univers. ‘Will you come in here for a moment? I have something to say to you. Edouard, give the lady a chair.’

There was a small sitting-room behind the hotel bureau where Madame Hautchamp and her husband spent more than half their lives, quite happily so far as one could see. It was a dim, airless place crammed with furniture: a large table, a small table, three straight-backed chairs.

Monsieur Hautchamp, a hairy little man with vague and kindly eyes, muttered something and withdrew.

‘Of course,’ decided Marya, ‘they are going to raise the rent.’ She waited.

Madame Hautchamp, who was a large, aquiline lady with a detached and inscrutable expression, announced:

‘Your husband will not return tonight, Madame.’

‘Oh!’ said Marya. ‘Ah! Bon! Did he telephone?’

She looked at a loudly-ticking clock on the mantelshelf. It was just eight.

‘Monsieur,’ said the patronne, ‘has been arrested. Yes, Madame arrested. About an hour ago, about seven o’clock. An inspector and an agent came here. Enfin....’

She gesticulated with both hands and one eyebrow.

‘I’ve realized, you see, that life is cruel and horrible to unprotected people. I think life is cruel. I think people are cruel.’ All the time she spoke she was thinking: ‘Why should I tell her all this?’ But she felt impelled to go on. ‘I may be completely wrong, of course, but that’s how I feel. Well, I’ve got used to the idea of facing cruelty. One can, you know. The moment comes when even the softest person doesn’t care a damn any more; and that’s a precious moment. One oughtn’t to waste it. You’re wonderfully kind, but if I come to stay with you it’ll only make me soft and timid and I’ll have to start getting hard all over again afterwards. I don’t suppose,’ she added hopelessly, ‘that you understand what I mean a bit.’

Lois argued: ‘I don’t see why you should have to start getting hard all over again afterwards. People aren’t such ogres as all that. People can be quite kind if you don’t rub them up the wrong way.’

‘Can they?’ said Marya.

‘Do you know why Lois has gone off?’ asked Heidler.

‘No,’ said Marya. ‘Why?’

He spoke slowly, without looking at her:

‘She’s gone away to leave us together—to give me a chance to talk to you, d’you see? She knows that I’m dying with love for you, burnt up with it, tortured with it. That’s why she’s gone off.’

He had tilted his hat to the back of his head and was looking fixedly across the deserted street. He looked much younger, she thought, and extraordinarily hard.

‘You think I’m drunk, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘Of course.’ She repeated: ‘Of course. And I’m tired, so let’s go home.’

‘Do you know why your door is open every morning?’ asked Heidler. ‘Have you noticed that it’s open? No? Stay where you are and listen to what I’ve got to say. I’ve had enough. Now you’ve got to listen. Your door is open because I come up every night and open it. Then I look at you and go away again. One does meaningless things like that when one is tortured by desire. Don’t you know that I wanted you the first time I saw you?’ He nodded. ‘Yes. Dare say that you didn’t know.’