Her legs were the green grass,

  And jasmines were her lips.’

  ‘Sing it to me, I think I know the melody,’ Grandsailles begged him.

  Girardin needed no urging, and after taking a sip of wine he clicked his tongue and in a falsetto voice, with the perfect and quavering intonation characteristic of the peasants of Libreux, he sang snatches of the ballad of the nun of Saint Julien, then sang the entire song and sang it again and this time the Count accompanied him with his deeper voice, marking the rhythm by striking his gold ring against a crystal dish which he held with his other hand to produce a sharp sound without resonance.

  When they reached the refrain Maître Girardin pinched the tip of his nose with his fingers to sharpen and refine the plaintive inflection of the song by the somewhat strident tone of his nasal voice.

  ‘Her breasts were two live stones,’ Girardin sighed, in a voice as delicate as a mosquito’s whine.

  ‘P-m, p-m, p-m,’ Grandsailles responded, marking the last ‘p-m’ with a sharp tap of his ring.

  ‘Her legs were the green grass!

  P-m, p-m, p-m,

  And jasmines were her lips!

  P-m, p-m, p-m,

  P-m, p-m, p-m,

  P-m, p-m, p-m.’

  Girardin always left at ten-thirty. He now got up and said goodnight. The Count remained for ten long minutes in the dining-room, writing down the song in his notebook as slowly as possible, and then did not know what else to do. For a moment he thought of saying something to Prince, who seemed to be lingering intentionally, as if in the hope of starting a conversation. But the silence remained unbroken, and Prince then smiled a sad little smile, as if wishing to apologize because Grandsailles had found nothing to say to him.

  Removing the last pieces of the service he withdrew, wishing the Count a goodnight. Then Grandsailles finally got up from the table and, slowly ascending the wide staircase, went to his room.

  The electric light of the Château, always a little feeble, quivered almost imperceptibly, and the single globe, hanging rather low from the ceiling above the exact centre of the Count’s bed, was so worn that its ambered and dying pallor barely cast a glow over it.

  On the pulled-back sheet a mite-coloured silk nightshirt was meticulously folded. As was his nightly habit, Grandsailles provisionally laid on it the little notebook with his jottings and got undressed. When he was completely naked he remained thus for a few moments, absentmindedly stroking a slight bruise he had given under the left pap with a button when he had crushed the onion in the salad a little while ago.

  The Count’s body was perfect, tall and handsome, and to visualize him one may recall the famous drawing of Apollo in the Milan museum, executed by Raphael. When the Count had slipped on his nightshirt, which was just a little longer than his day-shirt, he picked up his notebook and went to the end of the room where a large, dark mahogany chest stood, very narrow but so tall that it reached the ceiling.

  This rigid chest rested on four little human feet with long, slender toes in the Egyptian style, sculptured in very shiny golden bronze. Grandsailles opened the two doors of the chest, the interior of which was empty except that on one of its central shelves and within reach of the hand there lay a series of objects: at the left, a tiny child’s skull crowned with a delicate gold aureole, attributed to Saint Blondine, which Grandsailles had kept here since the restoration of the church of the Château had been begun: beside this relic of the child martyr, a violin and bow, and next to these a black key adorned and inlaid with a silver crucifix which went with the coffin that contained the remains of the Count’s mother. As he did every night, Grandsailles deposited his notebook there and picked up the violin, but just at the moment when he inclined his head to seize the instrument between his chin and his shoulder he heard a noise which made him turn around. The smiling face of an old woman appeared in the partly opened door.

  It was Grandsailles’ faithful governess, whom the Count always called ‘the Canoness of Launay’ in reminiscence of Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma. ‘Good evening, canoness, ‘said the Count, putting his violin down on the bed. The canoness entered, bearing in one hand a dish with two boiled artichokes, for which the Count had a mania when he was taken with insomnia in the middle of the night. In the other hand the canoness carried a great shaggy glove made of cat hair with which she regularly rubbed the Count’s limping leg, which was subject to seizures of acute rheumatismal pains. The canoness was almost diabolically ugly, but she exerted a certain attraction by her intelligent vivacity and her wide-awake look. She was clean to the point of exaggeration; her skin was fine, but monstrously wrinkled, and her right eye was continually running, which obliged her to wipe it periodically with her white lace-edged apron.

  The Count had no secrets from his canoness. She was the only one allowed to enter and leave his room without even knocking. She decided everything in the Château, and as the Count was unable to do without her ministrations, he always took her along when he went off to Paris. The canoness, who had not yet opened her mouth, got down on her knees and began patiently and conscientiously to rub the Count’s leg. In the course of one of her rhythmic movements, a little more vigorous than the rest, the Count’s intimate parts were half exposed.

  Respectfully she pulled his shirt down again with her gloved hand, but her other bare and wrinkled one she slipped underneath and, pressing the flesh with the chaste joy of a mother, looked at him tenderly and exclaimed, ‘Oh my, oh my, what a blessing from heaven!’ Then with the same hand she tapped him on the knee as she leaned on it to get up with the full weight of her body resting on it. ‘You ought to take Saint Blondine’s little head out of the chest,’ the canoness advised, as she started to leave. ‘I could never go to sleep with that in my room.’

  From the doorway, as with great deliberation she wiped her eye which had had time to wet the whole length of her neck while she had got to her feet, she twice repeated this sentence by way of a conclusion, ‘For nothing keeps you awake so much as always thinking about death.’ And as she walked down the length of the corridor he heard her mutter, ‘Blessed be God! Blessed be God!’

  The clock struck eleven. Grandsailles then again picked up his violin and, pressing it serenely but firmly against his cheek, launched with his virtuoso’s bow into Bach’s D Major Aria. He stood leaning a little forward, the knee of his injured leg against the edge of the bed, the slit in the side of his nightshirt partly baring the thigh which had turned bright pink from the stimulation of the rubbing. In the centre of this irritated skin the old scar spread its branches like a dark eggplant-coloured vegetation.

  Grandsailles’ eyes rested on Saint Blondine’s little skull, with its tiny intact teeth, as smooth and white as a riverstone. Its purity made him think of Solange de Cléda’s knees, and the memory of her haggard face, ennobled by the brightness of her tears, seemed to lend precision and divine beauty to the melody as it developed, majestic and all-powerful.

  Grandsailles breathed deeply, moving his head to the melodic inflections of the burning river of the sonata, but his impassive features reflected his determination not to allow the emotions of his heart, with their weaknesses, to cloud the limpid purity of his interpretation of the music. As the aria neared its final bars, in which all the anguish of the night seemed to reach a geometric point at which it would remain suspended for eternity, he could feel the tip of the little finger of the hand with which he held the bow, as though it were still wet with Solange de Cléda’s warm and desirable saliva.

  2

  The Friends of Solange de Cléda

  At about half-past eleven in the morning Barbara Stevens, the wealthy American widow and heiress of John Cornelius Stevens, hurried out of the Hotel Ritz in Paris with her daughter Veronica. They walked down the sidewalk some fifty paces and entered Madame Schiaparelli’s dressmaking establishment. At ten minutes past one, mother and daughter came out of Schiaparelli’s and returned to the Hotel Ritz where they lunched on a salad served to them with due obsequiousness and ceremony.

  They swallowed two different kinds of vitamins with the aid of two martinis, which made them long for a third, and a chocolate and pistachio panaché ice cream; after which, without waiting for coffee, they set off again for Schiaparelli’s, whence they emerged to return once more to the Ritz in time for five o’clock tea.

  Barbara Stevens had succeeded in composing for herself a special facial expression by virtue of which she made it apparent when she entered Schiaparelli’s that she had just come from the Ritz, and another whereby she showed on returning to the Ritz that she had just left Schiaparelli’s. The first of these expressions consisted in keeping her mouth constantly half-open in a kind of disillusioned languor, which was exactly the contrary of the gaping mouth of surprise; she never answered the questions which the saleswomen asked her; she would let her gloved hands linger on the various articles and, tactlessly pretending to look at nothing, she was secretly astonished at everything. The second of these faces, the one for her return to the Ritz, she achieved by means of a closed, or rather a contracted mouth, for she would pucker her lips with an air of annoyance, which expressed a shade of disgust so frivolous that it could arise only from the little tyrannical worries peculiar to the exigencies of fashion, that must always remain unsatisfied in an ultra-sophisticated lady like herself. Barbara Stevens had had herself awakened this morning at half-past nine on the pretext that she had a six-thirty appointment with her hairdresser, which she had wrung from him by main force and which she was coldly resolved to break. Like many weak creatures chained to their absolute caprice, she felt free and at ease only when she could arbitrarily abolish the cares and obstacles with which she had purposely strewn her way the day before.

  For that matter, each of her little worries could become for Mrs Stevens a precious source of distraction in case she should find herself in the alternative of being bored. Thus when her day looked too empty to her she always had something with which to encumber, if not to fill it; on the contrary, when a morning started out auspiciously with more exciting occurrences, Mrs Stevens would begin voluptuously to rid herself of all her obligations, though to do her justice it is true that she did so with a correctness, a rigour, a meticulous care in the choice of excuses, which represented a real effort on the part of her secretary, who adroitly utilized all pretexts of politeness with an exclusive and unequivocal eye to publicity.

  ‘Mrs Barbara Stevens regrets her inability to come for her last fitting as she needs her shoes with the little diamond watches inlaid in the heels in order to attend the charity affair at the British Embassy.’

  ‘Mrs Barbara Stevens wishes to cancel her luncheon at Larue because of the arrival of the King of Greece.’

  ‘Mrs Barbara Stevens begs Monsieur or Madame Fernandez kindly to telephone her tomorrow morning, she is sorry she cannot be present at their cocktail party for she is being detained by her lawyers on an urgent matter.’

  ‘Mrs Barbara Stevens begs to be forgiven for having to put off her visit until her return from Versailles next Friday, and asks to have put aside for her the two rose tourmaline clips and the necklace of emerald cabuchons that Bérard the painter liked so much.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, yes, indeed,’ the jeweller would answer at the other end of the wire. ‘I believe she is referring to the Renaissance necklace with the little centauresses. Why yes, certainly, we shall put it aside.’

  Hanging up the receiver, he would say to himself, ‘Hm-Versailles… it must be the dinner at the Windsors’… let’s see, what day is that dinner?… the sixteenth, yes, Friday. But in that case the secretary must be mistaken. Mrs Stevens will never get back before Saturday morning. We will have to wait till Monday or telephone again… no, we must wait – Monday morning….’

  This kind of little calculation, infallibly set in motion by the telephone conversation in the jeweller’s platinum-mounted brain, was the speciality of Barbara Stevens’ secretary.

  Miss Andrews, for her part, possessed a small brain moulded of newspaper pulp, irregularly sprinkled with lugubrious black squares combined with the dirty grey ones of half-effaced and dreary pencil-scribblings of a crossword puzzle left lying around. She derived an almost savage joy from being able to shine for a moment in her mistress’s eyes, when she came in the evening to get her orders, by fawningly displaying the Machiavellian resources that enabled her, with unparalleled mediocrity, to weave filigrane ornaments of stupidity to dress the too-naked and impulsive desires which Mrs Barbara Stevens often just left where she dropped them.

  ‘Taking upon myself the responsibility of cancelling your Friday appointment.’ Miss Andrews would say, jubilant over her find, ‘I achieved four different results. First, that of adding a margin of two days for Madame’s decision; second, of informing them of Madame’s dinner at the Windsors’ in Versailles without mentioning it; third, of informing the Fernandezes of your choice, for they are to go tomorrow morning to see the same jewel, which Cécile Goudreau has called to their attention. They are bound to become interested in it. Then they will be told that Mrs Barbara Stevens has had it put aside.’

  ‘I’m sure Madame Goudreau must have heard about it from Bérard, for they say she has absolutely no taste,’ Barbara broke in, a little pricked by jealousy.

  ‘And fourth,’ Miss Andrews continued triumphantly.

  ‘What do you mean, fourth?’ Mrs Stevens asked in surprise, having only vaguely followed her secretary’s social expatiations while slipping on a lace dressing-gown splashed with large and loud-coloured violets. She wore this garment (which clashed outrageously with the chasteness of her white-and-gold drawing-room, decorated by Jean Michel Frank) with the pleasure of satisfied self-love. In the intimacy of her room, at least, and before the sole secret witness of her secretary, she could give herself over without restraint to the natural penchants of her execrable taste.

  ‘Fourth – the fourth advantage is having chosen Friday,’ Miss Andrews resumed, rattling off her words in fear of not being able to get to the end of her explanation. ‘Friday the Fernandezes are dining at Solange de Cléda’s where Madame is so sorry she cannot be present because of the Windsors! The Fernandezes cannot fail to speak jealously of your latest extravagances, so it will be exactly as if you had been there.’

  ‘Who answered the telephone at Cartier’s? The little dark fellow with the Spanish accent?’

  ‘I think so. He was very pleasant. He said twice, “Tell Madame I am entirely at her disposal”.’

  ‘Entirely at her disposal. Yes, it’s surely the little dark fellow. Did you telephone Monsieur Paul Valéry for my luncheon of the twentieth?’

  Miss Andrews again plunged into the exhausting description of the diplomatic advantages of her manner of telephoning, while Barbara Stevens, with her head between her hands, remained bowed attentively over her engagement book with her eyes shut, imagining with a scenic precision worthy of the best stage designer each of the reactions and the facial contractions which her new appearance in Paris would produce in her circle of acquaintances, advised in advance of her recent activities by her secretary’s mystifying zeal. Then she studied her rôle according to each of the circumstances and, exacting, dissatisfied, she obliged herself to begin again a hundred times the same movements, the same grimace, the same inflection of voice, coming in, going out and coming in again imaginatively and tirelessly in order to achieve perfection. It was exhausting! And it was only then that she ventured to be pleased with herself, having in turn become her own spectator.

  She saw herself enter Cartier’s as the vermilion climax of all the gossip of the Versailles dinner, going to the Fernandezes as the gavel of high finance, and to her booter’s as though she were merely the Duchess of Kent. It was a curious thing: although Barbara did not take such effects very seriously, it was nevertheless certain that she thus obtained the most eager cajoleries from her shopkeepers, the promptest whistles to call her car, the deepest bows from doormen and society people; and all this contributed to make her unsure of herself and she would wonder. ‘Am I perhaps not altogether a bluff?’

  ‘Enough, darling,’ Barbara implored, cutting short her secretary’s inexhaustible chattering, ‘tell me, what does destiny hold in store for us today?’

  She knew, alas! And by her tone of fatality she was only preparing the naturalness of her reaction.

  ‘There is nothing,’ Miss Andrews replied a little embarrassed, ‘except the fittings and the hairdresser at six-thirty.’

  ‘At last,’ Barbara sighed, ‘a day of happiness!’

  Miss Andrews was already standing with her feet together like a military rigidity waiting to be dismissed; her slightly shiny and Lilliputian face had the same pink colour and the exact form of a little toe with a large greenish tooth – that is, a tiny nail – placed in the middle of it.

  ‘You may go – thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  At this moment Veronica entered the room and came up and kissed her mother on the corner of her mouth. Eluding the kiss Barbara again sighed. ‘At last, we’re going to be able to spend a pleasant day, just the two of us, but in any case I’ll have to go to that confounded hairdresser instead of staying and catching up with my correspondence.’ She did in fact detest her new hairdresser’s too glacial manner of treating everyone alike, and she would gladly have avoided the appointment with this rebel… ‘a communist, undoubtedly,’ she thought. But the frightful emptiness of the end of her day chained her hopelessly to her appointment: after the hairdresser, nothing! She looked furtively and resentfully at the telephone as it quivered and gave a timid tinkle without sequel, which made all the mortal silence of this morning beat painfully upon Barbara’s already empty heart. She felt herself grow faint and averted her face with disgust from the spot where it slumped like a motionless sleeping white lobster, stupidly caught on its fork, incapable of coming to her rescue.