‘How restful,’ said Barbara, ‘a morning without telephone calls.’

  ‘Who do you expect to telephone? Everyone has gone to the country,’ said Veronica.

  ‘Why, is this a holiday?’ her mother asked weakly.

  ‘It’s a half holiday. Some of the shops are open, but the people have left. There’s a new Fred Astaire film, by the way.’ Veronica threw out this suggestion for the fun of teasing her mother.

  ‘I should say not! For nothing in the world!’ Barbara burst out with annoyance, while she hastily ran over and took back her nail-file which she had just discovered in her daughter’s hands.

  ‘I should say not!’ the girl said in turn imitating her mother’s tone, ‘you know that the manicure forbade you to touch your hands.’

  Barbara acceded poutingly and went back to lie down on her couch.

  ‘I can stand the manicure getting on my nerves; I can stand Miss Andrews getting on my nerves; I can stand my daughter Veronica getting on my nerves, but not Fred Astaire – enough tapping; I can stand anybody getting on my nerves, but not with their feet!’

  In a moment Barbara’s face became covered with barely perceptible nervous quivers. It was as though one could see the little grey spiders of dissatisfaction running in all directions on the mother-of-pearl of her carefully tended epiderm. Veronica came and sat down beside her: motionless and steady-eyed, she could feel her mother’s eyes already turning moist and expected her to cry. Barbara Stevens had that faculty for fleeting emotivity that gives sparkle to certain faces, in which the dew of large and facile tears enhances and polishes the shades of sentiments at the same time that it removes the slightest trace of their dust. Barbara was forty-three, but her little chisel-shaped nose was sixteen, and the blue-tinged dimples at her mouth were barely twelve.

  Was Barbara really beautiful? She gave exactly the contrary impression. She seemed to have been beautiful, just recently. And this was perfectly true. Ugly as a child, passable at the time of her marriage, beautiful yesterday, ravishing today, Barbara Stevens was one of those rare beings capable by their nature’s very essence of all the transformations and rejuvenations so glibly promised by beauty parlours. Through an innate sense of imitation her face could with deceptive accuracy reproduce the most antagonistic expression of any being – man, woman and even animal. Plunged in the mythology of fashion shops, she expended all her mimetic faculties in contaminating herself at will with the virtues and attitudes of the divinities of the day who succeeded most imperiously in fascinating her: thus Barbara Stevens, in the frenzied race of her depersonalization, spent the treasures of her energy in resembling all the pretty women of her period, while keeping of herself only what was strictly necessary to remain alive. All that was natural about her was limited – her legs were rather short, her forehead small, she was plump without generosity and just passably blond. What contrast could be more startling than that offered by the river-like and golden exuberance of her daughter!

  Veronica was blond, by virtue not only of her golden hair that cascaded over her shoulders, but of the kind of light than emanated from her whole body: when she was beside her mother it was as though she lent her some of her blondness, and when she was alone she made the very furniture that surrounded her turn blond. Unlike Barbara, Veronica had a large serene brow, rounded, slightly meningitic, and long, sculpturally modelled legs that one never saw, for in her presence one could not help looking constantly at her eyes, and one could not help looking at her eyes because in her gaze one saw absolutely nothing; foreign to tears and to frowns her eyes were fixed and dry like two immense deserts, and their pupils were of a blue so pale that they blended into the whites, and it was only in their depths and on the horizon of their translucent vista that a bit of moonlight and gold-dust shone. Barbara’s defect of having rather short legs was undoubtedly nature’s ungracious way of bringing her closer to the earth, and at the same time making her more human. Veronica, on the other hand, did not need her long legs of a goddess to lift her heart to a different level. She was one of those who trample on human feelings with the light feet of an antelope. Barbara, like most weak creatures, was kindly, disposed to forgiveness, to pity, and was cruel only unconsciously. Without being cruel, Veronica was neither good nor bad, like the gods of ancient Olympus, and like all combative creatures belonging to an élite she was pitiless, vindictive and subject to irretrievable passions. She was the praying mantis that devours its love through a biological need for the absolute.

  Barbara Stevens felt her daughter’s inquisitorial gaze resting on her. But she was attached to this gaze, for its ponderable transparency was like a crystal-ball paper-weight resting on the lightness of her feelings written on the fluttering tissue-paper of her frivolity. She was attached to it, above all, because she might need it at any moment if a crisis should presently occur. Barbara expected from Veronica’s inflexible gaze no consolation, but she nevertheless liked to feel herself looked at while she wept, for it was the only way in which she could bring herself to feel sorry for herself. While waiting for such a scene Barbara had recovered her engagement book which she placed on her lap, she leaned her elbows on the arm of the couch, her forehead resting on her hands, her eyes wide open, concentrating without seeing anything on a page opened at random. Presently out of the darkness of her mind, she saw a little hat emerge, a hat of such a violent metallic blue that it appeared red: as a matter of fact, it appeared red only because it was red, and it was not blue because the sole thing that was blue about this hat was the blue veil that covered it. This hat flashed in her brain for an instant, like an electric spark which changes from blue to red with such rapidity that once it is gone one can no longer tell which of these colours was perceived first. Nevertheless the instantaneous and blinding apparition of this hat had sufficed to illuminate the face of the person who wore it for a moment and as Barbara recognized this person she uttered a cry of fright and called out her name, ‘Mrs Reynolds!’

  ‘I had completely forgotten that I have a dinner this evening at the Reynolds’,’ she said, letting her two arms drop on the couch in a theatrical abandon by which she seemed to beg for pity from Veronica, who smiled at her in a fashion which could have been a little more tender and a little less malicious.

  ‘I can’t just not go to the dinner at the Reynolds’,’ Barbara continued. ‘I’m already being accused of neglecting my compatriots. Besides I like them, but they’re so naive! I don’t like to be able to lie without having to watch myself. Remember this, my daughter: in order to be carried away by a lie, one must be able to lie to others as well as to oneself.’

  The prospect of her mended evening had given her back wit, kindness, beauty, and had restored to her soul a serene calm that made her yawn long and gratifyingly between her teeth. This compressed yawn made her lips quiver imperceptibly and was a sign that she was going, after a last relapse into indolence, to make a decision.

  ‘Ai, Dio!’ she exclaimed, getting up.

  Barbara dragged herself aimlessly about the room, enjoyed its silence which a while ago made her nerves feel raw, and was even prepared to feel indulgent about the large cubist painting of Harlequin by Picasso, which she had had to buy so much against her will.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘what reminded me of my dinner? You’ll never guess – the Picasso! Exactly the same colour as Mrs Reynolds’ hat, the one she was wearing the day she invited me as we crossed downstairs in the lobby: that same blue, and that same flame-red….’

  Thereupon Barbara half pulled out, then immediately put back into their envelope, some photographs of herself that she had not yet had time to look at carefully, and going into the bathroom she put them provisionally on the washstand. Then she returned to the room, looking for something else, hesitating between a German book on Renaissance jewels and the New York Times of the previous Sunday. She finally chose the latter, took it under her arm and once more, lazily and with finality, headed for the bathroom, dragging her feet as she went. There she locked the door and remained a good long three-quarters of an hour.

  In the course of the afternoon Barbara Stevens found time, besides, to choose between three cocktails, of which she accepted four, for she invited two Venetian friends whom she met by chance to join her at the Ritz bar for a quarter of an hour, substituting this for her appointment with the hairdresser, which she had cancelled. From this moment on it might be said that her time was organized with the precision of a military manoeuvre: twenty-four minutes to get to Neuilly, ten minutes to enjoy a cocktail; then back to the Ritz, eight minutes to change dresses, then two more appearances, each of five minutes’ duration, for final cocktails; and lastly, to the Reynolds’, where she arrived twenty-three minutes late.

  At six o’clock Veronica came back to the hotel alone, and by the special immobility of the disorder in the living-room she realized that her mother had left a long time before. She immediately stretched out on the same couch where her mother had reclined during the greater part of the morning; she planned to have dinner here later, and to go to bed immediately after. She would have liked to get undressed right away and slip on a glazed piqué dressing-gown, her latest acquisition, so fresh, smooth and starched that Veronica had said, in answer to her mother’s reproaches the first day she had worn it. ‘It’s the first time in my life that I realize what it’s like to feel completely naked.’ Barbara, in fact, always protested when she caught Veronica in her room without any clothes on, but since the discovery of this dressing-gown her nudism had become transformed into the pleasure of the direct contact of her firm flesh with the somewhat rigid, slippery and immaculately white fabric. She was also having her sheets glazed with a very substantial quantity of starch, and when one struck them with one’s finger they gave off a little sound like cardboard. All day long Veronica would stoically wait for this delightful moment when, exhausted with fatigue after her shopping, she could at last slip her naked body into her starched robe and eat an apple.

  But today something prevented her from changing immediately – one of those premonitions that were so habitual with her. She had just had a strange, fixed and very clear impression that someone would come and fetch her at the last moment to take her out. Veronica puckered her brows with a characteristic stubborn, ill-humoured expression, that was neither the grimace of migraine nor that of melancholy, but rather the contraction of her concentrated and permanent interrogation as to what was about to happen to her. Nevertheless, and in spite of the deep absorption of her mind, she took off her shoes and with one hand pressed a pale apple which had the same lustre as her brow. And while with the other hand she held a knife, one foot perseveringly struggled to enlarge a hole in her stocking till it was big enough for a whole toe to slip through. It was as though she were merely waiting for this result as a signal to start to peel her apple, that is to say her life. And by her calm and resolute manner any humble peasant of the plain of Creux de Libreux might have divined that the first man Veronica met in her life would be hers, and that she would marry him.* For Veronica was one of those who, when they peel an apple, carry the operation to its conclusion with a sure regularity and an awe-inspiring skill that enable them, by their steadiness, not to make a single ‘break’ through the irregular incisions of doubt in this skin of their own destiny, no matter how finely they cut it. No symbol in the world is more powerful and real than this one, for having relearned, thanks to Freud, that automatic actions (the language of the subconscious) always prophetically reveal the secrets of our souls, we now know for certain that the girl who peels an apple and continues to the end without once breaking the peel gives proof of a constancy of character and a level-headedness such that when instead of the apple she confronts the man whose emotional relations to herself she has to peel, she will never break her idyll and will bring it to a happy final result. The girl who on the contrary breaks the peel of her apple into a thousand uneven pieces will behave in the same way with her loves; being inconstant, she will break and cut all her relations, and at the end of her life, instead of the continuous and melodic line of her conduct, she will see the skin of her destiny lying in a thousand shreds at her feet.

  Without in the least suspecting what a magic operation she was performing, as with impeccable assurance she peeled the fruit among all fruits most heavily weighted with symbols.† Veronica, who would probably have been the first to laugh at this kind of exegesis, nevertheless felt it in all the fibres of her intact organism. She knew that the first love that would be born in her life would be definitive, and so the least accident threatened to be irreparable and fatal. She would not begin again, she would not mend: one single life, one single line of absolute perfection. But the man’s apparition was not yet imminent, and she even knew approximately the moment when it would occur. She would meet him this summer, toward the end of summer, perhaps in the beginning of September.

  While waiting for love, Veronica ardently imagined friendship, of a woman, which she also wanted to last as long as she lived, a beautiful creature who would feel as she did, riveted to her body, protecting her by the double cuirass of spirit and of flesh, in anticipation of the great ordeal. She wanted a woman-friend with whom she might share the anguishing springtime of her passion, the ferocity of her midsummer embraces and the elegy of autumnal caresses. The friend she was expecting must be as feeble as her own mother and at the same time, unlike the latter, she must have a big mouth, a great devotion, no frivolity and arms habituated to and expert in pleasure, capable of guiding hers, which would be resolute but perhaps trembling at the supreme moment of the annihilating sexual embrace. For she was preparing herself to be the immolated victim – like the legendary beings of the ancient sanguinary religions of the Aztecs. Veronica sitting in the shadow of the fertile coolness of the great tree of her blood was waiting, and her paralysing immobility became like that which precedes aggression. She was getting ready for the great ordeal of giving her life, she was arming herself with a dangerous force, for at the least flinching of her partner in the accomplishing of the rite – that of tearing out her heart, she knew herself capable of sealing the climax of their absolute embrace with the force of her own jaws, and thus by the death of one of them concluding her pact of conformity with the grandiose rules and laws of the nature of her love.

  Veronica thus needed more than a woman-friend of epic stature, she had to have a complex being who would be at once the mother offering her ecstasy in witness of Veronica’s passion, the virgin-flower of the ritual of her sacrifice, the lascivious slave who unveils the secrets of the initiation, and the messenger from heaven, the priestess of her faith.

  Up to this moment in Veronica’s life, each time she had wanted something with intensity her destiny in the guise of an objective hazard would regularly come to her rescue, bringing her at the exact hour the precise object of her wish. And again today, this evening, presently, this same hazard was preparing to materialize by fulfilling her desire.

  The doorbell rang. Veronica did not quiver, and without waiting for Miss Andrews to announce who it was, ordered her, ‘Have her come in!’

  It was indeed she – Betka!

  Betka had a big mouth and she was wearing a raincoat. A choking heat rose from the street, and the heavy atmosphere of a storm which for three days had not made up its mind to break loose over Paris charged her heavy red hair with electric sparks.

  ‘What do you wish?’ said Veronica, unhurriedly putting on her shoes again.

  ‘I wanted to speak to Mrs Barbara Stevens. May I introduce myself? I am the young woman who last week wrote all the invitations for Veronica Stevens’ coming-out party. You are Veronica, aren’t you?’

  Veronica nodded her head.

  ‘Your mother expressed her satisfaction with my work, as well as her intention to avail herself of my services again shortly…. It’s true that I did pretty well to write all those addresses at the last moment in one night, and by hand, for we had to check them with Miss Andrews one by one…. So I hope that I may be able to make myself useful again….’

  Veronica waited for a long time before answering her, in order to be quite sure that Betka’s embarrassment tacitly implied a request. Then, her already assured friendship prodding her intuition, she anticipated herself by guessing.

  ‘Yes, my mother did tell me she was going to employ you again, and probably in a more regular way; meanwhile I’ll be delighted to give you an advance on your future salary…. Oh, no! it’s quite natural. I’m always running out of pocket money myself!’ And, as Betka still seemed to protest, Veronica concluded. ‘I really must insist, it means so much to me – I want awfully to make you happy!’

  Betka was flabbergasted by the violent and elementary sincerity of Veronica’s tone.

  ‘No,’ said Betka, ‘I don’t want an advance on my salary. I can return this money to you in exactly two days; I only need enough to send a telegram to my parents in Poland.’

  Veronica promptly handed her a pad of telegraph blanks which Betka seized avidly while at the same time she pulled off her raincoat so hurriedly that she tore it. She tossed back her hair that kept falling over her eyes, and with her trembling hands she tucked in her blouse which again emerged from her belt, exposing a little lozenge of bare stomach which she vainly tried to hide. Veronica looked with stupefaction at this whirl of disorganized, communicative and irresistible life that seemed to be in the throes of perpetual torment – a frenzy of flesh – and as she gazed at her she compressed her lips on her gold cigarette-holder, biting it harder and harder with her teeth till she left their marks in it.

  Feeling that Veronica was watching her intently. Betka moderated the disorder of her excitement and it then became apparent that it was a strain for her to keep relatively calm. She sat down in a businesslike way before the desk and began, with a worried look, to fill out blanks which she would immediately crumple, dissatisfied, looking up each time with pleading eyes full of apology and encountering the other’s impassive gaze. Veronica’s dark and unbending face rarely smiled, but when it happened (not more than three times a week) her smile of a melancholy angel became illuminated by celestial gleams that transfigured her for a few seconds to such a point that all who observed her at such moments would wait for this smile to be repeated in order to convince themselves that they had not been the victims of an illusion. This evening, since Betka had entered the room, Veronica had smiled at her four times already in this way, and one might have said that Betka had lived during the intervals only to wait each time for the reappearance of this new light from her lips which seemed to warm her eyelids from afar, as must be the case when one approaches the gates of Paradise.