Ignorance (22 page)

I held out my parcel: here’s the sewing from my mother. Madame Fauchon put her finger to her lips: the little ones are having their nap. She picked up a broom and began sweeping sawdust out of a corner. I put the parcel on the counter. I smoothed the brown paper, pulled the string straight. My lips formed shapes of words I couldn’t utter.

If you asked a question you risked getting an answer you couldn’t bear. I managed to whisper. Do you know where Monsieur Jacquotet is? She said: he’s staying with us. He’s been ill with bronchitis, but he’s getting better.

Hide him in the house of your friendship. Your fragile house. We were small as mice, ants, birds. We tried to hide in our houses woven of straw, our houses of feathers, our houses of twigs. The Germans saw through our walls and could smash them any time they liked. Just one blow of a fist. They’d do it deliberately, as a punishment. Coldly. Not losing control. They’d calculate the force necessary and just beat the house until it collapsed, broken and bleeding. Marie-Angèle’s book of fairy tales fell open at the page of the big bad wolf. Huff and puff huff and puff and I’ll blow your house down. The wolves spared some houses because they could be useful. They appreciated the graceful proportions of Monsieur Jacquotet’s
salon
, the elegant spaces upstairs: they were civilised wolves. What would they do with all his furniture? Chop it up for firewood, perhaps. What would they do with his garden? Dig it up for vegetables.

I said: can I do anything to help? Madame Fauchon didn’t bother replying. She worked the shavings into a heap in the centre of the floor. I skipped out of her way as her broom knocked against my feet. I looked around, saw a dustpan behind the door, stooped to pick it up. She said: it’s kind of your mother to help me. Say thank you for me.

She clutched her broom as though it were a child she were trying to calm down. You held on, steady and tight, while the child thrashed in a tantrum. No. Herself she was holding on to. Studying her broom’s sturdy handle, its clogged bristles, she spoke in a low voice: the two little ones are coming with me and the older two are staying with their father and Monsieur Jacquotet. Just for the moment, until their papers come through. They’ll catch up with us as soon as possible.

I crouched in front of her, holding the dustpan steady. With one strong push of the broom she swept the pile of debris into it.
Voilà
!

From the room above came a child’s wail. Tuneless music of distress. A moment’s pause before a second piping cry joined in. Wobbling, then insistent. Madame Fauchon said: I must see to the children. Go up to Monsieur Jacquotet if you like, but don’t stay long. He’s still very tired. He’s in our room, at the top of the stairs. I said: I’ve got to get back to work, in any case.

Dark wooden bedhead, white pillow. White sheet pulled up to his striped flannel collar. His eyes opened, saw me. I tiptoed forward. Hello. He wasn’t asking for anything. He just lay there. I said: pyjamas. I didn’t ever imagine you wearing pyjamas. I sat down on the bed, took off my shoes, swung up my legs. We lay on our sides, holding each other. He felt frail, as though he’d been wounded, then mended. If I embraced him too hard he’d shatter. He was light. If I didn’t hold on to him he’d float out of the window, away away. Perhaps that was where he wanted to go. Away away. Behind his shoulder, on the night-stand, a white plate bore a small green apple, a brown-handled knife, saw-edged, laid across rim to rim. A tumbler of water, a folded newspaper.

His breath smelled syrupy, medicinal. He whispered: I gave him a painting as payment.

Ironed white linen cloth, lace-edged, on the night-stand. Tiny brown stain. In one part of my mind, time collapsed. We’d always be here, together, and we’d find our way towards each other clumsy sure silent confident. Why did language break up when I most needed it why couldn’t I speak why didn’t I know what to say? In another part of my mind someone warned: two minutes left to us, perhaps, before the rap at the ceiling: time to go, be off with you Jeanne. If only I could have known him longer, loved him longer. If only we’d had more time. I wanted to heap love on to him, give him everything I hadn’t been able to give before, make it up to him, rescue him feed him happiness tell him how much I’d always loved him, but it was far too late for that indulgence, I had to hang back, just meet his gaze, tell my fingers to remember for ever the touch of his cheek. Under my hand his heart beat steadily.

I walked back to Ste-Madeleine. In the early evening I joined the girls in the
salon
. They sprawled around the room. Their faces seemed anonymous and closed as shops. I asked them if I might do drawings of them. They sat up straighter. Suit yourself. It makes a change from cards and manicures.

Monsieur Jacquotet had once described to me Degas’s prints of tired whores posed thighs apart on couches, their rucked-up chemises showing their private parts. Drooping shoulders; frizzed hair; battered expressions. Pictures for other men to look at. You fucked the whore, all brightly painted up for you, and then afterwards you looked at her picture, her dead eyes, the exhausted slump of her face, and mused: oh poor girl. Or you praised Degas’s brutal, uncompromising honesty. Whereas the girls in the
patronne
’s house wanted portraits that made them look their individual best, just like anyone else, done up in Sunday frocks and hats with their hair nicely set and waved. Photographs were good to give to their families, but who could afford the photographer’s studio? Anyway, a pencil sketch, coloured in, was proper art. And done by me it was free. So I set to with pastels, rubbing and smudging.

Oh, you’re so good at drawing, the girls exclaimed. My pictures were as skewed as those of Monsieur Degas, perhaps; but in the opposite direction. He painted girls looking pathetic and desperate; I drew them looking prosperous and well dressed, rosy-cheeked. I drew them as they wanted to be seen.

That night, in the hall, I let Maurice kiss me and fondle my breast. I stroked his cheek smelling of lemon verbena and said: why should I give it to you for nothing? You pay the girls, after all. Maurice said: little miss cock-teaser. Little miss hard-to-get.

Did Marie-Angèle guess what he got up to on his visits to Ste-Madeleine? What did he get up to with her? What would he look like with his clothes off? I put on a schoolgirlish voice: I’d like to get to know you a little bit first, that’s all.

His arm tightened around me until I gasped. He let me go: skinny ribs! He pinched my thigh through my frock. We arranged to meet next day in the local bar. Late morning, the girls and the
patronne
still fast asleep, I took a chance and slid out.

Later on I’d try and turn it into a sketch. Maurice’s black hat on his black knee. His hand on my red crêpe thigh. The Germans packed in around the little tables, drinking tall glasses of golden beer. Grey-green legs stretched out, blocking the space. Blue spirals of smoke. Blue eyes summing me up: Maurice’s bit of skirt. I’d draw the scene very correctly. I was behaving very correctly, according to the rules of the
patronne
’s house. A knowing, come-hither smile. Legs crossed, feet pointing in parallel, one curled-over hand tipping my chin. I’d draw my gestures: tilt of head, crook of finger, flap of eyelash.

The scenes I’d lived through with Monsieur Jacquotet had been freely invented by us both according to no rules. Was that true? How could I know? Anyway, those images had to be cut off, kept invisible, safe inside me. Perhaps one day I’d go back to them. Anyway, that had been love. Nothing to do with sex. No. Don’t lie. Both. I didn’t know what to call it. Why weren’t there words for it? Words were no good. They separated everything. They could not possibly explain what you felt. Red-hot wires pierced me. Don’t think about him. He’s absence, he’s got to depart, I love him, I’ll never see him again. I wriggled my shoulders at Maurice and simpered and said: it’s so nice to get out of the house sometimes. Life in there can be so dull. This is a real treat.

He ordered us a small glass of white wine apiece, gave me a cigarette. We eyed each other and smoked. Around us sonorous German voices lilted. Words melted together into long, warm sentences. Golden as gingerbread. The gingerbread house in the forest. The witch was dead. Cut up for stews long ago. Her gingerbread house ransacked. Ordinary men ordinary speech. Soft and melodious, unlike the abrupt, barking sounds you heard on the street. In here the German language became a rich flow, rising and falling. Their laughter sounded just like the laughter of Frenchmen.

Maurice said: those hand-me-downs don’t suit you. You could do with some decent clothes. He touched my forefinger with his own. He stroked his fingertip across the back of my hand. Smooth touch. Surely one finger was just like any other. One skin touching another. Hundreds of fingers all feeling the same. If you shut your eyes you couldn’t tell one man’s finger from another. Maurice put his hand over mine and smiled at me. So, little Janny-fanny, wouldn’t you like a new dress? Is that what you’d like? Or something else? Tell me.

A man in blue jacket and trousers walked in, glanced at me. Émile. I glanced back, away. He went up to the bar, murmured briefly to the
patronne
. Maurice asked: friend of yours, is he? All the men here know you, don’t they? His eyes sneered. I shrugged, twirled the wine in my glass. I put on an indifferent voice: never seen him before in my life.

Émile left me alone. He understood me as I did him: business. When he and I made love in his room it wasn’t business, and he wasn’t a customer but a friend. The first time, with just twenty minutes before the
garagiste
’s wife would shout up to Émile that his supper was ready, we hurried, bumping and struggling on the slippery quilt. Émile took over and I let him, he fumbled and shoved. I wasn’t myself but his pocket and I hated him as he thrust and yelped. Afterwards, he lit us roll-ups and said: I blew it, didn’t I? Sorry.

Our bare shoulders were touching. I wanted my clothes back on. I composed a polite little speech. Never mind, everything’s all right. I stubbed out my cigarette and flung back the sheet.

The second time, on a Sunday, the
garagiste
and his wife gone foraging in the woods towards Ste-Marie, and their flat empty except for us, silent except for our breathing, the chime of the clock outside, we took longer. Time for a long, wandering conversation. Sex flowed out of talking, into talking, in and out of talking. Émile wetted his finger and smoothed my eyebrows: they’re lovely, Jeannina, thick as caterpillars. All furry and black. When you frown they go all wriggly. He kissed me, put his fingers into me, stroked me. I stroked him back. We found our way: rhythmical, rocking. Then an invented irregular dance. We both burst out laughing at the same time: jazz! Then rhythmical again. He waited for me: we went on for what seemed a long time, steadily, then time vanished, I lost myself, cried out, and then he did, which made me cry out more. Diving into the sky; a great golden parachute expanding, blooming, plummeting down; falling silk collapsing over us.

The sheets tumbled about our legs, we smoked. Émile said: we’ll have to be careful. Just make love at the right time. We don’t want to be making a baby. I watched a tiny spider abseil down from the dusty corner of the ceiling, pick its delicate way across Émile’s belly. An acrobat spider waving its slender legs. I put out my finger and the spider balanced on it. I said: don’t we? Why not? Émile rolled away from me. White shoulder blades dusted with freckles. He said: I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I may have to go away quite soon. I touched his back. The spider wrote on his skin. Émile brushed away the spider-words, scratched himself.

Maurice clapped on his hat. He said: until tonight, then.

While the
patronne
and the girls were busy with clients, I took him downstairs, to my cubbyhole off the kitchen. Looking at the cramped space, the narrow bed, he grimaced and said: it’s like a convent cell. Are you a nun, darling? I’d love to fuck a nun.

Diagrams for gestures and poses existed. I remembered the photographs in Monsieur Jacquotet’s magazines. I remembered Degas’s tiredly expert whores. Maurice knelt astride me. He whispered: say something filthy, show me how dirty you are.

His big hands pressing my shoulders. His cock soft. I wasn’t sure what to say. I blurted out bits of bawdy I’d heard from the girls gossiping off duty. He pinched my breast. Make it more exciting.

The pornography kept in the
salon
upstairs for the clients to flick through was all pictures, not words. I had to make up my own. I recited all the swear words I’d ever heard used in the street by brawling men, all their insults they could fling at each other like stones. Cunt cunt cunt. Big rude boys shouting in the playground. Next I took up all the prayers that priests had made for the Virgin, their sexless perfect darling who had no cunt at all. I twisted together these two hymns, turned them topsy-turvy. With every half-sentence I uttered Maurice hit me, staccato, his blows on my backside punctuating my tirade. I heard someone whimpering like an animal. Who is she? Where is she that animal? Not here upstairs up up up, I flew up to the ceiling and looked down at a picture. Red black brown white. Her white tits, his brown buttocks lifting and falling, brown shoulders with a black mole, a red cock, cocked, a gun cocked, the man’s cock rises, he shoves into the girl, his redness splits her white. Now just shut up! He increases his speed, fucks her harder. He gasps. You love this don’t you? Ask for it. Ask for more. The girl cries oh yes yes I love it give me more give me more. He leans forwards resting on one elbow slaps her hips plunges thrusts twice ready to fire his shot jerks out of her yells triumphantly shoots across the sheets.