Belle De Jour by Joseph Kessel

Séverine knew him. Thick-set, a tired-looking suit, and those shoulders, that vulgar nape of the neck … he was going to a house of acquiescent women; a man like that couldn’t be going anywhere else. Séverine would have sworn to that on her life. Some murky intuition helped her understand the haste with which the man went in, the involuntary embarrassment about his arms, and still, the hard lust that drove him on.
    The taxi had reached the end of the short street. The driver told Séverine. She had him take her home.
    Now she had food for her obsession. The furtive character of the rue Virène and the man who’d lost her in the blind alley became one. A painful sense of weakness made her heart thud each time she thought of the silhouette sliding into that shameful entrance. Sheimagined his low forehead, his fat, hairy hands, his coarse clothing. He would walk up the stairs, ring the bell. Women would come. At this point Séverine’s fantasy stopped, for what took place in her mind then was a delirium of shadows, flesh, and gasping breath.
    Sometimes these images satisfied her, sometimes they exhausted themselves in their urgent intensity. She had to see that house again. The first time she had herself driven there; the next time she went on foot. She was so frightened she didn’t dare stop for a second, even to read the little sign stuck up by the door. Deeply disturbed, she brushed against the old walls as if they were impregnated with the sad brutal lust they concealed.
    The third time Séverine rapidly made out the discreet lettering on the sign:
    Madame Anaïs—first-floor left
    And the fourth time she went in.
    She never knew how she got up that staircase, nor exactly how she found herself in an open doorway confronting a big, pleasant-looking blonde, still young. She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to run away, but didn’t dare. She heard—“Can I help you, mademoiselle?”
    And she muttered: “You are … that is to say, you live here.”
    “I am Madame Anaïs.”
    “You see, I’d like.…”
    Séverine flung the look of a stricken beast at the salon into which she was ushered.
    “Relax,” said Madame Anaïs. “Come in and let’s talk.”
    She took Séverine through to a room with dark wallpaper and a huge bed covered with a red quilt.
    “Now then, honey,” Madame Anaïs began good-humoredly, “you want to put a little butter on your bread, right? Well, I’m willing to help. You’re very sweet and nice. That kind goes down well here, believe me. I take half. There’s the upkeep, you know.”
    Without finding the strength to reply Séverine nodded her head. Madame Anaïs kissed her.
    “I know, you’re a little nervous,” she said. “It’s the first time, isn’t it? Now you can see it’s not that awful. It’s still early, the other girls aren’t here yet, they’d tell you the same themselves. When can you start?”
    “I’m not sure … I’d like to see if.…”
    Suddenly Séverine cried out loudly, as if afraid that she would never be able to escape, “In any case I absolutely have to leave at five. Positively.”
    “As you like, dearie. Two to five, those are nice hours. You’ll be our Belle de Jour, hmm? Only, you’ll be on time, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll get angry. At five you’re free. You’ve got a boy friend waiting for you then, have you? Or a little husband some place.…”

V
    A little husband … a little husband … a little husband.…
    Séverine stubbornly muttered the words with which she’d left Mme Anaïs. She could not understand them, but they utterly overwhelmed her. When she reached the Louvre she stared at the noble facade; its simplicity seemed to do her good for a second, but then she turned her head away. She had no right to such a sight.
    A traffic jam barred her way. One bus was going to Saint-Cloud and Versailles. Séverine remembered coming out of the Louvre once with Pierre, and his remarking with pleasure that there was a bus route