Belle De Jour by Joseph Kessel Page B

drink. These men, of whose very existence Séverine had been ignorant till then, were of another flesh than she; but for thirty francs, at Mme Anaïs, any one of them could have her.
    Séverine had no time to analyze the nature of the spasm that seized her at that moment. The boatman had taken a step back. Her fear, since it was not bound up with any real impression, became insufferable: it belonged to the world of dreams. This man was going to vanish like the other, like the man in the blind alley. And Séverine felt it beyond her power to face the agony of his disappearance a second time. She couldn’t do it.
    “Just a minute, wait,” she moaned.
    Then, her feverish eyes clinging to the boatman’s expressionless gaze, she said, “Three o’clock, rue Virène, 9b, Mme Arias.”
    Stupidly he shook his head, which was covered with coal-dust.
    Either he doesn’t understand, or he doesn’t want to, thought Séverine with the inhuman fright only nightmares can give. Or perhaps he hasn’t any money.
    Still staring at him, she dug into her bag and held out a hundred-franc note. In a besotted way the man took it, examined it closely. By the time he’d looked up Séverine was hurriedly climbing the ramp from the jetty to street level. The man shrugged, folded the note in his palm and walked toward a barge. He’d wasted too much time as it was. They were leaving sharp at noon.
    That same noon hour, when the old bells of ancient Paris had begun their carillons, decided the direction of Séverine’s steps. Pierre would be finishing up at the hospital. She had to meet him there before he left. Like all Séverine’s decisions in the past few days, this idea occurred to her quite casually, but immediately became an absolutely imperative notion.
    A pendulum given a sudden shove in one direction compensates at once by a swing to the other. It was the same with Séverine’s heart: it swung toward Pierre now with an ardor all the stronger for her having so completely and grossly forgotten him.
    No longer, however, did Séverine expect Pierre to protect her against her own actions. By now she was horrifiedly certain that nothing and nobody could stopher from being at the rue Virène at the appointed hour. She sought no excuse in the accident that had set the boatman beside her. Now that she had made up her mind she felt that everything had happened could be only a pretext for her decision: she’d have found the boatman at any street-corner of this city she once thought she knew but which now seemed to her peopled with gnarled, demanding animals to whom she was condemned to belong. She didn’t know whether the sacrifice she was making would bring her horror or happiness; but before it was accomplished she had to find Pierre and let him see her as the woman he loved for the last time. For the moment was upon her when this woman would be consumed.
    “Is Dr Sérizy still here?” Séverine asked the hospital receptionist with dread.
    “Just leaving. Look, there he is, going across to put on his things.”
    Pierre was crossing the courtyard surrounded by a knot of students. They were all wearing white coats. Séverine looked at her husband’s youthful face, toward which others still younger were turned. She knew little enough of the delights of the mind; but there was such a strong desire for knowledge, such intellectual vigor in this group—all of which converged visibly on Pierre —that she didn’t dare call out to him.
    “I’ll wait here,” she said softly.
    But warned, doubtless, by the instinct of his love Pierre turned his head toward his wife, and, though she was shaded by the porch, recognized her. She saw him say a few words to the young men around him and thenwalk toward her. As he drew near, Séverine hungrily examined those precious features, as if she were never to see them again. But this face of Pierre’s was one unknown to her, still marked by hours spent in a world of his own, a world of teachers and