“One hundred and seventy-two, Mama.”
“Well, that’s not so bad!”
The Kampfs sighed with satisfaction and smiled at each other with the same expression of weary triumph as two actors after the third curtain call.
“We’re doingwell, aren’t we?”
“Mademoiselle Isabelle Cossette … That’s… that’s not my Mademoiselle Isabelle, is it?” Antoinette asked shyly.
“But of course…”
“But why are you inviting her?” exclaimed Antoinette, then blushed violently, expecting a curt “What business is it of yours?” from her mother. But Madame Kampf seemed awkward.
“She’s a fine young woman… We have to be nice to people…”
“She’s absolutely ghastly,” Antoinette protested.
Mademoiselle Isabelle, a cousin of the Kampfs, was music teacher to several families of rich Jewish stock-brokers. She was a boring old maid, as stiff and upright as an umbrella; she taught Antoinette piano and music theory. Extremely short-sighted but refusing to wear glasses because she was proud of her rather pretty eyes and thick eyelashes, she would lean over the piano and glue her big pointed nose, bluish from rice powder, to the music. Whenever Antoinette made a mistake, she would hit her fingers sharply with an ebony ruler that was as hard and flat as she was. She was as malicious and prying as a magpie. The night before her music lessons, Antoinette would whisper a fervent prayer (her father had converted when he got married; Antoinette had been raised a Catholic): “Please God, let Mademoiselle Isabelle die tonight.”
“The child’s right,” Kampf remarked in surprise. “What’s got into you to make you want to invite that old madwoman? You can’t actually like her…”
Madame Kampf shrugged her shoulders angrily.
“Oh, you don’t understand anything! How do you expect my family to hear about it otherwise? Can’t you just picture the look on their faces? Aunt Loridon, who fell out with me because I married a Jew, and Julie Lacombe and Uncle Martial, and everyone in the family who looked down their noses at us because they had more money than us, remember? It’s very simple: ifwe don’t invite Isabelle, I can’t be sure that the next day they’ll all die of envy, and then it’s not worth having the ball at all! Keep writing, Antoinette.”
“Shall we have dancing in both reception rooms?”
“Of course, and in our hall… It’s very beautiful, our hall… I’ll hire great baskets of flowers. Just wait till you see how wonderful it will look filled with beautiful women in their most elegant dresses and best jewellery, the men in evening dress… It looked positively magical at the Levy de Brunelleschis’. During the tangos, they switched off the electricity and left on two large alabaster lamps in the corners of the room that gave off a red light…”
“I don’t care much for that idea. Makes it look like a dance hall…”
“But everyone seems to be doing it now. Women love letting men have a little feel to the music … The supper, naturally, on small tables…”
“How about having a bar to start off with?”
“That’s a good idea… We need to warm them up when they arrive. We could set up the bar in Antoinette’s room. She can sleep in the linen room or in the box room at the end of the corridor just for one night…”
Antoinette went pale and started trembling violently.
“Couldn’t I stay for just a quarter of an hour?” she whispered, her words almost choking her.
A ball… My God, was it possible that there could take place— here, right under her nose—this splendid thing she vaguely imagined as a mixture of wild music, intoxicating perfumes, dazzling evening gowns, words of love whispered in some isolated alcove, as dark and cool as a hidden chamber… and that she could be sent to bed that night, like any other night, at nine o’clock, like a baby? Perhaps the men who knew the Kampfs had a daughter would ask where she was—and her mother would answer with her hateful little laugh, “Oh, but really, she’s been asleep for hours…” And yet what harm would it do to her if Antoinette, yes, Antoinette as well, had a bit of happiness in this life? My God, to be able to dance, just once, wearing a pretty dress, like a real young lady, held tightly in a man’s arms! She closed her eyes and repeated, “Just a quarter of an hour, can’t I, Mama?” with a kind of bold despair, as if she were pointing a loaded revolver at her heart.
“What?” shouted Madame Kampf, stunned. “Don’t you dare ask again…”
“You’ll go to Monsieur Blanc’s ball,” said her father.
Madame Kampf shrugged her shoulders.
“I think this child must be mad…”
Antoinette’s face suddenly contorted.
“Please, Mama, please, I’m begging you!” she shouted. “I’m fourteen, Mama, I’m not a little girl any more. I know girls come out at fifteen, but I look fifteen, and next year…”
Madame Kampf exploded.
“Well, honestly, how wonderful! Honestly!” she shouted, her voice hoarse with anger. “This kid, this snotty-nosed kid, coming to the ball! Can you just picture it? Just you wait, girl, I’ll knock all those fancy ideas right out of you. You think you’re going to ‘come out’ next year, eh? Who’s been putting ideas like that in your head? You listen to me. I’ve only just begun to live, me, you hear, me, and I have no intention of rushing to lumber myselfwith having to marry off a daughter… I don’t know why I shouldn’t box your ears to teach you a lesson,” she continued in the same tone of voice, while walking towards Antoinette.
Antoinette stepped back and went even whiter. The lost, desperate expression in her eyes caused Kampf to feel a kind of pity. “Come on now, leave her be,” he said, catching Rosine’s raised arm. “The child’s tired and upset, she doesn’t know what she’s saying… Go to bed, Antoinette.”
Antoinette didn’t move; her mother shoved her by the shoulders.
“Go on, out, and not a word. Move it, or I’m warning you …”
Antoinette was shaking from head to foot, but she walked slowly out of the room holding back her tears.
“Charming,” said Madame Kampf after she’d gone. “That girl’s going to be a handful… I was just the same at her age, though. But I’m not like my poor mother who never knew how to say no to me… I’ll keep her in her place, I promise you that…”
“She’ll calm down when she’s had some sleep. She was tired. It’s eleven o’clock already; she’s not used to going to bed so late. That’s why she got upset… Let’s carry on with the list,” said Kampf, “and forget about it.”
III
IN THE MIDDLE of the night, Miss Betty was woken by the sound of sobbing in the next room. She switched on the light and listened for a moment through the wall. It was the first time she had heard the girl cry: usually when Madame Kampf scolded her, Antoinette managed to hold back her tears and say nothing.
“What’s the matter with you, child? Are you ill?” she called through the wall.
The sobbing stopped.
“I suppose your mother scolded you. It’s for your own good, you know, Antoinette … Tomorrow you’ll apologise to her, you’ll give each other a kiss, and it will be all over. It’s late now, you should get some sleep. Would you like some herbal tea? No? You could answer me, you know, my dearest,” she said, as Antoinette remained silent. “Dear, dear, a little girl sulking isn’t a pretty sight. You’re upsetting your guardian angel…”
Antoinette made a face and stretched out her clenched little fists towards the wall. Bloody woman. Bloody selfish hypocrites, the lot of them… They couldn’t care less that she was crying all alone in the dark, so hard she could barely breathe … that she felt as miserable and lonely as a lost dog!
No one loved her, no one in the whole world… But couldn’t they see, blind idiots, that she was a thousand times more intelligent, more precious, more perceptive than all of them put together—these people who dared to bring her up, to teach her? These unsophisticated, crass nouveaux riches? She had been laughing at them all evening, but of course they hadn’t eve
n realised… She could laugh or cry right under their noses and they wouldn’t deign to notice… To them a fourteen-year-old was just a kid—to be pushed around like a dog! What right did they have to send her to bed, to punish her, to insult her? “Oh, I wish they were all dead,” she exclaimed. Through the wall she could hear the Englishwoman breathing softly as she slept. Antoinette started crying again, but more quietly this time, tasting the tears that ran down her cheeks into the corners of her mouth and on to her lips. Suddenly, a strange pleasure flooded through her; for the first time in her life she was crying like a true woman—silently, without scowling or hiccoughing. Later on, she would cry the same tears over love … For a long time she listened to the sobs rising in her chest like the deep, low swell of the sea. Her mouth was moist with tears and tasted salty. She switched on the light and looked in the mirror with curiosity. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks red and mottled. Like a little girl who’s been beaten. She was ugly, ugly … She started sobbing again.
“I want to die! Dear God, please make me die … Dear God, sweet Holy Virgin, why did you make me their child? Punish them, I’m begging you … Punish them just once, and after that, I’ll gladly die.”
She stopped suddenly and said out loud, “Of course it’s all a joke. The good Lord and the Virgin Mary are just a joke, like the good parents you read about in books and all that stuff about the happiest time of your life …”
The happiest time of your life, what a joke! She was biting her hands so hard that she could taste blood in her mouth. “Happiest… happiest… I’d rather be dead and buried…” she kept saying over and over again, furiously.
Day in, day out, doing the same things at the same times… It was slavery, prison! Getting up, getting dressed… Dull little dresses, heavy ankle-boots, ribbed stockings—all on purpose, on purpose so she’d look like a drudge, so that no one in the street would even glance at her, so that she’d be just some insignificant little girl walking by… “Fools! You’ll never be young like me again, with skin as delicate as a flower, smooth, fresh, and lustrous eyelashes, and beautiful eyes—sometimes frightened, sometimes mischievous—which can entice, reject, desire… Never, never again!” But the desire… and these terrible feelings… Why did she feel this shameful, desperate envy eating away at her heart every time she saw two lovers walking by at dusk, kissing as they passed and teetering slightly, as if they were intoxicated? Why feel the hatred of a spinster at only fourteen? She would have her share eventually, she knew that. But it was so far off, so very far it seemed it would never come … and, in the meantime, this harsh life of humiliation, lessons, strict discipline, shouting from her mother…
“The woman dared to threaten me!” she said out loud. “She shouldn’t have dared…”
Then she remembered her mother’s raised hand.
“If she had touched me, I would have scratched her, bitten her, and then … But it’s always possible to escape … for ever… There’s the window,” she thought feverishly.
She imagined herself lying on the street, covered in blood. No ball on the fifteenth… “Couldn’t the child have chosen another day to kill herself?” they’d say. As her mother had said, “I want to live, I, I.” Perhaps, in the end, that’s what hurt more than all the rest: never before had Antoinette seen in her mother’s eyes that cold look, the look a woman would give to a rival.
“Dirty selfish pigs. I’m the one who wants to live, me! I’m young… They’re cheating me, they’re stealing my share of happiness… Oh, if only, by some miracle, I could go to the ball! To be the most beautiful, the most dazzling woman there, with all the men at my feet!”
She lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Do you know who she is? That’s Mademoiselle Kampf. She’s not pretty in the conventional sense, you know, but she is extraordinarily charming… and so sophisticated. The others all pale by comparison, don’t you agree? As for her mother, well, she looks like a kitchen maid compared to her daughter…”
She laid her head on the tear-soaked pillow and closed her eyes; her weary limbs were overcome by a feeling of soft, gentle sensuality. She tenderly touched her body through her nightdress with light, respectful fingers. A beautiful body, ready for love…
“Fifteen, O Romeo, that’s how old Juliet was…” she murmured.
Once she was fifteen, it would all be different; then she would savour life …
IV
MADAME KAMPF SAID nothing about the previous night’s argument to Antoinette, but all through lunch she let her daughter know she was in a bad mood by barking out the kind of curt reprimands at which she excelled when she was angry.
“What are you day-dreaming about with your mouth hanging open like that? Close it and breathe through your nose. How nice for parents to have a daughter who always has her head in the clouds! Will you pay attention to how you’re eating? I bet you’ve stained the table-cloth… Can’t you eat properly at your age? And don’t look at me like that! You have to learn how to take criticism without making faces. Is it beneath you to answer? Cat got your tongue?
“That’s it, here come the tears,” she continued, standing up and throwing down her napkin. “Well, I’d rather leave the table than look at your stupid little face.”
She went out, slamming the door behind her, and leaving Antoinette and her governess staring at the abandoned place setting opposite them.
“Finish your dessert now,” Miss Betty whispered. “You’ll be late for your German lesson.”
Antoinette, her hands trembling, picked up a section of the orange she had just peeled. She always tried to eat slowly and calmly, so that the servant, standing motionless behind her chair, would think that she despised “that woman” and her constant nit-picking; but, in spite of herself, big, shiny tears fell from her swollen eyes on to her dress.
A little later, Madame Kampf came into the study; she was holding the packet of invitations.
“You’re going to your piano lesson after tea, aren’t you, Antoinette? You can give Isabelle her invitation, and, Miss Betty, you can put the rest in the post.”
“Yes, Mrs. Kampf.”
The post office was very crowded; Miss Betty looked at the clock.
“Oh, it’s late! We don’t have time… I’ll come back during your lesson, dear,” she said looking away, her cheeks redder than usual. “You don’t… you don’t mind, do you, dear?”
“No,” murmured Antoinette.
She said no more; but when Miss Betty left her in front of Mademoiselle Isabelle’s apartment building, urging her to hurry up and go in, Antoinette waited a moment, hidden behind the large doors leading to the courtyard. She saw the Englishwoman hurrying towards a taxi that was waiting at the corner. The car passed very close to Antoinette, who stood on tiptoe and looked inside, simultaneously curious and frightened. But she saw nothing. She stayed where she was for a while, watching the taxi disappear into the distance.
“I’d suspected she had a lover! They’re probably kissing right now, like they do in books. Will he say, ‘I love you’? And what about her? Is she his… mistress?”
Antoinette felt a sense of shame and disgust, mixed with a kind of vague suffering. To be free and alone with a man—how happy she must be! They’d be going to the woods, no doubt…
“How I wish Mother could see them,” she whispered, clenching her fists. “Oh, I do! But no … People in love are always lucky! They’re happy, they’re together, they kiss … The whole world is full of men and women who love each other… Why not me?”
She was swinging her school bag in front of her. She looked at it with hate, then sighed, turned slowly, and crossed the courtyard. She was late. She could already hear Mademoiselle Isabelle: “Haven’t you been taught that being on time is the most important obligation of a student towards her teachers, Antoinette?”
“She’s stupid and old and ugly,” thought Antoinette in exasperation.
To her face, she reeled out, “Hello, Mademoiselle, it’s not my fault I’m la
te. It was Mother: she asked me to give you this…”
As she held out the envelope, an idea suddenly struck her.
“… and she asked if you could let me leave five minutes earlier than usual.”
That way she might be able to see Miss Betty coming back with her man.
But Mademoiselle Isabelle wasn’t listening. She was reading Madame Kampfs invitation.
Antoinette saw the dry, dark skin of her pendulous cheeks suddenly flush red.
“What’s this? A ball? Your mother is giving a ball?”
Mademoiselle Isabelle turned the invitation over, furtively brushing it against the back of her hand to see whether it was engraved or just printed. There was a difference of at least forty francs… As soon as she touched it, she knew it was engraved. She shrugged her shoulders angrily. Those Kampfs had always been insanely vain and extravagant! In the past, when Rosine had worked at the Banque de Paris (and, good God, it wasn’t so very long ago), she’d spent all her wages on clothes. She wore silk lingerie, a different pair of gloves every week… But then again, she frequented, no doubt, the most disreputable places. It was only that kind of woman who found happiness. The others …
“Your mother has always been lucky,” she muttered bitterly.
“She’s furious,” Antoinette said to herself. “But you’ll definitely be coming, won’t you?” she asked with a malicious little smile.
“I’ll let you know. I’ll do my very best because I’d really like to see your mother,” said Mademoiselle Isabelle. “But, on the other hand, I don’t know if I can … Some friends—the parents of one of my younger students, Monsieur and Madame Aristide Gros, the former cabinet private secretary (I’m sure your father has heard of him) … I’ve known them for years—they’ve invited me to the theatre, and I’ve already accepted… But I’ll see what I can do,” she added, without going into further detail. “In any case, tell your mother that I would be delighted, just delighted to see her…”