Mr Hire's Engagement Read online

  Mr. Hire was no longer there. A tram went by on the other side of the road, and there he was, sitting in the reddish light next to one of its windows.

  To reach the next stop, she had another five hundred yards to walk. When she got there, there was no tram in sight; she went on to the next stop and thus, by gradual stages, she reached Villejuif on foot. She bought some more chestnuts at the crossroads. She was tired. Her heels were rubbed sore, and the soles of her feet were hurting, because her shoes were so highly arched. In spite of the temperature she was so hot that she had pushed her green hat to the back of her head, and it was like this that she went into the house, her bag of chestnuts in her hand.

  Out of habit, she glanced into the lodge. She saw the concierge, who had put her spectacles on and was reading the newspaper, her elbows on the table. Opposite her, the inspector was warming his hands above the stove. She went in. 'Don't get up! Have a chestnut? . . .'

  She blew as she spoke, because the chestnut in her mouth was hot. The inspector took two. He, too, was obviously tired and discouraged. 'You don't know where Mr. Hire can have got to, I suppose?'

  'Me? How should I know?'

  'She goes out every Sunday afternoon with her young man,' explained the concierge without looking up from her paper. 'Was it a good match?'

  The inspector gazed at the stove with annoyance.

  'He did it on purpose!'

  'What?'

  'Jumped on a moving bus. I was expecting him to take the tram, as usual. So he must have been going somewhere he didn't want to be followed.'

  'Does it interest you very much?'

  'I'll say it does!'

  'I might go and have a word with him.'

  The concierge looked up. The spectacles altered her appearance, made her look older, but rather distinguished. 'Are you crazy?'

  The girl flung her head back and laughed. You could see scraps of chestnut in her mouth.

  'What d'you bet I make him come clean?' she called, as she opened the door.

  And she ran to staircase B, went into her own room, saw Mr. Hire's lit-up window, and Mr. Hire himself, pouring boiling water into his little coffee-pot. She had not turned on her light. She groped her way across to her dressing-table, found the bottle of eau de Cologne, and sprinkled some on her dress and hair. Still in darkness, she combed her hair and pulled up her artificial silk stockings, which were rolled over elastic bands above her knees.

  Mr. Hire was laying his table: a cup, a plate, a saucer for butter, a slice of bread, and some ham.

  About to leave her room, the girl hesitated again, looked at her bed, then at the lighted window. She had no need to go past the lodge. In the courtyard she was surprised by the cold, for all this coming and going had made her sweat. The staircase was the same as her own, except that the doors were painted brown, whereas those of staircase B were dark blue.

  She had to stop, because a whole family was toiling up, the children in front, the mother, loaded with parcels, panting in the rear.

  At last she reached the door corresponding to her own. She gave a final pat to her copper-coloured hair, a final tug to a wrinkled stocking, and knocked.

  There was the sound of a cup being put down on its saucer, a chair violently pushed back. The girl smiled as she heard shuffled footsteps approaching the door. She looked down. For another second the outline of the keyhole was lit up, then something came between the door and the light behind it.

  She guessed this was an eye, and smiled, drew back a step to put herself in the field of vision, and thrust forward her full bosom with a confident gesture.

  V

  MR. HIRE did not move. The girl could still see the eye at the keyhole, and she forced another smile and muttered, after making sure there was nobody on the stairs:

  'It's me . . .'

  The eye vanished, the keyhole was darkened, no doubt by the man's body as he straightened up, but there was not a sound, not a movement. The girl tapped her foot with impatience and, as the light lit up once more, bent down to it in her turn.

  Mr. Hire had already withdrawn to a distance of three yards, with his back against the table, staring at the door. He had the anguished expression of a sick man awaiting a crisis and holding his breath. Could he, too, see an eye at the keyhole?

  The dairy-maid was forced to go away, because someone was coming downstairs. By the time she reached the lodge she had managed to put on a smile, but her full lips betrayed disappointment all the same.

  'That you, Alice?'

  The concierge had her back turned, busy undressing her little daughter. The inspector, sitting beside the stove with a coffee-mill between his knees, looked inquiringly at the dairy-maid.

  'Did you see him?'

  She perched on the edge of the table and shrugged her shoulders, and her thighs could be vaguely glimpsed above the rolled stocking- tops.

  'I bet he's mad,' she said.

  And the concierge, without turning round, with a safety-pin between her teeth, said:

  'A madman who knows what he's about! . . . Run along to bed, now,' she added, pushing her daughter towards the back of the lodge.

  She was tired. She took the coffee-mill from the inspector.

  'Thank you. That's very kind of you.'

  They had grown accustomed to each other. During the fortnight the police officer had spent in watching the district, he had adopted this place as his refuge. There was always hot coffee waiting on a corner of the stove. And he sometimes brought along a bottle of wine or some cakes.

  Alice swung a muscular leg and stared sulkily at the floor.

  'Has my boss got back?'

  'An hour ago, with her sister-in-law from Conflans.'

  And the concierge, sitting down, took up the conversation at the point where she and the inspector had broken off. She put her glasses on again, and her face took on a reflective expression.

  'I could swear it, you know, but I wouldn't like to say I might not be mistaken . . . That Saturday, he came home at the usual time. It's only on the first Monday of each month that he gets back late. I didn't see him go out again, and yet during the night I pulled the cordon for him.'

  'To let him out?'

  'No, to let him in—that's just the point!'

  All this thinking was sharpening her. Alice went on swinging her leg, the inspector's eyes following it automatically. It was hot. The coffee was dripping through the filter, drop by drop. It was all typical of Sunday evening, the weariness that does not come from work, the relaxed, sluggish atmosphere, and the minutes creeping past more slowly than on other days.

  The girl's back ached, her feet painful in their too tight shoes. Tenants kept passing the lodge and starting lazily up the stairs. A woman opened the door.

  'Didn't my mother-in-law come?'

  'At three o'clock. She said she'd find you at the cemetery.'

  Alice, an unlighted cigarette between her lips, was watching the inspector, and suddenly asked:

  'Aren't you going to arrest him?'

  The concierge turned her little eyes on the dairy-maid.

  'You're a nasty girl,' she declared.

  And she wasn't joking. She disapproved of the girl's luscious figure, her bare arms and dimpled chin.

  'We don't know yet,' sighed the policeman, offering a match. 'We need some proof.'

  The concierge's brow wrinkled as though this statement was meant for her alone, as though it were for her to unearth the desired proof.

  'If he's left free, he'll do it again. One can feel it. I couldn't touch him for all the money in the world. Why, I daren't even touch his laundry when he brings it down on Wednesdays for me to give to the washerwoman.'

  The inspector threw his cigarette into the coal-scuttle. He, too, was tired, tired of doing nothing, of waiting, of dividing his time between this kitchen and the Villejuif cross-roads.

  'Well, take this up to him,' he said to the concierge, producing an envelope from his pocket.

  'What is it?'

&nb
sp; 'A summons from the superintendent, for Wednesday. Perhaps that'll make him try something or other.'

  'Must I go up?'

  She was scared and yet, once the letter was in her hand, she became menacing.

  'All right!'

  The dairy-maid slid down from the table and made for the door. The inspector stared hard at her, pointed to the departing concierge, even put forward a tentative hand. He would have liked to be alone with her, but she pretended not to understand and went hurriedly across the courtyard, since it was freezing harder than ever and the square of sky above was silver-grey, though night had long fallen.

  In the darkness of her room, kneeling on the bed to see more clearly, Alice did not hear the concierge knocking on the door of the room opposite, but she could guess when it happened from the start Mr. Hire gave. He had been busy with a pair of scissors, cutting out big squares of brown paper which lay on the table. He had taken off his collar and his socks.

  Still holding the scissors, he turned towards the door and fell back a step. Then he hurried across on tiptoe and put his eye to the keyhole.

  Outside on the landing, the concierge must have been growing impatient and made some remark. For Mr. Hire stood up, buttoned his jacket, and opened the door, just a very few inches, putting his hand out in such a way that he himself could not be seen. The sound of the third-floor violin came through, and that of the wireless which someone had switched on when they got home. '

  His door closed again, Mr. Hire looked at the envelope, turned it in all directions without opening it; then he fetched a knife from the cupboard where the gas-ring was, and slowly slit it open, unfolded the sheet of paper.

  He made no gesture. His expression did not change. He simply sat down by the table, his eyes fixed on the brown paper he had previously been cutting up. He was not hearing the cars on the road, or the violin or the wireless. He was existing in a blur of sound, a humming that might have come from the stove or from his own pulse.

  Alice had left her room on tiptoe. But suddenly Mr. Hire raised his head and stared across the courtyard at the girl's room, where the light was turned on at that moment. He had never noticed its details so clearly. The girl came in, banged the door behind her and, without the slightest pause, flung herself fully dressed on the bed, her face in the crook of her elbow.

  Mr. Hire still did not budge. She was lying flat on her stomach. Her whole body was shaking so that her rump jerked erotically. But the convulsive shaking of her shoulders was the most evident of all, while her feet beat furiously on the pink eiderdown.

  She was weeping. She was sobbing. Mr. Hire, embarrassed as though by something abnormal, picked up one of the pieces of brown paper from the table and fastened it, with four drawing-pins, over one of the three window-panes. But he could still see her through the two others. He worked slowly. His lips parted as though he were talking to himself.

  Alice pulled herself together, twisted round like a leaping trout, bounded to her feet and, in a fury, pulled open her green silk blouse, uncovering her white vest with the breasts bulging under it.

  Her hair was tousled. She began to walk about. She went from the bed to the dressing table, grabbed a comb, which she then hurled across the room, and twice she looked in Mr. Hire's direction.

  He had picked up the second piece of brown paper and four more drawing-pins. Two of these were already in place. Alice hunted feverishly in her bag, afraid to lose a second, brought out a pencil, tore off a big piece of lace-edged paper from a shelf.

  Mr. Hire retreated to the table, whence he could see nothing. But he was no sooner there than he came forward a step and bent his head to look through the third window-pane, the only one still uncovered.

  She had already finished writing and, kneeling on her bed, was holding the paper close up to her own window, watching the room opposite with an anxious face.

  She could see him trying to hide. She snapped her fingers like an impatient schoolboy.

  It never entered her head that Mr. Hire could not read what she had written, because the light was behind the piece of paper and all he saw was a dark square.

  Becoming more and more irritable, she gave several little taps on the glass, and he came another step forward, mistrustful, then stood motionless for quite a time. At last he made a negative gesture with his hand, took his piece of brown paper, stepped back, and held it up close to his own lamp.

  She did not understand. She pointed to her own sheet of paper, and Mr. Hire indicated his lamp with a brief and still hesitant little gesture. As she was wiping her eyes with her free hand, he went close up to the window, held his paper as she was holding hers, then withdrew and raised it up to the lamp.

  She had understood. She jumped off her bed and held out her paper with both hands.

  After all this, Mr. Hire had beads of sweat on his forehead and more still on his upper lip, under the moustache. He puckered his heavy dark eyebrows and read: 'I absolutely must speak to you.'

  She was still holding the paper high in the air, and this drew up her breasts, making them look still heavier, and revealed the reddish hair under her armpits.

  As Mr. Hire drew back, she rushed forward again, pleading, nodding repeatedly as much as to say:

  'Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . .'

  He had practically disappeared, for when he was at the far side of his room she could not see him any longer. He came back, then retreated again with a stern expression, pointing with one finger across to her room.

  'No . . .' she shook her head.

  And she pointed to Mr. Hire's room, and did not wait for a reply. Springing off the bed, she snatched up her blouse and wriggled into it as she made for the door. She came back, however, to look at herself in the glass, and after dabbing her face with a towel, she powdered it a little, pushed out her lips to make sure the lipstick had not smudged.

  Mr. Hire, stiff with fright, pinned up the third sheet of paper with two drawing-pins, ran to his washstand, emptied the basin, shut the cupboard, rushed across the bed and smoothed the counterpane. There was still no sound on the stairs. He paused in front of his looking-glass, ran the comb through his hair, fingered his cut and straightened his moustache. He was about to put on his collar and tie when footsteps came to a halt on the landing.

  He was breathing so hard that the wiry hairs of his moustache were visibly shivering. His eyes were blank. He had found it immeasurably difficult to say:

  'Come in!'

  And he could sniff close at hand the same smell that had been carried to him faintly on the north wind as he sat in the stand at Bois-Colombes.

  It was a warm smell, in which he could distinguish the sickly sweetness of face-powder, the sharper note of some scent or other, but most of all the girl's own smell, the smell of her flesh, her hair, her sweat.

  She, too, was breathing hard. She sniffed, glanced round the room, and finally discovered Mr. Hire, standing just inside the door he had now closed again.

  She could no longer think of anything to say. First she tried to smile, even thought of holding out her hand, but it was impossible to stretch out one's hand to a man so motionless, so distant. 'It's hot in here.'

  And she looked at the window, now covered by the sheets of brown paper. She walked over to it, lifted up one piece of paper, saw her own room, and more especially her bed, which looked almost near enough to touch. When she turned round again she at last caught Mr. Hire's eye, and she blushed scarlet, while he turned his head away.

  A little earlier she had been pretending to cry, but now her eyelids were really pricking, her pupils misted over. He did nothing to help her, left her to fight it back alone in the emptiness of the room, where the slightest noise seemed to echo more loudly than anywhere else. He even went across to the stove and bent down to pick up the poker.

  It was no use waiting any longer. Alice began to cry and, as the bed was close at hand, she first sat down on it, then slid down sideways and propped herself on the pillow.

  'I'm so asha
med!' she stammered. 'If you only knew!' Bending forward, still grasping the poker, he looked at her, and the last traces of colour faded from his cheeks. She was still crying. Her face was hidden. She murmured between her sobs:

  'You saw, didn't you? It's horrible! I didn't know. I was fast asleep.' Peeping between her fingers, she saw him put down the poker and straighten up, still hesitant. She was wet with perspiration. Sweat was soaking the silk of her blouse, under the arms.

  'Everything can be seen from here! And there have I been every day, undressing and . . .'

  She sobbed harder than ever, giving him a glimpse of her tear-stained face, her mouth distorted in the effort to bring out the words.

  'I wouldn't care! I don't mind you looking at me. But it's that dreadful thing . . .'

  Slowly, so slowly that the change was imperceptible, Mr. Hire's waxen features were beginning to come alive, his expression becoming human, anxious, pitiful. 'Do come nearer to me! I feel as though that would make it easier...' But he was standing bolt upright beside the bed, like a tailor's dummy. He couldn't pull his hand away in time. She caught hold of it.

  'What can you have thought? You know better than anybody that it was the first time he'd come, don't you?'

  She had no handkerchief, and wiped her tears on the counter-pane. Heat radiated from her plump, heavy body, and there it lay sprawling, in the room, on Mr. Hire's bed, a source of exuberant life. Mr. Hire stared up at the ceiling. It seemed to him that the whole house must be able to hear the echoes, feel the palpitations of so much life. Someone was walking to and fro, overhead, with regular, persistent steps, probably carrying the baby, to hush it to sleep.

  'Come and sit down by me.'

  It was too soon. He still resisted, trying to escape the attraction of the body that lay there, huddling up and stretching out, spasmodically, between the sobs.

  Calming down, she said brokenly: