Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

She would insert herself into the tightly packed group surrounding the roulette table, with the writhing motions of a snake caught between two rocks. Then, when she was in, the group closed up again and held her fast, like a constricted elastic band. All you could see were backs, an unbroken line of backs, some naked with tinsel shoulder-straps, some naked without tinsel shoulder-straps, and some reticently clothed in black.

The maid, meanwhile, would unfold a little camp-stool that the management had provided her with, seat herself directly behind her employer’s back, adjust a pair of prim rimless glasses to the bridge of her nose, pull a strip of lace and two small steel needles out of the pocket of her dress, and contentedly begin to crochet. From time to time her mistress’ arm would dart out of the spinal thicket surrounding her and halt before her face, palm upturned. Each time this occurred the maid would open the drawstring-bag on her lap, fish out the required banknotes, and place them in the hand’s garrotting grasp. The arm would vanish again back where it had come from, a doleful voice would intone “Nothing more goes,” and the maid would go back to her crocheting.

This unexciting routine would continue sometimes for hours, without a single variation. Outside, regularly every few minutes, the mercurial gleam of the lighthouse out on the promontory would strike the long line of casino windows, splash from one to the next like silvery water, and then go on back out into the Bay of Biscay. In the next room, with a sound that seemed to come from miles away, an orchestra muffledly played a tango and a couple or two could be seen moving about the floor like sleepwalkers locked in each other’s arms.

The taffeta bag slowly deflated like a toy balloon from which the air escapes little by little, until its glossy plumpness was all gone and only a crumpled rag remained on the maid’s lap.

Moments of absolute, breath-holding stillness. A click, and then people stirred again, breathed again, shifted from one foot to the other. A man ran his finger around the inside of his collar, as though it were choking him. A woman laughed, without joy. A coin dropped to the floor with a trill like that of a small bicycle-bell.

The maid looked up and the countess’ hand was being held out toward her once more, with a swift opening and closing of the fingers that resembled the beaks of five young birds clamoring to be fed. The maid dutifully explored the inside of the drawstring-bag, fitting it over her own hand almost like a glove, and came out with a last banknote that must have adhered to its lining. The countess’ arm flicked away with the suddenness of a whip being cracked. The maid folded the empty bag and neatly inserted it into her pocket. She took up her needles again and went on making lace.

Moments of breath-holding silence. Only a sound like a child’s toy top spinning on a wooden floor. Then the top fell over with a little cluck! Someone sighed. Someone else cleared his throat. Flimsy paper rustled sibilantly in transfer, then crackled more sharply in compressed folding.

When the arm came out again, the maid’s face was expressionless as she looked up from her lace. So was her voice. Like someone who has seen this point reached a hundred times before, on a hundred other nights, and long ago stopped hoping that anything will ever change it. “There’s nothing left, madame.”

She saw the fingers contract, turn inward; their pointed nails buried themselves in the soft palm, digging five little graves.

The maid sighed. Not with compassion, with boredom. The way a nurse would who becomes wearied of watching her sick patient’s unending and unvarying symptoms.

“Nothing more goes,” an entombed voice said, sounding as if it came from an open grave.

The maid rolled up her strip of lace, put it into her pocket. She removed her glasses, polished them with her breath. She took a last, frugal, suction-forced sip from the moist bottom of her lemonade-glass. She waited for the approaching debacle, as she had waited so many times before.

It came without sound. Discreetly, without commotion: with the good breeding that seeks anonymity for its moments of despair.

The countess extricated herself backward. There was no other way: there was no room to turn. Then she turned around, to face life once more. Life away from the table. A wisp of her sleek hair had fallen across one eye. Mechanically, with the rickety gesture of an automaton whose spring has run down, she brushed it aside with the back of her hand. It fell forward again immediately afterward. A furrow of moisture, like a satin ribbon, bisected the powder on her forehead.

“Let’s leave now,” she whispered hoarsely, as if even the use of her voice had been temporarily taken away from her.

The maid stood up and followed her out of the gambling room and into the chandeliered vestibule outside. Instead of a woman, a wax mannequin that sagged at the knees seemed to be tottering ahead of her. The maid hurriedly caught up with her. “Lean on me, madame,” she offered, extending her arm.

The offer was summarily rejected, with a downward push. She didn’t want physical assistance, she wanted financial.

“Don’t you have anything on you, Fernande?” she breathed avidly, moistening her lips. “Anything at all, no matter how small—?”

“You know I don’t. How could I?” the maid answered pointedly. “It’s been so long since I was last paid.”

The countess saw a chasseur standing there at attention, to open the vestibule-doors for arrivals and departures. She suddenly darted over toward him, blurted out: “Young man — my friend — would you by any chance have—?”

The maid caught her by the arm just in time, managed to insert herself between the two of them, so that the incipient bit of beggary was blocked off.

“Madame,” she pleaded in a horrified undertone. “Stop and think what you are doing.”

The countess looked down at the restraining hand that had been placed on her arm. The maid understood the unspoken rebuke, removed it. The countess, however, did not try to solicit him a second time.

He turned to stare after her as she passed through the doorway and blended into the night outside. He kept shaking his head pityingly to himself.

The following day she went to consult a mystic, or occultist, whom she had heard spoken of. Unaccompanied now, for the maid had finally quit her the night before. The woman she went to see was an escapee from one of the Eastern European countries, but unlike many of the others in that category, she seemed to have done fairly well in her chosen metier. She refused to allow herself to be called a fortuneteller, perhaps a precautionary measure in view of the unsympathetic French laws, but insisted upon calling herself a “consultant” or an “intimate consultant,” depending upon the size of the fee she extracted.

She lived in a somewhat banal yellow plaster villa on the Avenue de la Reine Natalie, and evidently had sources of information of her own to brief her on her various clients in advance — in this case probably a bellman or desk-assistant at the hotel, for the appointment had been made over the telephone — for she greeted the countess with Slavic affability, poured tea for the two of them from an ornate brass samovar, and managed to give the paid-for interview the aspect of a social visit.

After a few phrases of small-talk, the countess stated her case.

“I have a pressing need of guidance, of advice.”

“One already knows.”

“You know also the subject to which I have reference?”

“The casino.” The consultant’s sources of information were evidently extremely reliable.

“The casino,” agreed the countess with a wormwood-bitter smile.