Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book II

And I turned to Papa. He smiled grimly, but did not answer, while Lilian, perfectly black and sulky at hearing the word Lies! seemingly very vexed, left the chair close to me on my right, on which she had been seated, and went off to recline on the divan with her dog, leaving Papa and me to cap each other's stories and smoke without her. She never took her eyes off me.

I make much of my bitch Lili, as I have been doing an day, and all my sentiment with the animal is met with icy coldness on their part.

Lilian is in a complete fit of the sulks, seeing me so indifferent and the time for my departure approaching, without my having said anything at all.

No doubt after my letter, which Lilian never alluded to from that day to this, they expected I should forget myself in some way, or show some wretched weakness. That is why they sent for me. The whole of the day, Papa never left me, and instead of doing photography, he walked round and round his garden, and took care to keep near the house. I followed him.

Lilian, at one time brought some work into the dining-room, so as to be near to us; but I made no sign, and they both circled round me as if watching an epileptic patient. I suppose they thought I might burst into tears, or faint away, or better than all, beg Lilian's pardon and make a substantial peace-offering.

Do wicked women bleed foolish men's purses by excess of ill-treatment? Probably they do, or else Lilian and her Pa would have behaved in a different manner.

I look at my watch. It is time to go.

“We'll take the dogs out, come back and fetch your bike, and take you to the station,” said Papa.

Lilian, who generally went with us, or alone with me, very dull and black, begs to be excused. She goes to Pa, says “good-night” to him, and putting up her face to be kissed, he salutes her on both cheeks. She never did this before. Papa looks surprised, and the light fades out of his eyes, as it always does when stirred by the power of his passion for Lilian. It stirs me too, and I feel very lewd, as this is the first time I ever saw them kiss before me. I may say that I never saw Lilian kiss her mother all the time I had known her, and it will be noted that Mamma was not present when Papa kissed Lilian. She knew I liked to see her playing with Papa. Was she doing this to pander to my vile mania; or to excite my jealousy; or to please Mr. Arvel, by telling him that I was jealous of him?

I never knew. Had I been on good terms enough with Lilian to ask her, she would have only told me some lie, so when the pleasant quarter-of-an-erection sensation it created in me had worn off, I forgot all about it, and it is only as I strike the keys of my typewriter nearly a year afterwards that I see the girl and the old man kissing so chastely before me, both trying to get at the little brains and money I may have had. I bear no malice, as I led them on to believe I was malleable.

Lilian says: “Bonsoir, monsieur!” to me very coldly. We go out. She goes with us into the hall, standing behind us, still hoping for a word, or a sly caress perhaps. I take off my hat and say very softly and nicely: “Bonsoir, mademoiselle!”

She answers, really hissing it through her teeth: “Bonsoir!” Quite curtly, and there is no “monsieur!” with it, which is very rude.

The sibilant sound of her last word betrayed the rage she felt, after a useless day of simulation in the face of my unfeigned indifference. And Papa would taunt her, and ask her what had become of the boasted power she had over me.

I go out with Papa, who must have noticed the change in his girl's manner to me.

He talks smut.

“Girls nowadays don't seem to care about real copulation-they like being 'messed about' better.”

This was a bold thrust at me. I answer quite indifferently and insignificantly.

I let him keep up the conversation, and he gets on to sleep and sleeping draughts, in order to be able to say:

“Lilian sleeps well. When we were in Brussels, she would get to bed after the theatre at midnight, and never wake until eleven the next day. As she was away for her health, I never disturbed her, but let her have her sleep out. We had a fine, big, double-bedded room. There was a large screen and I rigged it up across the room, fixing it against the washstand.6

A month ago, he had told me that Lilian was lazy and would not get up. But that was nothing. He was a man who said just what came into his head, as it suited him. But what did he want me to reply that night? What was I to answer?

I felt inclined to be smutty, and chaff him about Lilian, and her love for her Pa, and so on. But I would not take the trouble and after all it might have been a trap. I simply said nothing I expect he was pursuing his same old “bluffing” tactics. But there was an undercurrent of fear of me. He was too clever. It would have been much more simple to have said nothing, as I did in answer to him. There was now a very long silence between us, more significant than any reply I could have given. He broke it by talking of bawdy-houses. I explained that they were not much good. Some fellows, I said, liked to take a green girl there with them. But it is generally a bad move. He replied that possibly it was wrong to go with anybody you might care about. I put an end to this debate, by declaring that as a general rule it was not a wise thing to do.

He evidently had the idea of seeing Lilian with him in a brothel, among its abandoned denizens, a favorite pastime among fast Parisians. Had she been with him; did he long to take her; or had she gone to one with a miché? This was the second time he had spoken to me of lupanars. He had got them prominently in his mind.

There is nothing new under the sun of sexuality, and nearly all old debauchees, when they get hold of a young woman, new to depravity, or who they fancy is not quite corrupt, feel a great delight in going to a brothel with her. Each one thinks he has been the first to be so diabolically lecherous. What fools we old voluptuaries are!

I thought he would have liked me to speak out and go about Paris with him and Lilian. I hardly knew what to think. Lilian had stopped all friendship between Arvel and Jacky, by her lies. It was a very difficult position for me to be in, especially as I got no help from the wretched young woman. Suppose I had begun to talk lightly about her to the father and he had turned round on me? So I said nothing. By this time, we had returned to the house.

A light was burning in Lilian's room. Immediately, Arvel's head goes up, looking at the bright window like a boy of twenty. He puts up the dogs for the night, and conducts me to the station. He is very cordial and says he will soon have me down again. He wants me to go and visit some ground he has bought on the Western line. I promise him some special photographic printing paper-which I send him a day or two after-and we part.

I get my parcel of books at the station. There is Césarée; the first volume of Gynecocracy, and volumes two to six, inclusively, of Justine.

In volume 6, I had marked the paragraph about the pleasure of seeing one's mistress in another man's arms. I had asked Lilian if she had noticed and read it. She swore she had seen no marks. I attached no importance to this, thinking that perhaps after all I had penciled some later volume that she had not seen yet.

That idea did not suit Lilian's plans at this juncture, as she wanted me to become jealous, so she told this lie; as when she pretended to ignore the Mademoiselle Bismarck missive. How I discovered her prevarication again, was by looking through the books in the train, when I found, not only my underscoring and marginal lines, but the place in the sixth volume was marked with a long strip of orange photographic paper, such as I had seen plenty of at Sonis, but I possessed none of that kind. This made me more sure than ever that Papa had read the book, and that he would have been more free and genuine with me, shutting his eyes to my connection, had she not worked him against me, as he was, to a certain extent, a puppet in the hands of Lilian and her Mamma. The two women can kill him by inches, if they choose. The mother has but to tempt him with her choice cooking, which he cannot resist, and Lilian will follow suit with her cunning caresses. To regain fresh strength daily, he will eat heavily, and drink rich wines, followed by fiery, cheap whiskies. No man, especially at his age, can burn the candle at both ends with impunity.