Jacky S - Suburban Souls, Book II

I tell her in front of Papa that I am cleverer than he is.

“He does you, Mademoiselle, as a Japanese girl, because he has got you in front of him, but I transformed you into a ballet-girl without seeing you!”

I inform her that I have got her negative and shall make a dozen more dancing girls, and send her one every week. With her black face, she goes off in a huff to see her customers, who now arrive.

Papa remarks that Lilian has a devil's temper and he coolly adds that she is wicked, and a liar.

My photograph is now finished, and I say that I shall go and show it to Lilian and dare her to tear it up. Arvel tells me to be careful as she very likely will. She appears again, and I tell her that I will not show her my picture unless she kisses me. This is all before Papa. I never spoke so freely to her before in the presence of her parents. She is really quite surprised and is obliged to say:

“What is the matter with you to-day? I have never seen you like this!”

I now feel I am master of the situation, and I become more of a wag than ever. I chaff her about having a husband soon, and tell her that Papa will get her a nice little man and she shall have twins. They glance at each other. I continue to play the clown.

The negatives are now finished and dry, and I go and find Mamma in the kitchen to get a petroleum lamp for printing purposes.

I joke with her, too, and tell her that my calves are such a success that a lady in Paris makes me put on a pair of her black silk stockings every time I go to see her. Mamma says I am very gay. I ask her if her daughter always tries on hats and bonnets on her customers' heads down in the country, or sometimes goes to Paris to do so.

“I suppose now and again they countermand her by postcard, or so on?”

“I never saw a postcard countermanding anything,” she answers, and then adds sadly:

“My daughter don't tell me everything!”

All mothers who know their daughters are foolish virgins pretend never to know what is going on under their noses. Adèle, I think, shuts her eyes to everything, puts up with anything, waiting for her old man to marry her. He told me again he would at the end of the year, Raoul having only one year's soldiering to do as the only son of a widow. If his mother was married, he would have to serve three years.

Back with my lamp. Lilian says Papa is too fat. She makes me pinch his ribs. We talk of women's bellies. Lilian says she has none and what little she has, she keeps down by wearing suspenders instead of garters. I say that a woman with a belly does not exist for me.

“Hush!” exclaims Lilian, “Ma may hear you!”

Adèle was quite near, having come into the garden unobserved by us. Papa hears all this loose talk, but is dumb.

“You should be very nice to Mamma,” says Lilian to me, after she has left us. “You ought to try and make love to her.”

What does she mean? I dare not guess. Papa is right beside us, but he is mute.

I now go after Lilian alone in the garden, as the customers are gone and she has had her piano lesson besides. How about the visit to Paris now?

I ask her how she liked the novel of Suzanne I sent her. Not as much as Césarée it appears.

“That is because Césarée is a good little virgin and Suzanne is vile. How did you like La Femme et le Pantin?”

“Not at all!”

“No, because it shows up women like you. Come here, I want to talk to you for the sake of old times.”

And we go away behind some trees, she looking very happy, thinking I am going to be very nice, from my opening words. As we walk together, I say to myself: is it really to be believed that by sheer strength of false letters and lies, the truth, the whole truth can be entombed? It cannot, shall not be. She has lied enough. It is impossible to lie more. The strength of lying is doubtless enormous, but it finishes by being exhausted. She has tried to build a very wall of falsehood round her house and fabricate with forged sentiment, supported by lies, a monstrous idol of seeming truth, before which I am, forsooth, to stupidly kneel.

Now I have been all round the circle of lies. I know, I understand, I judge, and that gave me the tone of authority which ought to have impressed her greatly, had she loved me.

I felt myself soaring above all humane consideration. I forgot my book. I was no longer myself. I was the impersonal mouth of truth, and the grandeur of the part I played gave me simple, strong, and luminous facility with which to speak; and ample demonstration gushed forth abundantly.

I told the facts and classified them, unrolling the chain link by link before my victim. I explained all, and showed all. Each hypothesis became a reality, accompanied by a procession of proofs, without any Jesuitical insinuations, or sneaking blows in the back.

“I very much enjoyed my last visit here, when after that Sunday night in Paris. you thought I was going to come round again and humble myself. You waited all day for me to speak. I said nothing and have held my tongue for a month, until it pleased you to send for me. And I am not asking for anything now-not even a kiss — as you are the vilest creature that ever breathed. I am not the weak hero of “The Woman and the Puppet.”

I pass over her denials, and her false laugh of scorn, which she puts on, trying to show me that she did not care what I said to her, but will continue with as much as I can remember of all I forced her to listen to. I was quite calm. She did not excite my lust as she once did, and I found a peculiar pleasure in insulting her and dragging her through the ordure she kept on shoveling up herself, until she should get tired of trying to drive me silly by her stupid wickedness. I think that is all she wanted to do. Did she really know what she was about?

“I gave you a turquoise ring. Strange, I have just found that 'turquoise' means November. I 'had' you first November 26, 1897, and in November 1898, you got deflowered.”

“It's a lie! I'm still a virgin! Oh, that month of November!” she added, with the half-groan, half-sob, that I had already heard when I taunted her with the remembrance of Shrovetide.

“A virgin of three inches of finger! I don't care if you are a virgin or not. What made me angry was your imposture, extending over three months, when you kept me from touching you between the thighs, as much as you could, and told me”-here I could not help sneering-“how you were keeping your maidenhead for Jacky, and how you would like me alone to have it.”

She was silent. Her jerky, imitation laugh stopped, and she bent her head.

“You were free to do as you liked, but not to try and trick me who never did you any harm. You invented that lie about the unregistered letter; how you suffered at Lille and Brussels; and how you were always a poor, persecuted virgin, adoring me. You are worse than any woman I ever met. How much do you get, when you dine out with Lolotte? A hundred francs between you?”

“You talk to me as if I were a common prostitute. I want no money. I have plenty.”

“You are lucky. I have none. I want to tell you that you have been trying to trick me, and I never was your marionette. You invented a cheating dodge that I never heard of before. You give rendez-vous by letter, knowing you cannot keep it, and then you countermand it, and if reproached, say: 'But I meant to see you and could not. It is not my fault. Did I not make the appointment?' The last one made by you and stopped by a customer's postcard that your mother saw, was a fine cheating joke. You Ma has just told me that she never knows what you do. Your letter with the appointment for Mi-Carême was a lie. Your Papa, as a man of business, knew in advance the date of his departure. It was a slack time with him in Paris and the Carnival was on in Brussels. And your 'monthlies' were just over, for you went out cycling with me on the first of March.”