Marie Claire
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Marguerite Audoux >> Marie Claire
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The yard began to get dark, and the lights lit up the rooms inside. I
meant to get up from the bench, thinking, "Ox Eye will open the gate
for me;" but my body felt crushed, and I seemed to have two broad, hard
hands weighing heavily on my head. And, as though I had spoken them
aloud, the words, "Ox Eye will open the gate for me," repeated
themselves over and over again. All of a sudden a voice, with pity in
it, said, quite close to me, "Please, Marie Claire, don't sit out here
in the snow." I raised my head, and standing in front of me was a
young, quite young, sister, whose face was so beautiful that I could
not remember ever to have seen such a face before. She bent over me to
help me up, and, as I could hardly stand upright, she put my arm under
hers, and said, "Lean on me." Then I saw that she was taking me to the
kitchen, the great glass door of which was bright with light. I didn't
think of anything. The snow pricked my face, and my eyelids were
burning. When I went into the kitchen, I recognized the two girls who
were standing by the big square oven. They were Veronique the Minx,
and Melanie the Plump, and I seemed to hear Sister Marie-Aimee talking
to them by these names. Melanie nodded to me as I passed her, and
leaning on the young sister's arm, I went into a room in which there
was a night-light burning. The room was divided into two by a big
white curtain. The young sister made me sit down on a chair, which she
took from behind the curtain, and went out without saying a word. A
little while afterwards Melanie the Plump and Veronique the Minx came
in to put clean sheets on the little iron bed beside me. When they had
finished, Veronique, who had not looked at me at all till then, turned
to me and said that nobody had ever thought that I should come back.
She said it as though she were reproaching me for something shameful.
Melanie put her hands together under her chin, and put her head on one
side, just as she used to do when she was a little girl. She smiled
affectionately at me, and said, "I am very glad that you have been sent
to the kitchen." Then she patted the bed, and said, "You are taking my
place. I used to sleep here." She pointed to the curtain, and in a
low voice she said, "This is where Sister Desiree-des-Anges sleeps."
When they had gone out, closing the door behind them, I sat closer to
the bed. The big white curtain made me feel uncomfortable. I thought
I could see shadows moving in the folds which the night-light left in
darkness. Then I heard the dinner-bell. I recognized it, and without
knowing what I was doing I counted the strokes. Everything was quite
still for some time, and then the young sister came into the room
bringing me a bowl of steaming soup. She pulled the big curtain back
and said, "This is your room, and that is mine." I felt quite
reassured when I saw that her little iron bedstead was exactly the same
as my own. I began to wonder whether she was Sister Desiree-des-Anges,
but I dared not believe it, and asked her. She nodded "Yes," and
drawing her chair close to mine, she put her face in the full light and
said, "Don't you recognize me?" I looked at her without answering.
No, I didn't recognize her. In fact, I was certain that I had never
seen her; for I was certain that one could never forget her face if one
had seen it once. She made a funny little grimace, and said, "I can
see you don't remember poor Desiree Joly." Desiree Joly? Of course I
remembered her. She was a girl who had become a novice. Her face was
rosier than roses. She had a beautiful, slim figure, and used to laugh
all day long. We all loved her. She used to jump about so when she
played with us that Sister Marie-Aimee often used to say to her, "Come
now, come now, not so high, please, Mademoiselle Joly! You are showing
your knees!" Even now, when I was looking at her, I could not remember
her. She said "Yes, the dress makes a lot of difference." She pulled
up her sleeves; and making the same funny little face again, she said,
"Forget that I am Sister Desiree-des-Anges, and remember that Desiree
Joly used to be very fond of you." Then she went on quickly, "I
recognized you at once," she said. "You still have the same baby
face." When I told her I had imagined Sister Desiree-des-Anges to be
old and cross, she answered, "We were both wrong. I had been told that
you were vain and proud; but when I saw you crying in the middle of the
snow, I thought only that you were suffering, and I went to you." When
she had helped me to bed, she divided the room again with the curtain,
and I went to sleep at once.
But I didn't sleep well. I woke up every minute. There was a heavy
stone on my chest still, and when I managed to throw it off, it split
up into several pieces, which fell back on me and crushed my limbs.
Then I dreamed that I was on a road full of sharp pointed stones which
cut me. I walked along it with difficulty. On both sides of the road
there were fields, vines, and houses. All the houses were covered with
snow, but the trees were laden with fruit, and were in bright sunshine.
I left the road and went into the fields, stopping at all the trees to
taste the fruit. But the fruit was bitter, and I threw it away. I
tried to go into the snow-covered houses, but they had no doors. I
went back on to the road and the stones gathered round me so fast that
I could not go on. Then I called for help. I called as loud as I
could, but nobody heard me. And when I felt I was going to be buried
under a huge heap of stones, I struggled so hard to get away from them
that I woke myself up. For a moment I thought I was still dreaming.
The ceiling of the room seemed to be a tremendous height. The rod from
which the white curtain was hanging glittered here and there, and the
branch of boxwood which was nailed to the wall threw a shadow on the
statue of the Virgin which was in the corner. Then a cock crowed. He
crowed several times, as though he wanted to make me forget his first
crow, which had stopped short, as if he were in pain. The night-light
began to flicker. It flickered for a long time before it went out, and
when the room was quite dark I heard Sister Desiree-des-Anges breathing
gently and regularly.
Long before daybreak I got up to begin my work in the kitchen.
Melanie showed me how to lift the big coppers. It was a matter of
skill as well as of strength. It took me more than a week before I
could even move one of them. Melanie taught me how to ring the heavy
waking bell. She showed me how to put my shoulders into the work so as
to pull the rope, and I soon got into the way of it. And every
morning, whether it were cold or raining, I used to enjoy ringing the
bell. It had a clear sound which the wind increased or lessened, and I
never got tired of hearing it. There were days when I rang so long
that Sister Desiree-des-Anges would open her window and would say
pleadingly, "That'll do, that'll do."
Since I had come to the kitchen, Veronique the Minx used to look away
from me when she spoke, and if I asked her where anything was, she
would point to it without speaking. Sister Desiree-des-Anges used to
watch her, and would curl her lip as she watched. She was not as
quick-tempered as she used to be when she was a novice, but she was
full of life still and full of fun. Every evening we used to meet in
our room, and she would make me laugh at her remarks at what had been
going on during the day. Sometimes my laughter ended in a sob. Then
she used to put her hands together as the saints do in the pictures,
raise her eyes and say, "Oh, how I wish that your sorrow would leave
you." Then she would kneel on the ground and pray, and I often used to
go to sleep before she got up again.
Work in the kitchen was very hard. I used to help Melanie polish up
the coppers, and wash the tiled floors. She did most of the work
herself. She was as strong as a man, and was always ready to help me.
As soon as she found that I was tired, she used to force me to sit down
on a chair, and would say smilingly, "Recreation time." A few days
after I had arrived, she reminded me of the difficulties she used to
have in learning her catechism.
She had not forgotten that during a whole season I had spent all my
recreation time trying to teach her to learn it by heart. And now she
delighted in making me rest.
Veronique's work was the preparation of the vegetables, and she also
took the meat in from the butcher. She used to stand stiffly by the
scales until the butcher's boys put the meat on. She was always
grumbling at them, saying that the meat was cut too small or cut too
big. The butcher boys used to get angry with her and were rude to her
sometimes, and Sister Desiree-des-Anges told me at last to take the
meat in instead of her. She came to the scales just the same next day;
but I was there with Sister Desiree-des-Anges, who was telling me how
to weigh the meat.
One morning one of the two butchers looked at me and spoke my name.
Sister Desiree-des-Anges and I looked at the butcher boy in surprise.
He was a new one, but I soon recognized him. He was the eldest son of
Jean le Rouge. He was delighted to see me again, and told me that his
parents had got a good place at the Lost Ford. He himself didn't care
about working in the fields, and had found work with a butcher in the
town. Then he told me that the Lost Ford was quite near Villevieille,
and asked me if I knew it. I nodded my head to say that I did. He
went on to say that his father and mother had been there for some
months, and that there had been feasting there last week because Henri
Deslois was married. I heard him say a few words more which I didn't
understand. Then the daylight in the kitchen turned into black night,
and I felt the tiles give way under my feet and drag me down into a
bottomless hole. I remember Sister Desiree-des-Anges coming to help
me, but an animal had fastened itself on my chest. It made a dreadful
sound which it hurt me to hear. It was like a horrible sob which
always stopped at the same place. Then the light came back again, and
I could see above me the faces of Sister Desiree-des-Anges and Melanie.
Both were smiling anxiously, and Melanie's broad, red face looked like
Sister Desiree-des-Anges' pointed pale one. I sat up in bed, wondering
why I was there by daylight, but I didn't get up. I remembered little
Jean le Rouge, and for hours and hours I fought with my pain.
When Sister Desiree-des-Anges came into the room at bedtime she sat
down on the foot of my bed. She put her two hands together like the
saints did. "Tell me of your sorrow," she said. I told her, and it
seemed to me that every word I spoke took some of my suffering away
with it.
When I had told her everything, Sister Desiree-des-Anges fetched "The
Imitation of Jesus Christ," and began to read aloud. She read in a
gentle and resigned voice, and there were words which sounded like the
end of a moan.
On the days which followed, I saw little Jean le Rouge again. He told
me some more about the Lost Ford, and while he said how happy his
parents were and how kind the master was to them, I could see the house
on the hill with its garden in flower, and its spring from which the
little brooklets crawled down to the river, hiding themselves under the
broom. I often spoke of it to Sister Desiree-des-Anges, who listened
to me meditatively. She knew the neighbourhood and every corner of the
place, and one evening, when she sat dreaming and I asked her what she
was thinking about, she said, "Summer will be over soon, and I was
thinking that the trees were full of fruit."
During the month of September a number of religious paid visits to the
Mother Superior. Ox Eye used to ring the bell to announce them. Every
time she rang Veronique went out to see who was coming in. She always
had something disagreeable to say about each one of the sisters whom
she recognized. One evening the bell sounded. Veronique, who was
looking out, said, "Well, here's one whom nobody expected." She put
her head into the kitchen again, and said, "It is Sister Marie-Aimee."
The big spoon which I had in my hand slipped through my fingers and
dropped into the copper. I rushed to the door, pushing past Veronique,
who wanted to keep me back. Melanie rushed after me. "Don't," she
said, "the Mother Superior can see you." But I rushed out to Sister
Marie-Aimee. I rushed into her arms with such force that we nearly
fell over together. She clasped me tight and held me. She was
trembling and almost crazy with joy. She took my head in her hands,
and, as if I had been quite a little child, she kissed me all over my
face. Her stiff linen cap made a noise like paper when you crumple it
up, and her broad sleeves fell back to her shoulders. Melanie was
right, the Mother Superior saw me. She came out of the chapel and came
towards us. Sister Marie-Aimee saw her. She stopped kissing me, and
put her hand on my shoulder. I put my arm round her, fearing that she
would be taken away from me, and the two of us stood and watched the
Mother Superior. She passed in front of us without raising her eyes,
and didn't seem to see Sister Marie-Aimee, who bowed gravely to her.
As soon as she had gone I dragged Sister Marie-Aimee off to the old
bench. She stopped a moment, and before sitting down she said, "It is
as though things were waiting for us." She sat down. She leaned
against the linden tree, and I kneeled down in the grass at her feet.
There were no more rays in her eyes. It was as though the colours in
them had all been mixed up together. Her dear little face had grown
smaller, and seemed to have gone further back into her cap. Her
stomacher had not the beautiful curve on her chest that it used to
have, and her hands were so thin that the blue veins in them showed up
quite clearly. She hardly glanced at the window of her room, but
looked out on the linden trees and round the courtyard, and as she
caught sight of the Mother Superior's house, these words fell from her
like a sigh, "We must forgive others if we wish to be forgiven." Then
she looked at me again, and said, "Your eyes are sad." She passed the
palms of her hands over my eyes, as if she wanted to wipe out something
which displeased her, and, keeping them there so that my eyes remained
shut, "How we suffer,"' she said. Then she took her hands away and
clasped mine, and, with her eyes on my face, she said, as though she
were praying, "My sweet daughter, listen to me. Never become a poor
religious." She heaved a long sigh of regret, and said, "Our dress of
black and white tells others that we are creatures of strength and of
brightness. At our bidding all tears are dried, and all who suffer
come to us for consolation, but nobody thinks of our own suffering. We
are like women without faces." Then she spoke of the future. She
said, "I am going where the missionaries go. I shall live there in a
house full of terror. Before my eyes will pass unceasingly everything
that is hideous, everything that is ugly, everything that is bad." I
listened to her deep voice. There was a note of passion in it. It was
as though she were taking on to her own shoulders all the suffering of
the world. Her fingers loosed mine. She passed them over my cheeks,
and in a gentle voice, and sweet, she said, "The purity of your face
will always remain graven on my mind." Then she looked out, away and
past me, and added, "God has given us remembrance, and it is not in
anybody's power to take that away from us." She got up from the bench.
I went with her across the yard, and when Ox Eye had closed the heavy
gate behind her, I stood and listened to the echo of its closing.
That evening Sister Desiree-des-Anges came into the room later than
usual. She had been taking part in special prayer for Sister
Marie-Aimee, who was going away to nurse the lepers.
Winter came again. Sister Desiree-des-Anges had soon guessed my love
of reading, and she brought me all the books in the sisters' library,
one after the other. Most of the books were childish books, and I read
quickly, turning over several pages at a time. I preferred stories of
travel, and I used to read at night by the night-light. Sister
Desiree-des-Anges used to scold me when she woke up; but as soon as she
went to sleep I took up the book again. Little by little we became
great friends. The white curtain was no longer drawn between our beds
at night time. All sense of constraint had disappeared between us, and
all our thoughts were in common. She was cheerful and bright always.
The one thing that annoyed her in her life was her nun's costume. She
found it heavy and uncomfortable, and she used to say that it hurt her.
"When I dress," she said, "I always feel as though I were putting
myself into a house where it is always night." She was always glad to
get out of her dress in the evening, and loved walking about the room
in her night-dress. She used to say, making that funny little face, "I
am beginning to get used to it, but at first that cap crushed my cheeks
and the dress weighed my shoulders down."
When the spring came she began to cough. She had a little dry cough
which used to make itself heard from time to time, and her long slim
body seemed to become more fragile than ever. She was as bright and
cheerful as before, but she complained that her dress became heavier
and heavier.
One night in May she tossed about and dreamed aloud. I had been
reading all night, and noticed all of a sudden that daylight was
coming. I blew out the night-light and tried to sleep a little. I was
just dropping off when Sister Desiree-des-Anges said, "Open the window,
he is coming to-day." I looked to see whether she was asleep, and saw
that she was sitting up in bed. She had drawn back her blanket, and
was untying the strings of her night-cap. She took it off and threw it
to the foot of the bed. Then she shook her head, her short hair rolled
into curls on her forehead, and I recognized Desiree Joly at once. I
was a little bit frightened, and got up. She said again, "Open the
window and let him in." I opened the window wide, and when I turned
round Sister Desiree-des-Anges was holding out her clasped hands
towards the sun, and in a voice which had suddenly grown weaker, she
said, "I have taken off my dress. I could not stand it any longer."
She lay down quietly, and her face became quite still. I held my
breath for a long time to listen to hers. Then I breathed hard, as
though I could give her my breath, but when I looked at her more
closely I saw that she had breathed her last. Her eyes were wide open,
and seemed to be looking at a sunbeam which was coming towards her like
a long arrow. Swallows flew past the window and flew back again,
chirruping like little girls, and my ears were filled with sounds which
I had never heard before. I looked up to the windows of the
dormitories, hoping that somebody would hear what I had to say, but I
saw nothing but the face of the big clock which seemed to be looking
down into the room over the linden trees.
It was five o'clock. I pulled the blanket up over Sister
Desiree-des-Anges and went out and rang the bell. I rang for a long
time. The notes went far, far away. They went right away to where
Sister Desiree-des-Anges had gone. I went on ringing because it seemed
to me that the bells were telling the world that Sister
Desiree-des-Anges was dead. I went on ringing too, because I hoped
that she would pop her beautiful face out of the window and say,
"That'll do, that'll do, Marie Claire."
Melanie pulled the rope out of my hands. The bell, which was up, fell
back all wrong, and gave a sort of groan. "You have been ringing for a
quarter of an hour or more," Melanie said. I answered, "Sister
Desiree-des-Anges is dead." Veronique went into the room after us.
She noticed that the white curtain was not drawn between the two beds,
and said that she thought it was disgraceful for a religious to let her
hair be seen. Melanie passed her finger over a tear which was rolling
down each of her cheeks. Her head was more on one side than ever, and
she whispered quite low, "She is even prettier than she was before."
The sunshine bathed the bed, and covered the dead woman from head to
foot.
I remained with her all day. Some of the sisters came to see her. One
of them covered her face with a napkin, but as soon as she had gone, I
uncovered it again. Melanie came and spent the night by the bedside
with me. When she had closed the window she lit the big lamp, "so that
Sister Desiree-des-Anges should not be in the dark," she said.
A week afterwards Ox Eye came to the kitchen. She told me to get ready
to go the same day. In the hollow of her hand she held two gold
pieces, which she put side by side on the corner of the oven, and,
touching one after the other with her finger, she said, "Our Mother
Superior sends you forty francs." I did not want to go away without
saying good-bye to Colette and to Ismerie, whom I had often seen at the
other side of the lawn; but Melanie assured me that they didn't care
for me any more. Colette could not understand why I was not married
yet, and Ismerie could not forgive me for being so fond of Sister
Marie-Aimee.
Melanie went to the gate with me. As we passed the old bench, I saw
that one of its legs was broken, and that one end of it had fallen into
the grass. At the gate I found a woman waiting. Her eyes were hard.
She said, "I am your sister." I didn't recognize her. It was twelve
years since I had seen her. Directly we got outside she caught hold of
my arm, and in a voice as hard as her eyes, she asked me how much money
I had. I showed her the two gold pieces which I had just received.
Then she said, "You will do better to remain in the town, where you
will find it easier to get something to do." As we walked on she told
me she was married to a gardener in the neighbourhood, and that she
didn't intend to give herself any particular trouble over me. We got
to the railway station. She took me on to the platform because she
wanted me to help her carry some parcels. She said "good-bye" when her
train went off, and I remained there and watched it go. Almost
immediately another train stopped. The railway men ran up and down the
platform calling to the passengers for Paris to cross over. In that
one moment I saw Paris with its great houses like palaces, with roofs
so high that they were lost in the clouds. A young man bumped into me.
He stopped and said, "Are you going to Paris, mademoiselle?" I
scarcely hesitated, and said, "Yes; but I have no ticket." He held out
his hand. "Give me the money," he said, "and I will go and get it for
you." I gave him one of my two gold coins, and he ran off. I put the
ticket and the change in copper which he had brought me into my pocket,
went across the line with him, and climbed into the train.
The young man stood at the carriage door for a minute, and went off,
turning back once as he went. His eyes were full of gentleness, like
those of Henri Deslois.
The train whistled once, as though to warn me, and as it moved off it
whistled a second time, a long whistle like a scream.
THE END
AFTERWORD
And now may I tell you what I know about Marguerite Audoux, the author
of the book you have just read? I know very little more of her than
you do, for you have read the book, and Marguerite Audoux is Marie
Claire. If Marie Claire in English does not please you, the fault is
mine. I have tried hard to translate into English the uneducated,
unspoilt purity of language, the purity of thought which are the
characteristics of the French; but the task was no easy one, much as I
loved it in the doing.
Marguerite Audoux herself is a plump and placid little woman, of about
thirty-five. She lives in a sixth-floor garret in the Rue Leopold
Robert, in Paris. From her window she has a view of roof-tops and the
Montparnasse cemetery. When she learned of the success of her book,
with which she had lived for six years, she cried. "I felt dreadfully
frightened at first," she said, "I felt very uneasy. I felt as though
I had become known too quickly, as though I were a criminal of note.
Now my one wish is to work again." She reads a good deal. Her
favourite authors are Chateaubriand and Maeterlinck. In Maeterlinck
she loves the mystery. "We never know people properly," she says.
"They are just as difficult to understand as things that happen are.
We never know whose fault it is when good or bad things happen, and we
don't really know whether we ought to be angry or to be sorry with
people who do harm. Wicked people are like a thunderstorm, don't you
think? And a lazy woman is like a hot room. Both are unhealthy, but
they cannot help it."
Marguerite Audoux does not say these things to be clever. She says
them quite simply, and they express her natural way of thought, which
is simplicity and purity itself.
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