Belle De Jour by Joseph Kessel Read Free Book Online

vaudeville and dance-hall to which she had Pierre take her did give her the suspension of feeling she was seeking. But as soon as they came out onto the street the now familiar agony filled her body. The noise of the engine, the splashes of light and shadow inside the taxi, the driver’s back seen dimly through the glass, all made Séverine think of riding with Renée and hearing about … In the elevator up Pierre noticed his wife’s dead white face.
    “I told you,” he said gently, “going out would tire you.”
    “No, it’s not that. Please. I’d let you know if …”
    For a second Séverine was liberated. She’d tell Pierre and everything would be made clear. He’d led a full life before meeting her. And he’d be able to explain, he’d be able to calm this satanic agitation of hers by comparing it with similar examples drawn from his experience.
    Was the flush at Séverine’s temples due solely to her hope for release? Or was this hope mingled with another, less distinct but far more disturbed and powerful desire? To evade the problem Séverine started speaking as soon as the apartment door shut behind them.
    “I was rather upset by some gossip Renée told me about. One of her friends, Henriette, you don’t know her, well, it seems she often works in a … a whore-house.”
    These last words came out on such a note of shock Pierre was surprised.
    “And?” he asked.
    “But … well, that’s all.”
    “So you upset yourself over a thing like that. Come and sit down, darling.”
    They’d been talking in the hall. Pierre led his wife through to his study. She sank onto a sofa. A fit of trembling had taken hold of her, light enough but so rapid and recurrent that she felt faint.
    She was avidly, desperately, waiting for what Pierre would say. And now it was not simply tranquillity she wanted: she felt incurably curious. A necessity as organic as hunger possessed her to hear discussed aloud those things she herself had refused to imagine.
    “So? What do you think?” There was a prayer in her question, a prayer in which fear and violence played equal parts.
    “But my poor sweet, this is a perfectly simple little story. A matter of wanting a little luxury, that’s all. I mean, this Henriette, her husband doesn’t make much, I imagine? So there you have it, she wants to be dressed like you and Renée. You know, like everyone else, I’ve met creatures of that kind in the sort of place you mentioned.”
    “Did you visit them often, Pierre?”
    This time her voice scared him. He took her hand and said, “Now calm down, of course I didn’t. In any case I’d no idea you’d be so jealous of my past, which after all is an ordinary one.”
    Séverine summoned up the strength to smile. Yet what she would have given to have been able to slake the thirst that consumed her.
    “No, no, it’s not that I’m jealous,” she answered. “I just like to hear anything new about you, that’s all. Go on, go on.”
    “But what do you want me to say? That kind of woman—I mean someone like Henriette—is generally very quiet, submissive and frightened in such establishments. That’s all, darling, and now let’s talk about something else because really that sort of enjoyment is just about the saddest in the world.”
    If Séverine had been an addict she would have recognized the intolerable sensation she now felt. She was on the verge of the sort of madness that seizes a junkie whose shot is snatched away just as he feels the needle’sprick. None of Pierre’s explanations corresponded to what she’d been expecting. They lacked savor, they lacked resonance. An exasperation she would never have thought possible grew against her husband; it was born in her fingers, spread through her body without sparing a single nerve, a single cell; it reached her breasts, her throat, her brain. She whispered distractedly, “Say something, say something, can’t you.”
    And as Pierre began to stare at her too closely she cried