She powdered her lipstick to darken it and then pursed her lips and gave her face one final intent glare. Her eyes were good, the pupils were soft and the whites gleaming. She went to meet her ex-husband.
13
Loiseau had been smoking too much and not getting enough sleep. He kept putting a finger around his metal wristwatch band; Maria remembered how she had dreaded those nervous mannerisms that always preceded a row. He gave her coffee and remembered the amount of sugar she liked. He remarked on her suit and her hair and liked the plain-fronted shoes. She knew that sooner or later he would mention the Englishman.
‘Those same people have always fascinated you,’ he said. ‘You are a gold-digger for brains, Maria. You are drawn irresistibly to men who think only of their work.’
‘Men like you,’ said Maria. Loiseau nodded.
He said, ‘He’ll just bring you trouble, that Englishman.’
‘I’m not interested in him,’ said Maria.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ said Loiseau cheerfully. ‘Reports from seven hundred policemen go across this desk each week. I also get reports from informers and your concierge is one of them.’
‘The bitch.’
‘It’s the system,’ said Loiseau. ‘We have to fight the criminal with his own weapons.’
‘Datt gave him an injection of something to question him.’
‘I know,’ said Loiseau.
‘It was awful,’ said Maria.
‘Yes, I’ve seen it done.’
‘It’s like a torture. A filthy business.’
‘Don’t lecture me,’ said Loiseau. ‘I don’t like Amytal injections and I don’t like Monsieur Datt or that clinic, but there’s nothing I can do about it.’ He sighed. ‘You know that, Maria.’ But Maria didn’t answer. ‘That house is safe from even my wide powers.’ He smiled as if the idea of him endangering anything was absurd. ‘You deliberately translated the Englishman’s confession incorrectly, Maria,’ Loiseau accused her.
Maria said nothing. Loiseau said, ‘You told Monsieur Datt that the Englishman is working under my orders. Be careful what you say or do with these people. They are dangerous – all of them are dangerous; your flashy boyfriend is the most dangerous of all.’
‘Jean-Paul you mean?’
‘The playboy of the Buttes Chaumont,’ said Loiseau sarcastically.
‘Don’t keep calling him my boyfriend,’ said Maria.
‘Come come, I know all about you,’ said Loiseau, using a phrase and a manner that he employed in interrogations. ‘You can’t resist these flashy little boys and the older you get the more vulnerable you become to them.’ Maria was determined not to show anger. She knew that Loiseau was watching her closely and she felt her cheeks flushing in embarrassment and anger.
‘He wants to work for me,’ said Loiseau.
‘He likes to feel important,’ explained Maria, ‘as a child does.’
‘You amaze me,’ said Loiseau, taking care to be unamazed. He stared at her in a way that a Frenchman stares at a pretty girl on the street. She knew that he fancied her sexually and it comforted her, not to frustrate him, but because to be able to interest him was an important part of their new relationship. She felt that in some ways this new feeling she had for him was more important than their marriage had been, for now they were friends, and friendship is less infirm and less fragile than love.
‘You mustn’t harm Jean-Paul because of me,’ said Maria.
‘I’m not interested in Drugstore cowboys,’ said Loiseau. ‘At least not until they are caught doing something illegal.’
Maria took out her cigarettes and lit one as slowly as she knew how. She felt all the old angers welling up inside her. This was the Loiseau she had divorced; this stern, unyielding man who thought that Jean-Paul was an effeminate gigolo merely because he took himself less seriously than Loiseau ever could. Loiseau had crushed her, had reduced her to a piece of furniture, to a dossier – the dossier on Maria; and now the dossier was passed over to someone else and Loiseau thought the man concerned would not handle it as competently as he himself had done. Long ago Loiseau had produced a cold feeling in her and now she felt it again. This same icy scorn was poured upon anyone who smiled or relaxed; self-indulgent, complacent, idle – these were Loiseau’s words for anyone without his self-flagellant attitude to work. Even the natural functions of her body seemed something against the law when she was near Loiseau. She remembered the lengths she went to to conceal the time of her periods in case he should call her to account for them, as though they were the mark of some ancient sin.
She looked up at him. He was still talking about Jean-Paul. How much had she missed – a word, a sentence, a lifetime? She didn’t care. Suddenly the room seemed cramped and the old claustrophobic feeling that made her unable to lock the bathroom door – in spite of Loiseau’s rages about it – made this room unbearably small. She wanted to leave.
‘I’ll open the door,’ she said. ‘I don’t want the smoke to bother you.’
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Sit down and relax.’
She felt she must open the door.
‘Your boyfriend Jean-Paul is a nasty little casserole,’6 said Loiseau, ‘and you might just as well face up to it. You accuse me of prying into other people’s lives: well perhaps that’s true, but do you know what I see in those lives? I see things that shock and appal me. That Jean-Paul. What is he but a toe-rag for Datt, running around like a filthy little pimp. He is the sort of man that makes me ashamed of being a Frenchman. He sits all day in the Drugstore and the other places that attract the foreigners. He holds a foreign newspaper pretending that he is reading it – although he speaks hardly a word of any foreign language – hoping to get into conversation with some pretty little girl secretary or better still a foreign girl who can speak French. Isn’t that a pathetic thing to see in the heart of the most civilized city in the world? This lout sitting there chewing Hollywood chewing-gum and looking at the pictures in Playboy. Speak to him about religion and he will tell you how he despises the Catholic Church. Yet every Sunday when he’s sitting there with his hamburger looking so transatlantique, he’s just come from Mass. He prefers foreign girls because he’s ashamed of the fact that his father is a metal-worker in a junk yard and foreign girls are less likely to notice his coarse manners and phoney voice.’
Maria had spent years hoping to make Loiseau jealous and now, years after their divorce had been finalized, she had succeeded. For some reason the success brought her no pleasure. It was not in keeping with Loiseau’s calm, cold, logical manner. Jealousy was weakness, and Loiseau had very few weaknesses.
Maria knew that she must open the door or faint. Although she knew this slight dizziness was claustrophobia she put out the half-smoked cigarette in the hope that it would make her feel better. She stubbed it out viciously. It made her feel better for about two minutes. Loiseau’s voice droned on. How she hated this office. The pictures of Loiseau’s life, photos of him in the army: slimmer and handsome, smiling at the photographer as if to say ‘This is the best time of our lives, no wives, no responsibility.’ The office actually smelled of Loiseau’s work; she remembered that brown card that wrapped the dossiers and the smell of the old files that had come up from the cellars after goodness knows how many years. They smelled of stale vinegar. It must have been something in the paper, or perhaps the fingerprint ink.