Madame Polidor’s house was outside the rampart wall, adjacent to a road lined with artillery batteries and field tents that curved along the coast. I don’t know why I had imagined that it would be a castle. It turned out to be a partially ruined tower, no longer of any military use (as Uncle Charles observed), surrounded by piles of rubble. Since the coaches could not make it to the door, it was necessary to walk in the dark among bivouacking soldiers and enormous cannons pointed out to sea. My disenchantment only grew upon seeing the guests’ lack of decorum; some were singing, while others laughed and shouted to one another in greeting. I felt like a fish out of water. I asked myself what I, so timid and quiet, was doing there among such freewheeling sorts. Robert walked in silence. He held me by the arm in an impersonal way, as though still testing his will to seduce me. Suddenly, an insistent, feminine voice called out to him. It came from someone who had been walking behind us. I held my breath. I feared he would leave my side. But he didn’t even turn around and, taking advantage of the fact that Uncle Charles had moved a few steps ahead of us, I showed my gratitude for his gesture by resting my head, briefly, on his shoulder. The poor impression I’d formed of the place disappeared the moment I entered the tower. Now, at this very minute, lost in nostalgia as I recall the exotic look of Madame Polidor’s sitting-room, I suspect that it is the very same room that, years ago, used to appear over and over in my dreams: the bare stone walls, the huge silver candelabra on the mantelpiece, the thick beams supporting the ceiling and, of course, Robert. The only difference was that, in my recurrent dream, there was an enormous bed (a memory, perhaps, from my childhood in Lausanne, when my parents were still alive?) and possibly a mirror. In any case, in my dream there hadn’t been the Egyptian rug or the heaps of red and black pillows that, piled up here and there, served as chairs, and even as divans for the guests; or the small tables, scarcely a hand’s length high, upon which accumulated bottles of wine, glasses and, here and there, a candlestick; or the white silk wall hangings, painted with strange hieroglyphs that contrasted with the worn and blackened stone walls; or the massive trunk upon which rested a Spanish guitar and church censer, burning an aromatic resin. Above all, in my dream, there was no Claudette, the girl with honey-colored skin, dressed as a Turk, who, as soon as we entered, whispered her name and began collecting the furs, shakos, and twenty-franc pieces—the obligatory donation for the gypsies—that the gentlemen held out to her. (I have just remembered that in my dream I was always wearing her Moorish slippers.) Then we arranged ourselves in easy groups of two and three around the tables. There were, perhaps, a dozen of us, fifteen at the most, including Madame Polidor and the enchanting Claudette.
Seated between Uncle Charles and Robert, who began politely filling our glasses, I discovered that I had been mistaken in my impression that the guests were people of low social standing. Sprawled comfortably upon the cushions were five women, all of them covered in jewels and dressed in that summer’s latest fashion, styles inspired by the Empress herself. The rest of the guests were officers, mostly Hussars. Their uniforms, with their great furs, were the only ones I knew how to identify. Madame Polidor reclined in Romanesque fashion, supporting herself on one elbow, her head resting in the palm of her hand. I decided that her irresistible beauty resided in the shape of her lips, voluptuously full, and ever so slightly down-turned at the corners, suggesting just a hint of weariness. (Oh, Maryse, my dear Maryse! Though it’s true that, back then, you were still Madame Polidor to me, in remembering you now, in detailing your mouth, I find it difficult to relegate you to a minor character in the scene, nothing more than an extra in this comic opera that I’m composing, and yet, this is how it must be until your moment arrives and you step onto center stage. We shall proceed then, for the time being, with the name Madame Polidor.) Next to her was a man with a gray mustache and a patrician air about him who, upon entering the tower, had exchanged greetings with my uncle. “Colonel Marnot, a friend from the Egyptian campaign. Were he not serving with the Guard he’d be a General by now,” Uncle Charles had whispered to me. And suddenly, from above and to my right came the sound of violins and tambourines.
I had seen gypsies in Toulouse, but those had been Spanish gypsies who had crossed the Pyrenees with the Saltimbanques from Aragon and Catalonia. These, now making their way downstairs, were dressed completely differently, especially the men, who wore long hair, wide shirts, leather doublets and colorful scarves tied around their necks. Since I hadn’t noticed a staircase behind the wall hangings, their sudden arrival surprised me so much that, for a while, I didn’t even notice the music they were playing. “I’ll wager they’re Transylvanian airs,” said my uncle, revealing himself somewhat a connoisseur of those plaintive ballads, a bit too slow for my taste, that melded with the dusky light of the room, evoking a remote and inconsolable sadness.
“Are you familiar with the history of the gypsies, monsieur?” I asked Robert brightly.
“Not with their history, no. But I do know about their lives. Much of what we understand today about horses, their dispositions, quirks, illnesses, good and bad crossbreedings, we learned from them,” he said in a didactic tone, smiling.
“I assume, then, that there are gypsies among the Hussars,” I said, naively.
“Heaven forbid! Gypsies are thieves. Although one must admit that they are also good musicians and coppersmiths.”
“The Hussars are elite troops,” Uncle Charles put in, raising his glass to Robert and offering a toast to his health.
While I was formulating an apology, Uncle Charles looked at his watch, stood up a tad unsteadily, and told me it was time to go. “’Tis a pity, but it’s past midnight already,” he added, shrugging his shoulders in his customary gesture of resignation. And destiny is a tricky thing, for had Madame Polidor not appeared at that very moment and insisted that we stay because the best of the music was yet to come, my relationship with Robert would never had been more than a mere flirtation, at most, one of those fleeting war-time romances fueled by letters filled with plagiarized verses and covered with little drawings of hearts and bordered in flowers, tepid epistolary idylls whose tender words of endearment, burdened by repetition, culminate only in boredom. It did not take much to convince Uncle Charles, who sank back into the cushions, accompanied, this time, by Madame Polidor. “We’ll leave in fifteen minutes. All right with you?” he whispered, turning toward me. And what was I to say? I responded with silence.
Meanwhile, Robert, who had stopped wooing me ever since we left the dance, decided to renew his advance, and I, terrified and unsure what to do, felt his left hand slip between the cushion and my dress. I was about to push him away, but my resolve faltered: the waltzes, the champagne, his eyes, his imperiousness, and yes, his well-rehearsed lines: “Henriette, what does it feel like to be a perfect being, to have everything: beauty, grace, youth, wit? Tell me, what does it feel like to fly above it all, up there with the angels?” Such words, though they seem completely ridiculous to me today, transported me to the heavens that night.
Our hostess had not lied when she’d said that the musical evening had not yet reached its finest moment. Firmly anchored in place by Robert’s hand, which had felt its way to my clothed privates, I joined the others in applauding the raucous gypsy woman who, accompanied by an allegro moment of a tune in a major key, had descended the stairs in a flurry of twirling skirts and bare feet. My eyes hooded with pleasure—no hand other than my own had ever touched me in that way—I allowed myself to be swept away by the woman’s deep, husky voice, to be transported by her hands on her hips and her brazen expression that, a mere hour earlier, would have caused me to blush. As I followed her unabashed movements with my eyes, my gaze met with Colonel Marnot’s. His eyes appeared to burn with indignation, with a deep reproach. Though Robert had allowed his fur to slide down his arm, half-hiding it from view, I knew that the Colonel had discovered our secret game, and my pleasure disappeared instantaneously. Blushing and trembling with shame, I stood up so abruptly that the woman interrupted her song. Everything seemed to be spinning: the wall hangings, my shadow, the gypsies; it all wheeled about me, as though I