Tender Shoots Read online

  “My dear Delphine, calm yourself. I am not pitiless, I assure you. Let’s try to find a way out of all this together.”

  She weakens, lays her forehead on my hand and suffers excessively. Her joints crack; she claws her nails into the palms of her hands.

  I detach myself from where she is lying, get to my feet and search for reasons for her to resist, for excuses.

  “Everything that happens to me,” she says, “is due to pride.”

  I was expecting this dreadful word which all women have on their lips and by which they define their humility.

  Delphine had arranged to meet me in Regent’s Park. I had been to check in my luggage beforehand, for the train leaves for France in one hour. All around me the park, worn away by the drilling of recruits over five years, is recovering again. A soldier in peacetime uniform walks by, glowing like a red pepper in a jar of pickles. Dropped by an invisible squirrel, a nut falls from branch to branch and breaks open on the ground.

  I cannot say that the visit to Ebury Street the previous day has upset me. Rather, it has offended me. Delphine was suffering, discontented, attached to her misfortune, prey to a disconcerting vulgarity. Then she came out with words from a cheap novel, and a fainting fit managed to ruin everything. But as soon as I was on my own, the rigorous, resolute image of earlier days returned to me, out of which, reproduced as if on a tracing, the recollection of her recent disorder still grimaced from time to time. It pained me. Not that Delphine’s happiness was precious to me, but it grieved me to see this character, whom neither pleasure nor misfortune had managed to destroy until now, so weighed down. I had reckoned her to be incapable of changing for the better, but also resistant to contagion. Her proud integrity had often been intolerable to me, but no less tiresome was this sudden appropriation of her whole being by a pointless destiny.

  I then experienced an upheaval of feelings, and thought only of devoting myself to her. All night I wore myself out with worry, and ardently I longed for the joy of rescuing her. Overwhelmed with emotion, I almost got up and went to wake her …

  Time goes by, Delphine does not come. London no longer gives back what is given to it. Like a loose net, it receives and retains everything. There are, in this gamut of houses, many creatures like her, who are not living there because of a grief or specific pleasures, but who do not know how to leave. Without chewing them up, between neat quays, London swallows up in its marine oesophagus all the products of the globe which, continuously, remain there when the ships’ toil is ended.

  She won’t come. In the zoo nearby, the roaring of the lions makes the reinforced concrete caverns quiver. Macaws gash the evening with their cries. I remain alone with a heart full of charity.

  AURORA

  THE WINDOW OPENS onto a courtyard, where morning has not yet reached the far end. Above me, the worn sheet of the sky, studded with stars, with splashes of acid already in the east. Atrocious morning for an execution. The courtyard is an echoless in-draught. It is too narrow for a dull silence—this one is vertical, as in drainpipes.

  Beneath the ground, the apprentice bakers let the heavy dough flop down again, each time for the last time.

  I do not want to live here any longer, I’m choking; sleep would be possible were it not for the dreams and the overwhelming weariness of waking up; it is even more impossible to live far from one’s friends than with them. I gnaw at my nails, I pull out my hair, I have some successes; but I do not kill time, I wound it.

  I should like to go away on my own, with my chequebook hung round my neck in a small metal box; with my suitcase. My suitcase whose smooth flanks are like cheeks, over which all the winds have blown, all fingers have passed; labels from hotels and stations; multi-coloured chalk marks from the customs; and the worn-out bottom that is turning blue with sweat, sea water, vomit, and red where the bottles of eau de cologne have broken inside. Unfortunately, I can no more escape from this city than from myself. There still remains the walk beneath the covered courtyard, the docile pastures of Upper Tooting, the suburban omnibuses, the parks that are as inappropriate as a flower-pot on the balcony, and, behind the Opera house, the aroma of agricultural labours, beneath the colonnade, in the midst of the market that perfumes Beecham’s art with a smell of cabbage …

  Behind me, I can hear people enjoying themselves. Is there not one among them willing to forsake their entertainment, in order to follow this portent whose interpretation appears to be required of me this morning? Who may also wish to leave? Or, at least, share my sorrow at not leaving? Or console me for the anonymous farce of creation? An advertisement in the newspapers perhaps?

  I turn round—it is a woman in an orange tunic tied with a gold cord; arms bare, tanned, very long. Tattooed bracelets. It is Aurora. I recognise her from having seen her dance in the rain at the open-air theatre at Bagatelle one evening in spring. And then there are the illustrated covers of the Tatler: “Aurora feeds her pumas.” “We walk badly, how Aurora places her feet.” On her forefinger, alas, a black diamond, from the Burlington Arcade.

  In spite of that, she is attractive. She speaks simply, as if accustomed to controlling her breathing, with measured words. Here she is at the centre of a circle of young men—she has their slimness, their narrow hips, their short hair, their small head; her eyes are level with theirs.

  She herself would say: “Women are odalisques with legs that are too short; when they confront a man, their eyes are level with his lips, he looks straight into their bosom—is that seemly?”

  Aurora has no bosom and deprives us of furtive pleasures, but of those alone.

  This evening there are a few society ladies. Aurora loses all her self-assurance in their presence; she does not like their expressions, conceals her bare feet in their golden sandals beneath her tunic and, pinning her brooch higher, reduces the opening of her neckline.

  All the other women, on the other hand, approach her with confidence, kiss her hands, lay their pretty, made-up faces, looking like sweets, upon her shoulder and tell her smutty stories involving generals, theatre directors, servants, suicides, cocaine dealers. Meanwhile, Roger, seated at the piano, his back heaving, plays Parsifal.

  I am sleepy. The weariness is such that it is restful just to stay where you are and say you are weary. The conversation is lumbering. I go to the dining room. A few dried-up sandwiches are left on the plates, shrivelled at the corners like postage stamps not properly licked, cigarette ash, corks; the level of the liquids is going down in the bottles; the beards of the guests are growing again implacably. Their hands are sticky and their faces ache.

  I return to my window. The street is now bluish, steely cold. Beneath the roof, in a tube shaped like an S, a woman sews at her machine, trying to stop the fraying of the night with a hem.

  I feel a pointed chin digging into my shoulder. I feel a breast swelling against my back, inhaling the air of the new day which the leaves in the parks has washed at last and sent back with their own fragrance.

  “What a life!” Aurora says.

  “What a life!” I reply, but I am not really aware of what I am saying. I no longer have the strength to think about who we are, why we are there, whether I like Aurora or dislike her; I no longer care about modulating my voice, my welcome, no longer care about bothering to be charming, about opening my eyes.

  Aurora says:

  “Whose house are we in?”

  “I don’t know … brought by friends … tepid, sweet champagne … get away … where’s the door?”

  “Ah!” cries Aurora with passion—“to live simply, logically, in harmony with one’s self and with the world, the equilibrium of the Greeks, the joy …”

  At these foolish words I pull myself together. Here in my nerve-ends is the strength my muscles deny me; exasperation awakens me. I want to ask her why she goes out dolled up like this, why she camps out like a gypsy instead of living under a roof, like everyone else; I want to crush her perfect feet in their gold sandals with my heel, to wring her neck. I t
hink of fairground manoeuvres under the eye of the police, in the rain, of wretched circus entertainers, I spew up Helvetic heresies and visions of art. Nothing will soothe me other than shaming her, humiliating her.

  “Can you do the splits?”

  “Of course.”

  She sets out two chairs and starts to split herself in two.

  It is too much. I hurl myself at her so as to strangle her. I squeeze her powerful neck with all my strength, but, with a smile, she clenches her muscles so firmly from chin to shoulders, that, gasping for breath, I have to let go.

  She laughs. I am furious.

  “Let’s go,” I say, “I’ll take you back.”

  Aurora climbs into the taxi as if she were mounting a chariot. The vehicle advances silently. Aurora sits in the shadow, her legs crossed, holding her chin.

  Calmed down, I have kindly thoughts: “In fact, she has simplified herself extraordinarily. Neither lies nor bombast issue from her slender lips, nor anxiety from her eyes, nor pointless gestures from her hands. She controls her body with lucidity like a precision instrument with powerful and delicate movements on which the strains that crush us are shattered, where, even at this hour, the organs function smoothly.”

  I envy her harmonious perfection, her inner life free of conflict, her joints free of arthritis, her feet free of corns, her back free of stiffness.

  Were I to ask her: “What is to prevent you from behaving badly when you want to, since you are certain you won’t have a bad headache the next day?” she would reply: “My personal hygiene.”

  Suddenly Aurora burst out:

  “Don’t leave me alone! not alone!”

  Sobs.

  They contort this body with its hard muscles and violently convulse it. I try to take her fingers, their sinews protruding like steel threads, but they are riveted to her eyes, to her forehead, domed and hard like armour-plating. Warm tears drop onto my hands, which I try to make gentle, but whose gentleness is of no avail. I leave Aurora to herself.

  She weeps.

  She is trying to live simply, that is all.

  Aurora lives near the river. First there is wasteland, then a street of workers’ cottages where a gramophone still drones behind a red blind. An iron gate, a paved passage lined with fruit trees. An unusual scene in the early hours.

  Aurora strikes a match. Here I am in a room where there are trunks, crates on which can be read in black letters—TOP, BOTTOM, P&O CABIN. On the floor, in piles, some books. On a low bed, without sheets, some sable furs and a broom.

  From there, we reach a studio. The darkness is pierced by four specks of light—Aurora lets four gas butterflies with blue bodies burst forth from them, one after another. At the first two, the walls draw closer, consolidate their masses, and reveal the layout of the room.

  At the other two, the darkness that remained in the corners disappears, rises up to the ceiling where the eye pursues it. Along the entire height of the twenty-foot walls extend arches in relief, supporting windows.

  Aurora pokes the fire in the stove. Its glow spreads over the wooden floor and settles in a distant mirror. The room is bare. Here and there, on pedestals, ancient casts with a waxy patina. At the back, a raised platform.

  It is the hearing chamber of a law court not used since the end of George IV’s reign. There are still inscriptions above the doors—PUBLIC ENTRANCE, DEFENDANT, CROWN PROSECUTOR, ATTORNEY-GENERAL. Below the judge’s dais, the local Apollo; at his feet, a mechanical piano. No other furniture apart from two sofas, the jury box, some African footstools, some fabrics with geometric patterns from the Zambesi.

  “This is my house,” says Aurora. “It’s a trunk, really. I’ve nothing else in the world apart from these plaster-casts, my dresses and my guns. I once had a large house in Portman Square, with furniture, guests and servants who passed things around on trays. I’m not possessive, I’ve kept nothing. I’m poor. I’ve gradually detached myself from all the bonds that the things we love impose on us, for their beauty, their value or the memories we attach to them.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I am on my own in life, sitting on crates, face to face with myself.”

  “You are as beautiful as another man’s wife, Aurora. Is it true you don’t belong to anyone?”

  “No one must come into my life.”

  “Do you love your body?”

  “It’s a storeroom that is consigned to me. I don’t put foul thoughts or food that is unclean into it, I look after it, I respect it, I dress it simply … I’m thirsty.”

  From the floor, by the wall, she picks up a bottle of Australian burgundy, Chambertin Big-Tree, and takes a swig.

  Once again Aurora got on my nerves:

  “You’re probably a reformist, a vegetarian, a eurhythmist, a teetotaller? I loathe this defiance of good manners, this puritan and pagan readjustment of society.”

  “You’re mistaken, there’s nothing systematic about me; I’m a Canadian girl who’s fond of the simple life.”

  “Since when?”

  “Always. I don’t remember having danced or held a gun for the first time … but tonight, for the first time, I feel weary. Gina dragged me off after the theatre to the place where we met. I’m sorry. I’m very weary. I look at the distance I still have to cover, as bad runners do, and I hesitate. Theatrical displays eat up my vitality. You saw me in the car … I am weak, nervous … and you’re witnessing all that … It’s weird …”

  Morning sleep will restore her. But she begs me not to leave her alone, to come upstairs with her, saying that she is going to take a bath.

  I am learning about the simple life.

  Above the door of the little staircase—LORD CHIEF JUSTICE’ S ROB ING-ROOM. We go in—it is the bathroom.

  She cries out:

  “Into the water, Aurora! …”

  She undresses in the most natural way, gets into the water, soaps herself, lets the water flow over her body. Perfect body. The muscles in her back ripple like balls of ivory beneath her taut, tanned skin, a substance that is both sturdy and priceless, like the silk used for air-balloons; they can be deciphered as easily as on an anatomy chart, where they cover our organs with pink arborescences; arched loins where the water streams, protruding breasts and, shorn of all heaviness through dancing, long legs, elongated at the ankles, hollowed out on the inside of the thighs, swollen at the supple junction of the knees.

  “Come on, Aurora! Out of the water!”

  She talks to herself like this, just as she talks to her clothes, to objects. (A habit, she explains, common to all lonely people who spend months without seeing their fellow creatures and for whom the human voice is necessary, as the tuning-fork for all other sounds.)

  She pats herself dry, rubbing her face unceremoniously until it turns blood-red. No powder, no make-up, no perfume.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “For the first time,” I say, “I am laughing when I think of a corset, a detachable collar or boots with buttons …”

  In the room there is a pleasant smell of washed flesh, soap, alcohol, steam. Aurora pulls open the chest of drawers where ribbons and scarves are laid out in colours, as if in a prism—she puts on a crêpe-de-chine veil and goes downstairs to the studio again.

  The gas butterflies return to their cocoons. Aurora wraps herself in woollen blankets, stretches out on a mattress laid out on the floor. Then she makes sure that her revolver is under the bolster. Her arms and her bare shoulders jut out from the improvised bed. You can see her straight nose in the midst of tousled hair. You can see her eyes. Then you see them no more.

  I leave the studio and set off to have a coffee in the cab drivers’ shelter.

  I went back to Aurora’s.

  My work completed, I was making my way to the area by the river where the North Sea breeze was driving the smoke clouds towards the west, and beating back the seagulls and the smell of exposed mudflats towards the City. The roads that led me were barely made up and pitted with puddles,
and already had a smell of the fields, a promise of countryside.

  “You must come out of town with me,” Aurora said. “I shall teach you to live as we savages do. In the time you need to have lunch in the restaurant, we shall be naked in a river or else we shall go for a run in the woods. On summer nights I shall take you to sleep in the open air on Oliver’s roof terrace, from where you can see the Crystal Palace, gleaming in the distance like a carbuncle in the moonlight. You’ll feel much better, you won’t have any more headaches, your hair will stop falling out and you’ll stop desiring your friends’ mistresses, as Frenchmen do.”

  The taxi pulls up in the middle of the road, as though it had broken down. But the driver does not blaspheme, does not open his bonnet. He opens the door for me—I have arrived. I had promised to be in Epping Forest at seven o’clock, here I am.

  It is a September evening, slightly chilly. The giant beech trees do not appear to weigh heavily on the fresh, springy earth, nor do their shadows, or the human toil (though does the toil of English farmers weigh heavily?). On the river the gramophones have ceased crackling. The deer are grazing in the dawn mist.

  Aurora had promised to be here at seven o’clock. But she probably sets her path by the sun and will use this cloudy weather, just as her sisters would a traffic jam, as an excuse for being late. Suddenly the branches crackle beneath the lightest of weights, like that of a doe. I turn round—here is Aurora. She runs towards me and her tunic clings to her body like those of the Victories. She holds an attaché case in her hand. She runs on tiptoes, in even strides, well balanced with the motion of her hips. At thirty paces from me, she slows down. Her face, which was merely a clear disc, takes shape, divided in two horizontal parts by her prominent cheekbones, enhanced by a short, mobile nose, like a police dog’s. Her momentum gradually relaxes and by the time she reaches me, she is walking. She lays her bag on the ground, then both hands on my arm.