Good Morning, Midnight Read online

  'Have you worked anywhere else since then?'

  'Well, no. No, I haven't.'

  'I see,' he says. He waves backwards and forwards like a tall tree that is going to fall on me. Then he makes a sound like 'Hah', and goes off into a room at the back, followed by Salvatini.

  Well, this has gone badly, there's no disguising it. It has gone as badly as possible. It couldn't have gone worse. But it's over. Now he'll never notice me again; he'll forget about me.

  An old Englishwoman and her daughter come into the shop. I escort them upstairs and then fidget about arranging the showcases at the back of the room. In an hour or so they come down again. They walk up to the showcases, the old lady eager, the daughter very reluctant.

  'Can you show me some of these pretty things ?' the old lady says. 'I want something to wear in my hair in the evening.'

  She takes off her hat and she is perfectly bald on top - a white, bald skull with a fringe of grey hair. The daughter stays in the background. She is past shame, detached, grim.

  'Come along, mother, do let's go. Don't be silly, mother. You won't find anything here.'

  There is a long glass between the two windows. The old lady complacently tries things on her bald head.

  The daughter's eyes meet mine in the mirror. Damned old hag, isn't she funny?....I stare back at her coldly.

  I will say for the old lady that she doesn't care a damn about all this. She points to various things and says: 'Show me that - show me that.' A sturdy old lady with gay, bold eyes.

  She tried on a hair-band, a Spanish comb, a flower. A green feather waves over her bald head. She is calm and completely unconcerned. She was like a Roman emperor in that last thing she tried on.

  'Mother, please come away. Do let's go.'

  The old lady doesn't take the slightest notice, and she has everything out of both of the cases before she goes. Then: 'Well,' she says, 'I'm very sorry. I'm so sorry to have given you so much trouble.'

  'It's no trouble at all, madame.'

  As they go towards the door the daughter bursts out. A loud, fierce hiss: 'Well, you made a perfect fool of yourself, as usual. You've had everybody in the shop sniggering. If you want to do this again, you'll have to do it by yourself. I refuse, I refuse.'

  The old lady does not answer. I can see her face reflected in a mirror, her eyes still undaunted but something about her mouth and chin collapsing.... Oh, but why not buy her a wig, several decent dresses, as much champagne as she can drink, all the things she likes to eat and oughtn't to, a gigolo if she wants one ? One last flare-up, and she'll be dead in six months at the outside. That's all you're waiting for, isn't it? But no, you must have the slow death, the bloodless killing that leaves no stain on your conscience....

  I put the ornaments back in the cases slowly, carefully, just as they were.

  That brings me up to dejeuner. I go upstairs. One long table here, the mannequins and saleswomen all mixed up.

  There is, of course, an English mannequin. 'Kind, kind and gentle is she' - and that's another damned lie. But she is very beautiful - 'belle comme une fleur de verre'. And the other one, the little French one whom I like so much, she is 'belle comme une fleur de terre'

  I still can't get over the meal at this place. I have been living for some time on bread and coffee, and it blows my stomach out every time. Hors d'oeuvres, plat du jour, vegetables, dessert. Coffee and a quarter of wine are extra, but so little extra that everybody has them.

  Nobody talks about the English manager - a wary silence.

  I go downstairs, feeling dazed and happy. Gradually the happiness goes; I am just dazed.

  Salvatini puts his head out of the door behind me and says: 'Mr Blank wants to see you.'

  I at once make up my mind that he wants to find out if I can speak German. All the little German I know flies out of my head. Jesus, help me! Ja, ja, nein, nein, was kostet es, Wien ist eine sehr schone Stadt, Buda-Pest auch ist sehr schon, ist schon, mein Herr, ich habe meinen Blumen vergessen, aus meinen grossen Schmerzen, homo homini lupus, aus meinen grossen Schmerzen mach ich die kleinen Lieder, homo homini lupus (I've got that one, anyway), aus meinen grossen Schmerzen homo homini doh re mi fah soh la ti doh....

  He is sitting at the desk, writing a letter. I stand there. He is sure to notice how shabby my shoes are.

  Salvatini looks up, gives me a furtive smile and then looks away again.

  Come on, stand straight, keep your head up, smile....

  No, don't smile. If you smile, he'll think you're trying to get off with him. I know this type. He won't give me the benefit of a shadow of a doubt. Don't smile then, but look eager, alert, attentive....Run out of the door and get away....You fool, stand straight, look eager, alert, attentive....No, look here, he's doing this on purpose....Of course he isn't doing it on purpose. He's just writing a letter....He is, he is. He's doing it on purpose. I know it, I feel it. I've been standing here for five minutes.

  This is impossible.

  'Did you wish to see me, Mr Blank?'

  He looks up and says sharply: 'Yes, yes, what is it? What do you want ? Wait a minute, wait a minute.'

  At once I know. He doesn't want me to talk German, he's going to give me the sack. All right then, hurry up, get it over....

  Nothing. I just stand there. Now panic has come on me. My hands are shaking, my heart is thumping, my hands are cold. Fly, fly, run from these atrocious voices, these abominable eyes....

  He finishes his letter, writes a line or two on another piece of paper and puts it into an envelope.

  'Will you please take this to the kise?'

  Take this to the kise....I look at Salvatini. He smiles encouragingly.

  Mr Blank rattles out: 'Be as quick as you can, Mrs - er - please. Thank you very much.'

  I turn and walk blindly through a door. It is a lavatory. They look sarcastic as they watch me going out by the right door.

  I walk a little way along the passage, then stand with my back against the wall.

  This is a very old house - two old houses. The first floor, the shop proper, is modernized. The showrooms, the fitting-rooms, the mannequins' room....But on the ground floor are the workrooms and offices and dozens of small rooms, passages that don't lead anywhere, steps going up and steps going down.

  Kise - kise....It doesn't mean a thing to me. He's got me into such a state that I can't imagine what it can mean.

  Now, no panic. This envelope must have a name on it.

  ....Monsieur L. Grousset. Somewhere in this building is a Monsieur L. Grousset. I have got to take this letter to him. Easy. Somebody will tell me where his room is. Grousset, Grousset....

  I turn to the right, walk along another passage, down a light of stairs. The workrooms....No, I can't ask here. All the girls will stare at me. I shall seem such a fool.

  I try another passage. It ends in a lavatory. The number of lavatories in this place, c'est inoui....I turn the corner, find myself back in the original passage and collide with a strange young man. He gives me a nasty look.

  'Could you tell me, please, where I can find Monsieur Grousset?'

  'Connais pas,' the young man says.

  After this it becomes a nightmare. I walk up stairs, past doors, along passages - all different, all exactly alike. There is something very urgent that I must do. But I don't meet a soul and all the doors are shut.

  This can't go on. Shall I throw the damned thing away and forget all about it?

  'What you must do is this,' I tell myself: 'You must go back and say - quite calmly - "I'm very sorry, but I didn't understand where you wanted me to take this note."

  I knock. He calls out: 'Come in.' I go in

  He takes the note from my hand. He looks at me as if I were a dog which had presented him with a very, very old bone. (Say something, say something....)

  'I couldn't find him.' 'But how do you mean you couldn't find him? He must be there.'

  'I'm very sorry. I didn't know where to find him.'

  'Y
ou don't know where to find the cashier - the counting-house?

  'La caisse,' Salvatini says - helpfully, but too late.

  But if I tell him that it was the way he pronounced it that confused me, it will seem rude. Better not say anything....

  'Well, don't you know?'

  'Yes, I do. Oh yes, I do know.'

  That is to say, I knew this morning where the cashier's office is. It isn't so far from the place where we put our hats and coats. But I don't know a damned thing now....Run, run away from their eyes, run from their voices, run....

  We stare at each other. I breathe in deeply and breathe out again.

  'Extraordinary,' he says, very slowly, 'quite extra ordinary. God knows I'm used to fools, but this complete imbecility....This woman is the biggest fool I've ever met in my life. She seems to be half-witted. She's hopeless....Well, isn't she?' he says to Salvatini.

  Salvatini makes a rolling movement of his head, shoulders and eyes, which means: 'I quite agree with you. Deplorable, deplorable.' Also: 'She's not so bad as you think.' Also: 'Oh, my God, what's all this about? What a day, what a day. When will it be over?' Anything you like, Salvatini's shrug means.

  Not to cry in front of this man. Tout, mais pas ca. Say something....No, don't say anything. Just walk out of the room.

  'No, wait a minute,' he says. 'You'd better take that note along. You do know who to take it to now, don't you? The cashier.'

  'Yes.'

  He stares at me. Something else has come into his eyes. He knows how I am feeling - yes, he knows. 'Just a hopeless, helpless little fool, aren't you?' he says. Jovial? Bantering? On the surface, yes. Underneath?

  No, I don't think so. 'Well, aren't you?' 'Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes.' I burst into tears. I haven't even got a handkerchief.

  'Dear me,' Mr Blank says. 'Allons, allons,' Salvatini says. 'Voyons'....'

  I rush away from them into a fitting-room. It is hardly ever used. It is only used when the rooms upstairs are full. I shut the door and lock it.

  I cry for a long time - for myself, for the old woman with the bald head, for all the sadness of this damned world, for all the fools and all the defeated....

  In this fitting-room there is a dress in one of the cupboards which has been worn a lot by the mannequins and is going to be sold off for four hundred francs. The sales woman has promised to keep it for me. I have tried it on; I have seen myself in it. It is a black dress with wide sleeves embroidered in vivid colours - red, green, blue, purple. It is my dress. If I had been wearing it I should never have stammered or been stupid.

  Now I have stopped crying. Now I shall never have that dress. Today, this day, this hour, this minute I am utterly defeated. I have had enough.

  Now the circle is complete. Now, strangely enough, I am no longer afraid of Mr Blank. He is one thing and I am another. He knew me right away, as soon as he came in at the door. And I knew him....

  I go into the other room, this time without knocking. Salvatini has gone. Mr Blank is still writing letters. Is he making dates with all the girls he knows in Paris? I bet that's what he is doing.

  He looks at me with distaste. Plat du jour - boiled eyes, served cold....

  Well, let's argue this out, Mr Blank. You, who represent Society, have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month. That's my market value, for I am an inefficient member of Society, slow in the uptake, uncertain, slightly damaged in the fray, there's no denying it. So you have the right to pay me four hundred francs a month, to lodge me in a small, dark room, to clothe me shabbily, to harass me with worry and monotony and unsatisfied longings till you get me to the point when I blush at a look, cry at a word. We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were. Isn't it so, Mr Blank? There must be the dark background to show up the bright colours. Some must cry so that the others may be able to laugh the more heartily. Sacrifices are necessary....Let's say that you have this mystical right to cut my legs off. But the right to ridicule me afterwards because I am a cripple - no, that I think you haven't got. And that's the right you hold most dearly, isn't it? You must be able to despise the people you exploit. But I wish you a lot of trouble, Mr Blank, and just to start of with, your damned shop's going bust. Alleluia! Did I say all this? Of course I didn't. I didn't even think it.

  I say that I'm ill and want to go. (Get it in first.) And he says he quite agrees that it would be the best thing. 'No regrets,' he says, 'no regrets.'

  And there I am, out in the Avenue Marigny, with my month's pay - four hundred francs. And the air so sweet, as it can only be in Paris. It is autumn and the dry leaves are blowing along. Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro....

  Thinking of my jobs.... There was that one I had in the shop called Young Britain. X plus ZBW. That meant fcs. 68.60. Then another hieroglyphic - XQ15tn - meant something else, fcs. 112.75. Little boys' sailor suits were there, and young gentlemen's Norfolk suits were there.... Well, I got the sack from that in a week, and very pleased I was too.

  Then there was that other job - as a guide. Standing in the middle of the Place de l'Opera, losing my head and not knowing the way to the Rue de la Paix. North, south, east, west - they have no meaning for me....They want to saunter, this plump, placid lady and her slightly less placid daughter. They want to saunter in the beautiful Paris sunlight, to the Rue de la Paix.

  I pull myself together and we get to the Rue de la Paix. We go to the French-English dress shops and we go to the French-French dress shops. And then they say they want to have lunch. I take them to a restaurant in the Place de la Madeleine. They are enormously rich, these two, the mother and the daughter. Both are very rich and very sad. Neither can imagine what it is like to be happy or even to be gay, neither the mother nor the daughter.

  In the restaurant the waiter suggests pancakes with rum sauce for dessert. They are strict teetotallers, but they lap up the rum sauce. I've never seen anybody's mood change so quickly as the mother's did, after they had had two helpings of it.

  'What delicious sauce!' They have a third helping. Their eyes are swimming. The daughter's eyes say 'Certainly, certainly'; the mother's eyes say 'Perhaps, perhaps....'

  'It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?'

  'Yes,' I say, 'it can be sad.'

  But the softened mood doesn't last.

  She has coffee and a glass of water and is herself again. Now she wants to be taken to the exhibition of Loie Fuller materials, and she wants to be taken to the place where they sell that German camera which can't be got anywhere else outside Germany, and she wants to be taken to a place where she can buy a hat which will epater everybody she knows and yet be easy to wear, and on top of all this she wants to be taken to a certain exhibition of pictures. But she doesn't remember the man's name and she isn't sure where the exhibition is. However, she knows that she will recognize the name when she hears it.

  I try. I question waiters, old ladies in lavabos, girls in shops. They all respond. There is a freemasonry among those who prey upon the rich. I manage everything, except perhaps the hat.

  But she saw through me. She only gave me twenty francs for a tip and I never got another job as guide from the American Express. That was my first and last.

  I try, but they always see through me. The passages will never lead anywhere, the doors will always be shut. I know....

  Then I start thinking about the black dress, longing for it, madly, furiously. If I could get it everything would be different. Supposing I ask So-and-so to ask So-and-so to ask Madame Perron to keep it for me?....I'll get the money. I'll get it....

  Walking in the night with the dark houses over you, like monsters. If you have money and friends, houses are just houses with steps and a front door - friendly houses where the door opens and somebody meets you, smiling. If you are quite secure and your roots are well struck in, they know. They stand back respectfully, waiting for the poor devil without any friends and without any money
. Then they step forward, the waiting houses, to frown and crush. No hospitable doors, no lit windows, just frowning darkness. Frowning and leering and sneering, the houses, one after another. Tall cubes of darkness, with two lighted eyes at the top to sneer. And they know who to frown at. They know as well as the policeman on the corner, and don't you worry....

  Walking in the night. Back to the hotel. Always the same hotel. You press the button. The door opens. You go up the stairs. Always the same stairs, always the same room....

  The landing is empty and deserted. At this time of night there are no pails, no brooms, no piles of dirty sheets. The man next door has put his shoes outside - long, pointed, patent leather shoes, very cracked. He does get dressed, then. . I wonder about this man. Perhaps he is a commercial traveller out of a job for the moment. Yes, that's what he might be - a commis voyageur. Perhaps he's a traveller in dressing gowns.

  Now, quiet, quiet....This is going to be a nice sane fortnight. 'Quiet, quiet,' I say to the clock when I am winding it up, and it makes a noise between a belch and a giggle.

  The bathroom here is on the ground floor. I lie in the bath, listening to the patronne talking to a client. He says he wants a room for a young lady friend of his. Not at once, he is just looking around.

  'A room? A nice room?'

  I watch cockroaches crawling from underneath the carpet and crawling back again. There is a lowered carpet in this bathroom, two old armchairs and a huge wardrobe with a spotted mirror.

  'A nice room?' Of course, une belle chambre, the client wants. The patronne says she has a very beautiful room on the second floor, which will be vacant in about a month's time.

  That's the way it is, that's the way it goes, that was the way it went....A room. A nice room. A beautiful room. A beautiful room with bath. A very beautiful room with bath. A bedroom and sitting room with bath. Up to the dizzy heights of the suite. Two bedrooms, sitting room, bath and vestibule. (The small bedroom is in case you don't feel like me, or in case you meet somebody you like better and come in late.) Anything you want brought up on the dinner wagon. (But, alas! the waiter has a louse on his collar. What is that on his collar? Bitte schon, mein Herr, bitte schon....) Swing high....Now, slowly, down. A beautiful room with bath. A room with bath. A nice room. A room....