Free Belle De Jour by Joseph Kessel Page A

memories of the day she’d just lived through. Though she was mortally afraid of these memories, she tried to recall the day’s events in detail, since doing so at least shielded her from having to make a decision. But gradually her memories lost the power to fill her mind. Hallucinatory blots appeared in her consciousness—the entrance to her house, the concierge looking up at her, her housemaid’s smile, the mirrors, oh all the mirrors all variously reflecting that face kissed by the swollen lips of M Adolphe. For a moment it seemed better to run back to Mme Anaïs’ and shut herself up there, night and day.
    Belle de Jour … Belle de Jour.
    Could she go home with that name?
    The lights of a car were slowly blinking in front ofher. She flung herself towards them, shouted her address at the driver and added:
    “Hurry, hurry. It’s an emergency.”
    Her real agony was finally rising to the surface. Despite all her efforts to suppress it, the image of Pierre’s face had appeared in her consciousness, and Séverine knew that nothing mattered any more, humiliation or horror, except that she get back before Pierre and see to it that he wasn’t worried.
    “It’s after six,” she murmured, trembling, as she went into her room. “I’ve only half an hour.”
    Frantically she undressed, washed her body over and over again, scrubbed her face till it hurt. She would have liked to change her skin. It was all she could do not to light a fire and burn her suit and underclothes as if she’d just committed a murder.
    She was in a peignoir when Pierre came in. As he kissed her, Séverine froze with terror.
    “I forgot. My hair.”
    She was sure her hair smelled of bordellos, stank of the rue Virène. She was surprised to hear Pierre say in his usual voice, “Yes, you’re almost ready, darling. I’ll have to hurry.”
    Only then did she remember that some friends were stopping by to pick them up for dinner and the theater. For a moment she was relieved; but the thought of coming back with Pierre to the sweet midnight tenderness that bound them so closely was utterly intolerable.
    “Darling, I’m not feeling very well,” she said hesitantly. “I think I caught a chill in the park this morning. I’d really rather not go out tonight, but you must …no, I insist, darling. The Vernois are such nice people. And I know you want to see the play, you told me so, I’d really be unhappy if you missed it.”
    It was a long and cruel night for Séverine. Despite her infinite physical and spiritual weariness she couldn’t sleep. She was terrified of Pierre’s return. So far he hadn’t noticed anything, but it was impossible for this miracle to continue when he came into her room, as he inevitably would. It was impossible that that monstrous day had left no trace on her, in her, about her. More than once Séverine jumped out of bed to see in her mirror whether some special line, some stigmata, hadn’t appeared on her face. The hours went by in this state of demented persecution.
    Finally she heard the door open. She pretended to be asleep, but her features were so tense that if Pierre had approached her bed he would have seen through the sham. But he was afraid of waking her up, and slipped out noiselessly. Séverine’s first feeling was one of gloomy surprise. Was it so easy, then, to hide such chaos from the person who knew her best? Though there was reassurance in the idea, it hurt her, and she refused to believe it. Surely this was simply a respite granted by darkness. She would be punished when daylight came. When he saw her then, Pierre would know.
    “And my God, my God …” she groaned, propped against her pillows like some suffocating invalid.
    Incapable of imagining the result of his discovery, incapable of divining whether the pain she would feel would be worse than the pain she would cause, she shuther eyes, as though the darkness of the room were not intense enough for her despair.
    Alternating between terror and