Free The Vatard Sisters by Joris-Karl Huysmans Page A

feasts of pallid flesh. Now that he had her in his thrall, he only expended the little strength that remained to him in doling out careful beatings. Looking at love in this way had given Désirée more and more pause for thought. Could she ever be happy with lovers like that? It went without saying that you could be unlucky in your marriage, but after all her father and mother had lived happily enough, and other couples she knew didn’t knock each other about, or only rarely, and then it was because they’d been together for twenty years and it’s normal to get impatient with each other after living together so long. Her mind was made up: she’d wait until she’d found a lover to her liking, a handsome young man who would love her, a tall fair-haired lad, if possible, with long eyelashes and a fine moustache. Sometimes even, while working, she would daydream, eyes staring into the distance, about her future, she imagined seeing him after having been married to him for a month: in the mornings she would get up after having gently kissed him on the eyes, she’d tie his tie for him and pull his shirt down at the back to prevent it riding up at the neck, and then she herself, after having tidied her little household and put the leftover stew from the night before in a small bowl in her lunch-basket so that she could reheat it in the workshop over her little spirit lamp, would leave too, a little early, in order to be able to stroll past the haberdashers and give herself the pleasure of coveting a beautiful little necklace for fifteen sous that she would buy the following Saturday after she’d been paid.
    For after all, she was a fine lady and would only consider marrying if it left her well-off enough to spend at least ten francs a month on clothes and make-up, and as she was stitching pages together she would add up figures, calculating her husband’s salary and her own, smiling at the idea that, when they saw her come in with a new hairnet edged with red trim, the other women at Débonnaire & Co. would exclaim: ‘Lord, you’re chic, you are!’
    The main thing was to find a man who could fulfill these conditions. Certainly, since she’d reached the age of puberty, and even before, there’d been no lack of would-be lovers. She had an alluring, cute little face, with that mischievous demeanour so appealing in young women, but she hadn’t been satisfied with any of her suitors, fine lotharios who would come round to pay her a visit after a few drinks, and who still had winey stalactites dripping off their moustaches as they strutted about and grinned inanely.
    ‘You’re too ambitious, it’ll end in tears,’ her sister would say to her, and Désirée, who was gazing at herself in a mirror, complacently admiring her dainty pinkness, would shake her head and flick her hair to give it more body.
    ‘Well, why not?’ she’d reply, ‘I’m probably no worse looking than anyone else, I’ve a right to be ambitious.’
    She was supported in this opinion by her father, who didn’t want her to get married. It was mostly she who did the housework, so he’d gaze at her with an air of tenderness, murmuring: ‘My little girl’s as good as gold, I’d never force her to marry a man she doesn’t like. I’m not a hard-hearted father…’ and, as if he believed or wanted her to believe that parents had the power to force their offspring to marry against their will, he took advantage of this fatherly broadmindedness in order to obtain everything he wanted from Désirée.
    Wasn’t she, after all, his favourite? Certainly he loved his other daughter, and very much so, but it wasn’t the same thing. No doubt Céline was a good girl, was sometimes more affectionate even – when she’d found a man – than her younger sister, but she had an unstable character that was really insufferable. The whole house had to submit to the restlessness of her passions, the furious rages of her breakups. On days when she was jilted by a