CHAPTER IV

THE MUSSEL SHELL

The wedding took place quietly. The witnesses were an oddman who could still strike a few last sparks from his tottering frame, and a worthy cobbler who, having cunningly evaded marriage himself, for the drink-sodden life of him, enjoyed watching other people's. Superior clients he would urgently press to have sons and daughters who would marry soon. He had convincing arguments in favour of early marriage. 'Settle your children properly, you'll have grandchildren in no time. Look sharp and get your grandchildren settled, and you'll have greatgrandchildren!' In conclusion he would point to his good suit which could mix with anybody. Before grand weddings he had it pressed at thé cleaners, for ordinary ones he ironed it himself at home. Only one thing he begged leave to ask, and that was reasonable notice. When his services had not been in request for some time, he would offer — slow worker though he was by temperament — repairs while-you-wait for nothing. Usually unreliable, in this sphere he was a man of his word, did the shoes on the spot and charged really very little. Children — mostly young girls — so lost to their duty as to marry without their parents' knowledge, but not so lost as to dispense with marriage altogether, sometimes made use of him. Indiscretion incarnate, he was in these matters silent as the grave. Not by a flicker did he betray his clients, even though he recounted in pompous detail the tale of her daughter's wedding to her own unsuspecting mother. Before setting off for his 'little bit of heaven' — as he called it — he would fix to the door of his workshop an enormous notice. On it could be read in writhing, soot-black letters the message: 'Out on my business. Back sooner or later. The undersigned: Hubert Beredinger.'

He was the first to learn Therese's luck and doubted the truth of her story until, offended, she invited him to the registry office. When all was over, the witnesses followed the happy pair into the street. The oddman received his tip bowed down with gratitude. Muttering his congratulations he made his way off. "... at your service any other time ...', echoed in the ears of Mr. and Mrs. Kien. Ten paces off, his empty mouth was still mumbling with zeal. But Hubert Beredinger was bitterly disappointed. He did not hold with this sort of wedding. He had sent his suit out to be pressed; the bridegroom was in his working clothes, his shoes trodden over, his suit threadbare; without love or joy, instead of looking at the bride, he had been reading the words in the book. He said 'I will' no different from 'thank you'; then never even gave his arm to the old stick, and as for the kiss, the kiss on which the cobbler lived for weeks — a kiss by proxy was worth twenty of his own — the kiss which he'd have paid good money for, the kiss which was the 'business' hung up on his workshop door; the public kiss under official eyes; the bridal kiss; the kiss for all eternity; that kiss, that kiss had never happened at all. When they parted the cobbler refused his hand. He disguised his resentment under a hideous grin. 'Just a moment please,' he giggled, like a photographer, while the Kiens hesitated. Suddenly he bent down towards a woman, chucked her under the chin, smacked his lips loudly and with eager gestures outlined her opulent figure. His round face grew rounder and rounder, his cheeks blew out to bursting, his double chin splayed out far and wide, the lines round his eyes twitched, tiny nimble snakes; his tensed hands drew ever broader curves. From second to second the woman grew fatter. Twice he looked at her, the third time, encouragingly, at the bridegroom. Then he gathered her into his arms and felt with his left hand shamelessly for her bosom.

True, the woman with whom the cobbler was fooling was not there, but Kien understood the shameless dumb show and drew the watching Thérèse quickly away.

'Drunk even before lunch!' said Thérèse, and clamped herself to her husband's arm; she too was indignant.

At the next stop, they waited for the tram. To make it clear that one day — even a wedding day—was no different from any other Kien took no taxi. The tram came up; he mounted the step before her. One foot on the platform, he recollected that his wife ought to go first. His back to the street, he stepped off again and collided violently with Thérèse. Exasperated, the conductor rang the bell. The tram went on without them. "What's the matter?' Thérèse asked reproachfully. He had certainly hurt her a good deal. 'I wanted to help you up — that is, to help you, my dear.' 'Oh,' she said, 'that would be a nice thing.'

When they were at last seated, he paid for both of them. He hoped this would make amends for his clumsiness. The conductor gave the tickets to her. Instead of thanking him, she grinned broadly and nudged her husband with her shoulder. "What?* he asked. 'The things people think of!' she giggled and flourished the tickets at the stout back of the conductor. She was making fun of him, thought Kieh, and he said nothing.

He began to feel uncomfortable. The tram filled up. A woman sat down opposite him. She had, in all, four children with her, each smaller than the next. Two of them she clutched tightly on her lap, two of them remained standing. A gentleman, sitting on Therese's right, got out. 'Over there!' cried the mother, pushing her little brood across the gangway. The children made a rush for it, a little boy and a little girl, well under school age, the two of them. From the opposite direction an elderly gentleman was approaching. Thérèse put out her hands to protect the tree seat. The children crept underneath it. They were in haste to show they could manage by themselves. Close by the seat, their little heads popped up. Thérèse flicked them away like specks of dust. 'My children!' screamed their mother, 'what are you thinking of?'

'I ask you,' countered Thérèse and gave a meaning look at her husband. 'Children last.' By this time the elderly gentleman had reached the goal, thanked her, and sat down.

Kien understood the look in his wife's eyes. He wished his brother George were here. He had set up as a gynaecologist in Paris. Not yet thirty-five years old, he enjoyed a suspiciously high reputation. He knew far more about women than about books. A bare two years after he had completed his studies, society had placed itself in his hands in so far as it was ill, and it was always ill, all those sickly women anyway. This outward sign of success had earned him Peter's well-deserved contempt. He might perhaps have forgiven George his good looks, they were congenital, he was not to blame. He could never have forced himself to undergo a plastic operation in order to escape the injurious results of so much beauty; his was unhappily a weak character. How weak was clear from the fact that he had abandoned the special branch of medicine which he himself had first chosen in order to pass with flying colours into the realms of psychiatry. It was alleged that he had done some good work in this field. In his heart he had remained a gynaecologist. Loose living was in his blood. Eight years before, indignant at George's vacillation, Peter had abruptly broken off all correspondence with him and had subsequently torn up a whole series of anxious letters. He was not in the habit of answering letters which he had torn up.

His marriage would make the best possible occasion for resuming relations with him. Peter's suggestions had first awakened in George his taste for a career oflearning. It would be no disgrace to ask for his advice on a subject which lay within the domain of his real and natural branch of medicine. What was the right way to treat this timid, reserved creature? She was no longer young and took life very seriously. The woman who sat opposite was certainly a great deal younger, but she already had four children; Thérèse had none. 'Children last.' That sounded straightforward enough, but what did she really mean by it; She probably wanted no children; neither did he. He had never thought about children. For what purpose had she said that? Perhaps she took him for a person of no morals. But she knew his life. For eight years she had been aware of all his habits. She knew that he was a man of character. Did he ever go out at night? Had a woman ever called on him, even for a quarter of an hour? When she had first taken up her post with him, he had most emphatically explained to her that he received no visitors on principle, male or female, of whatever age, from infants in arms to octogenarians. She was to send everyone away. 'I have no time!' Those had been his very words. What devil had got into her? That shameless cobbler, perhaps? She was an innocent ingenuous creature; how otherwise, uneducated as she was, could she have acquired so great a love for books? But that dirty fellow's pantomime had been all too obvious. His gestures were self-explanatory; a child, without even knowing the reasons for his movements, would have understood that he had a woman in his arms. People of that kind, capable of losing control of themselves in the open street, ought to be segregated in asylums. They induce ugly thoughts in hard-working people. She was a hard-working woman. The cobbler had insinuated ideas into her head. Why else should children have occurred to her? It was not impossible that she might have heard something about such things. Women talk among themselves. She had perhaps been present at a birth, when she was in some other service. What did it signify if she did indeed know all there was to know? Better perhaps than if he had to explain it to her himself: There was a certain bashfulness in her expression; at her age it was faintly comic.

But Kien was surreptitiously contemplating the skirt. It was even bluer than usual and had been more stiffly starched. Her skirt was a part of her, as the mussel shell is a part of the mussel. Let no one try to force open the closed shell of a mussel. A gigantic mussel as huge as this dress. They have to be trodden on, to be trampled into slime and splinters, as he had once done when he was a child at the seaside. The mussel yielded not a chink. He had never seen one naked. What kind of an animal did the shell enclose with such impenetrable strength; He wanted to know, at once: he had the hard, stiff-necked thing between his hands, he tortured it with fingers and finger-nails; the mussel tortured him back. He vowed not to stir a step from the place until he had broken it open. The mussel took a different vow. She would not allow herself to be seen. Why should she be so modest, he thought, I shall let her go afterwards, as far as I'm concerned I shall shut her up again, I shan't hurt her, I promise I shan't, if she's deaf then God can surely explain to her what I'm promising. He argued with her for several hours. But his words were as impotent as his fingers. He hated roundabout methods, he liked to reach his goal the direct way. Towards evening a great ship passed by, far out at sea. His eyes devoured the huge black letters on its side and read the name Alexander. Then he laughed in the midst of his rage, pulled on his shoes in a twinkling, hurled the mussel with all his strength to the ground and performed a Gordian dance of victory. Now her shell was utterly useless to her. His shoes crushed it to pieces. Soon he had the creature stark naked on the ground, a miserable fleck of fraudulent slime, not an animal at all.

Thérèse without her shell — without her dress —did not exist. It was always immaculately ironed. It was her binding, blue cloth. She set great store by a good binding. Why did the folds not crumple up after a time? It was evident that she ironed it very often. Perhaps she had two. There was no visible difference. A clever woman. I must not crush her skirt. She would faint with grief. What shall I do if she suddenly faints? I shall ask her to excuse me beforehand. She can iron her skirt again immediately afterwards. While she is doing it I shall go into another room. Why does she not simply put on the other one though? She puts too many difficulties in my way. She was my housekeeper, I have married her. She can buy herself a dozen skirts and change more often. Then it will be quite sufficient to starch them less stiffly. Exaggerated hardness is absurd. The people in the tram were right.

It was not easy going up the stairs. Without noticing it, he slackened lus pace. On the second floor he thought he was already at his own door at the top, and started back. The little Metzger boy came running down the stairs singing. Hardly had he seen Kien, when he pointed to Thérèse and complained: 'She won't let me in! She always shuts the door in my face. Scold her, Professor!'

'What is the meaning of this?' asked Kien threateningly, grateful for a scapegoat in the hour of need.

'You said I could come. I told her you said so.'

'"Her". Who is that?'

'Her.'

'Her?'

'Yes, my mother said, she's no right to be rude, she's only a servant.'

'Miserable brat!' shouted Kien and reached out to box his ears. The child ducked, tripped, fell forwards and to save himself from shooting down the stairs clutched at Therese's skirt. There was the sound of starched linen cracking.

'What!' cried Kien, 'more impertinence!' The brat was making fun of him. Beside himself with rage, he gave him a couple of kicks, dragged him panting to his feet by the hair, boxed his ears once or twice with his bony hands and pushed him out of the way. The child ran up the stairs whimpering. 'I'll tell mother! I'll tell mother!' A door on the floor above was opened and closed again. A woman's voice was heard raised in protest.

'It's a shame for the beautiful skirt,' Thérèse excused the violence of the blows, stood still and looked in a special way at her protector, It was high time to prepare her for what was to come. Something must be said. He too stood still.

'Yes, indeed, the beautiful skirt. "Youth's a stuff will not endure," ' he quoted, happy for the chance of indicating in the words of a beautiful ancient poem what must later come to pass. A poem was always the best way of saying something. Poems can be found for every occasion. They call things by the most formal of names and yet they are perfectly comprehensible. As he walked on up the stairs, he turned back towards her and said:

'A beautiful poem, don't you think?'

'Oh yes, poems are always beautiful. You've got to understand them, though.'

'Many things need understanding,' he said slowly, and blushed.

Thérèse jogged him in the ribs with her elbow, shrugged up her right shoulder, twisted her head round the opposite way and said pointedly and with a challenge in her voice: 'We shall see what we shall see. Still waters run deep.'

He had the feeling that she meant him. He took her remarks for a sign of disapproval. He regretted his immodest hints. The mocking tone of her answer robbed him of the rest of his courage.

'I — er, I didn't mean it quite like that,' he faltered.

The door of his own flat saved him from further embarrassment. He was relieved to be able to dive into his pocket for the keys. It gave him at least a reasonable excuse for lowering his eyes. He could not find the keys.

'I have forgotten the keys,' he said. Now he would have to break open his own flat, as he had once broken open the mussel. One difficulty after another; he could do nothing right. With a sinking heart he dived into the other trouser pocket. No, the keys were nowhere to be found. He was still searching, when he heard a sound from the lock of the door. Burglars ! The idea flashed through his mind. At the same moment he saw her hand on the lock.

'That's why I brought mine with me,' she said, puffing herself out with satisfaction.

How fortunate he had not shouted for help. The cry had been on the tip of his tongue. He would never have been able to look her in the face again. He was behaving like a small boy. Not to have his keys with him, such a thing had never happened before.

At last they were inside the flat. Thérèse opened the door to the room in which he slept and signed him to go in. 'I shall be back at once,' she said, and left him there alone.

He looked round and breathed deeply, a man set free.

Yes, this was his home. Here no harm could come to him. He smiled at the mere idea that any harm could come to him here. He avoided looking at the divan on which he slept. Every human creature needed a home, not a home of the kind understood by crude knock-you-down patriots, not a religion either, a mere insipid foretaste of a heavenly home: no, a real home, in which space, work, friends, recreation, and the scope of a man's ideas came together into an orderly whole, into — so to speak — a personal cosmos. The best definition of a home was a library. It was wisest to keep women out of the home. Should the decision however be made to take in a woman, it was essential to assimilate her first fully into the home, as he had done. For eight long, quiet, patient years the books had seen to the subjugation of this woman for him. He himself had not so much as lifted a finger. His friends had conquered the woman in his name. Certainly there is much to be said against women, only a fool would marry without a certain testing time. He had been clever enough to put off the event until his fortieth year. Let others seek to emulate his eight years of testing! Gradually the inevitable had borne fruit. Man alone was master of his fate. When he came to think it over carefully, he saw that a wife was the only thing he had lacked. He was not a man of the world — at the word 'man of the world' he saw his brother George the gynaecologist before his eyes —he was everything else, but not a man of the world. Yet the bad dreams of these last days were doubtless connected with the exaggerated austerity of his life. Everything would be different now.

It was ridiculous to feel any more depression at the task before him. He was a man, what was to happen next? Happen? No, that was going too far. First he must decide when it was to happen. Now. She would put up a desperate defence. No matter. It was understandable, when a woman was fighting to save her last secret. As soon as it was over, she would fall in admiration before him, because he was a man. All women are said to be like that. The hour had struck. Resolved. He gave himself his word upon it.

Next: where was it to happen? An ugly question. True, all this time he had been staring straight at a divan bed. His eyes had been gliding over the bookshelves, and the divan bed with them. The mussel from the seashore lay on it, gigantic and blue. Wherever his eyes rested, the divan bed rested too, oppressed and clumsy. It looked as if it had to bear the whole burden of the bookshelves. When Kien found himself in the neighbourhood of the real divan bed, he would twist his head round and the bed would come gliding all the way back to its right place. Now that he had made a resolution on his word of honour, he examined it more accurately and at greater length. His eyes indeed, out of habit no doubt, still wandered from time to time. But in the end they came to rest. The divan bed, the real live divan bed was empty and had neither mussels nor burdens upon it. But suppose it were made to carry a burden? Suppose it were covered with a layer of beautiful books? Suppose it were covered all over with books, so that it could not be seen at all?

Kien obeyed his inspired impulse. He collected a mass of books together and carefully piled them up on the divan. He would have preferred to select some from the top shelves but time was short; she had said she would be back directly. He renounced the idea, left the step-ladder as it was and made do with selected works from the lower shelves. He laid four or five heavy volumes one on top of another, fondled them briefly and hurried off in search of others. Inferior works he rejected, so as not to hurt the woman's feelings. True she knew nothing about them, but he selected carefully on her behalf all the same, for she had insight and sensibility where books were concerned. She would be coming directly. As soon as she saw the divan bed covered with books, orderly woman that she was, she would go up to it and ask where the volumes belonged. In this way he would lure the unsuspecting creature into the trap. A conversation would easily arise on the titles of the books. Step by step he would go on ahead, guiding her gradually on the way. The shock which lay before her was the crowning event in a woman's life. He would not frighten her, he would help her. There was only one way of acting, boldly and with determination. Precipitancy was hateful to him. He blessed the books in silence. If only she didn t scream.

A little while before he had heard a faint sound as though the door in the fourth room had been opened. He took no notice, he had more important things to do. He contemplated the armoured divan from his writing desk, to see the effect, and his heart overflowed with love and gratitude towards the books. Then he heard her voice:

'Here I am.'

He turned round. She was standing on the threshold of the neighbouring room, in a dazzling white petticoat with wide lace insertions. He had looked first for the blue, the danger. Horrified, his eyes travelled up her figure; she had kept on her blouse.

Thank God. No skirt. Now there would be no need to crush anything. Was this respectable? But how fortunate. I would have been ashamed. How could she bring herself to do it? I should have said: Take it off. I couldn't have done it. So naturally she stood there. As though we had known each other for a long time. Naturally, my wife. In every marriage. How did she know? She was in service. With a married couple. She must have seen things. Like animals. They know what to do by nature. She had no books in her head.