When I held out my hand, she turned aside her forehead with a savage motion and vanished.
“You wouldn’t have killed her when out hunting, Max?” I asked.
“Kill a doe?
Why not a woman?” was his simple reply.
That day we had lunched in Ville-d’Avray, like everybody, at that restaurant with peculiar outdoor dining areas overhanging the edge of the pond, areas for sleeping in, as well.
We were as well-behaved as lovers who have already had their fill.
It pleased me to note that Max had the same impassioned serenity which trees and fresh, freely blowing breezes instill in me. Leaning on my elbows, I watched the flat water of the pond, clouded, rusty in spots, and the hazel bushes with their pendent catkins.
Then my eyes turned back to my good life-companion, in the firm hope of constructing for him a happiness as lasting as that life itself . . .
Will I really leave?
There are hours when I prepare for my departure as if in a dream.
My dressing case, the rolled traveling rug, and the raincoat, exhumed from my closets, have seen the light of day again, dented, scratched, as if worn out by wayfaring . . .
Disgustedly, I’ve poured out jars of rancid white greasepaint and vaseline that had turned yellow and were reeking of petroleum . . .
These tools of my trade I now handle unlovingly.
And when Brague came to ask how I was doing, I welcomed him so absentmindedly and cavalierly that he left very cross and, what’s more serious, with an exceedingly polite “farewell, dear friend.”
Bah!
During those forty days I’ll have plenty of time to see him and cheer him up again! . . .
I’m expecting him any minute now for his final instructions.
Max will arrive a little later . . .
“Good day, dear friend.”
I expected this! My partner is still annoyed with me.
“No, listen, Brague, enough of that!
The aristocratic style doesn’t become you at all! We’re here for a serious talk. You remind me of Dranem playing Louis XIV when you call me ‘dear friend’!”
Brightening at once, Brague protests:
“The aristocratic style! Why not?
I can beat Castellane at his own game when I put my mind to it!
You’ve never seen me in evening clothes?”
“No!”
“Neither have I . . . Say, your little . . . boudoir is dark! What about going to your bedroom? There’s more light for talking.”
“Let’s go to my room . . .”
Brague immediately catches sight of a photo of Max on the mantelpiece: Max in a new jacket, stiff, the black of his hair too black, the white of his eyes too white, looking official and a little foolish, but still very handsome.
Brague examines the picture, while rolling a cigarette:
“This guy must be your boyfriend, right?”
“He’s . . . my boyfriend, yes.”
And I give a nice smile, with an imbecilic air.
“He’s elegant, there’s no denying it!
You’d swear he was a cabinet minister!
What makes you laugh?”
“Nothing . . . it’s that notion that he could be a cabinet minister!
That’s not his style at all.”
Brague lights his cigarette and observes me from the corner of his eye:
“Taking him along?”
I shrug my shoulders:
“No, of course not!
It’s impossible!
How can you want that?”
“That’s just it, I don’t want it!” Brague exclaims, reassured. “You’re right, kid, let me tell you!
All the tours I’ve seen that got screwed up because Madame doesn’t want to leave Monsieur, or Monsieur wants to keep an eye on Madame!
They quarrel, then they’re all kissy-kissy, they squabble again, and then they make it up so thoroughly that you can’t pry them out of the sack; Madame’s legs wobble onstage and her eyes have black rings: it makes life hell, I assure you! . . .
Give me a nice trip with just buddies every time!
You know me, I’ve never changed my mind on that subject: love and business don’t mix.