Unmasked
The boat was crowded with people. The crossing promised to be calm, and the Havre people were going to make an excursion to Trouville.
The ropes were cast off; a final shriek from the whistle announced our departure, and at the same moment the ship shuddered through her whole body, and along her flanks rose the sound of water rushing.
The paddles revolved for some seconds, stopped, and started again slowly: then the captain, standing on his bridge, shouted into the telephone that goes down into the bowels of the engine room, “Right away,” and they began to churn up the sea at full speed.
We glided along past the quay, crowded with people. The people on the boat waved their handkerchiefs as if they were setting out for America, and their friends on shore waved back in like manner.
The burning July sun poured down on red sunshades, on light frocks, on happy faces, on the almost unruffled sea. Once outside the harbour, the little boat swung sharply round, turning her narrow nose towards the far-off coast half seen through the morning haze.
On our left gaped the mouth of the Seine, twenty kilometres across. Here and there large buoys marked the position of the sandbanks, and from this distance we could see the smooth discoloured waters of the river that did not mix with the salt water but stretched out in long yellow ribbons across the vast clear green spaces of the open sea.
As soon as I am aboard a ship, I feel an irresistible impulse to stride up and down, like a sailor keeping his watch. Why? I don’t know. So I begin to tramp round the bridge through the crowd of travellers.
Suddenly I heard my name. I turned round. It was an old friend of mine, Henri Sidoine, whom I had not seen for ten years.
We shook hands and, talking of one thing and another, we began to prowl up and down again together like bears in a cage, much as I had been doing alone just before. And as we talked we eyed the two rows of travellers seated along both sides of the bridge.
All at once Sidoine, his face distorted with anger, exclaimed:
“This boat is full of English people! The swine!”
It really was full of English people. The men stood up and looked at the horizon through their glasses, with a portentous air, as who should say: “We, we English, are the rulers of the waves. Boom, boom, look at us now!”
And all the white sun veils floating from their white hats looked like the waving flags of their complete self-sufficiency.
The gawky young ladies, whose footgear resembled their country’s dreadnoughts, clasped shawls of many colours round their stiff bodies and skinny arms, and smiled vacantly at the brilliant seascape. Their tiny heads, pushed out at the ends of these long bodies, bore queer-shaped English hats, and the meagre rolls of hair resting on the nape of their necks looked like coiled snakes.
And the ancient spinsters, even skinnier, exposing their British jawbones to the widest extent, looked as if they were threatening the universe with their monstrous yellow teeth.
Walking past them, one caught a whiff of india-rubber and mouthwash.
With growing indignation, Sidoine repeated:
“The swine! Why can’t we stop their coming into France?”
I smiled and asked him:
“Why do you want to do that? As far as I’m concerned, they’re a matter of complete indifference.”
He retorted:
“It’s all very well for you. But I, I married an Englishwoman. And there you have it.”
I stood still and laughed in his face.
“Oh, the devil you did! Tell me about it. She makes you very unhappy, does she?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“No, not exactly.”
“Then … she … she … deceives you?”
“Unfortunately no. That would give me grounds for divorce and I should be vastly relieved thereby.”
“Well, I don’t understand it, then.”
“You don’t understand? That doesn’t surprise me. Well, it’s nothing more than the fact that she has learned French! Listen:
“I had not the least desire in the world to get married when two years ago I went to spend the summer at Étretat. There’s nothing so fatal as these seaside towns. One overlooks the fact that slips of girls look their best in these places. Paris suits women and the country suits young girls.
“The donkey rides, the morning bathe, picnic luncheons, are so many matrimonial snares. And really there is nothing more charming than an eighteen-year-old child running across a field or gathering flowers by the roadside.
“I made the acquaintance of an English family staying at the same hotel as I was. The father looked like the men you see over there, and the mother like all other Englishwomen.
“There were two sons, the type of bony youth that plays violent games from morning to evening, with balls, sticks, or rackets; then two girls, the eldest a dry stick, another of those Englishwomen like preserved fruits; the younger a marvellous creature. A fair, or rather a flaxen-haired, girl, with a head conceived in heaven. When these pretty rogues make themselves charming, they are divine. This one had blue eyes, eyes of that blueness which seems to hold all the poetry, all the romance, all the ideals, all the joy of earth.
“What a world of infinite dreams is opened to you by a woman’s eyes, such eyes as those! How it calls to the eternal longings and confused desires of our hearts!
“You must remember, too, that we French adore foreigners. As soon as we meet a Russian, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, or English woman with the least claims to beauty, we fall instantly in love. Everything that comes from abroad delights us extravagantly—broadcloth, hats, gloves, guns, and—women.
“We are wrong, however.
“But I believe that what attracts us most in strange women is their broken speech. Immediately a woman speaks our language badly, we find her charming; if she uses quite the wrong French words, she is entrancing, and if she babbles a quite unintelligible dialect she become irresistible.
“You cannot imagine how charming it is to hear an adorable rosy mouth say: ‘J’aime bôcoup la gigotte.’
“My little English Kate spoke a language like nothing on earth. For the first few days I couldn’t understand it at all, she invented so many amazing words; then I became completely infatuated with this absurd lighthearted jargon.
“In her mouth all the odd, mangled, and ridiculous phrases became utterly fascinating; and every evening on the terrace of the Casino we held long conversations which were no more than a succession of enigmatic phrases.
“I married her! I loved her to distraction, as a dream can be loved. For what your true lover adores is always a dream in the form of a woman.
“You remember the admirable verses of Louis Bouilhet:
“Tu n’as jamais été, dans tes jours les plus rares,
Qu’un banal instrument sous mon archet vainqueur,
Et, comme un air qui sonne au bois creux des guitares,
J’ai fait chanter mon rêve au vide de ton coeur.21
“Ah, well, my dear, the only mistake I made was to give my wife a French teacher.
“As long as she murdered our vocabulary, and tortured our grammar, I was fond of her.
“Our conversations were simple. They revealed to me the amazing beauty of her person, the incomparable grace of her gestures; they presented her to me in the guise of a wonderful speaking toy, a flesh-and-blood puppet made for kisses, able to stammer a few words to tell what she loved, sometimes to utter quaint exclamations, and to express in a fashion adorable because so incomprehensible and unexpected, her emotions and her unsophisticated sensations.
“She was like nothing but those pretty playthings that say ‘papa’ and ‘mamma,’ pronouncing them Bab-ba and Mab-ma.
“How could I have believed that …
“She can speak, now. … She can speak … badly … very badly. … She makes quite as many mistakes. … But she can make herself understood … yes, I understand her … I know what she says … I know her. …”
“I have broken my doll to look at her inside. … I have seen it. … And still I have to go on talking to her, my dear!
“Oh, you can have no idea of the opinions, the notions, the theories of a young and well brought-up English girl, whom I have no cause to reproach, and who recites to me from morning to night all the phrases out of a phrase-book for the use of schoolgirls and young persons.
“You have seen those cotillion favours, those pretty gilded paper packets which contain utterly detestable bonbons. I got one of them. I tore it open. I wanted to eat the contents, and now I am all the time so savagely disgusted that I feel a positive nausea at the mere sight of one of her countrymen.
“I have married a woman who is like nothing but a parrot that an old English governness has taught to speak French: do you understand?”
We were in sight of the crowded wooden quays of Trouville Harbour.
I said:
“Where is your wife?”
“I have taken her to Étretat,” he declared.
“And you, where are you going?”
“I? I am going to Trouville to distract my mind.”
Then, after a pause, he added:
“You simply cannot imagine how utterly stupid some women can be.”