In the Park

by MONICA STIRLING

IT WAS dark and it was raining. So there were fewer people than usual in the Pare Monceau half an hour before closing time. Among them was Mademoiselle Bérénice Rousseau.

Mademoiselle Bérénice seldom visited the Parc Monceau. Being there made her uncomfortable, although she had years ago forgotten why. Today, however, the rain had caught her: without an umbrella, without a direct Métro or autobus home, without the money for a taxi, she had to take a short cut through the park.

The rain was not falling heavily. This was lucky for Mademoiselle Bérénice. Because she could not walk fast. Her shoes pinched her corns, and the hottest summer Paris had known for years — the concierge said the newspapers said it was hotter in Paris than in Africa, imagine — had made her ankles swell.

Mademoiselle Bérénice was forty-nine but, although her ligure was not bulky, looked more. She was tall, with the big bones that are apt to deprive a woman of access to pathos, and her face was neither good nor bad looking but suggested a patient horse. Mademoiselle Bérénice’s parents came from Auvergne. She had the indifferent, slouching carriage of a woman who seldom looks at herself, and wore a black hat, coat, and shoes that looked as if they had been bought several years before the war. They had. And they had been cheap then. Her coat, which was unsuitable for summer, had a collar of imitation astrakhan and her shoes had a strap over the instep and three buttons. Her gloves and stockings were of fawncolored cotton, and although her handbag was not as big as those now fashionable, it was big enough to contain her keys, purse, comb, Métro and autobus tickets, identity card, lunch sandwiches — dark brown bread with pale pink charcuterie — and a folded newspaper. Mademoiselle Bérénice read the Figaro regularly. She was a good Catholic and staunch admirer of Monsieur Francois Mauriac’s editorials.

The name Bérénice did not suit Mademoiselle Bérénice at all. When she was young she had been aware of this and distressed by it. But only mildly. She was almost without personal vanity and had a profound respect for her parents. They had given her this name because they had seen Bérénice performed at the Comédie-Française during their honeymoon. Mademoiselle Bérénice had seen it herself, for the first time, a year ago. She would have enjoyed it, had it not made her cry. When she cried, her eyelids became red and swollen in record time. She had occasionally wished, without intensity, that she was capable of crying as did the heroines of the few films she had seen — large eyes wide open, pearly tears creeping over long lower lashes and impeccable cheeks without detrimental effect.

The sandy path crunched beneath Mademoiselle Bérénice’s feet. There was no doubt about it, her shoes needed resoling. Life was very difficult, with half the tradespeople on holiday, and those who had not got Fermeture Annuelle scrawled across their shuttered windows unwilling to work save for fabulous prices. It’s all very well for the Socialists to talk. They don’t know what it is. But the Parc Monceau smelled so fragrant that Mademoiselle Bérénice forgot the Socialists, whose presence in her imagination was as shadowy as it was threatening, and began to remember her childhood’s holidays in the country. Life had been easier then, colors brighter, shapes more defined, food more appetizing.

Mademoiselle Bérénice’s feet were hurting her now. How odd it was, she thought, that when you were young you never believed you would have to reckon with your body. No matter how many elderly relatives were crippled with arthritis or rheumatism — you knew a similar fate would never overtake you. Not that Mademoiselle Bérénice had been young long.

Her parents had met in the post office, where they both worked. Her father had been detailed to teach her mother her job, when the latter arrived, small and dark and in need of a restraining hand to prevent her cheeking stupid customers. Mademoiselle Bérénice’s father had enjoyed being a restraining hand. And Mademoiselle Bérénice’s mother had enjoyed being restrained. As a result they had not only loved but flirted with each other until death them did part. Which it did in 1916. Two years after Monsieur Rousseau had been killed at Verdun, Madame Rousseau died of Spanish flu. By this time all youthful impulses had been annihilated in Mademoiselle Bérénice, who was unresentfully selling stamps for 50 francs a month.

2

AFTER her mother’s funeral Mademoiselle Bérénice went to live with an elderly aunt who was the widow of a postman. The aunt’s name was Sophie and she was of the most extreme propriety. It never occurred to Mademoiselle Bérénice to treat authority with anything but respect, or bereavement with anything but resignation. So the love and tenderness no one required of her withered into a gratuitous submissiveness about which there was nothing servile. The fact that her character included elements of grandeur served only to make her as unhappy as acting ability would make a person who had never heard of theaters.

Mademoiselle Bérénice was neither popular nor unpopular with her post-office colleagues. They paid less attention to her than to the flies that plagued them in summer. But she was liked by her customers: untouched by the gloating sadism that is apt to be the functionary’s most remarkable feature, she never found herself at a loss for stamps, change, or information without unmistakably genuine regret; and whenever she formed part of a couple one of whom was at fault she instinctively assumed that one to be herself. For this she was heartily despised by her concierge, a pejorative individual who was extremely fond of reading newspapers and misquoting the most alarming passages.

Mademoiselle Bérénice’s aptitude for being downtrodden would not have developed at the expense of most of her other qualities had it not been for the fact that during the First World War she had loved and lost. That it was preferable to have done this than not to have loved at all was among the many notions that never occurred to her. She had loved a telegraph boy of her own age and he had loved her. Neither had loved before and it was their intention to marry. But before they could do so patriotism and a desire to impress Bérénice — who was already impressed by him to the point of idolatry — had led Yves to give a false age and enter the Air Corps, in which service he was killed. At this point Mademoiselle would have liked to die. But she considered it her duty to her widowed mother to live. So she did, in a subdued manner — and reproached herself for selfish expenditure after buying a black dress.

During the next months Mademoiselle Bérénice cried often and long. With Yves dead her eyelids might become as red and swollen as tomatoes for all she cared. But she never cried save when alone. For she knew that she had not grieved like this for her father and she did not want to hurt her mother’s feelings. When her mother died, Mademoiselle Bérénice thought she had no more tears left. But she discovered herself mistaken. She did not complain. This, she concluded, was life — an opinion Tante Sophie approved and encouraged.

After this, little happened to Mademoiselle Bérénice. She continued to sell stamps, she occasionally ate her lunch on the banks of the Seine on her free days; and the Second World War altered for her only the quality of her sandwiches. She did not like it when German soldiers entered the post office, but the apathetic sadness that hung between her and the rest of the world like a semiopaque curtain prevented her viewing them with more than puzzled distaste.

She was earning 3500 francs a month now. It did not buy so much as 50 francs had once done. Fortunately she had a small appetite. When she was sixty-three — or sixty if the new law were passed — she would be able to retire with a pension of two thirds her salary. The idea of retirement did not excite her. She had come to think of the sending and receiving of letters as the world’s main activity, and she would miss her grandstand view.

Mademoiselle Bérénice did not often think of Yves. She had loved him so long ago. Had she married him she would probably now have children older than he was when he died. No doubt she had, in many ways, been spared. Children so often disappointed their parents. Especially modern children. Her aunt often said she ought to think of this. God knew what He was doing. Tante Sophie was particularly fond of people who knew what they were doing. She was a remarkable woman. Age had impaired none of her convictions. On the contrary.

It was lucky for Mademoiselle Bérénice, who was inclined to vacillation, that she had had so character-forming a relative to whom to turn.

Nevertheless, Mademoiselle Bérénice was not anxious to return to her aunt this evening. She did not admit this to herself. She preferred to admit that her shoes were pinching her swollen feet so badly as to necessitate her resting on one of the park benches.

A little breeze had sprung up. It should have been pleasant after the excessive heat of the day. But it was not. Fumbling for the snap fasteners at her collar, Mademoiselle Berenice thought how pleasant it must be to live in a country with a good climate. Italy for instance. There had been a customer in the post office this morning who wanted to send a letter to Rome as quickly as possible: a young girl with pretty fair hair and big brown eyes. She had been in a state about her letter. How long does the air mail take? Oh! — an exasperated sigh — but if one sends it express as well, doesn’t that make it go quicker? Oh what is the post office for, for the love of God? Angrily, anxiously, suspiciously, she had pushed a bulky white envelope across the worn brown counter. Mademoiselle Bérénice saw again the big unformed writing, in purple ink: Signor Valentino Danesi; heard again the impatient, ardent “But how soon — oh can’t you tell?” Another sigh. Then the grubby little hand with the big cheap engagement ring was knuckled to push the thick curled fringe off the sweating forehead.

While Mademoiselle Bérénice sat, uneasily remembering the girl’s transports, a light was turned on in one of the attic windows of the big gray houses that ring the Parc Monceau. Mademoiselle Bérénice looked quickly away from it. Her eyes were not what they had been. But spectacles came so expensive. And after all she could see well enough, couldn’t she? She could. Well enough to distinguish two heads, two pairs of shoulders, the burning butt of a cigarette, at the window. Presently the cigarette was put out, the two heads drew closer. At last they pressed against each other. Mademoiselle Bérénice’s bad sight became suddenly worse. Unable to see what was before her, she remembered what was long behind her.

3

YVES had lived in an attic overlooking the Parc Monceau, with his mother, who was a dressmaker. Their living room had contained an imitation Turkish carpet, mirrors with tarnished gilt frames, rickety little tables strewn with plush pincushions alive with pinheads, crumpled paper patterns the color of milky coffee, and half a dozen wooden dressmaker’s dummies draped with cheap material.

And there, in the midst of this stuffy, feminine atmosphere, was Yves, slight and trim in his uniform. He had bright brown hair and bright blue eyes and a gaily authoritative manner of holding out his arms and saying, “Come here, baby.” This endearment had not yet been cheapened by frequent and inappropriate use in films, and the adolescent Bérénice had never heard it without feeling as though something in her — just below where she had been told her heart was, and just above where she had been told her stomach was

— something in her were first swelling, then contracting, then turning over. Slightly alarmed and very delighted by this sensation, which never failed to take her by surprise, the adolescent Bérénice had to close her eyes tightly, draw breath sharply before

— smiling, blushing, trembling, looking momentarily almost pretty, momentarily almost worthy of her romantic name — she was able to run to Yves and put her thin arms round him.

Their longing to be near each other was so overwhelming, so agonizingly pleasant that at first they could do nothing but clasp each other tighter and lighter and tighter. Then Bérénice would be shaken into speech. Softly, quickly, desperately, as though they were in a condemned cell with only a few minutes of life before them, she would whisper, “Oh my darling my love my beloved my rabbit my dear heart.” And Yves would press his head down against hers, so she felt the hardness of his cheekbone through the soft skin, and murmur, with a catch in his voice that brought tears to her eyes, “Oh darling darling darling.” And, as they exchanged eager inexperienced kisses, they realized, for the first time in their narrowly circumscribed lives, that the world was a very big place. Delivering telegrams, flying aeroplanes, selling stamps, and fighting anxiety were only a few of its contents, the rest of which were suddenly revealed to them by love — blindingly, confusingly — as the contents of a packed and moonlit antique shop are suddenly revealed by a switched-on electric light.

Oh world! Oh time! Each suddenly weak with pity for all those unfortunates who were not loved by the other, Yves and Bérénice would kiss again and again, pausing only to take each other’s faces between their hands and murmur endearments and promises and inarticulate expressions of their conviction that the present was beautiful, the future beautifully promising, and virtue all about them, waiting only to be put to use.

Both had been brought up to think it sinful to make love before one was married, and each would rather have died than involve the other in sin. So despite the waves of desire that punctuated their meetings with sudden blushes, sudden pallors, irrational tears and laughter and trembling, it did not occur to them to do more than kiss and murmur over and over again the classic murmurs: Oh my darling, what is it my darling, when did you first, Oh so did I, Oh darling yes, please say it again, promise me you’ll never love anyone else, as if I could, you’re so beautiful, there’s no one like you, when we are married, when the war’s over, when we are married, Oh darling! I do love you so much, Oh darling.

So entranced were they that neither was aware of hearing the bell ringing through the park below to announce closing time — but neither was subsequently ever to dissociate the faint, shrill, monotonous sound of a distant bell from the smell of damp grass and leaves, the sight of enlaced couples slowly crossing electric-lighted, tree-shadowed paths, and the taste of kisses that seemed to promise that life might, after all, make more than just sense.

The two heads disappeared from the attic window, and a few seconds later the light went out. As it did so, it seemed to Mademoiselle Bérénice that something in her breast clicked. She fumbled for a handkerchief. But her ill-fitting cotton gloves made her clumsy and, instead of finding the handkerchief, she spilled the contents of her pocketbook. Seized by disproportionate anguish, she tugged at her right glove. With a little snap the button fell off. It was small and the same color as the path, so she had little chance of finding it. As she bent down — sighing because her back was painfully stiff—her pocketbook slipped from her lap onto the wet gravel. This was too much. For the first time in forty-nine years Mademoiselle Bérénice felt that she was being unjustly treated.

A small, choking sound escaped her. Abandoning the effort to feel for her tumbled belongings, she began to cry. She cried very quietly, with the discretion that had years ago become habitual to her. It was very provoking, having lost her handkerchief. She rubbed her eyes, hard and unskillfully, as if by doing this she might stop herself crying. But still the tears came. They came so fast they almost choked her.

Waves of painful feeling seemed to be beating up from her feet to her head. First she was too hot, then too cold. And she was as incapable of stopping trembling as of stopping crying. For the first time in her life she would have liked to scream. But reasonable people do not scream in public. Nor in private. And the worst of it was that she had no idea why she was crying. But Tante Sophie said there was a reason for everything, so there must be a reason for her tears. Desperately, conscientiously, Mademoiselle Bérénice searched for one. And at last she found it: her feet were hurting her badly. Still crying she bent and fumbling undid the buttons of her shoes. Painfully, she freed her feet, placing them one on top of either imitation leather shoe. Relief washed upward over her ankles. There was no doubt about it, she felt better. But still she could not stop crying. She began to feel first mystified, then frightened. This exacerbated her grief. She pressed her ungloved hand over the collar and front of her coat. Both were wet. But whether from tears or rain she did not know.

While she was battling with what was beginning to seem to her like the first onslaughts of insanity, a boy and a girl came and sat on the nearest bench, which was in a pale yellow circle of lamp light. They looked very young, very poor, very plain, and very happy. No sooner had they sat down than they put their arms around each other and began kissing and murmuring, the sounds they made almost undistinguishable from those the wind was making in the trees. Almost, but not quite.

A spasm of pain, which she took for neuralgia, made Mademoiselle Bérénice curve her round shoulders, clench her rheumatic hands. Her uncovered feet and scattered belongings forgotten, her hat awry, her hair disordered, her unpowdered face sodden, she looked wildly from the kissing couple to the dark window behind which another couple were doubtless embracing. She no longer heard the wind in the trees. Its sibilance made way, in her ears, for that of silly young voices: Oh my darling, what is it my darling, when did you first, Oh so did I, Oh darling darling darling. . . .

Mademoiselle Bérénice’s clenched hands began to beat a tattoo against her bony knees. It was as if she were trying to tap an answer to the question shrilling through her as the alarm shrills through a fire station: trying, but not succeeding. Because although she knew neither whom she was asking: What is life worth without this? nor what she meant by the vaguely comprehensive word “this,” Mademoiselle Bérénice was quite certain that there never had and never would exist a satisfactory answer.

4

SUDDENLY she stopped crying. Her stopping was as inexplicable to her as her starting had been. She felt very old and very tired. But site did not feel ashamed. Although she knew she ought to have done so. Crying in public. What would Tante Sophie have said? It was a pity that Mademoiselle Bérénice asked herself this question. Because it roused a prompt answer: shocked as a convent-bred girl who suddenly discovers in herself the makings of an atheist, Mademoiselle Bérénice found herself thinking that Tante Sophie might not be infallible.

After a long sigh that was almost a sob, she buttoned her damp feet into their shoes, scraped some of her belongings — and a handful of gravel — into her pocketbook, wiped her face with her glove, thrust some wisps of hair over her ears, and adjusted her hat. Then she stood up, with difficulty.

As she did so, a bell began to ring on the other side of the park. The enclasped couple on the near-by bench separated. Oh darling, they groaned, oh darling, where can we go, Oh I can’t bear it, shall we never have a place to ourselves where they’ll leave us alone? For the second time that evening a sense of injustice raged through Mademoiselle Bérénice. For her, as for the young couple clutching each other’s hands upon the public bench, life had been arbitrarily ruled by an inexplicable deity known as They. They ruled one’s schooldays, They chose one’s work, They made one’s salary less than the cost of living, They manifested themselves in human form via teachers, employers, priests, and — failing all else — elderly relatives. They droned over one’s life with an effect as menacing as that of a bomber interminably circling over civilians who have not even an air-raid shelter to give an illusion of being protected. They They They. Suddenly: I hate They, cried Mademoiselle Bérénice.

Although she had not done so, she imagined she had spoken aloud and her sagging cheeks became mottled with humiliation. Anxiously, she glanced at the lovers. But they had not noticed her. They had eyes only for each other. Bain or no rain, closing time or no closing time, the lovers were happy: the lovers thought they had escaped They. But Mademoiselle Bérénice knew better, and after a last pitying glance from bench to window and back again she made a limping escape from the scene.

She could not, however, escape the sound of the bell announcing closing time. Closing time, closing time, all out, all out: faint and sweet and insistent it seemed to Mademoiselle Bérénice to proclaim the death of hope. Her feet painfully aware of the inequalities of the path beneath them, her face so sodden by rain that she no longer knew whether she was crying or not, Mademoiselle Berenice limped home.

The concierge was on holiday and her deputy was deaf. So Mademoiselle Berenice had to wait in the rain for what seemed to her a long time before the front door creaked open: long enough to come to a decision. At first, this decision shocked her. But by the time she had climbed to the fifth floor — the elevator was not working — it seemed to her first an inevitable, then a reasonable decision.

Tante Sophie was in bed and asleep. Making as little noise as possible, in order not to disturb her relative — it is so difficult for old people to sleep — Mademoiselle Bérénice went to the bathroom and found Tante Sophie’s sleeping tablets. Then she washed her face, cleaned her own teeth, and put her false ones in a glass of water with a dash of disinfectant, Then she went to her room and put her hat on the shelf, her coat on a coat hanger, and her shoes on shoe trees. Then she took from the bottom of the wardrobe a small cardboard box containing a packet of short letters and a yellowed snapshot of a very solemn young man in an ill-fitting uniform who had so little connection with the proud and dashing Yves whom Bérénice remembered that she felt obliged to make one more journey — to the kitchen for matches.

The matches were post-war ones, evil-smelling, giving off just a faint blue glow, then a flickering yellow flame. She had to use half the box before the letters and the cardboard-mounted photograph were reduced to crumpled black fragments. When she had done this she closed the door and pressed her bathrobe against the crack below it. The window had not, fortunately, been opened for years. Tante Sophie disapproved of unnecessary fresh air, and was determined to have none in her apartment. Then Mademoiselle Bérénice turned on the gas stove. With rationing as it was, it was unlikely much gas would come from it. Fortunately she was not relying upon this. She folded back the counterpane, sat down, and took the sleeping tablets one by one, helping them down with sips of water. Then she switched out the light and stretched herself upon the bed.

It was decided at the inquest that Mademoiselle Bérénice had committed suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed. This did not protect her, entirely, from her neighbor’s censure. Many of them thought, as did the concierge, that Mademoiselle Bérénice had behaved very ungratefully to her aunt, considering that the old lady had been a second mother to her. But since they were charitable people who knew that unmarried women are inclined to become odd — particularly at Mademoiselle Berenice’s age — they did not allow their disapproval to prevent them sending flowers. Tante Sophie even rose at dawn to go to market, so as to get as many flowers as possible for her money. She liked things done properly. The concierge often said of Tante Sophie: “If ever there was a saint it’s that woman.”