The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron

Seventeen

214 Seventeen “So you had it out,” said Jean when she returned home. “it was time. your eyes look like two holes burnt in a blanket.” By the next morning she was recovered physically. the swelling was imperceptible. the hole in her jaw no longer bled. no one would have suspected, to look at her, the ordeal of the day before. the sense of desolation remained, however . She was as firm as ever in her resolution to have nothing more to do with Paul, but the thought that he had so quickly replaced her was a torment. She went to market early, as usual. Being short of money, because of the livre spent on the Pont neuf, and unwilling to ask Jean for more that morning, she could buy little in the way of meat but a dozen chicken legs. She spent a long time preparing them for the soup kettle; it was a task which she disliked. if the legs were dipped into boiling water for a minute and then cooled, the horny covering, thin and semi-transparent if the hen had been young, or scaly and yellow if the hen had been old, could be removed like a glove without tearing the flesh. the legs then boiled slowly with herbs and salt gave a rich gelatinous broth, very nourishing , and there was often a little good meat which could be gnawed from the bone. once cooked, it was good fare; Jean liked it. 215 T H E G H O S T O F M O N S I E U R S C A R R O N this morning the claws, as she took them up one by one to be peeled, sometimes encrusted with dirt which could not be scalded away, curved viciously, lengthened by much scratching in hard earth. they seemed to her cruel and brutal, and the gesture she made, in order to rip the outer nail from the claw and clear the scaly case from the clean meat, seemed to her brutal also. Cleared of its befouled and calloused sheathing, the claw appeared clean and intact, unchanged in outline, bearing still a nail on every crooked finger, still with its heavy padded palm, a hand bestial in shape yet purified . it was a fantastic thing, innocent in its new purity and helplessness, cruel in its old unrelinquished predatory pose. Marianne, ripping the old covering from the flesh again and again, put into the motion a part of her own distress, opposing the cruel gesture to the cruel fact. She permitted herself no pity for the dead birds, nor for her jealous heart. while she worked, Jean came into the kitchen and drew himself a drink of water from the copper fountain. after that he tapped on the fountain with his knuckles and, having determined that it was almost empty, took up the buckets and went off, presumably to refill it. it was a task which had formerly belonged to nicolas. Marianne occasionally carried water for it, but in the main, Jean had made himself responsible for keeping it filled. the fountain held eight bucketfuls, and refilling it meant four trips to the rue St.-antoine. a month ago—ten days ago—Jean’s departure with the buckets would have been the signal for Paul to leave his work, to put his arms about Marianne. on this morning she braced herself against the knowledge that Paul would not appear. yet the door to the workroom opened. Marianne without lifting her head knew that Paul had crossed the room and 216 Janet Lewis stood before her. She would not look up; he did not go away. he said in a low voice: “i suffer.” She had heard him say the same words once before, she could not remember when. She believed him. She looked up and saw his face full of pleading, and her resolve melted, evaporated, became as if it had never existed. when Jean returned with his two buckets of water, setting them down in the porte-cochère while he opened the door to the kitchen, Marianne was still peeling chicken legs, and Paul was back in the shop. But Marianne kept on her lips the pressure of Paul’s long kiss. She could still feel in the embrace of his slight, agile body the violence of his passion and of his triumph. nothing else mattered. nothing else had...