The following day, at one-thirty, I call on Van Norden. It’s his day off, or rather his night off. He has left word with Carl that I am to help him move today.
I find him in a state of unusual depression. He hasn’t slept a wink all night, he tells me. There’s something on his mind, something that’s eating him up. It isn’t long before I discover what it is; he’s been waiting impatiently for me to arrive in order to spill it.
«That guy,» he begins, meaning Carl, «that guy’s an artist. He described every detail minutely. He told it to me with such accuracy that I know it’s all a goddamned lie… but I can’t dismiss it from my mind. You know how my mind works!»
He interrupts himself to inquire if Carl has told me the whole story. There isn’t the least suspicion in his mind that Carl may have told me one thing and him another. He seems to think that the story was invented expressly to torture him. He doesn’t seem to mind so much that it’s a fabrication. It’s the «images» as he says, which Carl left in his mind, that get him. The images are real, even if the whole story is false. And besides, the fact that there actually is a rich cunt on the scene and that Carl actually paid her a visit, that’s undeniable. What actually happened is secondary; he takes it for granted that Carl put the boots to her. But what drives him desperate is the thought that what Carl has described to him might have been possible.
«It’s just like that guy,» he says, «to tell me he put it to her six or seven times. I know that’s a lot of shit and I don’t mind that so much, but when he tells me that she hired a carriage and drove him out to the Bois and that they used the husband’s fur coat for a blanket, that’s too much. I suppose he told you about the chauffeur waiting respectfully… and listen, did he tell you how the engine purred all the time? Jesus, he built that up wonderfully. It’s just like him to think of a detail like that… it’s one of those little details which makes a thing psychologically real… you can’t get it out of your head afterward. And he tells it to me so smoothly, so naturally… I wonder, did he think it up in advance or did it just pop out of his head like that, spontaneously? He’s such a cute little liar you can’t walk away from him… it’s like he’s writing you a letter, one of those flowerpots that he makes overnight. I don’t understand how a guy can write such letters… I don’t get the mentality behind it… it’s a form of masturbation… what do you think?»
But before I have an opportunity to venture an opinion, or even to laugh in his face, Van Norden goes on with his monologue.
«Listen, I suppose he told you everything… did he tell you how he stood on the balcony in the moonlight and kissed her? That sound banal when you repeat it, but the way that guy describes it… I can just see the little prick standing there with the woman in his arms and already he’s writing another letter to her, another flowerpot about the roof tops and all that crap he steals from his French authors. That guy never says a thing that’s original, I found that out. You have to get a clue like… find out whom he’s been reading lately… and it’s hard to do that because he’s so damned secretive. Listen, if I didn’t know that you went there with him, I wouldn’t believe that the woman existed. A guy like that could write letters to himself. And yet he’s lucky… he’s so damned tiny, so frail, so romantic looking, that women fall for him now and then… they sort of adopt him… they feel sorry for him, I guess. And some cunts like to receive flowerpots… it makes them feel important… But this woman’s an intelligent woman, so he says. You ought to know… you’ve seen her letters. What do you suppose a woman like that saw in him? I can understand her falling for the letters… but how do you suppose she felt when she saw him?
«But listen, all that’s beside the point. What I’m getting at is the way he tells it to me. You know how he embroiders things… well, after that scene on the balcony — he gives me that like an hors d’œuvre, you know — after that, so he says, they went inside and he unbuttoned her pajamas. What are you smiling for? Was he shitting me about that?»
«No, no! You’re giving it to me exactly as he told me. Go ahead…»
«After that» — here Van Norden has to smile himself, — «after that, mind you, he tells me how she sat in the chair with her legs up… not a stitch on… and he’s sitting on the floor looking up at her, telling her how beautiful she looks… did he tell you that she looked like a Matisse?… Wait a minute… I’d like to remember exactly what he said. He had some cute little phrase there about an odalisque… what the hell’s an odalisque anyway? He said it in French, that’s why it’s hard to remember the fucking thing… but it sounded good. It sounded just like the sort of thing he might say. And she probably thought it was original with him… I suppose she thinks he’s a poet or something. But listen, all this is nothing… I make allowances for his imagination. It’s what happened after that that drives me crazy. All night long I’ve been tossing about, playing with these images he left in my mind. I can’t get it out of my head. It sounds so real to me that if it didn’t happen I could strangle the bastard. A guy has no right to invent things like that. Or else he’s diseased…
«What I’m getting at is that moment when, he says, he got down on his knees and with those two skinny fingers of his he spread her cunt open. You remember that? He says she was sitting there with her legs dangling over the arms of the chair and suddenly, he says, he got an inspiration. This was after he had given her a couple of lays already… after he had made that little spiel about Matisse. He gets down on his knees — get this! — and with his two fingers… just the tips of them, mind you… he opens the little petals… squish-squish… just like that. A sticky little sound… almost inaudible. Squish-squish! Jesus, I’ve been hearing it all night long! And then he says — as if that weren’t enough for me — then he tells me he buried his head in her muff. And when he did that, so help me Christ, if she didn’t swing her legs around his neck and lock him there. That finished me! Imagine it! Imagine a fine, sensitive woman like that swinging her legs around his neck! There’s something poisonous about it. It’s so fantastic that it sounds convincing. If he had only told me about the champagne and the ride in the Bois and even that scene on the balcony I could have dismissed it. But this thing is so incredible that it doesn’t sound like a lie any more. I can’t believe that he ever read anything like that anywhere, and I can’t see what could have put the idea into his head unless there was some truth in it. With a little prick like that, you know, anything can happen. He may not have fucked her at all, but she may have let him diddle her… you never know with these rich cunts what they might expect you to do…»
When he finally pulls himself out of bed and starts to shave the afternoon is already well advanced. I’ve finally succeeded in switching his mind to other things, to the moving principally. The maid comes in to see if he’s ready — he’s
