The Mandarins. Simone Beauvoir de
wrong. Take that little brunette over there, and the redhead with those pretty falsies, for example. You wouldn’t find the same thing at all under their dresses.’ She rested her chin in the palm of her hand and looked steadily at Henri. ‘Aren’t you interested in women?’
‘Not in that way.’
‘How then?’
‘Well, I like looking at them when they’re pretty, dancing with them when they’re grateful, or talking to them when they’re intelligent.’
‘For talk men are better,’ Nadine said. She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘why did you ask me to go out with you? I’m not pretty, I dance badly, and I’m a poor conversationalist.’
Henri smiled. ‘Don’t you remember? You were reproaching me for not asking you?’
‘And I suppose every time someone reproaches you for not doing something, you immediately do it?’
‘All right,’ Henri asked, ‘why did you accept my invitation?’
She gave him such a naïve and inviting look that he was suddenly upset. Was it true, as Paula claimed, that she couldn’t see a man without offering herself to him?
‘One must never refuse anything,’ she said sententiously.
For a moment she silently stirred her champagne. Then they started to talk idly again. But from time to time Nadine would abruptly stop talking to stare insistently at Henri, a look of astonished reproof on her face. ‘One thing is sure,’ he told himself. ‘I can’t very well make a pass at her.’ She only half-appealed to him; he knew her too well; she was too easy; and besides, it would have embarrassed him because of the Dubreuilhs. He tried to fill the silences, but twice she yawned deliberately in his face. He, too, found that time passed slowly. A few couples were dancing, mostly Americans and their girls, and one or two pairs of lovers from the provinces. He decided to leave as soon as the dancers had done their number and he felt relieved when they finally came on. There were six of them, in sequin-studded panties and brassieres, wearing top hats on which the French tricolour or the American stars and stripes were painted. They danced neither well nor badly, they were homely but not excessively so. It was an uninteresting show, a show that never got off the ground. What was it then that made Nadine look so delighted? When the girls took off their brassieres, uncovering their wax-firmed breasts, she cast a sly glance at Henri and asked, ‘Which one do you like best?’
‘They’re all the same.’
Nadine silently examined the women with an expert, rather blase look. After they had backed out of the room, waving their panties in one hand and holding their red-white-and-blue hats over their genitals with the other, Nadine asked, ‘Do you think it’s more important to have a pretty face or a good figure?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On the woman, on your taste.’
‘Well, how do you rate me?’
‘I’ll tell you in three or four years,’ he said, looking her over carefully. ‘You’re still unfinished.’
‘You’re never finished until you’re dead,’ she said angrily. Her eyes wandered around the room and came to rest on the blonde dancer, who was now wearing a tight black dress and sitting at the bar. ‘You know, she really does look sad. Why don’t you ask her to dance?’
‘That certainly won’t cheer her up much.’
‘All her friends have men. She looks like a leftover. Ask her; what can it cost you?’ she said with a sudden burst of vehemence. Then her voice softened, and pleadingly she added, ‘Just once.’
‘If it means that much to you,’ he said.
The blonde followed him unenthusiastically on to the dance floor. She was a silly, ordinary-looking thing; he couldn’t see why Nadine took such an interest in her. To tell the truth, Nadine’s whims were beginning to get on his nerves. When he returned to the table, he noticed she had filled two champagne glasses and was looking at them meditatively.
‘You’re nice,’ she said, looking at him tenderly. Suddenly she smiled and asked, ‘Do you get funny when you’re drunk?’
‘When I’m drunk I always think I’m very funny.’
‘And other people, what do they think?’
‘When I’m drunk, I don’t worry very much about what other people think.’
She pointed to the bottle. ‘Let’s see you get drunk.’
‘Champagne isn’t what’ll do it.’
‘How many glasses can you drink without getting drunk?’
‘Quite a few.’
‘More than three?’
‘Of course.’
She looked at him doubtfully. ‘That’s something I’d like to see! Do you mean to say you could gulp these two glasses down and it wouldn’t do anything to you?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Let’s see you try.’
‘Why?’
‘People are always bragging; sometimes you have to call their bluff.’
‘After that, I suppose you’ll ask me to stand on my head,’ Henri said.
‘After that, you can go home and go to bed. Drink up; one after the other.’
He swallowed the contents of one of the glasses and felt a sudden shock in the pit of his stomach.
‘Now the second,’ Nadine said, handing him the other glass.
He drank it down.
He woke up stretched out on a bed, naked, alongside a naked woman who was holding him by the hair and shaking his head.
‘Who are you?’ he mumbled.
‘Nadine. Wake up, it’s late.’
He opened his eyes; the lights were on. He was in a strange room, a hotel room. Yes, he remembered the desk clerk, the stairway. Before that, he had been drinking champagne. His head ached.
‘What happened? I don’t understand.’
‘That champagne you drank was spiked with brandy,’ Nadine replied, laughing.
‘You spiked my champagne with brandy?’
‘I did. It’s a little trick I often play on the Americans when I have to get them drunk. Anyhow,’ she said, still smiling, ‘it was the only way to have you.’
He carefully touched his head. ‘I don’t remember a thing.’
‘Oh, there was nothing much to it.’
She got out of bed, took a comb from her purse, and, standing nude before a full-length mirror, began combing her hair. How youthful her body was! Had he really held that lithe, slender form, with its softly rounded shoulders and small breasts, against him? Suddenly she realized that he was studying her. ‘Don’t look at me like that!’ she said. She grabbed her slip and hastily put it on.
‘You’re very pretty!’
‘Don’t be silly!’ she said haughtily.
‘Why are you getting dressed? Come over here.’
She shook her head and Henri, suddenly worried, asked, ‘Did I do something I shouldn’t have? I was drunk, you know.’
She walked over to the bed and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You were very nice,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t like starting all over again,’ she added, walking away. ‘Not