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By Root 1311 0

work in the forge, enveloped in sparks of red-hot metal, his flesh singed, breathing hard, tapping steadily, lifting hammers twenty times too heavy for him, heedless of the risk that he might be crushed. She understood him now. He seemed magnified by his superhuman effort, his scheming on a vast scale, his obsession with acquiring an immense fortune immediately. She remembered his jumping over obstacles, rolling in the mud, and not even taking the time to wipe himself off in order to arrive ahead of schedule, not even stopping to enjoy himself along the way, chewing on gold pieces as he ran. Then Maxime’s pretty blond head appeared behind his father’s stout shoulders. He wore the bright smile of a streetwalker and the blank stare of a whore who never lowered her eyes, and he parted his hair in the middle, revealing the whiteness of his cranium. He made fun of Saccard and deemed it “bourgeois” to go to so much trouble to earn the money that he consumed with such admirable indolence. He was kept. His long, soft hands told of his vices. His hairless body struck the weary pose of a satiated woman. Vice flowed as easily as lukewarm water through this soft, spineless creature, utterly devoid of curiosity about evil. He was passive. And Renée, as she watched these two apparitions emerge from the dim shadows of the mirror, took a step backward and saw that Saccard had tossed her out as a prize, an investment, and that Maxime had happened along to pick up the gold coin the speculator had let drop. She had always been an asset in her husband’s portfolio. He had encouraged her to wear gowns for a night and take lovers for a season. He had rotated her in the flames of his forge, used her as one might use a precious metal to gild the iron in his hands. Little by little, the father had thus made her mad enough and miserable enough to accept the son’s kisses. If Maxime was the impoverished blood of Saccard, she felt that she was the fruit these two worms had ruined, the vileness at which both had eaten away and in which both now lay coiled.

She knew now. These were the men who had stripped her naked. Saccard had unhooked her bodice, and Maxime had removed her skirt. Then, just now, both of them had ripped off her slip. Now she remained without a shred of clothing, with her gold ringlets, like a slave. When they had looked at her earlier, they hadn’t said, “You’re naked.” The son had quivered like a coward, trembling at the idea of seeing his crime through to the end, and had refused to follow her in her passion. The father, instead of killing her, had robbed her. He was a man who punished people by picking their pockets. A signature had appeared like a ray of sunlight in the midst of his wrath, and as vengeance he had carried that signature off with him. Then she had watched their shoulders disappear into the darkness. No blood on the carpet, not a single cry, not a whimper. These men were cowards. They had stripped her naked.

On one solitary occasion, she told herself, she had read the future: on that day when with burgeoning desires she had braved the murmuring shadows of the Parc Monceau and been terrified by the thought that her husband would someday defile her and plunge her into madness. Oh, but her poor head ached! How acutely she now felt the fallacy of the imagination that had led her to believe she was living in a blessed realm of divine ecstasy and impunity! She had lived in the land of shame, and she was punished by the surrender of her entire body and the annihilation of her being, now in its final agony. She wept that she had not listened to the resonant voices of the trees.

Her nakedness vexed her. She turned her head and looked around. The dressing room retained its heavy odor of musk, its overheated silence disturbed only by snatches of the never-ending waltz, like dying ripples on a sheet of water. Like attenuated laughter from some far-off sensual encounter, the music passed over her, and its mockery was more than she could bear. She stopped her ears so as to hear no more. Then her eyes took in the luxurious appointments