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By Root 1391 0

down from the crown along the fabric on either side of each appliqué. The pinkish gray of the bedroom brightened here to a pinkish white, the color of naked flesh. And in this arbor of lace, beneath these curtains that hid the entire ceiling except for a small bluish aperture in the empty center of the crown, where Chaplin5 had painted a laughing cupid eyeing his arrow and preparing to shoot, it was easy to believe that you were at the bottom of a box of candy, or a precious jewel case enlarged to show off not the splendor of a diamond but the nakedness of a woman. The carpet, as white as snow, was unblemished by any sprinkling of flowers. The furniture included a mirrored armoire whose two panels were encrusted with silver; a chaise longue, two poufs, and some white satin stools; and a large dressing table with a pink marble top, its feet hidden by flounces of muslin and lace. The glassware on the dressing table—bottles, vases, and basin—was of old Bohemian crystal with streaks of pink and white. And on another table, encrusted with silver like the mirrored armoire, lay the paraphernalia and utensils of grooming, a bizarre collection including a number of small implements whose purpose was difficult to make out: backscratchers, nail buffers, files of all sizes and shapes, straight and curved scissors, and all manner of tweezers and pins. Each of these objects, in silver and ivory, bore Renée’s monogram.

The dressing room had one especially delightful corner, to which it owed its fame above all else. Opposite the window, the sections of drapery opened up to reveal, at the end of a long, shallow alcove, a bathtub, a sunken basin of pink marble set right into the floor so that its edges, fluted like those of a large shell, lay flush with the carpet. Marble steps led down into this tub. Above the swan-necked silver faucets, a scalloped Venetian mirror without a frame, with frosted patterns etched into the crystal, filled the end of the alcove. Every morning Renée took a short bath, which for the rest of the day left the dressing room suffused with moisture and a fragrance of moist young flesh. Occasionally a bottle of perfume left unstoppered or a cake of soap left out of its box injected a more violent note into this rather insipid languor, in which the young woman liked to lie almost naked until noon. The puffy draperies were also bare. The pink bathtub, tables, and basins, and the muslin covering the ceiling and walls beneath which one could imagine a reddish flow of blood, took on the roundness of flesh, of shoulders and breasts, and depending on the time of day it all resembled the snowy white skin of a child or the warm flesh of a woman. It was nakedness writ large. When Renée stepped out of her bath, her fair body added but a touch more pink to the abundant pink flesh of the room itself.

It was Maxime who undressed Renée. He was good at that sort of thing, and his agile hands divined pins and slipped around her waist with innate understanding. He undid her hair, removed her diamonds, and then redid her hair for the night. And since he combined his duties as lady’s maid and hairdresser with witty remarks and caresses, Renée had to choke back belly laughs as the silk of her bodice crinkled and her petticoats were unbuttoned one by one. When she saw that she was naked, she blew out the candles, took Maxime by the waist, and all but carried him into the bedroom. The ball had completed her intoxication, and in her fever she was aware of having spent the previous day by the corner of her fire in an ardent stupor of vague but pleasant dreams. She could still hear the dialogue between Saccard and Mme Sidonie as they called out numbers like bailiffs in their clipped voices and nasal twang. It was these people who bored her to death and drove her to crime. And now, as she searched the darkness of the huge bed for Maxime’s lips, she pictured him again as she had the night before, staring out at her from the middle of the fireplace with blazing eyes.

The young man stayed until six the next morning. She gave him the key to the