The Kill

When the big calèche carried them off to the Bois and gently along its carriageways as they whispered smutty stories in each other’s ears and searched their memories of childhood for dirty jokes, it was merely a diversion of their desires, an unavowed gratification of their wants. They felt vaguely guilty, as if they had grazed each other’s flesh. Indeed, that original sin, that languor born of filthy conversations that had left them weary with voluptuous fatigue, had stimulated them more gently than frank and unmistakable kisses would have done. Their camaraderie was thus the slow progress of two lovers fated to end one day in the private room at the Café Riche and finally in Renée’s large pink-and-gray bed. When they found themselves in each other’s arms, they did not feel the shock of sin. They were like old lovers, whose kisses were steeped in nostalgia. Their two beings had been in intimate contact for so long that despite themselves they spoke of a past that had been suffused with a tenderness of which they had been unaware.

“Do you remember the day I arrived in Paris?” Maxime asked. “You were wearing an odd outfit, and with my finger, I traced an angle on your breast and advised you to alter your neckline to a V.... I felt your skin under your blouse, and my finger went in a little. . . . It was very nice.”

Renée laughed and kissed him. “You were already an awfully naughty boy,” she murmured. “You had us in stitches at Worms’s, remember? We called you ‘our little man.’ I always thought Suza

“Yes, indeed, we laughed quite a lot,” the young man whispered. “The photo album, you know? And all the rest—our errands in Paris, our snacks at the pastry shop on the boulevard—you know, those little strawberry cakes you adore? . . . I’ll always remember that afternoon when you told me about Adeline’s little adventure in the convent, when she wrote letters to Suza

The lovers laughed at this story yet again, and then Maxime went on in his flirtatious voice. “When you came in your carriage to pick me up at school, we must have made quite an unusual pair. . . . I was so small I vanished under your skirts.”

“Yes, yes,” she stammered, shivering and drawing the young man toward her. “That was so nice, as you say. . . . We loved each other without knowing it, didn’t we? I knew before you did. The other day, on the way home from the Bois, my leg brushed against yours, and I jumped. . . . But you didn’t notice anything, did you? You weren’t thinking about me?”

“Oh, yes I was!” he replied, a bit embarrassed. “Only I didn’t know, you understand. . . . I didn’t dare.”

He was lying. The idea of possessing Renée had never occurred to him in any clear way. He had allowed his dissolute habits to rub off on her but had never really desired her. He was too lackadaisical for such effort. He had accepted Renée because she pressed herself on him, and he had slipped into her bed without wanting to or realizing in advance what he was doing. Having once rolled in her sheets, he stayed because it was warm and because it was typical of him to abandon himself whenever he fell into a hole. At first his ego was gratified. She was the first married woman he had had. He gave no thought to the fact that her husband was his father.

Renée, however, si

Maxime returned night after night. He entered by way of the garden around one o’clock. Usually Renée was waiting for him in the conservatory, which he had to cross to reach the small salon. They were in any case supremely impudent, barely troubling to hide themselves and neglecting the commonest precautions of adulterers. Of course this corner of the mansion was theirs. Only Baptiste, the husband’s valet, was allowed to enter, and Baptiste, a serious sort of man, vanished the moment his duties were discharged. Maxime joked that he probably went off to write his memoirs. One night, however, shortly after Maxime arrived, Renée pointed out the valet solemnly making his way across the salon, candlestick in hand. With his ministerial bearing, and his face illuminated by the yellow light of burning wax, the tall servant looked even more proper and austere than usual. Leaning forward, the lovers watched him blow out his candle and head for the stables, where the horses and grooms lay sleeping.

“He’s making his rounds,” Maxime said.

Renée stood shivering. Baptiste generally made her anxious. She sometimes said that with his chilly demeanor and frank stare, which never came to rest on a woman’s shoulders, he was the only decent man in the house.

Thereafter they became more cautious in their meetings. They shut the doors to the small salon, which allowed them to enjoy that room, the conservatory, and Renée’s apartment in complete tranquillity. It was a whole world unto itself. There for the first few months they savored the most refined and exquisitely exotic pleasures. They moved the scene of their lovemaking from the big pink-and-gray bed in the bedroom to the pink-and-white nudity of the dressing room and the symphony in yellow minor of the small salon. Each room, with its own peculiar fragrance, its own hangings, its own special life, yielded a different sort of tenderness and made Renée a different kind of lover. In the plush bed of the grande dame in the warm aristocratic bedroom, where lovemaking took on the discreet accents required by good taste, she was delicate and pretty. Under the flesh-colored tent, amid the fragrances and humid languor of the bath, she displayed herself as a capricious and carnal whore, surrendering her body as it emerged from the bath, which was where Maxime preferred to take her. And finally, downstairs, in the morning sunlight of the small salon, bathed in an auroral yellow that gilded her hair, she became a goddess, with the head of a blonde Diana, her naked arms in chaste poses and her unblemished body positioned on the love seats in postures that revealed noble lines and an antique grace. Maxime was almost afraid of this place, however, and Renée enticed him there only on foul days, when her intoxication required a more pungent note. Then they made love in the conservatory. That was where they savored incest.