Monsieur Hennequin was perfectly well aware of which way the gun in his hand was pointing—it was not his life that was in jeopardy. Further, he had reckoned since his first discovery of the note that it supplied him with evidence which would assure his receiving a purely nominal sentence even if he killed the man lying in the bed. Very little in his own life was menaced and he was now putting a stop to what might later have become a serious danger. Yet the invocation, the use of the threat of death may sometimes have a wider effect than the intended one. When once death is invoked, the choice of who must die may seem oddly arbitrary. In any case Monsieur Hennequin began to tremble.
He was not frightened, but he sensed that at this moment he was justifying his whole life. It was as if he was now prepared to choose death for himself rather than compromise or deny the meaning of his life. The important thing was the choice of death; whether for himself or another—always with the gun in his hand pointing at the man in the bed in front of him—seemed unimportant. It no longer mattered whether or not Camille witnessed the scene. To threaten or take the life of an avowed enemy was to enhance his own. He was discovering with excitement a new power.
If I have the slightest reason to suspect that you have seen her, I will shoot you like a dog whilst you sleep.
G. began to laugh. The pretences had been dropped and the truth which was revealed was absurdly familiar. The truth was Monsieur Hennequin, visibly trembling, the words coming out of his mouth with strange cries of pleasure, a pistol in his hand.
If I see you approaching the wife of any colleague or acquaintance of mine I shall shoot you as you leave the gathering.
Often he had been asked: why do you laugh, love?
After days of intrigue and hope and calculations, after doubts and heart-searchings, after boldness and timidity and further boldness, what truth is disclosed? His trousers flung across a chair, her wrap put aside or the coverlet of the bed pulled back, two rough triangles of darkish hair are disclosed and within them the parts whose exact forms first-year medical students are taught to recognize as typical of the entire human species. There is no mistaking any of it, and in this total lack of ambiguity there is a truly comic banality. The longer the mask has been worn, the longer the familiar has been hidden, the more comic the revelation becomes, for the more the pair of them are meant to be astounded at what they have always known.
You tried to take advantage of the innocence of my wife—as I’m sure you have taken advantage of God knows how many other unfortunate women. But this time, thank God, it is not too late.
When Beatrice fell back on the bed laughing, she was no longer laughing at the absurd man in black in the trap, but at what she knew would now become obvious on her bed, beneath the portrait of her father, according to a freedom apparently granted by a wasp sting.
Keep quiet. Stop laughing. Or you will get a bullet in your chest now.
He continued to laugh because at last he was face to face with the unexceptional. It was partly a laugh of relief, as though, against all reason, he had feared that the other might, in this, be exceptional. And partly he laughed at the great first joke of the commonplace becoming inexorable, like a penis becoming erect.
Monsieur Hennequin considered that his laughter was like that of a madman alone in his cell. And this idea that the leering man in the bed might be mad disturbed and discouraged him, for he believed that, although the mad must be forcibly restrained and in certain cases exterminated, madness itself was nevertheless self-defeating, and so his avowed enemy appeared to represent a less substantial menace than the one he had resolved, without hesitation or compromise, to put a stop to.
You are mad, he said. But mad or not you will have no second warning.
Monsieur Hennequin walked backwards out of the door, prolonging to the last possible moment the excitement (which the mad laughter had done so much to diminish) of pointing the gun at the man who had tried to seduce his wife.
Madame Hennequin and Mathilde Le Diraison are riding in a dilapidated carriage with a hood with holes in it and a driver with a straw hat, along the Via al Calvario, towards the church of San Quirico, which lies to the south, ten minutes from the centre of Domodossola.
They met G. in the Piazza Mercato. He greeted them quickly and, looking at Camille, said: Your husband with a pistol in his hand has just threatened to shoot me if I speak to you again. I must speak to you again. I will wait for you both at the church of San Quirico. We cannot talk here. Come as soon as you can. Then, without allowing them time to reply, he stepped back into the arcade and was gone.
Your friend is nothing if not dramatic, remarks Mathilde.
Do you think it is true?
That Maurice threatened him, yes.
He didn’t have a gun.
Every man has some friend who has a pistol.
Do you think Maurice is capable of killing him?
For you, my dear, men will do anything! Mathilde laughs.
Please be serious.
Do you feel serious?
When Camille heard that her husband had threatened him with a gun, she was reminded of her wedding day. Her anger at the injustice of her husband’s action, her shame on her husband’s behalf, her resentment at the fact that her husband had ignored her protestations and appeals, made her acutely aware that she was his wife, or, more accurately, that she had become his wife according to her own choice. Up to this moment being Madame Hennequin had seemed to be part of her natural life; her marriage was part of the same continuity which led from her childhood through young womanhood to the present. There had been misunderstandings and disagreements between her and her husband, but never before had she felt that the course of her life was out of her control, that what was happening was unnatural to her. She remembered how, at their wedding, Maurice and she had knelt, isolated, alone, in front of the entire congregation, but side by side so that she could feel his warmth, in order to receive communion. He had knelt shyly and with what she then believed to be true humility. Now she imagined him getting to his feet with a pistol in his hand and a look of blank unfeeling on his face.
Suddenly amazement overcame her anger with a thought which restored to her a little of her natural identity, which suggested that she was not entirely helpless and which confirmed her sense of being blindly wronged by her husband. This thought was: Under the threat of being shot, he still wants to speak to me because he can see me as I am.
No, I do not feel serious, says Camille.
You should persuade them to fight a duel for you.
That is what I told Maurice. He said it wasn’t modern.
I don’t see what being modern or not has to do with it. Men don’t change in that respect.
Do you think we do? asks Camille.
You are changing. You are transformed. You are a different person from what you were two days ago. If you could see yourself now—
What would I see?
A woman with two men in love with her!
Mathilde, please promise me one thing—do not, on any account, leave me alone with him.
Not if you both insist?
I am serious now. I cannot see him unless you promise me this.
Fortunately Harry is not jealous. Well, he is jealous, but not to the point of shooting or threatening. Afterwards he may make a scene in private with me, but I can put a stop to that quite quickly.