But she knew, because Clarisse had already shown her, just how
sturdy and steadfast that frail girl truly was, and Clarisse knew that
she knew, and her cheeks flushed with pride and excitement. How she loved those days when the other waitress didn’t come
in, when the lunch shift was entrusted to her alone! She had to be
even more efficient, resourceful and charming than usual, even livelier and friendlier, both to keep the customers happy, make them
think they had not waited as long as their watches said, and to
memorise the orders and never forget anything someone might ask
for out of the blue.
Striding lithe and quick through the dining room, she felt triumphant, exceptionaclass="underline" not many waitresses could handle thirty-five
customers without a single complaint, and never get the wrong
order or table, nor come across as anything but visibly and sweetly
unruffled.
Apart from the cook and her boss, no-one knew what a challenge
that was, for the challenge was precisely never to let a customer see
anything was amiss, and this made Clarisse, that clever girl, all the
prouder — that clever girl that she had become! That important,
irreplaceable girl!
The platefuls of grilled black sausage with mashed potatoes or
roast chicken with chips she balanced on her forearms made her
vaguely and constantly nauseous, and sometimes, as she strode
over the tiled floor in her crêpe-soled slip-ons, her disgust brought
gushes of burning acid up from her stomach, but she smiled and
talked, greeted and thanked in her quavering, muffled voice, with her
exquisite manners, making this Saint-Jean neighbourhood brasserie
feel like an upscale restaurant, and everyone found her so delightful,
so charming.
And the regulars knew her by name and casually called her
Clarisse, as if there were nothing odd about a girl such as her bearing
that marvellous name.
No-one ever guessed she had once been a lowly Malinka; no-one. The customers loved Clarisse, so pretty, so good-humoured, so good at her job, they loved her youth, which was never arrogant but innocent and fresh, and Clarisse felt it, and strove to seem even more perfectly unaware of the privilege of being so young, so pretty,
so perfectly healthy and trim.
And it was true, being young and beautiful meant nothing to her,
in the end. She wanted only to be an irrefutable Clarisse, with her
straightened hair, her pale eyes, her breathy voice rising at the end
of each sentence.
When evening came, in the room down the street that she rented
from her boss, she thought back over her day, pictured the moves
she had made, the way she had stood, tried to find things that could
still be improved on.
And whereas in school her fanatical urge for perfection had
nothing to focus on but the protocols of existence and the parameters of her homework, here she could finally use her intelligence
and acuity to the full, aiming to do her job in the most exemplary
way, leaving, in her conduct as in her sensibilities, nothing to find
fault with.
She paid vigilant attention to the tiniest details. Every morning
she studied her face and hands, checked and rechecked her black
skirt and beige blouse for spots, pulled her hair into a tight plait and
coiled it around her head.
Then she powdered her face to give it an impersonal air, to ensure
that it showed no sign of fatigue, and no emotion other than those
— joy, pleasure, enthusiasm — she so wanted to display. How she loved her face in the morning, powdered, serious and
inanimate!
That was how Clarisse was meant to be in the eyes of the world,
a wonderful girl whose good points were all you ever saw, because
there were no bad ones. And how that Clarisse was loved! *
That day, then, she handled the lunch shift alone, and as usual she never slipped up. And her name rang out from one end of the room to the other: Clarisse, when you get a moment! Hey, Clarisse, more bread! Bill, please, Clarisse!
All of which left her slightly dazed and, for the first time, wearily apprehensive at the thought that in just a few hours her evening shift would begin, that she would have to smile and be cheerful, and hear her name rebounding off the walls like a wild bouncing ball, the beguiling name that was now hers but which, when she was tired, she sometimes feared she might not recognise.
Now and then she was awoken by that nightmare: the restaurant was packed, the customers all calling at once for Clarisse, and she standing there dully, aware they meant her but unable to move her limbs because she wasn’t hearing the magic word, and when finally someone began shouting “Malinka!” she went back to work, smiling and light-hearted, but by then the room had emptied, oh, how she dreaded that stupid dream.
But she could easily fight off exhaustion, bleariness, the weird feeling, disagreeable but short-lived, that she could half see the silver letters of her new name shooting through the room.
What she found infinitely harder, that day, as the lunch rush was winding down, was seeing her mother come in, the servant, just as she remembered her, her slim hips sheathed in a checked woollen skirt, her putty-coloured raincoat, the thick, woolly mass of her short hair, and her small-featured face, her distant, placid demeanour, the servant herself coming into the brasserie with the same steady, unhesitant gait as if she were entering her own flat, in the house at the far end of the courtyard.
Although she must surely have seen Clarisse just as Clarisse had seen her, their eyes did not meet.
Motionless behind the bar where she had just made a cup of coffee, Clarisse watched as her mother looked around and finally chose a table near the window, indifferent or oblivious to the suddenly closed, dull, frowning face of the boss, who gave Malinka’s mother an almost outraged stare, then lowered her eyes and carefully studied her watch, as if, looked at long enough, it would end up consenting to help her turn out that unwelcome customer, that lowly woman.
Lunch was nearly over, and yet, Clarisse noted, a torrent of re- assuring thoughts rushing into her mind as she turned towards the big clock on the opposite wall and stared at it vacantly, it was only 1.30. Often they had customers coming in until two.
She felt her boss’s gaze on her burning cheek.
“That coffee’s getting cold.”
The voice itself was cold, metallic, indignant. Slowly Clarisse turned to look at her, and her boss’s wary, surprised eyes locked with hers, and what she saw in them, something Clarisse knew nothing of, made the woman strangely calm, though her mood was still as ugly as ever.