But what was really the last straw, was the quite obvious and shameless way they exploited us. It was such a perfectly simple trick that they scarcely bothered to conceal it. The only girls they found places for were those they themselves could no longer make use of. As long as it was possible to make any kind of profit out of them, by taking advantage of their talents, or strength, or lack of experience, they kept them prisoners. As the height of Christian charity, they had discovered a way of getting servants to work for them who would pay for the privilege of doing so, while at the same time robbing them, quite remorselessly and with incredible cynicism, of the modest resources they had managed to put by, having already made a profit out of their work …
I complained, feebly at first but later on more emphatically, that I had never once been summoned to the convent parlour. But to all my complaints these holy hypocrites merely replied:
‘Have patience, dear child. We have you in mind for a very special situation, and we intend to find it for you. We know just what would suit you, but so far nothing has turned up … not what we would like for you … not what you deserve.’
Days and weeks went by, yet still none of the situations were good enough, ‘special’ enough for me … And all the while my debt to them was increasing.
Although there was a nun in charge of the dormitory, the things that went on there night after night were enough to make your hair stand on end. As soon as the sister had finished her rounds, and everybody was pretending to be asleep, white shadows would suddenly appear on all sides, gliding from cubicle to cubicle and disappearing behind curtains, and the whole room would be filled with the sound of stifled kisses, cries, bursts of laughter and whispering. My companions were completely unrestrained. In the dim, flickering light of the lamp that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the dormitory, many a time I witnessed scenes of the wildest, saddest depravity .. . And all these holy nuns did was simply to close their eyes and ears, so that they should neither hear nor see what was going on. Anxious to avoid any scandal—for they would have been obliged to dismiss anyone caught in the act—they put up with these abominations by pretending to ignore them … And all the time my debt to them was increasing …
Fortunately, just when I was beginning to feel at the end of my tether, I was delighted by the arrival of one of my old friends, Clémence—Cléclé I used to call her—whom I had known when we were both working at a house in University Street. She was charming, all pink and white, and extremely fair, a regular little tomboy, full of life and gaiety. She was always laughing, for she managed to take things in her stride and to see the bright side of everything. Faithful and devoted, her one pleasure in life was helping other people. Though she was depraved to the very marrow of her bones, she was so gay, so utterly ingenuous and natural, that her depravity was in no way repugnant. Her vices were as natural to her as the flowers on a plant, or the cherries on a cherry tree. Chattering away like some sweet little bird, for a time she made me forget all my troubles, and calmed my feelings of revolt … As our cubicles were next to one another, on the second night she came into my bed … After all, what else could you expect? Force of example, perhaps … but also, perhaps, the craze to satisfy a curiosity that for a long time had been plaguing me … And, besides, with Cléclé it was a passion … ever since she had been seduced, four years ago, by one of her mistresses, a General’s wife.
One night as we lay in each other’s arms she began telling me in a funny little whisper about her last situation, with a magistrate at Versailles:
‘You’d never imagine all the animals there were in that dump … cats … three parrots … a monkey … and a couple of dogs. And I was supposed to look after the lot. Nothing was good enough for them, though any old rubbish would do for us … the same thing day after day. But not for them … Oh no, they had to have bits of chicken, cream tarts, Evian water … Yes, honestly, my dear, they had to have Evian water to drink, the filthy brutes, because of the typhus epidemic at Versailles … And, though it was winter, Madame had the nerve to take the stove from my bedroom and put it in the room where the monkey and the cats slept. Would you believe it? … I loathed them, especially the dogs … There was one, an absolutely horrible old pug-dog, who was forever sniffing under my skirts. Oh, I don’t mind telling you he used to get plenty of kicks for his pains … Then one day Madame caught me beating him, and you can’t imagine the row there was. In less than five sees she’d given me the sack … And d’you know, my dear, that dog …’—she was laughing so much that she tried to stifle the sound by burying her face between my breasts—‘well, that dog had exactly the same tastes as a man!’
Really, that Cléclé, what a scream she was! And so sweet! …
No one has any idea of all the worries that servants have to put up with, nor of the monstrous way in which they are continually exploited. If it’s not the employers, it’s the registry offices or some charitable institution—not to mention your fellow servants, for some of them are pretty foul. No one has the slightest concern for anyone else. Everybody lives, grows fat, amuses himself at the expense of someone more miserable and hard-up than himself. However much the scene may change or the background be transformed, however different or hostile the social setting, men’s passions and appetites remain the same. Whether it is in a cramped, middle-class flat, or some banker’s luxurious town house, you find the same beastliness, the same inexorable fate. When all’s said and done, the truth is that a girl like me is defeated even before she starts, wherever she may go and whatever she may do … poor human dung, nourishing the harvest of life and happiness for the rich to gather and use against us …
There is supposed to be no more slavery nowadays. But that’s all rubbish. What about servants? What are they, I’d like to know? In practice, they are simply slaves, with all that slavery entails—the moral degradation, the inevitable corruption, the spirit of revolt that breeds hatred … It is the masters who teach servants to be vicious. However pure and simple-hearted they may be when they start—and some of them are—they are soon corrupted by the depravity they come in contact with. They find themselves surrounded by vice, everything they see, breathe or touch is vicious. And so from minute to minute, from day to day, they begin to adapt themselves to it, for far from being able to defend themselves against it, they find themselves on the contrary, obliged to wait upon it, pamper it, respect it. And the spirit of revolt arises from the fact that they are powerless either to satisfy it or to break the shackles that prevent its natural development. It’s really quite extraordinary. They expect us to have all the virtues, all the resignation, all the heroism and readiness for self-sacrifice, but only those vices that flatter their vanity and further their interests. And for this, all we get in return is their contempt—and wages that vary between thirty-five and ninety francs a month … No, it’s fantastic! … And, on top of all this, we have to live in a state of perpetual struggle, of constant fear, between the semi-luxury of having a job one day, and, the next, having to face the squalor of unemployment; knowing that, whatever we do, we are always under suspicion, so that they are forever bolting doors, padlocking drawers, locking up cupboards, marking bottles, counting every cake and plum, and even have the nerve to search our pockets and our trunks as though they were detectives. There’s not a single door or cupboard in the place, not a drawer or a bottle, that isn’t continually shouting at us: ‘Thief, thief, thief!’ And, as if all this wasn’t enough, we have to put up with the constant irritation of seeing the terrible inequality, the appalling contrast between our lot and theirs, so that despite their familiarity with us, despite all their smiles and little gifts, an impassable gulf exists between us and them, a whole world of unspoken hatred, of suppressed envy, of longing for revenge … a contrast that, at every minute of the day, is made more blatant and humiliating by the whims, and even by the kindnesses of these unjust, loveless creatures, which is what rich people always are … Do they ever, for one single moment, consider what bitter and legitimate hatred we must feel, how we must long to kill them … yes, kill them … when we hear them, in order to describe something low and ignoble, saying, with a disgust that denies all common humanity: ‘He has the manners of a servant … She is as sentimental as a servant girl …’ Under such conditions, what do they expect us to become? Do these women really imagine that I, too, wouldn’t like to wear beautiful dresses, drive about in fine carriages, flirt with my lovers … yes, and even employ servants? … And then they lecture us about devotion, about being honest and faithful … I only wish their words would choke them, the cows!
Once, when I was in Cambon Street—God knows how many situations I must have had!—the daughter of the house was getting married, and her parents were giving a big evening party at which all the wedding presents were on show … enough to fill a furniture van. Just for a joke, I asked Baptiste, the footman:
‘Where’s yours, then? Aren’t you giving them a present?’
‘Mine?’ said Baptiste, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Go on, what is it?’
‘The only present I’d give them would be a can of lighted petrol under their bed.’
It was a jolly good answer. But Baptiste was always one for politics.
‘And what about yours, Célestine?’ he asked me.
‘Me? Why this’ … I replied, holding up my hands, with the fingers curved like claws, and pretending to scratch someone’s face … ‘My nails in his eyes!’
The butler, whom neither of us had spoken to, and who was meticulously arranging flowers and fruit in a crystal bowl, said calmly:
‘I’d be quite satisfied if I could just sprinkle them with vitriol instead of holy water when they were walking down the aisle …’
And he stuck a rose between two pears.
The really extraordinary thing is that such acts of revenge don’t occur more often. When I think that a cook, for example, holds the life of her employers in her hands every day … A pinch of arsenic instead of the salt, a touch of strychnine instead of vinegar … Why, it would be as easy as wink! And yet it just doesn’t happen … I suppose we must have servility in our blood!
I am not an educated person. I just write what I think and what I have seen … Well, what I say is, all this can’t be right … I think that directly anyone takes someone else into his house, even if it’s the most miserable devil alive or the lowest of whores, then they owe it to that person to look after them and make them happy … And I also maintain that, if our employers don’t give us these things, then we have the right to take them, even if it means robbing them or even killing them …
Still, that’s enough of that … It’s stupid of me to worry about such things, for they only give me a headache and turn my stomach … I had better go back to my story.
I had the greatest difficulty in getting away from the Sisters of Our Lady of the Thirty-six Sorrows … In spite of my affair with Cléclé, and all the new and pleasant sensations it had given me, I felt myself growing old in that dump, and was itching to be free again. As soon as they were really convinced that I’d made up my mind to leave, the good Sisters started offering me place after place … According to them they would all suit me down to the ground … But I am not a complete idiot, and I soon know when anybody is trying to do the dirty on me. So I turned down all the situations they offered me, for in each case I found something that didn’t suit me. You should have seen how upset they were, those blessed women … It was a scream! They reckoned that, by fixing me up with some sanctimonious old hag, they would be able to repay themselves for my keep out of my wages—with interest. And I was delighted to be able to turn the tables on them for once.
One day I notified Sister Boniface that I intended to leave that evening. She had the nerve to reply, raising her arms to heaven:
‘But my dear child, that’s impossible.’
‘What do you mean, impossible?’
‘Why, you just can’t leave the convent like that, my child … You owe us more than seventy francs. You’ll have to pay that back before you can leave.’
‘And what with?’ I enquired. ‘I haven’t got a farthing … Oh no, nothing doing!’
The Sister looked at me with hatred in her eyes and proclaimed, in a pompously severe tone of voice:
‘But don’t you realize, young woman, that that would be stealing, and that to steal from poor women like us is worse than any ordinary theft. It would be sacrilege, and God would punish you for it … Think what you are doing.’
Unable to suppress my anger, I shouted: ‘Just you tell me this, then … Which of us two is the thief, you or me? Really, you’re a wonderful bunch, you nuns!’
‘Young woman, I forbid you to speak like that.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, shut up! What on earth are you talking about? We do all your work … We slave for you from morning till night… We earn huge sums of money for you … And all you give us in return is food that a dog wouldn’t look at … And, on top of that, now you expect me to pay you! Well, you’ve got another think coming …’
Sister Boniface had turned quite pale … I could see she was furious, simply bursting with coarse, filthy words that she was afraid to utter. So she merely stammered:
‘Hold your tongue. You’re a shameless, un-Christian girl, and God will punish you … You can go if you want to, but we shall keep your trunk.’
I planted myself right in front of her, defiantly, and looking her straight in the face, I said:
‘I’d just like to see you! You try to keep my trunk and, before you know where you are, I’ll have the police on you … And if religion means mending your filthy almoner’s trousers for him, and stealing from hard-up tarts, and gloating over the horrible things that go on every night in the dormitory …’
By this time the sister was livid, and, in an attempt to drown my voice, she screamed:
‘Just you listen to me, young woman!’
But I went on: ‘Are you trying to pretend you know nothing about all the filthy goings-on in the dormitory? Have you got the guts to look me in the face and tell me you don’t know? … You just encourage them because you’re making money out of them …Yes, making money out of them!’