by CLAUDE F. CHEINISSE
Avidly, when the final patient was gone, I lit my first cigarette of the day. All around me, interns and externs were getting up with a great hubbub. While I was putting on my jacket, someone came up and handed me a few more papers to sign; then I walked down an endless hall and passed the doorman, an ancient gold-braided wreck, decorated in the war of 1970. I had to answer him patiently once more that, yes, the weather was clearing, no, they still didn’t know how to graft on an artificial arm, yes, the Doctor was very tired from his morning’s consultation. At last I got out onto the steps, and as it did every day, my exhaustion vanished all at once: Juliette was waiting for me.
She was unaware of the envious looks of passing students, who were examining her contours minutely, without even trying to be surreptitious about it; the boldest ones whistled with admiration. She had eyes for nothing but the door where I was about to appear. As soon as I passed through the impalpable curtain that barred the hospital entrance to microbes and unwanted visitors, Juliette started her engine and opened the door.
I sat down in the passenger’s seat with a sigh of relief. Juliette closed the door, pulled away gracefully, swerved to frighten an extern she didn’t like, and headed toward the restaurant, all without saying a word: she always respected the numb silence of my first few minutes. It was only after two red lights that she offered me a lit cigarette and asked tenderly, “Tired?”
My silence was an answer, and I knew she wouldn’t be offended.
I let myself sink into a delicious idleness, compounded of English tobacco and Juliette’s perfume. Three blocks farther down, a taxi cut into us from the left, and Juliette used her most strident voice to yell frightful things at him, which brought me back to earth.
Anyhow, we were almost at the restaurant. Juliette turned into the private drive that led to it, chose a shaded table surrounded by flowers, and when the waiter ran up, ordered a medium rare steak for me, and twenty liters and a grease Job for herself.
My affair with Juliette dated from three years back. At the first glimpse, I’d fallen violently in love with her, taken out my checkbook, and without the slightest regret traded in a Citroen that had no personality—a good driver, but incapable of expressing any emotion, or carrying on a conversation outside her own sphere.
Juliette herself took a long time to lose her shyness, to consider me as her friend rather than her master. She never talked much about it, but I think she had been very unhappy before coming with me: half broken in, hardly out of the factory in Milan, she had been turned over to a detestable ape who never let her drive herself, always insisted on holding the wheel himself—and the way he did it. . . . As soon as she realized what she meant to me, our understanding was complete. By unspoken agreement, we didn’t talk much about her past: I’m not one of these jealous types who insist on breaking in a car themselves and can’t stand not to be the first owner; but at the same time, I don’t like to think about anyone else driving Juliette.
The steak and the grease job were followed by a grapefruit and a wash, then by a good cup of coffee and a timing adjustment. To tease Juliette, I pretended to be interested in the lines of a Jaguar that came into the restaurant. Dignified, she ignored this treachery.
On the way back, at the turnpike exit, just before the sharp turn that overlooks the Seine, a new Dodge passed us going full speed.
Juliette said only, in a very soft voice, “Beginner . . .” and slowed up. Two seconds later, the taillights of the Dodge blinked on ahead of us—she was very close to the edge of the turn, and was forced to brake suddenly. Juliette twisted smoothly past her, with a throaty little laugh. Then she said, “She’s young . . .” and laughed contentedly.
She liked to make a point of her experience, even while groaning sometimes (I didn’t take her very seriously) about her advancing age and the imaginary slowing down of her reflexes.
Between my laboratory and my course at the University, the afternoon passed as usual. When I left the amphitheater, Juliette was there. I was tired, and was especially worn out by the hundred snickering students who had pretended to listen to me. Juliette knew or sensed it, grew very gentle—without being asked, she took the way to a scenic route that we loved, and once there, asked quietly, “Do you want to drive?”
In a moment I was in the driver’s seat; the wheel rose toward me; Juliette was offering herself. . . . We followed the scenic route lovingly, one guiding the other, one in the other, feeling the same joy at each rhythmic turn, at each acceleration when the motor’s thunder roared. . . . Toward the end, I relaxed my grip a little, only half steering her, leaving her almost free in her movements, attentive to the soft moans of her tires in the final turns. . . .
We were feeling calm again by the time we got back to the highway. I slid over into the passenger’s seat; with a joyful heart, I lit a cigarette and unfolded my paper. Juliette was humming gaily. Before dinner, we went to pick up Josiane (the week before, it had been Christiane. A little earlier, Veronique. Before that ... I don’t remember. They’re so much alike . . . all I ask of them is to be pretty, a bit dumb, and willing). And on the way back, when I put my arm around the girl’s shoulders and began to nibble sweet nothings into her ear, I knew by the faint interruptions in the purring of the motor that Juliette was laughing, very quietly, to herself.
Juliette and I went home to bed about one in the morning, light and relaxed, whistling together. Not for a moment did I imagine this would be our last day of happiness.
In the middle of the night, the telephone woke me: an emergency. I got dressed, grumbling, turned the dispenser dial to “coffee” and poured myself a big cup, then went down to the garage. Juliette was asleep, her brain disconnected. I called her: she switched on her wake-up current immediately. I heard the starter’s whine, but the sound of the motor didn’t follow. A second try, then a third had no more effect. In a timid little voice, Juliette said, “Excuse me . . .” I reassured her quickly, called a taxi, then the mechanic.
It was her first failure since the time we met.
The taxi came: he smelled of wet pipes and cold dogs. . . . He refused to wait for me, and I had to walk back. There was a light in the garage—the mechanic was using his stethoscope on Juliette. I went upstairs without disturbing them, and had a warm bath, a hot cup of coffee, and a book.
In the morning, Juliette didn’t want to talk to me. It took the hint of a badly controlled skid on the wet pavement to make her whisper, “I’m getting old…”
“You’re not going to start that foolishness again, are you?” I protested.
But, a little farther on, she who never made a mistake missed the new Do Not Enter signal at the corner of the boulevard. A whistle nailed us to the spot: luckily, it was a man cop, accessible to certain arguments. . . . Juliette used her law-breaking voice, so sensual and full of promises that it always made me a little jealous. A minute later we were released, with a somewhat shaky “And don’t do it again.” That cop would have beautiful dreams tonight.
I tried to suggest a little overhaul in Milan: I could perfectly well take cabs for a month. But Juliette did not answer. She left me in front of the hospital steps without a word, and went off without telling me where she was going.
At noon, she was there waiting for me, and for a moment I could have believed that everything would be the way it had been yesterday, every day—that it had been just a matter of a general overhaul. She offered me a lighted cigarette, hurled herself at the back of the extern she didn’t like, asked me in her soft voice, “Tired?” without expecting an answer.
But she braked to draw up in front of the agency where we had met, three years ago. The owner was waiting for us, and with a pang of sorrow I realized where she had been all morning.
I tried to argue with her, but she only said, “I’m tired. . . .” She had already made all the arrangements, all it needed was my signature. The New One, shining in all her chrome, was apprehensively quiet. She was new, I would have to break her in.
The salesman tried to talk to me about the “trade-in on the old model,” but I interrupted him, almost shouting: “No, I don’t want us to separate, Juliette’s going to stay with me. I—I’ll use her in the evenings, or Sundays. I don’t want anybody to tire her out any more; she has the right to get some rest.”
The salesman looked at me rather pityingly. “It’s nothing but a machine, Doctor. A beautiful machine.”
But I remained very firm: I wouldn’t sell Juliette. Besides, she backed me up: she said in an absent tone: “That’s it, the evenings—or Sundays. .. .”
She was the one who wanted me to leave right away with the Replacement, to get acquainted with her. She promised me to go quietly back to the garage. When I leaned over to get my portfolio from the back seat, she used her law-breaking voice to say to me, “So long, darling. . . .” She had never spoken to me that way, had never even used that voice with me. I meant to tell her of all my affection, promise her again how many fine vacations we’d have, and fine spins along the scenic routes…but she was already gone.
* * * *
When I arrived at the laboratory with the Intruder, toward the beginning of the afternoon, an automatic cop was waiting for me. As soon as I saw that long black and white cylinder, tapered like a torpedo, balancing on its two wheels in front of the door, I knew.
I hardly heard its report, recited in the neuter, official voice of those stupid machines. A few scraps of phrases whirled in the depths of my despair: “... gave chase, but .. . too fast. . . the turn . . .”
I had to keep up appearances, above all in front of a cop, human or not. I heard myself answer: “After all, she was nothing but a machine, a beautiful machine…”