INTERNATIONAL LOVE
399
the kitchen and came out again in moments with a plate of pastry.
She offered me a piece, offered her mother a piece, then put the
plate down near me. Deliberately, she avoided looking at me.
I said, "May I offer Jacqueline some pastry?" I lifted the plate.
"Jacqueline has no desire for pastry, I assure you."
She stood by her mother's chair, a twig of her mother in a short
skirt. I wanted to resist ... though I had no idea yet what I was
resisting ... I said, "How do you know unless you ask her?"
Unruffled, quite sweet, Madame Dijour shook her blonde head,
then craned her neck round so that the flesh wrinkled like a braid.
"Jacqueline, there, you see, there are some extra pieces of pastry,
would you like one?"
Her tone was inviting. There was a split second in which
Jacqueline tried to decide which way her mother wanted the
tipping situation to right itself. She bent and touched the dog's fur
with her lips. "No, mother." She took the dog.
"Give me that dog," Madame Dijour said. The dog was re–
turned. "Eat that." Jacqueline took the plate. It all happened rapidly
and was said softly. "Now eat."
Self-conscious, with restraint, Jacqueline began to eat. She kept
her medal eyes pinned to her mother.
With the dog on her lap, Madame Dijour took a sewing needle
from just under the inside of her elegant lapel and said to me,
"Watch. I suspect you have failed so far to appreciate this fine
animal." Holding the dog down, she placed the point of the sewing
needle against the animal's black snout. She pressed, and the dog
began to whimper - no squeal, no bark, only a high-pitched faraway
complaint. "You see," she continued, "not to cry out, that is the
lesson, that is the hard thing." She withdrew the point, the dog
wrenched its head, she forced the point again into the snarling
snout - the black lips lifted into a snarl, nearly soundless except for
the remote whimper.
She said, "You can inquire of my husband."
Jacqueline had stopped eating.
In her basket the cat's tail swept and twitched in an arc against
her sleeping body.
The needle approached again. The dog's helpless eyes, already
vast and rheumy, opened wider - the pincushion nose could take
it
