Petite Mort Read Online Free PDF

She turned on her heel and crossed the courtyard, turning left into an alleyway between buildings.
    In a minute or so, we came to a long, low block at the end of the alley. A number was painted in white on the side facing us.
    ‘Building Number One,’ Elodie said, ‘where Charles Pathéhas his offices,’ but I was unable to comment, for a cloud of flies had materialised in front of us: I spat several into my handkerchief. Elodie laughed. ‘The chemicals from the filmstrip building bring them. You’ll get used to it.’
    Eyes streaming, too proud to complain, I pressed my handkerchief to my nose, and was glad when we walked up the steps and in through the front entrance of Building I; corridors flashed past; soon we were in the bowels of the building. I craned my neck round every corner, hoping to hear a confident laugh, or catch a glimpse of André’s immaculate torso and curly hair.
    ‘In here,’ Elodie said, pushing open a heavy door.
    The room’s single humming light bulb showed me an Aladdin’s Cave of garments: racks of clothes, rubbing shoulders gorgeously, stretching away into felty darkness.
    Nearest the door was a set of tables with sewing machines upon them, and a set of women to go with it.
    ‘Solange,’ Elodie said, pointing at a pale woman in her fifties, who blinked at me from behind enormous spectacles. ‘Georgette,’ – barely fourteen years old, with wrists like twigs; ‘Annick,’ a woman with pale ginger hair that sparked under the electric lights. All the women were sewing costumes made of green velvet.
    Elodie indicated a sewing machine on a vacant table near the entrance. ‘We’ll get you a uniform sorted out tomorrow. It’s costumes for that absinthe film today. A hundred forest fairies, we need. Patterns are on the cards in front of you.’
    I stared at the machine.
    ‘You do know how to work one of these?’ she said.
    Two hours later my foot ached from operating the pedal; my fingers were rubbed raw and pricked full of tiny holes, and my first fairy uniform lay mangled in front of me. The other women appeared to notice nothing; their faces were bent over their work. The hammering of the needles rang in my ears.
    My nails sank viciously into the velveteen flesh of the fairy costume. Why had he buried me alive in here if he wanted nothing from me?
    Pathé as a studio, of course, was never empty, the great production line worked twenty-four hours a day, would have worked more if it was possible; but in our small department we always went home on time.
    At five o’clock on my first day my quota of costumes was nowhere near ready; I announced that I would stay until I had finished. The other women nodded indifferently and, one by one, vanished. Only Elodie paused in the doorway, looking at me suspiciously; thinking, I suppose, that I was plotting to usurp her role as chief costumière. During our midday break she had told us about her son, Charles-Edouard, to whom she longed to rush home each night; now she was caught between her affection for him and her own ambition. She had shown us a photograph of the child: a jowly baby and a younger Elodie, posed ridiculously in front of a painted seaside backdrop. I had eyed her scornfully, but was forced to admit that, once upon a time, she might have been attractive. Attractive enough, at any rate – I found out later that Charles-Edouard’s father was a minor aristocrat whose occasional cheques were never quite enough.
    At last, with a worried smile, Elodie picked up her purse and straightened her hat on her head, and left. The door closed on her and I was alone; I stopped pressing the pedal, stretched and got to my feet, jubilant. I had never really intended to do any more work. On my own I could explore the studio further; perhaps seek out where André’s offices were, the better to bump into him as if by accident on some subsequent day.
    In fact, I never left the costume department. Is there anything more gorgeous than a place of work