The narrator’s relationship with Madame P-R

The narrator’s relationship with Madame P-R is formed under the pressure of a clandestine abortion: it begins with a referral and a fee, depends on the practical knowledge Madame P-R provides, and outlasts their brief dealings as a complicated memory of fear, assistance, and obligation. The narrator sees her as both a paid practitioner and the woman whose actions made it possible to leave the crisis behind. Although they never meet again, Madame P-R remains an enduring presence in the narrator’s account of the experience.

Introduction and Referral

A week or so before Christmas, when the narrator had nearly abandoned hope of finding help, LB came to see her after Jean T had told LB that the narrator needed her. LB supplied the address of Madame P-R, a middle-aged paramedic who worked at a clinic and had helped LB. The referral gave the narrator a specific person to approach rather than an abstract possibility. LB described Madame P-R’s method, the precautions she took with her instruments, and the risk of infection that remained despite those precautions; LB had contracted septicemia herself. She advised the narrator to seek antibiotics afterward, and the narrator already had a prescription for penicillin.

The arrangement was also financial. Madame P-R charged four hundred francs, and LB offered to lend the narrator the money. The narrator recalls that an address and cash seemed to be all she needed at that point. In retrospect, that apparent simplicity sits beside the danger LB had described: her account made the procedure seem manageable, but also disclosed that sterilization did not eliminate every risk. Madame P-R entered the narrator’s life through another woman’s practical experience, and the support of that referral shaped what the narrator expected from her.

First Meeting and Practical Terms

On January 8, the narrator traveled to Paris to meet Madame P-R and settle the date and cost. She hitchhiked in sleet, then took the Métro to Paris’s 17th arrondissement. The address led to a dilapidated building on Passage Cardinet, where Madame P-R lived on the third floor. The narrator’s account emphasizes the ordinary, private setting in which she was about to entrust herself to someone she had never met.

Madame P-R was short and plump, with spectacles, gray hair in a bun, and dark clothes. She ushered the narrator through the small flat and asked when her last period had been. She examined her abdomen over her skirt and commented on its size; when the narrator mentioned having been out in the snow, Madame P-R answered briskly. These details make the meeting personal without making it intimate. Madame P-R did not address the narrator familiarly or ask about her circumstances. Instead, she concentrated on the date, the fee, and the procedure.

She told the narrator to return the following Wednesday, when she could bring home a vaginal speculum from the hospital where she worked. She confirmed that the charge was four hundred francs, payable in cash, and explained that she would use a probe without the additional substances the narrator had been told to expect. The narrator found the narrow focus on essentials strangely reassuring: there was no discussion of feelings or morals, and no invitation to reconsider. She understands this restraint as part of Madame P-R’s experience; keeping the conversation practical could prevent distress from delaying the women who came to her.

Assistance and Its Limits

The narrator later remembers the procedure as a frightening passage in which Madame P-R’s attention stayed on getting the work done. Afterward, Madame P-R gave instructions, placed cotton wool between the narrator’s thighs, and explained what to do if the expected process did not resolve within a couple of days. They drank coffee in the kitchen. The narrator cannot recall handing over the money, a gap that contrasts with how clearly she remembers the fee being confirmed beforehand.

Madame P-R also insisted on accompanying the narrator to Pont-Cardinet station. The narrator wanted to leave alone but did not want to reject her offer. Only later did she understand that Madame P-R may have feared the narrator would collapse outside the apartment. The walk left the narrator with mixed impressions: she felt abandoned by everyone except the woman beside her, yet also felt repelled by Madame P-R’s appearance once they were out in the street. The woman who had helped her could seem, in that moment, like a threatening figure. The recollection does not settle into gratitude or aversion alone; care and discomfort remain bound together.

On a later visit, the narrator was less afraid. Madame P-R replaced the first probe with another and recognized that the narrator was in labor. She did not charge extra, but asked for the probe to be returned because that model was difficult to obtain. This second exchange shows the relationship’s continuing practical character: Madame P-R provided what was needed for the next stage, while the narrator was expected to return an item essential to her work. Her assistance had clear limits. Once she had done her job, she offered no further support.

Memory, Judgment, and Dedication

The narrator’s later understanding of Madame P-R remains unsettled. She considers money a strong motive, noting that Madame P-R charged a high price despite living in a poorly furnished flat. She also imagines that Madame P-R may have felt she was helping women, and that her covert work might have offered a kind of private satisfaction to someone whose expertise was otherwise unacknowledged. These are the narrator’s interpretations, not explanations confirmed by Madame P-R. The distance between them leaves the woman’s motives partly unknowable.

The narrator did not return the probe. She took her parents’ car into a forest and threw it into bushes, later regretting the decision. She never saw Madame P-R again, but says she has never stopped thinking about her. In a striking formulation, she remembers this avaricious woman as having wrenched her away from her mother and into the world. The judgment preserves the cost and discomfort of their relationship while recognizing its consequence: Madame P-R’s intervention helped end the narrator’s immediate crisis and marked a passage into a different life.

The narrator ultimately says that the book should be dedicated to Madame P-R. That dedication does not erase the secrecy, the fee, or the narrator’s divided response to the woman. Instead, it gives lasting form to a connection that lasted only through a few practical encounters. Madame P-R appears in memory as neither a simple rescuer nor merely a paid stranger, but as the person whose limited, consequential assistance remained with the narrator long after their contact ended.