Pity for Women

by Henri de Montherlant

  This way of casting one's innermost secrets into the void was familiar to Costals: more than once he had done the same with Solange. Unwittingly M. Dandillot was returning the mysterious trust he had had in the girl; and the thought made him ponder.

  'My wife,' M. Dandillot continued, 'my wife's religion is that of the average Frenchwoman: she doesn't practise, she doesn't take the sacraments, but she goes to Mass on Sundays. Solange claims to be an unbeliever, but goes to Mass with her mother, and would be upset if she missed it. But Solange doesn't really know.... You know her: she's still in bud. As for me I've always been a pagan. You can't love nature as I do and Jesus Christ at the same time. Besides, we have an infallible proof that Christianity was inferior to the great pagan philosophies: the fact that it triumphed. Everyone knows the kind of things and people who triumph' (with an embittered smile). 'It isn't that I don't admire Christ's teachings. Any religion will always redeem itself from ridicule by charity. But St Paul ruined everything. And so, one of the firmest tenets of my moral code was: not to have a priest at my death-bed. This is still my intention, needless to say. But after the inner upheaval I have recently undergone, I must confess that this "gesture" seems to me less significant than it did. And you, Monsieur Costals, may one ask where you stand in regard to religion?'

  'I'm an "old Christian", an old Christian de sangre azul. But of course I have no faith and I don't practise.'

  'Ah! I'm very glad. I couldn't shake hands altogether honestly with a man I knew to be a believer, whatever his religion. Here, give me your hand, will you?' (He clasped it firmly.) 'Well, now, in spite of that, do you intend to have a Christian burial?'

  'I should like my body to be carried straight from my death-bed to the paupers' grave, and buried there not too deep, so that the dogs can dig it up and eat it.'

  'Splendid. But what about the priest? Would you see a priest if you were about to die?'

  'It depends. If I were dying in the bosom of my family I think I would. For two reasons. To please those around me at little cost to myself, since they would ardently wish it. And to be left in peace. It must be horrible to be pestered and persecuted at such a time, when all one wants is to be left in peace. Shall I tell you exactly what I think of this particular manifestation of religion? It has no importance whatsoever, and to struggle against it is to give it an importance it doesn't deserve. But if I were to die far from home - which is my dearest wish - if no one mentioned priests, I should certainly not call for one.'

  'You're probably right. "It's of no importance": that's about the long and the short of it. Take this room, for instance: everything is in order, everything classified, labelled, easy to find. Well, if I had been untidy, what difference would it make now? Another example: I've always bought things of the very best quality, on principle. Yet a fifteen-hundred-franc suit or a seven-hundred-franc suit both fray at the cuffs after the same number of months. So that one needs a new suit just as frequently, whichever one buys. Which means that it's really of no importance whether a suit is good or bad, just as it's of no importance whether a man is good or bad.'

  M. Dandillot pressed his right wrist against the bridge of his nose, between the eyes, as though to filter the light which he found so tiring in spite of the fact that the shutters were three-quarters closed, and his magnificent hand hung limp alongside his cheek.

  'I used to worship the sun,' he said. 'I believed it cured everything. I believed that whatever was wrong with one - pneumonia, an ulcer, a broken leg - one had only to lie in the sun to be cured. Yes, I believed this, from the bottom of my heart: it was pure fetishism. And I taught the same thing to hundreds of youngsters. And now, whenever the sky is the least bit bright it hurts me. I can't bear it any more. If I went out I would stay in the shade. (To think that I may never again see a cloudy sky!) Is there, then, one truth for the living and another for the dying? I was intoxicated by the beauty of the world and its creatures, quite disinterestedly, I may say, for I was never a womanizer. Now every living thing seems to me offensive, and I feel ready to hate them all. I've given up reading the newspapers. What do I care about all that, since I'm leaving it? My wife wants to take me out for a drive in the Bois. Well, I refuse. I don't want to see the beauty of the world any more, since I shall soon be unable to enjoy it. It would hurt me, and I don't want to be hurt.'

  'It's strange that your reaction to light should be exactly the opposite to that of the dying Goethe.'

  There you go again with your great men,' said M. Dandillot impatiently. 'What do I care about Goethe! Let him die as he wishes: no one can set me an example any more. Goethe also began to study natural history at the age of seventy-five, and one's supposed to think how admirable. Well, I'm with Montaigne: "What a foolish thing is an abecedarian old man!"'

  Costals was a little shocked. Out of conformity he had hypnotized himself into believing that Goethe was one of the great beacons of the human spirit, though in his heart of hearts he considered him grossly overrated.

  At that moment Solange came into the room, the lady visitor having departed. And Costals experienced the odd sensation of finding the presence of someone he loved importunate.

  As M. Dandillot made no move to send his daughter away, Costals took his leave after a few moments. In the hall, he ran into Mme Dandillot:

  'I can't understand what's the matter with my husband. He groans when he gets out of bed. He groans when he puts on his trousers. You'd think he was doing it on purpose. And yet he's a man who has had a great deal of character all his life.'

  'You can't understand what's the matter with him? The matter, dear lady, is that he's dying.'

  'In the first place, thank heaven, it's not at all certain. And even if he does believe his life is in danger, isn't that just the moment for him to show his mettle? When can he show it, if not in times of stress? But do you know what he said to the doctor yesterday? "Don't hurt me, doctor." "But you won't feel a thing ..." "Yes, yes, I know how you doctors talk. Well, I don't want to be hurt, do you hear me! Let others put up with suffering if they like, I won't!" It's rather painful for those who love him to hear him talk like that in front of strangers.'

  Costals mumbled something and left. 'So,' he thought, 'he brings me here so that he can unburden himself, and he lies! He'll be dead within a month, and he lies! God, what a bunch!'

  to Pierre Costals

  Paris

  Andrée Hacquebaut

  Cabourg

  30 June 1927

  Read this or not, as you please. This letter, which will be my last, is simply to tell you that I know.

  Crushed by you, with a temperature of 101 degrees - the fever of grief, nothing else [Pure invention. She had no fever but, because of her 'emotional upset', a boil on the thigh.] - on the point of becoming seriously ill or going mad, I had to have an immediate change of air and came to stay with a friend in Cabourg. At the Casino here I met a whole group of women writers and poets, and among them Baroness Fléchier.

  'Costals?' she said. 'Not only has he never held a woman in his arms, but never in his life has he even desired one! He admitted it to me himself.' [See first volume]

  Then she talked about Proust. I plunged into Proust, whom I had never read before. What a revelation! The scales dropped from my eyes. It's all blindingly clear. M. de Charlus is you! ...

  It's all there, everything! You love strength - like him. You go for long walks - like him. You don't wear rings - like him. All the details tally, everything speaks against you. The other day in your studio, you wore a shirt with an open collar. And then there was the time you drew my attention to your big, square-toed English shoes such as nobody wears in Paris. You mentioned your delicate feet! In fact it was an affectation of virility, an alibi.

  And the contradictions in your attitude towards me! The same 'inconsistency' we find in M. de Charlus. And your ups and downs. 'The very ups and downs of his relations with me,' as Proust writes of Charlus.

  You said to me in the avenue Marceau: 'Se
e how much I trust you. I talk to you as I would to a man.' You bet!

  And that 'delicacy of feeling that men so rarely show'. One can deny you all sorts of things, but never delicacy of feeling.

  Again, you once said to me that young men were fools. Charlus says it too. 'What impresses us about this man's (Charlus') face is a certain touching delicacy, a certain grace, an unaffected friendliness....' Just as I used to say to everyone about you: 'He's so natural and friendly.' Fool that I was! It's absolutely frightful to be plunged into this underworld. It has changed my whole vision of the world.

  And what was it you said about your character Christine in Fragility? 'I transformed myself into Christine.' Those half-admissions, which Proust also draws attention to! You reminded me of Flaubert's remark: 'Madame Bovary is me.' But Flaubert was obviously a pansy: he never married, there was only one woman in his life, and above all there's that phrase in Salammbô about certain Carthaginian troops whose 'friendships' made them more courageous, so it seems. (At that rate, I'd rather have an army of cowards.)

  And your complete lack of jealousy, which you have often spoken to me about and which you describe as 'an almost sublime common sense'. That cannot be called manly. Jealousy is one of the basic characteristics of the male.

  Now I understand why you did not find me more desirable. And to think of the tortures I went through, the time I spent staring at myself in the mirror! Now I understand why you did not need me. Of course, you were half woman yourself!

  You, Costals, possessed but not possessing! Dominated but not dominating! Seeking in love the same self-abasement that we women seek. The very thought of it sickens me. You have befouled the face of the earth for me, after having filled it with radiance.

  Since I knew nothing about this form of debauchery, and the ladies in the Casino knew nothing about it either, judging by the questions they asked one another, I overcame my nausea and consulted a medical dictionary (Labarthe's) which I found in my friend's library. I discovered that members of this infamous sect 'paint their faces'. And I've been racking my brain trying to remember whether that fresh complexion of yours … And the thought that you might be strolling along the boulevards with 'a handkerchief, a flower or some needlework' in your hand, as Labarthe puts it … And to think that I had my copy of Fragility bound in green morocco, now that I know that green is the favourite colour, the symbol by which these creatures recognize each other! Oh no! it's too frightful! It's stifling me, it's killing me …

  I have shut the dictionary, and I won't bother with any more documentary evidence. Even if these descriptions are a bit fanciful, they are quite enough for me and I shall stop there. You may well say that women refuse to face reality, that they are always burying their heads in the sand, etc. Well, have it your own way, but for me it's all very simple: there are a certain number of horrible things in the world which I prefer not to know about. My dignity as a woman, and eventually as a wife and mother, forbids it: I should be sullied forever. Let the world do as it likes - I personally have the right to ignore as much of it as I please.

  For five years now you have prevented me from marrying. Because of you my youth has been wasted - in fact my whole life has been wasted, for youth is all that counts in a woman's life. And wasted for whom? For the wretched creature you are! Can you imagine the tragedy of a woman who has made one of these people the very incarnation of manhood, and who suddenly, one day, has this revelation? And you haven't even the merit of being original, for there are heaps and heaps of them, and you're nothing but a pathetic snob, a slave of decadentism and putrefaction, a mere hanger-on of the Gides and the Prousts, those imbeciles, rotten to the core with intellectualism, sterility, aestheticism, instead of honestly fulfilling their duty as men, men who are useful to others and to their country … And not only did I love that, but I also loved its work! And since your whole attitude both towards me and towards society is totally insincere, your work must be the same. I can no longer believe a single word you have written. Your work is mere empty rhetoric, a monument of bad literature. If there were a spark of honesty left in you, you would break your pen in pieces. The only thing left for you to do is to creep into your hole in silence, pursued by the jeers of normal men and healthy women.

  The love I had for you, I have given to another. You have no right to it, for one does not accept a love of which one knows oneself to be unworthy, one has no right to cultivate the friendship of a pure and chaste young woman when elsewhere. ... My letters were addressed to a semblance of a person. I demand that you return them to me: they have fallen into your hands by mistake. And I am ashamed of them. What I loved was the man behind your work, the man of your false creation. It is as if I had given myself in the dark to someone I thought I knew, and at dawn discovered that I had been caressing some nameless creature, some half-man, some hideous hermaphrodite.... Are you aware that this kind of horror could lead one to suicide? Are you aware of that?

  But in this tragedy of mine, I have one consolation. The thought of what I have escaped. When I think, when I think that I might have been touched by you! Whereas now I could not bear you to touch my hand, even with gloves on. Yes, to think what I have escaped!

  I despise you.

  Wednesday

  I don't want you to take me for a dupe, but nor do I want you to think me cruel. I want you to read what I wrote to you yesterday, but I don't want it to be your last impression of me.

  I am writing to you with infinite sadness. But it is not for myself that I feel sad, today, it is for you. Ah! times have changed indeed! You have pitied me enough, now it is my turn to pity you. You loved me, let us say, like a sister; I feel today that I might come to love you with the compassion and forgiveness of a mother, and that makes me more serene.

  Yes, how sad it must be to be a monster! It makes one's heart bleed. I beg you to try and extricate yourself if there is still time. You are unhappy, and no doubt it was because you were unhappy that you took refuge in these refinements of vice. And now you are doubly unhappy; though perhaps you are not entirely guilty. I implore you, in the name of all that is sacred in the world, in the name of our memories (for you did love me, after all; only you could not, for obvious reasons, go all the way, could you?), abandon the path you are on. If ever my letters meant anything to you, if ever they helped you, made you ponder, please consider this one seriously: it is a solemn adjuration. Drag yourself up from this Abyss. Get back to the world of real humanity. Become a man again!

  If only for the sake of your talent as a writer. To think that you have never held a woman in your arms! How can you not feel that you are incomplete, that your whole outlook on the world is falsified thereby, and your art so much the poorer?

  When one is ill, one looks after oneself. But one must have the will to be cured. You must acquire that will.

  This very morning, I had a talk with one of the doctors here. He told me there were various kinds of treatment, both physical and moral, for gentlemen of the Charlus type. I enclose herewith the names of some Parisian psychiatrists who have apparently effected such cures. Put yourself in the hands of one of them. But first and foremost say to yourself, and repeat it, sometimes even aloud, after taking a slow, deep breath: 'I want to become a man.'

  These recent events, though they have shattered me, have brought me back to religion. God at least does not let one down. You know that I had more or less given up practising. But for the past five days, I have started going to church again daily. I no longer say, as in the past: 'O God, make me happy.' Now I pray for you. And I shall continue to pray for you until you are saved.

  Farewell. I forgive you. Believe in my immense pity.

  A.H.

  to Armand Pailhès

  Toulouse

  Pierre Costals

  Paris

  My dear Pailhès,

  Epigraph to this letter; the words of the Scripture: 'A woman's love is more to be feared than a man's hatred.'

  Object of this letter: A man's rage fin
ds vent in violence. A woman's rage finds vent in stupidity. It is this second point we shall now demonstrate.

  I am sending you, duly 'registered', [A pun in the original: recommander = 'to register' (a letter) and to recommend' (Translator's note).] a document which seems to me quite remarkable. You can return it to me when I have the pleasure of seeing you in Toulouse ten days from now.

  A woman rejected because she is not attractive enough welcomes with transports of delight an absurd allegation by an old literary crone about the man who has 'insulted' her. The allegation justifies her in her own eyes by convincing her that it was not because of her looks that she was rebuffed, and at the same time avenges her by showing her 'insulter' in an 'infamous' light. In other words, she is shown the portrait of a person unknown, who in no wise resembles the insulter, except, shall we say, that they both have two eyes, one nose, etc., perhaps even the same colour of hair. Blinded by her passion, she recognizes the portrait as that of her insulter; if she were before a judge, she would take an oath on it. But it is not enough for her to execrate him; she has been pitied, so she must pity in her turn: her scorn is transmuted into pity. And finally, since in spite of all this she still loves, and since reality, by deceiving her hopes, has thrown her back into darkness, she begins to pray for her insulter, and is thus enabled to crown her triumph by congratulating herself on her magnanimity, and perhaps to pursue her relations with the insulter, without damaging her self-respect, by means of biweekly letters twelve pages long in which she will continue to talk to him about himself under cover of the supreme Being. For, on the labels of cages in zoos, the males are indicated by an arrow, which means that they pierce the hearts of women, and the females are indicated by a cross, which means that they take refuge in the Crucifix.