Confidant (9781101603628)

by Gremillon, Helene; Anderson, Alison (TRN)

  She had also moved the wireless up to my room, to keep me company. I listened to it a lot, mostly music. I turned up the volume for the baby. I told myself we were alike, the two of us: we could only hear faceless voices.

  I called it the baby. She called it my baby. I didn’t say anything. There were plenty of other things I didn’t say to her. To stop putting her hands on my belly all the time. To stop giving me advice for her baby, to the effect that I had to eat properly for her baby. Sleep properly for her baby. Keep the bedroom window open, the smell of paint was not good for her baby. What was good or not good for her baby—that was all that interested her.

  We had the same figure. The towels she strapped around her middle grew thicker and thicker as my own belly grew. She never removed them. Even at home. She copied all my gestures. I hated it. You would have thought she was really pregnant. In any case, everyone in her entourage believed it.

  She didn’t want to miss a thing about this pregnancy that she considered to be her pregnancy. She shouldn’t have asked me so many questions. She was constantly asking me whether I felt them, those little champagne bubbles. Her friends who were already mothers always asked her that question and she didn’t know what to reply. I couldn’t tell what sensation they were talking about. Perhaps my pregnancy wasn’t normal. The idea that I wasn’t pregnant at all had even crossed my mind, perhaps I was just a little girl again, a little girl whose menses had fled when they understood what I planned to do with them. When this thought occurred to me I was relieved. It meant that this farce would soon come to an end. That I would regain my freedom. Go home. See my parents again. See you again. And then one evening, buried under my eiderdown, I felt it. There, down at the very bottom of my belly. Much lower down than I expected. A first time. Then again. And then yet again. But it wasn’t like champagne bubbles. It was like the fluttering of tiny fish. I couldn’t say it was like champagne bubbles, I had never drunk champagne. But I had seen little fish, on the surface of the lake in the rain.

  As the weeks went by this fluttering turned into quivering. Very faint to begin with. Then more and more obvious. Until before long my belly was contorted by the blows. From a foot. From a hand. From an elbow. My baby was moving about in a space that was too small for it. Just like I was.

  The only events I was entitled to be part of were those taking place in my womb. How could I not be alert to them, and describe them in detail? Grow attached to them? Before my belly began to grow, I was still honest. It was afterwards that things started getting out of control. The more I answered Madame M.’s questions, the further I retreated from my promise. But perhaps I would have distanced myself no matter what. Perhaps this idea of wanting to bear a child for someone else was only an illusion right from the start. I don’t know. And yet others have done it.

  At night I could not sleep. My stomach was burning. To fight boredom I would perform memory exercises. I would wander around the house, and I had to remember where each object was located in one room in order to have the right to move on to the next room. I told myself it was a good exercise for copying, in painting. But above all it allowed me to speak to the baby without speaking about us. I taught it about the world of things. ‘You see, this is a book, that’s a vase, I don’t know what that is, let’s call it “the blue object”, that’s just bad taste, that’s a drawer, this is ammunition, this is a little pistol.’

  I retraced my parents’ features, especially my mother’s. I could not help but say to the baby, ‘You see, those are your grandparents.’ They were the only human beings I spoke to the baby about.

  I wondered what its face would be like. Its eyes. Hair. Body. I hoped it would look like me in every respect. That it would come out of me looking so much like me that she could never bring herself to take it from me, because she would be so convinced that when people saw them together they would say, ‘That’s your friend Annie, she’s shrunk.’

  I had suggested names to her, and she went along with them. It didn’t matter to her. She wanted a child, not a name. I didn’t like the tone of her reply. I had to refrain from answering back that it wasn’t a child she wanted, but my child. I would have liked to go back on my word, but I knew that was impossible, she would never agree to it. I had no qualms anymore about asking her to buy me supplies; now we were equal. I wished she would stop putting up with all my requests and just throw me out. I wanted to run away. Even if it meant giving birth in the street. And then? Shame. Unwed mother. Less than nothing. I had heard too many stories like that not to know. If my parents had been younger, we could have said it was their child. I wouldn’t be the first to become the sister of my own child. ‘Annie must be pleased not to be an only child anymore,’ people would say, ‘she’s been complaining about it for so long.’

  But it was not possible, no one would believe it. And the greatest misfortune of all was that deep down I was convinced my child would have a greater chance at happiness in Madame M.’s world than in mine. Isn’t that why I had gone away with her? With a sinking heart I counted the days until the birth. And it was as if she could read my thoughts. One evening she came to reassure me. I could see the child whenever I saw fit, we could stay together if I liked, at least until her husband came back from the war, and even afterwards, he would surely agree. It was really up to me if she kept me on as a wet-nurse. And later, when the child was old enough, we’d see, we would try to explain things. She didn’t believe a damned word she was saying. But I did. I could no longer bear the idea of losing my child. I needed to believe her. I felt so alone.

  All through those long months in Paris I didn’t receive a single letter from my parents. I thought that my father must be keeping his word. ‘You want to see what it’s like to go far away, well then you will see, don’t count on us to write to you.’ That’s what he said just after he gave me the easel. I knew he had a temper, but for once I thought this was being too spiteful. At the same time, since I had never made him this angry before, because of this trip, I figured I was just getting acquainted with the extreme side of his temperament. And I felt sorry for Maman. She must have spent all her time trying to defend me. I missed her so much. I would have liked to share these moments with her, to find out what she had felt when I was in her womb.

  ‘Your parents are fine.’ That was what Madame M. always passed on. Beaming. ‘Your parents are fine.’ Filthy liar.

  Jacques, Monsieur M.’s handyman, had stayed behind at L’Escalier. ‘To look after the place until we get back,’ she said. Because of his gammy leg, he had not been called up. He was the one who came up to Paris once a week with news of my parents, but I never saw him, I only heard his voice. She didn’t want him to find out about me, either. The only one who knew, apart from the two of us, was Sophie. Madame M. gave my letters to Jacques, acting as postman, and he took them to my parents. Because at least I wrote to them. Not a lot. But often. It was hard to find things to write about. Even talking about the weather would be complicated. I had to write as if I was in Collioure. And above all as if I was not pregnant.

  My parents believed that my letters were part of a package that Madame M. sent to Jacques. All so that a postmark would not betray us. She left nothing up to chance. Before our departure she had even managed to get hold of twenty or more postcards of Collioure. Some of them were the same, she thought that would be even more credible: it’s always like that, lots of people send the same card twice from a place without realising.

  She read my letters before she gave them to Jacques, I’m sure. She would never have run the risk that I might write something that would betray us. She didn’t tell me, but I knew. I thought of her as my chief censor. Fair enough, there were also things I didn’t tell her.

  She often asked to look at my belly. She would stare at it until the little bump appeared and moved across it. I could see how troubled she was to see this. She would look at me with the eyes of the dispossessed. I didn’t try to co
nvince her otherwise. We all have our cross to bear. Hers was what she was living through now. Mine lay ahead of me. When the baby would be in her arms.

  And I lied to her. As the weeks passed, I lied more and more often in response to her invasive questioning. When she asked me if I felt something when the child kicked, I said no, I didn’t feel a thing. Which was completely untrue. But she believed me. She had no other way of knowing. And I enjoyed imagining her at her dinners on the town, repeating my words, ‘No, I didn’t feel a thing.’ And I was delighted at the thought of the incredulous looks the other women would give her.

  The only thing I felt like painting was my own body. But I knew that she wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of canvases of my pregnancy invading the room, so I had to make do with moments when she wasn’t there. The moment a sketch was finished, I had to hurry to cover it with something else, something flat. Frequently a blue sky. She must have thought I was painting a lot of skies. But as that was all I could see of the outside world, through the window, she must not have found it very surprising.

  This sinister comedy lasted one hundred and seventy-four days. One hundred and seventy-four days of prison, less sixteen days.

  She woke me up in the middle of the night. She had a surprise for me. The car was waiting for us in front of the house. Scarcely an hour later we pulled up outside a mill. I thought we were just stopping off; but it was our destination. She wanted me to get some fresh air. It wasn’t luxurious, but it would be good for her baby. There was a kitchen, a very long main room, a sort of alcove for washing, and a bedroom. The rooms in the basement were uninhabitable, full of dust and milling equipment. I was astonished we had come to this place. It was neither comfortable nor clean. But I could go out. I felt alive again. I spent my time out of doors. It was the end of March, nature was awakening. I had brought my sketchbook and charcoal with me. I found some inspiration again. I was the only one who made the most of the place. Along with Alto, who followed me everywhere. As for Madame M., she never left the mill. She spent her days sprawled in a chair by the window doing crossword puzzles. She stayed there, tense, startled by the slightest noise. I could see she was afraid we might be found out. I could also see she was afraid I might run away. I would have liked to. But I was seven months pregnant. And I had already felt a few contractions. It would have been too risky to follow the stream until I found someone to help me. Not to mention the fact that now I knew what she was like. If we were there, it was because there was no one within a radius of at least ten kilometres.

  We had never been so far apart. And yet we slept in the same bed. There was only one bed. Sophie slept on a mat in the kitchen. Madame M. came to bed once I was asleep and she got up at dawn. We never touched. Each of us on either side of our ‘Maginot line’. I didn’t sleep well. I would look at this odd scene: two pregnant women lying in the same bed. Our huge bellies distorting the blankets. A camel was sleeping in this room. I was thinking on behalf of the child in my belly: there’s the camel that has two humps and there’s the dromedary with only one . . . I would have to be able to answer all my child’s questions.

  Madame M. wasn’t sleeping well either. She was agitated and talked in her sleep. I felt like smothering her with her belly, tearing off all those deceiving towels and stuffing them in her mouth until she died. And she was sweating. In the morning her spot in the bed was soaked. We couldn’t wash the sheets and that acrid smell filled the room. I felt like telling her that her stench wasn’t good for the baby. One day I joked about it with Sophie. The following night I was awoken by the contact of a leg against mine. The two-humped camel had changed into a dromedary. I lifted the sheet, cautiously, and was astonished to see she had removed her belly. In fact she hadn’t removed a thing, it was Sophie who had taken her place next to me. The next morning Madame M. told me that if she was talking in her sleep it must be keeping me awake and that wasn’t good for her baby.

  We stayed there for sixteen days and then we went back to Paris. I gave birth less than two months later.

  She came into my room and handed me a doll.

  ‘Look what I just bought.’

  ‘She’s lovely.’

  ‘More than that. Press the button behind her neck.’

  ‘Maman! Maman!’

  On hearing the doll’s words I felt a violent contraction.

  Any pregnant woman would be disturbed by these letters, at least that’s how I rationalised my reaction.

  I had distanced myself from the correspondence and was convinced it was a novel, or probably a memoir. But there was still no sign of the author.

  I missed my mother a great deal, too; I too would have liked to know what she felt when I was in her womb; I too felt alone.

  I have often noticed that with each birth comes a death. As if there were a quota for the number of souls on earth. I did not have to wait long for this terrible conjuring trick to become a reality. My own mother died four days after I informed her that I was pregnant. Losing your mother a few days after becoming a mother yourself makes you feel terribly isolated.

  I still cannot grasp the fact that my child will never know her.

  Why the fuck did she have to drive so fast on that country road?

  After I folded up the letter I almost called Nicolas. Maybe running away from him was not such a good solution after all, any more than hiding my pregnancy from him was. At least I could give him the option of saying no. I knew he wouldn’t want anything to do with it, but at least I could let him tell me in his own words. So that I’d get over him, too.

  My feelings for him will surely not survive hearing him begging me on his knees to get an abortion, telling me again and again that we haven’t known each other long enough, that later, maybe, but just now it’s too soon.

  I used to think abortion was a good thing: progress, a woman’s free will . . . Now I find myself struggling in a trap which, like many traps, once smelled sweetly, in this case of ‘freedom’. Progress for women, my arse! If I keep the child, I’m guilty vis a vis Nicolas, who doesn’t want it. If I get rid of it, I am guilty vis a vis the baby. Abortion may claim to rescue women from the slavery of motherhood, but it imposes another form of slavery: guilt. More than ever, it is on our own that we handle—or mishandle—motherhood.

  I would have preferred not to have to choose. Shit, if I cannot, at the age of thirty-five, take responsibility for the outcome of a night’s fucking that no one forced me into, then what can I take responsibility for? If we are no longer responsible for the lives we bring into the world, where the hell are we headed? What can we feel responsible for?

  That was how I announced my pregnancy to my mother. She sat down with the shock. I hadn’t even thought of telling her to sit down; I thought they only did that sort of thing in bad advertisements. We had never talked about it, and she had always thought I didn’t want children. She was dumbstruck.

  Of course I’ve always wanted children, I just hadn’t found the right guy, and in this case I thought I’d found him but I got pregnant before I knew whether he’d go along with it, and the night I went to tell him he pulled the rug from under my feet by informing me that his brother had just had a baby and that he wouldn’t like to be in his shoes, he didn’t feel ready at all, not at all.

  Obviously after that I wasn’t able to tell him, but I’ve thought it over carefully, and I’m going to keep this baby, no matter what he thinks. I don’t care, I’m thirty-five, nature isn’t going to wait.

  Maman told me she understood. I told her she’d be a wonderful grandmother. She replied, ‘I’m sure.’ And then she added that having a child was a good thing, but it was even better to have it with someone.

  When I thought back on the strangely solemn way Maman had said those words, I promised myself I’d pick up the phone the next time Nicolas tried to get in touch with me. I had to tell him.

  The birth was terrible. I h
ad the worst asthma attack of my entire life. It was Sophie who looked after me. She kept on saying, ‘Poor Annie, poor Annie.’ At one point she felt she would not be able to manage on her own and she asked Madame M. to fetch the doctor. I saw clearly that she was hesitating about whether to fetch him. ‘She’s taking her time coming back. Surely she wouldn’t do that, would she?’ Sophie was furious. I had never seen her get angry with Madame M.

  And then, I don’t know what happened, I was in so much pain that I passed out. All I know is that when Madame M. came back she was alone. She never went to fetch the doctor. Can you imagine? She would rather we died, the baby and I, than let her secret become known. She was at the church, or so she said, praying for us. Thanks a lot!

  I had lost a great deal of blood. Sophie was distraught; she stayed by my side for hours, even after Louise was born. It wasn’t for her employer’s sake that she was concerned about my life, it was for my own sake, as simple as that. She told me she would never forgive herself if something happened to me.

  I was afraid. I had come to realise just how far Madame M. was prepared to go. If she was capable of letting me die, she was capable of killing me, particularly now that Louise was born. Even today I suspect that if Sophie had not been with us, she would have. Sophie told me I was mad to think like that, that her employer would never go that far. But I had seen in her eyes that she was no longer altogether sure. And before she left my room, under cover of plumping the pillows under my head, she whispered that she would make sure Madame M. went nowhere near my food.

  Louise was born on the sixteenth of May, 1940.

  A few days before the birth I wrote a letter to my parents telling them everything, the letter I mentioned to you a while ago. But I hadn’t found a way to get it to them. That was when I thought of asking Sophie. My parents had to read that letter, my mind wouldn’t be at rest until they did. If something happened to me, they had to know they had a granddaughter. I didn’t want her to send it through Jacques, I didn’t trust him. I had never liked the way he looked at me. Sophie told me I was wrong to think that way about him, that he was a good sort, but if I would rather she posted the letter, she would post it. She swore to me she would. She seemed sincere. I thought I could trust her. I told myself she would agree to do it because she was afraid of being accessory to a tragedy. A murder, even. But she must have changed her mind when she stood there by the post box; she couldn’t do this to her employers, they had always been good to her—she was Jewish and they had even managed to get her naturalised. So she didn’t post it. And she never told me. That must be what happened.