Confidant (9781101603628)

by Gremillon, Helene; Anderson, Alison (TRN)

  1 litre of Malaga wine

  30 grams of vanilla pod

  30 grams of cinnamon

  30 grams of ginseng

  30 grams of rhubarb

  Allow to macerate for two weeks.

  I drank this supposedly aphrodisiac wine, and turned everything I knew—jam, syrup—into an aphrodisiac concoction. It was pathetic. I even took aphrodisiac baths. Rosemary, sage, oregano, mint, and camomile blossoms. Five hundred grams of each, which I let infuse for twelve hours then poured into my bath. Over time my skin acquired a spicy scent that disgusted me.

  And then I began to take medication which I prepared myself, but always on the basis of the ingredients listed in Debay’s book. Pills. Liniments. Plasters. My bathroom had become a regular dispensary. Every act, every gesture was orchestrated with a view to conceiving, but time was passing, and nothing worked.

  My agitation made me forfeit all sense of moderation, and the escalation in treatments turned horribly wrong. After all, Anne of Austria had managed to give birth to Louis XIV after twenty-three years of infertility. Ablutions in burning hot water just before intercourse. Flagellation of the loins, thighs and buttocks with a birch switch. And the most unbearable of all, urtication: I had to rub my genitals with the fruit of the wild rose, which caused the most terrible itching.

  It may sound unsavoury, but it is the truth. I had become my own guinea pig and the only thing that would have stopped me was pregnancy. At that time, advice of this nature was the only remedy available for those who wanted a child when the body itself refused to comply with the wishes of one’s soul. Theories only become archaic the moment new ones replace them, and for almost sixty years nothing at all had been written about infertile women.

  Then there was my husband’s grandmother’s birthday.

  At the end of the lunch, Granny tapped her spoon against her saucer to get everyone’s attention; she wanted to thank all of us—sixteen of us—for having come. Everyone applauded. Then suddenly a voice cried out, ‘There aren’t sixteen of us, Grandmother, only fifteen!’

  With a twinkle in her eye, the old woman counted again and shook her head.

  ‘I’m not senile yet, when I say “sixteen” I have my own way of calculating!’

  Just then, someone understood what she meant. Cries of enthusiasm, then the names of all the women sitting around the table: ‘Marine!’ ‘Catherine!’ ‘Mathilde!’ ‘Bérengère?’ ‘Emma!’ ‘Virginie?’

  Every name except Granny’s and my own. Because it was no longer possible for her; and because for me, it never had been. Paul squeezed my hand under the table. The guests preferred the spontaneity of a guessing game over the idea of observing the feelings of others or, above all, tact. Finally, quietly, like a musical instrument that has been tuned at last, the names receded until there was only one left: ‘Mathilde! Mathilde!’ And to be sure, the heroine of the day was beaming with pleasure, as she should, under the circumstances. Everyone applauded. And amidst the applause, the heroine of the day spoke solemnly about the child she was carrying: her voice was earnest and somewhat flat, no doubt because she already had all she could wish for.

  Suddenly her eyes met mine and she looked away at once, her broad radiant smile frozen on her face, and a moment of awkwardness spread round the table. Silence. The game had yielded to the weight of reality, my reality. At that moment I realised I had become ‘the infertile woman’ in the family, the one whose presence absolutely precluded any displays of joy, the one who was so unfortunate that the happiness of others could prove fatal. My shame was confirmed.

  My infertility had taken over my whole life. I could no longer have a conversation. My anger or sadness about any subject at all was never taken at face value. I could see what everyone was thinking: she is angry because she cannot have a child, she is sad because she cannot have a child. My opinion as such no longer mattered.

  They must all have thought that it was shame that led to my hasty departure, and they were right. But they would never admit that they were the ones who brought the shame down upon me.

  I will acknowledge that Paul did everything in his power to ensure our departure went smoothly. He never complained about the numerous trips he had to make between Nuisement and Paris, either for his work or to attend a dinner. Because he could still join in that life; men have no such concerns amongst themselves.

  I did not want there to be any reminders of my infertility at L’Escalier, and everyone seemed to have concurred to make this easy for me. No one came to visit, and it was not difficult to cut myself off, all that was required was to leave Paris behind. As for the others, Paul did his utmost to avoid the subject; Sophie excelled at her job by pretending not to know, although she knew perfectly well, and Jacques, my husband’s handyman, was only interested in such matters insofar as they applied to animals.

  Even with Alberto I was fortunate . . . He was one of those people whose discretion meant he would only refer to a problem if he had a solution to offer. Alberto Giacometti was one of my friends, and he had agreed to give painting lessons to Annie.

  Annie was just Annie, a local girl. And above all, the only person threatening my fragile equilibrium.

  She often painted in the vicinity of L’Escalier and I could see her off in the distance. One day I asked Jacques to invite her in for tea, I felt in need of company. She got into the habit of coming to the house to work, and of course I went along with it. Contrary to all expectations, I appreciated the young girl’s presence, enjoying it rather than merely enduring it. She was the first person in so long who did not view me as a failed mother. If she needed something for her painting, I was only too happy to send for it. It was as if I had at last found someone on whom I could happily lavish my frustrated maternal instinct. I would not go so far as to say she came to replace the child I could not have, that would be too much of a caricature, but there was something of that in my relationship with her, and caricature can be a part of life.

  She never asked about it. She was not surprised to find out that my husband and I had no children, and I knew by this that she was making neither a statement nor a criticism. It simply did not occur to her. As she was not a prisoner of convention, Annie did not find me abnormal.

  It was November 1938.

  I was convinced that the best way to control my misfortune was to keep it to myself. I avoided speaking to her about it. I would rather she knew nothing about it and above all I was surprised to find that when I was in her company I could forget about it.

  Unfortunately one cannot spend one’s life avoiding such a topic. Neither between a man and a woman who love each other, nor between two women whose friendship is sincere.

  One day I told her everything. Down to the last detail. I could not stop talking, like an alcoholic who needs to pour out words, any words at all, to anyone at all. She was the first person in whom I could confide, and it was disturbing, enlightening, even, to hear myself giving voice to my emotions, but I immediately regretted it. I had ruined everything, and I knew it.

  She was sitting opposite me, crushed by my unhappiness, unsure how to react. And I immediately recognised the shame I had wanted to cast off by leaving Paris. The same shame that clung to me and made me suddenly lower my head and place both hands beneath my chin. It was that intense weariness, which I had managed to shrug off in Annie’s presence. I had ruined everything. I wept over my own cowardice.

  To confide in someone is a sign of love or friendship, and it must be handled with extreme tact. Not everyone can listen to another’s secrets, and a child even less so. A person’s character must be shaped before one burdens it with things it is not yet equipped to understand. Adults who confide in children disgust me. I disgust myself. But that day I was not adult enough myself to realise just how young Annie was. Too young for me to confide in, too young to respond with advice. As she could not fulfil the traditio
nal role of a confidant, she had no other choice than to allow herself to be profoundly affected by my despair. But as is often the case when one person opens her heart, the other follows suit.

  Annie did not want children. She was categorical about it, astonishingly resolute on the topic for her age. I saw how intensely her eyes shone, how delicately her hands folded her table napkin. That was typical Annie, in that moment: extremely assured, extremely gentle. I think her charm derived in part from that strange combination. Thrilling and soothing. She saw life as something more than just filled with children. Now I understood better why, when I was with her, my infertility had seemed so easy to bear.

  ‘It’s not compatible with motherhood,’ she added, before reciting a long list of women who had to give up painting once they became mothers. A friend of hers had told her this, a young man she was very fond of. A certain Louis.

  She also talked to me about her parents, who had waited for her until they reached that ultimate threshold where one no longer expects to fall pregnant. But immediately upon the joy of her birth came the fear of losing her. Her mother surrounded her with endless precautions, and worried about everything. Her father tried to reason with his wife, and they always ended up quarrelling. In the evening, her mother often slipped into her bed. Annie suspected she deliberately instigated these quarrels in order to be able to sleep next to her daughter, to hear her breathing and know that everything was fine, that her little girl was well and truly alive. Unintentionally, she had conveyed to Annie that having children was a heavy responsibility, a source of imminent tragedy.

  Annie was laconic and sensitive, and that’s why I liked her; she did not talk like others her age or from her background.

  All the same, she was still young, the age where one does not yet know that for certain problems there are no solutions. And she wanted to find one, any solution at all. She should never have gone ahead with it.

  She offered to have a child instead of me.

  Forgive me, I’m expressing myself poorly. To have a child for me.

  It was the seventh of February 1939. I was still sitting with my head down on my hands beneath my chin, my gaze riveted on the newspaper next to my plate, staring at the date the way a body grabs at anything to keep from falling.

  At the time, I swear, her proposal had seemed completely ridiculous, thoughtless, naïve. But despair is a sly evil, it gathers strength at night, and that very evening I began to reconsider her proposal. What if that were the real reason we had met? Was it God’s will?

  In those days I was constantly putting myself in God’s hands, a habit that had arisen out of distress. I was neither devout nor a regular churchgoer, but I was simply and foolishly superstitious, that was all I was capable of. Superstition, unlike faith, is for those who need to believe but cannot give—like myself at the time, enclosed in the selfishness of misfortune.

  The day I had decided to leave Paris I had felt so devastated that I was incapable of making more than one decision at a time. When I opened the drawer of my husband’s desk, the one where he kept the keys to our properties, I had shuffled through the metal bolts frenetically, before grabbing one without looking at it. It was the key to L’Escalier. I didn’t question my choice, but attributed it to God.

  Had He thus intended for me to meet this girl who would enable me to return to Paris with a child in my arms? In this business God will have served, in the end, to make me commit the most dreadful deeds.

  One day I caught myself gazing at Annie’s belly, and I imagined it growing round with my child.

  With this first glimmer of hope I understood the true source of my anxiety, one I had never dared formulate for fear it might transpire: that Paul would leave me.

  Our milieu required the presence of a child, but did he? What did he think when he looked at all the women he encountered? Did he occasionally find them attractive, not only because they were beautiful, but also because they might be able to provide him with a child?

  Paul, my husband, my love: this misfortune got the better of us. But we were so much in love with each other. Before.

  I knew by heart the ideal conditions for conception. Before resorting to other methods I had begun with them myself, and I was determined to apply them to Annie and my husband.

  The act itself must not last longer than three minutes; all the doctors agreed that pleasure would compromise the chances for conception. What were three minutes in exchange for a child? And I was convinced that once would be enough for God to provide me with this relief, just once. I know, that was stupid of me, but ‘errors often arise from certainty’, as Paul was in the habit of saying.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you that his Munich agreement was utter rubbish—how on earth could they think that Hitler would stop there? Too often errors arise from certainty. First it was the Rhineland, then the Anschluss, and now the Sudetenland. This new deal will hardly suffice to put a stop to that madman’s demands. Next time it will be war, I assure you.’

  That was on the sixteenth of March 1939. Paul and I were walking through the grounds at L’Escalier. Hitler had invaded Prague, and Czechoslovakia was finished. Paul was convinced that war was unavoidable. I didn’t want to believe it so I gently poked fun at his pessimism. I was so obsessed by Annie’s proposal that I could think of nothing else. The air was mild, it was our wedding anniversary, and I told myself this would be the best time to talk to him about it.

  ‘How can you ask me to do such a thing? . . . Have you taken leave of your senses? She’s only a kid, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She said the first thing that came into her mind. What are you thinking? First you want to move, and you don’t seem to care in the least if it harms my career. And now I am supposed to sleep with the first girl who comes along? What next? Will I have to kidnap a child after I’ve killed its parents? You’re going mad. I beg you, get a hold of yourself. Let me take you in my arms, darling—you got pregnant once, you’ll get pregnant again, I promise you.’

  But I did not let him take me into his arms, and moreover, after that day we were never much in each other’s arms anymore. I walked as far as the birthwort arbour and sat down. Paul was standing there in front of me. He was nervously trying to adjust a branch around the metal arch. I tried to speak as clearly as possible.

  ‘I never was pregnant. Pasquin lied to you.’

  That had been two years earlier. One day I missed my period, and it did not come in the days that followed. All during those endless months of waiting I had imagined a thousand ways to tell Paul that I was pregnant; I had never been able to use any of them.

  He held me in his arms with so much love: he had been so afraid that we might never have a child, he was so proud, he promised me he would be the best father I could dream of. We spent the night making a thousand plans—we who had stopped making plans at all. The next afternoon I had an appointment with Dr Pasquin for an examination, and I stopped by the market on the way. We had invited our closest friends to dinner, so eager were we to share our happiness with them.

  I never found out how the meal went, nor how Paul shared our good news with them. When I came back from the appointment, I apologised that I was not feeling well and went straight up to bed. I let them celebrate an event that would never happen. I didn’t have the heart to tell Paul the truth.

  I wasn’t pregnant. Pasquin was sorry, I was simply suffering from amenorrhea, which was not a serious condition. Not serious? How could he say such a thing?

  I did not leave my bed all week. Paul thought it was my pregnancy that had made me tired, and he was the soul of thoughtfulness. Every morning he read all the letters of congratulations that people sent to us. I stopped eating. Worried, he called Pasquin to my bedside.

  When the door closed behind them, I felt a terrible sense of relief. Pasquin would tell him everything: a minor case of amenorrhea etcetera. But when the door opened a
gain, Paul gave me a sweet smile and, as he pulled the covers up over me, he murmured that it was not so bad, if I had got pregnant once I would get pregnant again, I mustn’t worry, we would manage, he loved me.

  Although I wept and told Paul I had never been pregnant, that I was infertile—it was all in vain. He ran his hand over my forehead and told me to be calm, it was normal for me to be delirious after what I had just been through, the doctor had warned him. I stopped my crying, Paul would not believe me, he did not want to believe me. Pasquin told him I was suffering from depression, that it happened to many women after a miscarriage. When for once he should have told the truth, Pasquin had kept my secret.

  ‘A few days before the time of the month when the period is due, apply six small leeches to the vulva; that is, three to the inside of each of the labia minora. As soon as the leeches drop off, press a small wad of agaric mushroom to the bites in order to stem the flow of blood and stop it completely. Finally, twice a day for three days, inject stimulating solutions into the vagina, with:

  Liquid ammonia 4 gr

  Chilled mixture of brewed nettle 250 gr

  ‘It is rare that the menstrual cycle fails to be re-established after this treatment.

  ‘Many women, especially young girls, find the application of leeches repugnant; they may, before resorting to this extreme measure, try to have a sitz bath with the water at 30 degrees, some strong rubbing at the orifice of the vulva, mustard baths for the feet, cupping glasses on the inner thighs, and a few stimulating purgatives and enemas; finally, suffuse the vagina with steam from boiling water and expose the open part to a good fire in order to stimulate it. Through these various means, an absent period may be restored; if it is not, one must resort to the previous measure.’

  Paul was tearing the birthwort leaves to shreds. He was pale. Despite the fact that he was looking down, I could see his eyes blinking rapidly, which with him is a sign of extreme nervousness. I had just destroyed a reality he would never have been capable of imagining: he could not understand so much of what I was going through.