Confidant (9781101603628)

by Gremillon, Helene; Anderson, Alison (TRN)

  The next morning we went to Fontenay-le-Fleury for Sacha’s wedding. The people of the village had come out en masse to see the procession. The ceremony was moving, not in itself, but because it reminded me of our own wedding. To hear the bride and groom say ‘I do’ has always had the same effect on me: for a brief moment, love seems so simple; even the least thoughtful, most cynical or disillusioned of the guests believes in it. Only afterwards do people recover their wits, the way Paul did.

  ‘But there’s such a big difference in their ages, after all.’

  Sacha was fifty-four, Geneviève twenty-five. I didn’t say anything, but I did not appreciate his remark at all. It was the second time in less than a week that a difference in age had suddenly loomed up in my life.

  The previous Saturday I had seen Le jour se lève at the Normandie, and because Carné is far too refined to say it, he had not said it, but the matter is at the very heart of the film. Arletty and Jacqueline Laurent look so much alike that only age sets them apart, and both Gabin and Jules Berry choose the younger woman. Don’t say you haven’t been warned, Carné must have thought, on hiring the two actresses.

  I had pointed this out to the person next to me at the dinner table, who worked in the cinema; this hadn’t occurred to him at all upon seeing the film but now that I mentioned it, it stood to reason.

  There weren’t many of us at the luncheon, one hundred and five, to be exact. Sacha had decided he would invite the same number of people as the number of plays he had written—that was just like him. On the whole I felt at ease. The atmosphere was joyful, the conversation was lively, and this sheltered me from any trivial questions about children. The weather was not good, so we dined inside, except for dessert. In the garden a donkey was pulling a cart in which a cherry tree had been planted, and everyone was to go and help themselves. The women said it was a charming idea, so poetic . . . The men would have preferred not to have to leave the table, and most of them did indeed skip dessert. The idea of finding myself suddenly surrounded by all those women at the same time frightened me somewhat, and I let them go ahead. It was as I watched them go down the steps of the porch that I suddenly understood they were harmless, my former enemies, and that my adversaries had changed.

  Near the donkey pulling its cart was a white doe that Sacha had given Geneviève as a wedding present.

  Annie was the beautiful doe and I was the struggling donkey.

  The fact of it stunned me. The ten years between us, which I had never really noticed, instantly slapped me in the face.

  ‘Mademoiselle Annie will make a lot of heads turn!’

  How many times had Sophie said this to me over these last weeks? I was afraid I was beginning to understand what she had meant by it. You cannot hide a thing from servants, they see what others do not see. We are their centre of interest and even if we are careful, we cannot prevent incriminating details from becoming immediately apparent to them. The certain drape of a bedspread, a curtain pulled too tight—only they know how to put things back the way they had left them; a hair that should not be there, behaviour that is overanxious or too distant—they can perceive the slightest changes.

  I had got into the car, like every Saturday morning over the last few weeks, but on our way out of the village I acted as if I suddenly remembered the date. They could go on and do the shopping as usual, but I preferred to go home again. Paris on the day after the fourteenth of July: the Champs-Elysées would be blocked. So I asked Jacques and Sophie to leave me there at the fork in the road; I would go back on foot.

  ‘Mademoiselle Annie will make a lot of heads turn!’

  I clung to those words: I must not change my mind, must not back out. Why should I feel embarrassed, after all? I would not be barging in on any sort of intimacy, there wasn’t any. I was the one who had laid down the rules for their meetings, so my presence there had nothing indecent about it. I was trying to convince myself of this when I heard the door close behind them. They were going over to the bed. I could not understand what they were saying to each other, their murmuring was muffled by the tapestries. I thought they were lying down. I parted the heavy drapes.

  They were not lying down, they were seated. Both of them on the edge of the bed. Paul was running his hand through her hair, revealing her face. Annie had her back to me, I could only see Paul’s face, alive, so alive. And then I didn’t see him anymore, they were kissing. On the lips. Passionately. With her fingers Annie traced the line of Paul’s shoulders and neck. He let her; he was looking at her mouth. After their long caresses she went over to the stack of recent canvases on the floor and, after removing the ones on the top, she took one from the middle. A fine hiding place. Before she even had time to put it on the easel I knew what I would see there: Paul’s portrait.

  She worked for a long spell, with Paul staring straight ahead, unmoving, so peaceful. She put down her brush and came to kneel in front of him. They stayed like that for a long while, speaking quietly. And then he lifted her up and kissed her. They undressed, caressing each other. He took her in his arms, the way one carries a young bride, and set her down on a high stool. He placed his mouth over her sex. She took her pleasure. They returned to the bed, their bodies close together. She sat between his legs, he touched her breasts, her buttocks, kissed her on the forehead, he moaned, she brought him off with her hands, made him come—onto the sheets.

  So that is what the child I was so hoping for looked like.

  They lay down side by side, their hands on each other’s sex. Facing each other. Paul helped her to get dressed. He caressed her neck while she tidied her hair. Then they left the room. Hand in hand.

  Behind the curtains I vomited, sick with what I had just seen. In my mind their bodies were still entwined, their hands roaming, their mouths biting, giving each other pleasure. But my husband had not penetrated her. They made love in order not to make a child.

  But what had I expected? She was so beautiful. And even if she had been less beautiful, her boldness would have made her desirable. She had no modesty, no resistance in her supple body; she was so easy in her manner, so precise in the gestures of her hands; she was erotic, thrilling, even when she lay down, even when she did nothing. I vomited from the knowledge that I would never be able to fight against that, even if I made the same gestures. I vomited with the certainty that my husband was in love with this woman. The body does not err in such cases.

  The next morning a strip of white hair ran all along the right side of my head. Paul called out to me just as I discovered this revolting streak. Caught unawares, I quickly covered my head with a scarf. I was afraid he might see it as well and guess, as a result, that I knew everything. He did not even notice the scarf, which was, however, very obvious, being so terribly unfashionable. It was the fifteenth of July.

  The days went by, stalled in what was only too obvious. Annie’s canvases betrayed her betrayal: they were more violent, more tormented. I still remember a field of cornflowers against a black background, filled with a nervous sensuality. As if every flower contained something of Paul’s face. It was unbearable. One Saturday followed another and I could say nothing to either of them; I had begged them too often.

  And if I had said something to Paul? Would he have chosen me or would he have flung his love for her in my face? I would have liked to say, ‘Let’s go back to Paris, to our house’, but I didn’t dare, for fear he might reply, ‘Let’s take Annie with us.’ It would have been unbearable if he had dropped his mask. And if he had not yet admitted to himself that he was in love, there was no need to point it out to him.

  I did not try to understand them, but simply to outfox them, as you always do when you discover a secret that has been deliberately kept from you. I hid more than once behind those heavy drapes. I analysed my husband’s gestures, recognising some of the ones he had displayed with me, but above all discovering many others. I needed to see the two of
them, to see them loving each other, betraying me, as if I already knew I was about to commit an odious act that required me to feel profound hatred. Subsequently, with every moment of weakness or hesitation, those unbearable images would take hold and compel me, inexorably, towards the worst.

  We were both in the drawing room. Paul and I. The radio was on, the minister of public health was describing a catastrophic situation: the race to see which country would have the highest birth rate. The German papers were full of examples to follow: ‘Schumann was a fifth child, Bach had seven brothers and sisters, Handel nine, Wagner was the youngest of eight children, Mozart of ten . . .’ Here in France the question of the birth rate was of particular concern. The population was declining, you could calculate the figures down to the very moment when France would have lost half its population, then three quarters, and even when it would disappear altogether . . .

  I was not allowed to hear the end. Paul got up nervously and turned the knob on the radio. After a while he said, ‘By the way, Annie is still not pregnant.’

  I bit my lips to keep from exploding. And yet she takes my husband’s member in her mouth.

  That year we did not go away on holiday, something which had never happened. We usually spent the summer in our house in Collioure.

  Paul said the situation in France was too tense, but I knew that was just an excuse. The truth was he did not want to be away from Annie. Not to be outdone, I replied that I too had no plans to leave L’Escalier, given all the riff-raff who were invading our beaches with their paid holidays. And besides, Annie and her parents would surely go away for a few days.

  My reaction was such a relief to Paul that he did not even notice my attack on his false pretence, or on Annie, whom I had clearly relegated to her position among the proletarians I so despised. My treachery had no effect: my husband had ceased to view her as a working man’s daughter long ago. How could he, playing with her fingers the way he did, kissing her gently in the hollow between her wrist and her hand?

  Contrary to all expectation, in mid-August he suggested we go and spend a few days in Deauville; it was not as far away as the south and we could get home more quickly if the situation worsened. What I took to be thoughtfulness on his part turned into a veritable nightmare. You can hide your misfortune in the midst of other unhappy people, but not among happy people. And in contrast to all those holiday-makers who strode along the beach chatting, Paul’s misery was striking. He got obsessed by the theft from the Louvre of Watteau’s painting, L’Indifférent. I recall the title because that was how I felt when the stolen painting was recovered. He read me the articles concerning the theft, Bogousslavsky here, Bogousslavsky there. His monologues terrified me. Not so much because they were virtually the only words my husband addressed to me during our stay, but because they carried the scarcely disguised trace of Annie. It was not to me that he was speaking.

  In the toilets of the restaurant where we had lunch I removed my scarf and plucked out my white hairs one by one. By the seventh, I decided that if war was not declared I would murder Annie; by the ninth I was no longer crying, and was plucking them out almost with delight, to the tune of ‘Everything is absolutely fine, Madame la Marquise’ which I could hear coming from the restaurant.

  Separation would be my only salvation. Drowning myself in shameful speculation on the likelihood of misfortune, I prayed for war with every bone in my body. During the month of August 1939 all the signs were coming together. Civil defence measures were being put in place; sandbags had invaded Paris, covering statues; the Jardin des Plantes had been emptied of its rare animals; and train connections to Germany had been suspended. What others found terrifying was a comfort to me.

  War or no war? I clung to the least little hint, even the most specious. Instead of reading the astrologers’ predictions, which claimed that, according to the horoscopes of Messrs Hitler and Mussolini, there would be ‘no war this summer’, I preferred to note that the passage of numerous Bohemian waxwings had been recorded in eastern France and in Germany, as had been the case in 1870 and 1914. These birds, whose feathers are tipped with a sort of splash of blood red wax, are reputed to be the harbingers of great catastrophes. Then there was the rare edition of Nostradamus that had been found and which, similarly, did not predict happy times. ‘In 1940 the German armies will invade France from the north and the east. Paris will be reduced to ashes and it is in Poitiers that the definitive battle will be fought. But then a Frenchman will come forward to revive the country’s forces and drive the Germans out, and he will be crowned king in Avignon, to universal rejoicing.’

  Paul himself had painted an apocalyptic picture of the situation, never realising how happy it made me. Not only would war surely be declared but above all we were bound to lose. There was no point in trying to hide it from me, his newspaper had sent him to investigate the facts regarding military preparedness, and what he had discovered defied commentary. He had managed to intercept some official documents, letters from various members of the military committee, all pointing to defeat: our infantry was inadequate, the cannons were obsolete, the troops were lacking in observational and surveying equipment. There were no tracked munitions supply vehicles, only small lorries that would be incapable of progressing over terrain riddled with shells and mines. Some regiments did not even have any anti-gas materiel, nor any sirens to sound the alarm. And the air force was even worse off. The anti-aircraft artillery could only reach aircraft flying at less than six thousand metres, whereas German planes could reach altitudes of eight to eleven thousand metres. We were desperately short of modern aircraft. The French air force was in danger of being crushed in a matter of days.

  Too bad.

  I would rather my husband was taken by war than by her.

  I would rather my husband was taken by death than by her.

  And then there was that ridiculous handshake between Ribbentrop and Molotov. Even Daladier, when they came to wake him in the middle of the night, thought it was a joke on the part of the journalists. But the two schools—war or no war?—continued to face off against each other. There were those who, like Paul, thought that the process had been set in motion and others, like Aragon, who wrote that the war had just receded a bit further, because the pact between the Germans and the Soviets would serve as an instrument of peace against the aggression of the Reich. Errors often arise from certainty.

  During the month of August almost all my nights were disturbed by the same dream. I was bombing the Germans and it was thanks to me that war was declared.

  On the first of September at four forty-five a.m. the Schleswig-Holstein, a German battleship, opened fire on the Polish enclave of Westerplatte. And at eight a.m. Germany proclaimed that Danzig and its territory were henceforth an integral part of the Reich.

  At ten thirty Paul woke me up and broke the news to me. He had to go to the recruiting office; a general mobilisation had been ordered. I found no words to reassure him.

  We returned to Paris. There were dozens and dozens of children everywhere in the streets, little suitcases or bundles in their hands. Some of them wore large cloth labels with their name across their back. The government had ordered them to be evacuated. I envied all the women who were crying that day: their misery was proof that life had granted them the happiness it so obstinately withheld from me.

  On the third of September Adolf Hitler got up at seven a.m. and asked for the news from the front. It was excellent: Panzers and Stukas were deciding Poland’s fate.

  At nine fifteen in his study he had the translation of the text of the British ultimatum to Germany read out to him in a loud slow voice.

  At twelve thirty the French ambassador in turn delivered the fateful lines: ‘The Government of the Republic has the honour of informing the Reich Government that they see themselves in duty bound to fulfil the contractual obligations, as of five p.m. today, 3 September onwards, which they had e
ntered into with Poland and with which the German government is acquainted.’

  There was not a single newspaper left in the kiosks. Theatres and cinemas were closed, horse shows were cancelled. Avid crowds hurried to the churches, so numerous that they spilled out onto the church squares. It was raining. Paul and I were at home, in the drawing room, not speaking. Paul was not afraid. He was following events closely. And I was observing him. I would have liked to fix his features in my mind, but those features were dead to me; another woman had already taken them away.

  I went out. It had stopped raining. At the entrances to buildings concierges were painting the word ‘shelter’ in large white letters. It was nearly five o’clock. All around me men were looking at their watches. Twenty more minutes . . . Ten more minutes . . . Five more minutes . . . The church bell at the Madeleine rang five o’clock. The war had begun.

  One never thinks about those women who were infinitely relieved to see their husbands leaving for war; and yet they did exist, and I was one of them.

  The next day, first thing, I asked Jacques to drive me to L’Escalier. I was obliged to go back, otherwise Annie would have realised that I knew something. I owed her at the very least a ‘friendly’ goodbye. I was sure she would be there, hoping for a miracle, hoping that despite the mobilisation he would be there, too. She was pale. In order to have something to say she told me about her holidays in Dinard, where her father had taken her and her mother.

  So that was the real reason why Paul had suddenly wanted to go and ‘breathe the sea air’. And to think I had assumed it was for my sake. They certainly did not see one another, otherwise she would not have told me about her trip with such naïveté. It was only the prospect of being a little bit closer to her that had prompted Paul to go to Deauville. That was even worse. How many more lies had he made me swallow?