Confidant (9781101603628)

by Gremillon, Helene; Anderson, Alison (TRN)

  Above all I would not scream my hatred at her, or tell her that I knew everything; I would not humiliate myself in that way. Just let her be filled with doubt. In the beginning she would not believe me, but the more the days went by, the more the words would gain in strength, and no one would be here to erase them.

  I told Annie that the night before he was to leave for the front, Paul broke down. He made me promise to stay in Paris, the mail would get there more quickly; he did not want to abandon me, he loved me with all his soul; he had never been more sure of it than now, in the face of imminent danger; he repeated it to me tirelessly. He loved me. He loved me. And he made love to me with all the force of a man in love who is leaving for war. This had not happened to us for months.

  With these words I had just got even with her for all the hurt she had caused me; I thought I would never see her again after that.

  But at the beginning of October Sophie came into the library and told me that Annie was asking for me.

  ‘I am pregnant.’

  Those words that in the past I had so hoped for now turned my blood to ice. She was lying. I had seen the nature of their intercourse; it was not possible.

  Annie said nothing else to try and convince me. Her restraint, her solemn bearing were such that I believed her.

  As if the power of having imagined this moment so many times were enough to command my body, I stood up mechanically and went over to embrace her. I thanked her, told her I was happy. And the most incredible thing about it was that it was true. I told her to go home and rest, I would take care of everything. I had to think of the next step, make a plan.

  Obviously I wondered if it was really my husband’s child. What proof did I have that she was only sleeping with him? But the images I had seen far too often now came back to me and I was certain she was faithful to him and that he was the father.

  For a moment I was confused. I understood that they did not want this pregnancy, because it would inevitably put an end to their trysts. I had no longer been expecting a child. And then I remembered those words I had whispered in Annie’s ear one day, as if butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. I had insinuated that it might be my husband who was infertile, so perhaps it was useless to persist. My words had wasted no time in finding their way into her womb. That possibility, which I had shared with her without dwelling on it, had sounded threatening. Annie had understood that the arrangement could not continue forever. So she had managed to find a way to make Paul give her a child after all—the vilest means a woman has at her disposal to keep a man.

  I realised soon enough that I had suddenly become mistress of the situation again, and I decided to go back to L’Escalier. I was not sorry to leave Paris. Life during the month of September had been impossible. One could not leave the house without a gas mask, and at the slightest toot of a car horn everyone would feverishly put their gear on, convinced it was an alarm. And then all those sirens in the middle of the night, and going down into the bomb shelters for no good reason, where the worst thing that could happen was getting burgled. Sophie was in a terrible state, her sister had been severely burned during an air-raid drill in the métro; the power had been restored by mistake when there were still passengers on the rails. All the taxis had left Paris to take fleeing families out to the country. I could no longer go out. Everything was closed. Not to mention those who had been mobilised and not yet replaced at their jobs. I was not at all sorry to be going back to L’Escalier.

  We would stay in Nuisement so that she would not be far from her parents for too long and, as soon as her pregnancy was about to show, we would go away.

  Initially I thought I would take her to Collioure, to our holiday home, but as the days went by I became increasingly wary. It would be better, wiser, to come back to Paris.

  During the early months of the mobilisation the mail was badly disrupted—it made everyone very angry that letters and packages took weeks to arrive; fortunately for me, otherwise I would have contradicted myself in the course of my letters to Paul. Collioure, Paris, I would have said one thing, then another, and I would have had to justify myself, and thus inevitably arouse his suspicions. But when I received his first letter—on the seventh of November—I knew exactly what I must do, I had had time to decide my course of action.

  It was not enough to hide Annie’s pregnancy. I must actually look pregnant myself.

  I wrote to Paul:

  I was going home, to Paris, and taking Annie with me, I didn’t have the heart to leave such a charming person behind. Full stop.

  She would keep me company in the course of these very special months. Full stop.

  I would never have imagined breaking the news to him like this; we should have been looking into each other’s eyes—after all, we were going to have a child. Full stop.

  I was pregnant. Full stop.

  To vaunt my pregnancy, to make it obvious, was the only way to ensure no one ever came to question my motherhood. I had to protect myself. I did not know what promises they had made to each other during their mad caresses, and I did not want them to be able to claim their word against mine one day.

  Fortunately I had not spurned Paul’s advances the night before his departure. Even if the declaration of war was an unspeakable relief to me, I was devastated by the thought that I would not see him for months on end, perhaps even long years, or something even worse. So I let him take me in his arms. Perhaps, too, I wanted to be the last one to share his bed, a victory like any other; just because one is scorned does not mean one loses one’s pride. What I had told Annie was not a complete lie: Paul did make love to me the night before he left. But not like a man in love who is going to war. Simply like a man who is going to war.

  When I suggested to Annie that we go and settle in Paris she immediately agreed. In fact, she agreed to everything over those five months, even to being kept inside the house. Of course I did make it seem as if every one of my decisions had been made with my husband’s consent. To win her over to my cause I had no scruples about exploiting the fact that she was in love.

  As the war was not yet a full-scale one, Paris was now more welcoming once again, and a certain confidence had returned. Mothers who had sent their children to the countryside had them brought back. Only a few people still went down into the shelters; the government itself had reduced the air-raid warnings; and gas masks were added to the pile of things you occasionally tripped over. One fashion designer even decided to use them as a model for a perfume bottle. The trenches in the parks and gardens were used by children playing hide-and-seek. Life had returned to some kind of normality.

  A phoney war for a phoney pregnancy: that is what I said to myself. And what I said to her. I pretended to be as close to her as ever. Dances were allowed again and horse racing, too; nearly all the theatres and cinemas had re-opened. I went out a lot. Because when I was out, I was the pregnant woman, whereas at home I was merely an impostor. But also because it was easier for me to pretend to be expecting a child than to pretend to be fond of Annie.

  And yet I did everything in my power to be pleasant and affectionate to her. I told her about the civil code that Daladier had just created, and the allowance of three thousand francs granted to each firstborn child. I was very careful with what I told her; I knew very well that she had not agreed to bring this child into the world for money, but the sum in question was hers by rights. And I enticed her with the thought of all the canvases and brushes and charcoals she’d be able to afford with that money. All of which was meant to forestall any inclination she might have to go back on her word or run away.

  I kept a close watch on her. Although it may have seemed that our trust was well established, and that she did not mind being locked up, I had asked Sophie to keep her well within sight, to be always aware of Annie’s whereabouts.

  I even gave her a kitten, imagining that in her solitude she would pour he
r unhappy heart out to the little creature, and that her passionate and soppy words might help me to learn more about her and my husband. But she spoke only to her belly, and even then so quietly that Sophie could not detect the slightest word.

  And if by chance Annie tried to leave the house, she would have been prevented: the front door was always locked. But deep down I always knew she would stay; my best ally in preventing her from leaving was Paul. She was waiting for him.

  Whenever I received a letter from him, I took malicious delight in informing Annie of the fact and giving her a brief summary of his news. How her eyes shone when I talked to her about Paul; she no longer breathed the same way, she was physically hanging on my every word. It hurt to see the way she looked at me. Sometimes, sadistically, I purposely did not tell her what she was hoping to hear. But then I would change my mind a few hours later when I saw how her face had clouded over, how sad and distant she had become. I did not want to inflict such a mood upon the baby she was carrying, my baby, so I would say to her, ‘Oh by the way, Annie, I forgot to tell you, my husband sends you his regards.’

  At the end of each of his letters, Paul added a post scriptum: ‘Say hello to Annie for me.’ This short sentence, always the same, tarnished every message I received from him. Distance had made him gentler with me, as had the prospect of the baby; he asked me a lot of questions which I was always careful to answer—once I had asked Annie. His letters were long, because even at the front where nothing was happening, my husband was still a journalist. But in spite of our renewed complicity, that unchanging post scriptum, a razor sharp sword of Damocles, proved to me with every letter that that girl had not left his thoughts. And I imagined him composing the final sentence with so much more care than all the others. ‘Say hello to Annie for me.’

  For my part, in my letters, I always gave him some brief news about Annie.

  I often wondered if they would have written to each other if she had not been at the house with me. I was, alas, all too certain of the truth.

  And then one day a telegram came unexpectedly, without a post scriptum.

  at last stop will be there twenty-second march stop six days leave at last stop

  Six days’ leave, the end of everything.

  Under normal circumstances Paul would have said ‘a week’, but in these troubled times, a day was a day and approximation was no longer part of our way of thinking. Danger makes one precise. I was in a complete panic. ‘Will be there twenty-second.’ In these troubled times, in particular, nothing was less reliable than a date, time had lost its meaning; the war, however phoney, was imposing its own rhythm. That of fickleness. Of unpredictable variability. It was the eighteenth of March. Things could have changed a thousand times since he wrote that telegram. His leave might have been brought forward, to suit some mission or one of his company comrades. He could easily arrive today, from one minute to the next. Or he might even have invented that date in order to surprise me and show up unexpectedly.

  I imagined him disembarking from the train. Paying for the taxi. I imagined him standing before me with a smile that meant, ‘Here I am!’ The slightest little sound terrified me: here he was! I ordered Sophie to pack our cases for a few days and to prepare some supplies. She asked me where we were going. I myself did not know, and replied curtly that she did not need to know in order to pack, it ought to be enough that I had ordered her to! Poor Sophie. As far as I was concerned, danger had made me more aggressive than precise.

  I had never wanted to entertain the possibility that Paul could be granted leave. Every day already brought with it its share of ‘real’ events which I had to deal with, so that I refused to envisage those which might ‘possibly’ occur. Everything was already so complicated that I wanted to believe he would never be granted leave.

  We went away that very night. To the mill. Even if my husband visited all our properties, never for a moment would he imagine we could be there; the place was too uncomfortable, too Spartan. Annie did not mind. I had presented this sudden escapade as an idea of my husband’s, to ‘give the baby some fresh air’. How lucky we were! We would be able to celebrate springtime in the heart of the countryside. Annie continued to go along with everything as if it were all completely normal.

  ‘And Alto?’

  ‘What about Alto?’

  We had been driving for a long time already when we turned back to fetch the cat. Its fate had not crossed my mind for an instant.

  Paul would never come and look for us here; it was the sort of destination one ran away to, and he would never suspect I was running away from him. I spent two weeks cloistered in the smell of wheat, trying to convince myself of that. I was terrified at the thought that Paul might suddenly show up and confront me. Finland had surrendered to the Russians a few days before our departure. I had no way of knowing what was going on at the front. What if events suddenly took a turn for the worse and we were trapped here unawares?

  In all those months, the days at the mill were without a doubt the most unbearable. My fears were so violent that I talked in my sleep. I slept with Annie and I was afraid I might give myself away. Eventually I moved into the kitchen and onto Sophie’s mattress.

  I had never been so unsure of my plans. Was it the solitude? Or the silence and idleness? I had almost forgotten how much the Annie and Paul had hurt me. I tried to revive my grievances against them, but I felt almost indifferent. The only feelings that lingered were guilt and remorse. And I even wondered, would I be a good mother? Would I be loved in return? My husband must be looking for me at that very moment, but not for my sake. Perhaps this child would not love me, either. Perhaps I was simply not a loveable person.

  I think I could have given it all up but they had aroused my dormant anger once again.

  I was afraid to go back to Paris and find Paul still there; the date of his departure could also have been delayed. I had no choice, I had to go and see for myself. I could not send Jacques to check whether Monsieur had gone to join his regiment; I did not want him to find out about Annie’s pregnancy. I feared nothing on the part of Sophie, but from Jacques, yes. He always said, ‘Oui, Madame’, ‘Oui, Monsieur’, before we had even finished our sentences. It wasn’t overzealousness, but an imperious need to be part of the action. He was far too impulsive to keep a secret. He had other qualities, but with him anything was possible. Nowadays, if I am to believe what people have told me, he’s an elderly gentleman and he is doing well. Fortunately I left him out of this whole business; everyone else who was involved has died in far too tragic a way.

  That was the only day I regretted not confiding in him, because it left me no choice, I had to go and see for myself whether Paul had left.

  I waited for a few days beyond the scheduled date for the end of his leave and, without even telling Sophie, I set off on the road for Paris. I arrived at the house at around midnight. There were no lights on anywhere. This was a good sign: as a rule, my husband was never asleep at this hour. He might have gone out, but in all likelihood he was in his blockhouse with the other soldiers. I tried to reassure myself, but my heart was in my boots when I opened the door.

  I immediately saw his letter. It was there on the credenza in the entrance, visible in the moonlight.

  Where was I? Hadn’t I received his telegram? He hoped I was doing well. He was so sorry we had not seen each other. How unlucky could one be? And the baby, he would have so loved to feel it beneath his fingers, to see my belly moving. He was so worried about the future. One mustn’t have illusions, the present lack of military engagement could not last. There would be real fighting soon and, given the motorised nature of warfare, it would be far more ghastly than the Great War. We must prepare for the worst. He could not understand why the government left so many soldiers at the front where nothing was happening when there was such a shortage of workers in the factories. One just has to see that the carrot peeler in their regi
ment was a mechanical fitter of aeroplane engines. It was a mixed-up world. He apologised for talking to me about all that, he would so much have preferred me to experience my pregnancy under better circumstances. He begged us to take care of ourselves, and of the baby; he was so sorry not to have seen us, he had looked for us everywhere. He kissed me and held me close, in his arms—were they not already too short to circle my round belly?

  I might have found his long message touching had he not written ‘yourselves’. And above all, had I not read yet another message.

  During the days at the mill I no longer had the strength to bluff. In order not to give anything away to Annie, or allow her to be vexed by my mood, I found a solution: crossword puzzles. They allowed me to think out loud without having to pretend I had no worries. So while Annie thought I was busy figuring out my ‘Across’ and ‘Down’ clues, I was constantly thinking about the situation, turning the future this way and that, working through every possibility. I had envisaged this very moment, I had imagined myself folding Paul’s letter as I headed up to the next floor, not even bothering to take off my coat. I had known he would leave me a letter in plain sight somewhere. What I hadn’t known was whether he would mention Annie or not.

  He had not mentioned her. Not a word. No post scriptum.

  Had his despair at not seeing me made him forget Annie? Had he realised the extent of the wrong he had done? Had he come back to me? Or, on the contrary, had he managed to get word to her without going through me? Had he written a letter just for her?

  If so, he would have given a lot of thought as to where to hide it. He might have slipped it beneath one of the parquet boards initially. But no sooner would he have put the board back in place than he would worry. What if Annie did not look that carefully? Even if he left the floorboard a little loose, it would not suffice as a clue. No, it was too risky. It would be better to leave the letter in a place where Annie would be sure to find it as she went about her daily business. So, he would stick it beneath her palette. And then, once again, he would be anxious. What if she was no longer painting? Or not every day—after all, he knew nothing about her new habits. No, that was too risky. What intimate gesture could he be really sure of?