My father got up to fetch a bottle of champagne. I was sickened. He was happy, that was the main thing, but I had so often seen him happy on account of a woman.
‘I was rather frightened of you,’ said Anne.
‘Why?’ I asked.
To hear her, I had the impression that my veto could have prevented the marriage of two adults.
‘I was afraid that you were frightened of me,’ she said, and she began to laugh.
I began to laugh too, because I was indeed a little frightened of her. She was conveying to me both that she knew and that my fear was groundless.
‘Does it not seem ridiculous to you, two old people getting married like this?’
‘You’re not old,’ I said, summoning up the required conviction, for my father was on his way back, doing a little waltz while cradling a bottle in his arms.
He sat down next to Anne and put his arm round her shoulders. She responded by moving close to him in a way that made me lower my eyes. It was no doubt for just that that she was marrying him, for the way he laughed, for his firm, reassuring arm, for his liveliness and warmth. Being forty must bring with it the fear of loneliness, perhaps the last stirrings of desire … I had never thought of Anne as a woman, more as an abstraction. I had seen her as being composed of confidence, elegance and intelligence, though never of sensuality or weakness. I could understand my father’s pride: the haughty, aloof Anne Larsen was marrying him. Did he love her and would he be capable of loving her for long? Could I distinguish between this tenderness and the tenderness he felt for Elsa? I closed my eyes. The heat was making me drowsy. There we were on the terrace, all three of us, full of reservations, of secret fears and of happiness.
Elsa did not come back just then. A week went by very quickly, seven happy, very pleasant days – the only ones there were to be. We drew up elaborate plans for furnishings, we drew up timetables. My father and I took pleasure in making these timetables tight and difficult to keep to, with the recklessness of people who have never known what timetables are. In any case, did we ever believe in them? Coming home every day to the same place at half past twelve to have lunch, eating at home in the evening and staying in afterwards: did my father really believe that was possible? However, he was cheerfully burying his bohemianism; he was commending the virtues of order and of a bourgeois lifestyle, elegant and well-organized. But doubtless, for him as well as for me, all this merely amounted to castles in the air.
Whenever I want to put myself to the test, I like to ruminate on what I remember of that week. Anne was relaxed, confident and very sweet and my father loved her. I would see them come downstairs in the morning, leaning on each other for support, laughing together, with rings under their eyes, and I swear I would have loved that to have lasted for the rest of their lives. In the evening we often went along the coast to take our aperitif on the terrace of some café. Everywhere we went people took us to be a normal, united family. I was used to going out alone with my father and attracting smiles from people, or looks of ill will or pity, so I was delighted to revert to a role more suitable for my age. The wedding was due to take place in Paris after the holidays.
Poor Cyril had observed with some astonishment the changes taking place in our domestic arrangements. But he was delighted at the prospect of a legitimate outcome. We went out in the boat together, we kissed as the desire took us, and sometimes, while he was pressing his mouth against mine, I saw Anne’s face again, that morning face of hers with its softened contours. I saw the kind of leisureliness and happy nonchalance that love gave to her movements and I envied her. You get tired of just kissing, and no doubt if Cyril had loved me less than he did I would have become his mistress during that week.
At six o’clock, on our way back from the islands,7 Cyril would drag the boat on to the sand. We would make our way to the house through the pine wood and to warm ourselves up we invented games of cowboys and Indians, and races where he let me have a head start. He would regularly catch up with me before we reached the house, throw himself on me with a shout of victory, roll me over in the pine needles and pin me down and kiss me. I can still remember the taste of those breathless, inept kisses and the sound of Cyril’s heart beating against mine in rhythm with the breaking of the waves on the sand … One, two, three, four heartbeats and the gentle sound on the sand; one, two, three … one … He would draw breath again and his kisses would become precise and pressing. I could no longer hear the sound of the sea but instead of that in my ears there was the rushing, relentless patter of my own blood.
The sound of Anne’s voice caused us to break apart one evening. Cyril was stretched out alongside me as we lay half-naked in the reddish glow and shadows of the setting sun and I can understand how that could have misled Anne. She spoke my name curtly.
Cyril leapt to his feet, full of shame, of course. Then I stood up, more slowly, watching Anne. She turned to Cyril and, looking right through him, said quietly:
‘I am not expecting to see you ever again.’
He did not reply, but leant over and kissed my shoulder before retreating. His gesture astonished and touched me – it was like a pledge. Anne was looking at me with a fixed stare in that same serious, detached way, as if she were thinking of something else. That irritated me. If she was indeed thinking of something else, it was wrong of her to have so much to say for herself. I went up to her pretending to be embarrassed, but it was purely out of politeness. Mechanically she removed a pine needle from my neck and all at once seemed to see me properly. I saw her don her fine mask of scorn, that expression of weariness and disapproval which made her look remarkably beautiful and which I found rather frightening.
‘You ought to know that indulging in that kind of pastime usually lands a girl in a clinic,’ she said.
She was standing there staring at me as she spoke, and I was extremely vexed. She was one of those women who can speak while standing perfectly still. I, on the other hand, needed to be sitting in an armchair and it helped to have an object to grasp, like a cigarette; it helped if I swung one leg to and fro and watched it as it swung …
‘Don’t let’s exaggerate,’ I said, smiling. ‘All I did was to kiss Cyril. That’s not going to land me in a clinic.’
‘I don’t want you to see him again,’ she said, as if she assumed I was lying. ‘Don’t protest. You’re seventeen, I’m to a certain extent responsible for you now and I am not going to allow you to ruin your life. In any case, you have work to do, and that will take up your afternoons.’
Turning her back on me, she set off towards the house, walking as if unconcerned. In my consternation I was nailed to the spot. She meant what she said. Any arguments or denials on my part would be met by that aloofness of hers that was worse than contempt, suggesting that I did not exist or that I was something to be quashed, and not myself, Cécile, whom she had always known, that it was someone else and not me whom she could have contemplated punishing in this way. My only hope lay in my father. He would react as he always did: ‘Who is this boy, kitten? Let’s hope he’s handsome and fit. Be on your guard against scoundrels, girly.’ He just had to react in that way, otherwise my holiday would be over.
Dinner was a nightmare. At no time had Anne said to me: ‘I won’t mention anything to your father, I’m not a carrier of tales. But you must promise me to work hard.’ That kind of bargaining was alien to her. I was glad about that but at the same time resentful towards her, for if she had been like that it would have allowed me to despise her. She steered clear of that mistake as of others, and it was only after the soup course that she appeared to remember the incident. ‘I’d like you to give your daughter some sensible advice, Raymond. I came across her in the wood with Cyril this evening and they seemed to be on the very best of terms.’
My father tried to make a joke of this, poor man.
‘What’s this you’re telling me? What were they doing?’
‘I was kissing him,’ I insisted forcefully. ‘Anne thought …’
> ‘I thought nothing at all,’ she interrupted. ‘But I do think it would be a good idea if she were to stop seeing him for a while and do some work on her philosophy.’
‘Poor little thing,’ said my father. ‘After all, Cyril’s a nice boy, isn’t he?’
‘Cécile is also a nice little girl,’ said Anne. ‘That’s why I’d be heartbroken if anything were to happen to her. And considering the complete freedom that she has here, and the fact that she’s constantly in that boy’s company and that they have nothing much to do, something happening to her seems inevitable to me. Does it not to you?’
At those words ‘does it not to you?’ I looked up, while my father, very vexed, lowered his eyes.
‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘Yes, after all, you ought to do some work, Cécile. You don’t want to have to redo your philosophy, do you?’
‘What do I care?’ I replied tersely.
He looked at me and then immediately looked away again. I was thoroughly disconcerted. I realized that insouciance is the one thing that can provide inspiration for our lives and yet have no argument to offer in its own defence.
‘Come on, now,’ said Anne, taking hold of my hand across the table. ‘You’re going to swap being a wild creature of the woods for being a good scholar, just for a month. That’s not so serious, is it?’
They were both looking at me and smiling; from their point of view it was obvious. I gently withdrew my hand.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is serious.’
I said it so softly that they either did not hear me or did not choose to hear. The next morning I came across a sentence from Bergson that took me several minutes to understand.
However disparate cause and effect may initially appear to be, and although a rule of conduct is far from being a pronouncement on the nature of things, it is always through contact with the creative principle in the human species that one feels oneself drawing the strength to love humanity.8
I repeated this sentence over to myself, quietly at first, so as not to get worked up over it, then out loud. I rested my head in my hands and I studied the sentence closely. I finally understood it and I felt just as unmoved and powerless as when I had read it the first time. I was unable to continue. I studied the subsequent lines with the same concentration and in the same well-disposed way and suddenly something like a tempest rose up within me and threw me on to the bed. I thought of Cyril who was waiting for me in the sun-drenched inlet, I thought of the gentle rocking of the boat and of the taste of our kisses, and I thought of Anne. What I was thinking made me sit up on my bed, my heart beating fast, and I said to myself that it was stupid and monstrous, that I was nothing but a spoilt, lazy child and that I had no right to think the way I did. So it was in spite of myself that I continued with my reflections. I reflected that she was detrimental to us and dangerous and that she had to be got rid of. I remembered the breakfast that I had just sat through with gritted teeth. I had been appalled and disconcerted by my sense of resentment, which was an emotion that I despised and ridiculed myself for ever feeling. Yes, that was what I held against Anne: she prevented me from liking myself. I was, by my very nature, made for happiness and affability and light-heartedness, but because of her I was entering a world of reproaches and guilt, a world in which I was getting lost because I was not used to introspection. And what was she bringing me? I took stock of how strong she was: she had wanted my father and she had got him; she was gradually going to make of us the husband and daughter of Anne Larsen, which meant that we would become civilized, well-mannered, happy people. For she would make us happy. I could well imagine how easily we, unstable creatures that we were, would yield to the attraction of having structure in our lives and of not having to shoulder responsibility. She was much too efficient. My father was already growing away from me. I was obsessed, tortured, by the embarrassed expression he had had at table and by how he had turned his face away. It made me want to weep when I remembered how we used to be in league with each other, how we would laugh together as we drove back home at dawn through the deserted streets of Paris. All that was over. I in my turn was going to be influenced, reshaped and given direction by Anne. I would not even mind. She would act with intelligence, ironic humour and gentleness. I was incapable of resisting her. In six months I would no longer even want to.
I absolutely had to pull myself together, I had to get my father and our old way of life back. Those two merry, mixed-up years that I had just spent, those two years that I had been so quick to disown the other day, suddenly appeared to me decked out in all their charm. I had been free to think, to think the wrong thoughts or not to think very much at all; I had been free to choose my own life, to choose myself. I cannot say that I had been free ‘to be myself’ because I was merely putty, but I had been free to refuse to be moulded.
I know that it would be possible to ascribe complicated motives to this change in me, that it would be possible to endow me with magnificent complexes, such as an incestuous love for my father or an unhealthy passion for Anne. But I know the real causes: the heat, Bergson, Cyril or at least the absence of Cyril. I thought about this all afternoon as I passed through a succession of states of mind that were all unpleasant but all the result of this one realization, that we were at Anne’s mercy. I was not accustomed to reflecting on things, it made me irritable. At table, as had been the case in the morning, I did not open my mouth. My father felt obliged to make a joke of it:
‘That’s what I like about young people, their enthusiasm, their conversation …’
I gave him a fierce, harsh look. It was true that he liked young people, and to whom else had I talked but to him? We had talked about everything, about love, about death, about music. Now he himself was abandoning me and rendering me defenceless. I looked at him and thought: ‘You don’t love me as you used to. You are betraying me,’ and I tried to make him understand this without actually speaking. I was in full dramatic mode. Becoming suddenly alarmed, he returned my look, understanding perhaps that it was no longer a game and that our relationship was in danger. I saw him grow rigid, as if questions were occurring to him. Anne turned to me.
‘You’re not looking well. I feel bad about making you work.’
I did not reply – I hated myself too much for making such a drama out of things, and a drama that I could no longer call a halt to. We had finished dinner. On the terrace, in the rectangle of light projected from the dining-room window, I saw Anne’s hand, a living, elongated hand, reach out to find my father’s hand. I thought of Cyril. I wished he could have taken me in his arms on that terrace, criss-crossed with cicadas and moonlight. I wished I could have been caressed, consoled and reconciled with myself. My father and Anne were silent. They had before them a night of love. I had Bergson. I tried to weep, to feel sorry for myself, but in vain. I was already feeling sorry for Anne, as if I were certain of vanquishing her.
PART TWO
One
I am surprised at how clear my memories are from that point. I was acquiring a heightened awareness both of other people and of myself. I had always taken for granted the luxury of being spontaneous and casually self-centred. I had always simply lived life. But those few days had been disturbing enough to make me start to reflect on things and to observe myself as I lived. I experienced all the throes of introspection without, even so, becoming reconciled with myself. I said to myself: ‘This feeling I have towards Anne is stupid and pitiful, and it is brutal of me to want to part her from my father.’ But after all, I thought, why should I stand in judgement over myself? I was who I was, so had I not the right to experience events in whatever way I wished? For the first time in my life this ‘self’ of mine seemed to divide in two and I was quite astonished to discover such a duality within me. I found good excuses for my feelings, I thought I was being sincere when I murmured them over to myself, yet all of a sudden that other ‘self’ came to the fore, challenging my own arguments and telling me loudly that, for all their apparent validity
, I was deluding myself. But wasn’t it in fact that other self that was deceiving me? Was not this lucidity the ultimate form of mistakenness? I debated with myself in my room for hours on end in an effort to work out whether the fear and hostility that Anne was currently inspiring in me were justified or whether I was merely a selfish, spoilt little girl in the mood for some so-called independence.
In the meantime I was getting a little thinner every day. On the beach I did nothing but sleep and at mealtimes, in spite of myself, I maintained an uneasy silence which eventually they found embarrassing. I would look at Anne, I would watch her closely all the time, and all through the meal I would be saying to myself: ‘The way she gestured to him, isn’t that love, and isn’t it a kind of love he’ll not find again? And the way she smiled at me with that trace of anxiety in her eyes, how could I resent her for it?’ But all of a sudden she would be saying: ‘When we go back, Raymond …’ That’s when the thought that she was going to share our lives and have a hand in them made me bristle. She seemed then to consist only of coldness and cunning. I would say to myself: ‘She is cold, whereas we are warm-hearted. She is authoritarian, whereas we are independent. She is aloof – other people don’t interest her, but they fascinate us. She is reserved, whereas we are very merry. Only we two are truly alive and she is going to insinuate herself between us with her impassiveness. She is going to warm herself by gradually drawing from us our lovely, carefree warmth. She is going to rob us of everything, like a beautiful serpent.’ I would repeat to myself ‘a beautiful serpent … a beautiful serpent!’ Then she would offer me bread and suddenly I would come to and exclaim to myself: ‘But this is ridiculous! It’s Anne, intelligent Anne, the person who has taken care of you. Being cold is just the way she is, you can’t see any calculation behind it. Her aloofness protects her from a thousand sordid little things, it is proof of her nobility.’ A beautiful serpent … I would feel myself grow pale with shame, I would look at her, I would silently beg her to forgive me. She would sometimes catch sight of me looking at her and then surprise and uncertainty would cause her face to cloud over and make her cut short whatever she was saying. She would instinctively look towards my father and he would look back at her, be it with admiration or desire, without understanding what it was that was causing her anxiety. In a word, I gradually succeeded in making the atmosphere unbearable and I hated myself for it.
Bonjour Tristesse & a Certain Smile Page 5