My father suffered as much as it was possible for him to suffer, which, being the man he was, was not very much, for he was mad about Anne, mad with pride and pleasure, and that was all he lived for. One day, however, when I was dozing on the beach after our morning swim, he sat down next to me and looked at me. I felt his gaze weighing on me. I was about to stand up and suggest to him, with the air of false jollity that was becoming a habit with me, that we go back into the water, when he put his hand on my head and, raising his voice, called ruefully:
‘Anne, come and look at this grasshopper, she’s so thin. If this is the effect work has on her, she really must stop.’
He thought that he was resolving the issue and no doubt ten days earlier it would have been resolved. But I was much too deep into complications, and the hours set aside for study in the afternoons were no longer a problem for me, given that I had not opened a book since Bergson.
As Anne approached, I remained lying face down on the sand listening to the sound of her steps. She sat down on the other side of me and murmured:
‘It certainly doesn’t seem to agree with her. However, she really needs to apply herself to her work instead of going round in circles in her room.’
I had turned over and was now looking at them. How did she know that I wasn’t working? Perhaps she had even read my thoughts: I believed her to be capable of anything. The idea of it frightened me.
‘I am not going round in circles in my room,’ I protested.
‘Are you missing that boy?’ my father asked.
‘No, I’m not!’
That was not quite true. But it was true that I had not had time to think about Cyril.
‘Still, you’re not well,’ said my father sternly. ‘Anne, do you see her? She’s like a chicken that has been gutted and put in the sun to roast.’
‘Cécile, dear,’ said Anne, ‘make an effort. Work a little and eat a lot. That exam is important …’
‘I don’t give a damn about my exam!’ I cried. ‘Do you understand? I don’t give a damn!’
I looked at her despairingly, straight in the eye, to get her to see that there was more than an exam at stake. What she needed to do was to say to me: ‘Well then, what’s the matter?’ She needed to badger me with questions and force me to tell her everything. And if she did that she would win me over, she would decide whatever she wanted for me, but that way I would no longer be plagued by these sour, depressing feelings of mine. She was looking at me attentively, I saw the Prussian blue of her eyes cloud over with concentration and reproach. And I realized that it would never occur to her to question me and thereby to relieve me, because not only would the idea never cross her mind but in her judgement it wasn’t the done thing. I realized that she didn’t attribute to me any of the thoughts that were destroying me or, if she did, it was with scorn and aloofness, which in any case was all that they deserved. Anne always attached to things their exact importance. That was why I would never, ever, be able to do business with her.
I threw myself down on the sand again with great force, I rested my cheek on the soft warmth of the beach, I sighed and I trembled a little. Anne’s hand, relaxed and steady, came to rest on the back of my neck and held me still for a moment until my nervous trembling stopped.
‘Don’t make life complicated for yourself,’ she said. ‘You used to be so happy and always on the go, you’re usually so scatter-brained, and now you’re becoming sad and cerebral. That’s just not you.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m really a healthy, irresponsible young creature full of fun and silliness.’
‘Come and have lunch,’ she said.
My father had moved away from us. He hated that kind of discussion. On the way back along the track he took my hand and held it. His hand was firm and comforting. It had wiped away my tears after my first unhappy experience of love, it had held my hand at moments of peacefulness and perfect happiness and had squeezed it surreptitiously at times when we were conspiring together and were assailed by fits of giggles. That hand on the steering wheel or clutching the keys, of an evening, while searching in vain for the keyhole, that hand on a woman’s shoulder or holding a cigarette, it could no longer be of any help to me. I squeezed it very tightly. Turning towards me, he smiled.
Two
Two days passed. I was exhausting myself going round in circles. I could not rid myself of the one thought that haunted me: Anne was going to turn our lives upside down. I made no attempt to see Cyril again; he would have reassured me and would have brought me some happiness, and I didn’t want that. I even took a certain satisfaction in asking myself questions to which there were no answers, in remembering days just gone and dreading those that were to come. It was very hot. My room was in semi-darkness with the shutters closed, but it wasn’t enough to relieve the unbearable oppressiveness and mugginess in the air. I lay on my bed with my head tilted back, looking up at the ceiling, and moving just enough to locate a cool part of the sheet. I didn’t sleep but I would play records on the record player at the foot of my bed, slow records, with no tune, just rhythm. I was smoking a lot. I thought I was being decadent and I liked the idea. But this game-playing wasn’t enough to delude me: I was sad and disoriented.
One afternoon the maid knocked at my door and informed me cryptically that ‘there was someone downstairs’. I immediately thought of Cyril and went down. But it wasn’t him, it was Elsa. She clasped my hands effusively. Looking at her, I was astonished at her newfound beauty. She finally had a tan, a smooth, pale tan, and she was very well groomed and radiating youthfulness.
‘I’ve come to get my cases,’ she said. ‘Juan bought me some dresses these last few days, but it wasn’t enough.’
I wondered for a moment who Juan was, and moved on. I was pleased to see Elsa again. She had about her the aura of a kept woman and of bars and convivial parties, which reminded me of happier days. I told her that I was glad to see her again and she assured me that we had always got on well together, since we had a lot in common. I concealed a slight shudder at this and suggested we should go up to my room, which would save her from running into my father and Anne. When I mentioned my father she could not repress a little nod of the head and it occurred to me that she perhaps still loved him – Juan and his dresses notwithstanding. It also occurred to me that, three weeks earlier, I would not have picked up on that nod.
In my room I listened to her talk in glowing terms of the sophisticated, exhilarating life that she had been leading on the Riviera. I was vaguely aware of some strange notions suggesting themselves to me, partly inspired by her new appearance. She finally stopped talking of her own accord, perhaps because of my silence, then walked about a bit and, without turning round, asked casually whether ‘Raymond was happy’. I had the impression that the ball was in my court and I immediately understood why. At that moment a lot of different plans got all muddled up in my head, various schemes formed, I felt myself sinking under the weight of my own arguments. But, just as quickly, I realized what I had to say to her.
‘“Happy”,’ I replied, ‘that’s saying a lot. Anne won’t let him believe otherwise. She’s very cunning.’
‘Very!’ sighed Elsa.
‘You’ll never guess what she’s persuaded him to do … She’s going to marry him.’
Elsa turned towards me with a horrified look.
‘Marry him? Raymond wants to get married, he of all people?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Raymond is getting married.’
A sudden desire to laugh caught me by the throat. My hands were shaking. Elsa seemed completely at a loss, as if I had dealt her a blow. She couldn’t be allowed to reflect on things and come to the conclusion that, after all, it was to do with his age and that he couldn’t spend his whole life with good-time girls. I leant forward and, to make more of an impression, suddenly dropped my voice.
‘It just mustn’t be allowed to happen, Elsa. He is suffering already. It’s just not possible, you understand that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
She seemed fascinated. It made me want to laugh, and my shaking got worse.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to come,’ I said. ‘You’re the only one who can contend with Anne. Only you have the necessary class.’
It was quite obvious that she wanted nothing more than to believe me.
‘But if he’s marrying her,’ she countered, ‘it’s because he loves her.’
‘Come on,’ I said softly, ‘it’s you he loves, Elsa. Don’t try to make me believe that you don’t know that.’
I saw her blink, and she turned away to hide her pleasure and the hope that I was giving out to her. I was acting in a sort of daze and I sensed exactly what I had to say.
‘She bamboozled him, you understand, with talk about the stability of marriage, and about family life and morality, and he got taken in by her.’
I was overcome by what I was saying, for I was actually expressing my own feelings, no doubt in a crude, elementary form, but it corresponded to what I believed.
‘If the wedding goes ahead, the lives of all three of us will be ruined, Elsa. My father must be protected, he’s just a big baby … a big baby …’
I repeated ‘a big baby’ very forcefully. It seemed to me to be verging rather too much on melodrama but already Elsa’s lovely green eyes were clouding over with pity. I finished up as if it were a hymn:
‘Help me, Elsa. I say this for your sake, for my father’s sake and for the sake of the love you have for each other.’
Inwardly I concluded: ‘And for the sake of anyone else you care to think of.’
‘But what can I do?’ asked Elsa. ‘The situation strikes me as being impossible.’
‘If you think it’s impossible, then just give up,’ I said, in what is known as a broken voice.
‘What a trollop!’ murmured Elsa.
‘That’s the very word for it,’ I said, and it was my turn to look away.
Elsa was being reborn before my very eyes. She had been made a fool of and she was going to show that scheming woman just what she, Elsa Mackenbourg, was capable of. And my father loved her, she had always known that. Even when she had been with Juan she hadn’t been able to forget Raymond’s charm. It’s true that she had never mentioned marriage to him, but at least she hadn’t bored him, she hadn’t tried to …
‘Elsa,’ I said, for I could endure her no longer, ‘go and see Cyril and ask him from me to put you up. He’ll sort it out with his mother. Tell him that I’ll come and see him tomorrow morning. We’ll all three of us discuss the situation then.’
At the door I added, as a joke: ‘It’s your destiny you’re fighting for, Elsa.’
She gravely assented, as if she didn’t have a dozen possible destinies, as many destinies as there were men who would keep her. I watched her as she tripped off lightly into the sun. I estimated that it would take my father a week to find her desirable again.
It was half past three. I reckoned my father would be asleep in Anne’s arms and that Anne herself would be drifting into sleep, completely fulfilled and lying there in disarray, luxuriating in a warm glow of physical pleasure and pure happiness … I began very quickly to draw up plans, without pausing for a moment to think of myself. I was walking back and forth in my room, going over to the window to look out over a perfectly calm sea lying flat on the sands, then I would come back to the door and turn round again. I planned, I calculated, I gradually overcame all objections. I had never realized how agile the mind can be and what leaps it can make. I felt dangerously cunning and, on top of the wave of self-disgust that had engulfed me from the moment of my first exchanges with Elsa, there came a surge of pride, a feeling of being in league with myself and a sense of loneliness.
I need hardly say that all this collapsed when the time came for our swim. I was quivering with remorse in Anne’s presence, I didn’t know what to do to make amends. I carried her bag, I rushed forward to hand her her towelling robe when she came out of the water, I showered her with consideration and friendly remarks. This sudden change of behaviour, coming as it did after my taciturnity of the previous few days, did of course surprise and, indeed, please her. My father was delighted. Anne kept smiling her thanks and replying gaily to me. I remembered Elsa’s exclamation: ‘What a trollop!’ and my response: ‘That’s the very word for it.’ How could I have said that? How could I have endorsed Elsa’s rubbish? Tomorrow I would advise her to leave, having admitted to her that I had been mistaken. Everything would resume as before and I would take that exam of mine after all. The baccalaureate was bound to come in useful.9
‘That’s so, isn’t it?’
I was addressing Anne.
‘It’s useful to have the baccalaureate, isn’t it?’
She looked at me and burst out laughing. I followed suit, happy to see her so cheerful.
‘You are incredible,’ she said.
It was true that I was incredible, and she would have found me even more incredible if she had known what I had been planning to do! I was dying to tell her, so that she would see just how incredible I was! ‘Just think that I was getting Elsa in on the act – she was pretending to be in love with Cyril and was staying in his house, and we would see them go past in his boat, we would bump into them in the woods or along the coast. Elsa has become beautiful again. Oh, of course, she doesn’t have your beauty, but, you know, she’s got that flamboyant look that makes men’s heads turn. My father wouldn’t have stuck it for long. He has never accepted the idea that a beautiful woman who has once belonged to him might get over him so quickly and, as it were, before his very eyes, especially not with a younger man. So you understand, Anne, even though it’s you he loves, he would have very soon wanted to get her back, to give himself reassurance. He’s very vain, or not very sure of himself, whichever way you like to think of it. Elsa, on my orders, would have done whatever it took. One day he would have deceived you, and you would not have been able to bear that, would you? You are not one of those women who are happy to share. So you would have left, and that was what I wanted. Yes, it’s stupid, I know, I resented you because of Bergson, because of the heat; I imagined that … I daren’t even talk to you about it because it’s all so abstract and ridiculous. Because of the baccalaureate I could have made you fall out with us, you, my mother’s friend, our friend. And it is useful to have the baccalaureate, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t it what?’ said Anne. ‘Is it useful to have the baccalaureate?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
All things considered, it was best not to say anything to her. She might not have understood. There were things that Anne didn’t understand. I threw myself into the water in pursuit of my father, I wrestled him, I rediscovered the pleasures of playfulness, of being in the water and of having a clear conscience. Tomorrow I would change over to a different room. I would move into the attic with my schoolbooks. But I wouldn’t take Bergson – let’s not exaggerate! I would do two good hours of study on my own, working away in the silence with the smell of paper and ink. I imagined myself being successful in October, my father’s amazed laughter, Anne’s approval and ahead of me a degree. I would be intelligent and cultured and a bit detached, like Anne. Perhaps I had intellectual potential. Hadn’t I drawn up a logical plan in the space of five minutes? It was despicable, sure, but it was logical. And as for Elsa, I had ensnared her by appealing to her vanity and her sentimentality. She had come just to fetch her case and in the space of a few moments I had wanted her as my prize. It was funny, really, I had got Elsa in my sights, had glimpsed her weak spot and had taken careful aim before speaking. I had recognized for the first time what an extraordinary pleasure it is to be able to probe people, to expose them, to bring them into the light of day and, there, to touch them. I had sought to discover what drove an individual, in the same cautious way as when you go to put your finger on a spring, and the desired response had been immediately triggered. Got you! I had no experience of
that. I had always been too impulsive. Whenever I had affected another person, it had always been inadvertently. But I had suddenly now glimpsed the whole marvellous mechanism of human reflexes and all the power of language. What a pity that this had come about in the service of untruth! One day I would love someone with a passionate love and I would seek out a way to him, just like that, cautiously, gently and with trembling hand.
Three
The next day, as I made my way to Cyril’s villa, I felt much less sure of myself intellectually. To celebrate my recovery I had drunk too much at dinner the previous evening and had been more than merry. I had been explaining to my father that I was going to do a literary degree, that I would be associating with learned people and that I wanted to become famous and a real bore. To launch me he would have to use all the tricks of the advertising trade and the scandalmongers. We swapped preposterous ideas and roared with laughter. Anne laughed too, but less loudly and in an indulgent way. At times she stopped laughing altogether, when my ideas about being launched went beyond the boundaries of the literary world, not to say the bounds of decency. But my father was so clearly happy at our being back together again and telling our silly jokes that she said nothing. In the end they put me to bed and tucked me up. I thanked them in a heartfelt way and asked what I would do without them. My father really didn’t know. Anne seemed to have quite strong ideas on that topic but, just as I was begging her to tell me them and she was bending over me, I was overtaken by sleep. In the middle of the night I was sick. Waking up was worse than any previous bad experience of waking up that I had ever had. With my thoughts unfocused and my resolve wavering, I made my way to the pine wood, taking in nothing of the morning sea or the frenzied seagulls.
Bonjour Tristesse & a Certain Smile Page 6