I found Cyril at the entrance to the garden. He bounded towards me, took me in his arms and clasped me fiercely to himself, murmuring incoherently:
‘My sweetheart, I was so worried … It’s been such a long time … I didn’t know what you were doing or whether that woman was making you unhappy … I didn’t know that I could be so unhappy myself … I sailed past the inlet every afternoon at least once, sometimes twice. I didn’t know I loved you so much …’
‘Neither did I,’ I said.
The fact was that I was both surprised and touched. I was sorry I felt so sick and unable to express my emotion.
‘How pale you are,’ he said. ‘I’m going to look after you now. I won’t let you be ill-treated any longer.’
I could recognize Elsa’s imagination at work. I asked Cyril what his mother thought of her.
‘I introduced her as a friend who was an orphan,’ said Cyril. ‘Elsa’s very nice, actually. She’s told me everything about that woman. It’s strange, she has such a fine face, so full of class, yet she’s a scheming manipulator.’
‘Elsa has exaggerated a lot,’ I said feebly. ‘In fact I was going to tell her that …’
‘And I’ve got something to tell you too,’ interrupted Cyril. ‘I want to marry you, Cécile.’
I had a moment of panic. I had to do something, say something. If only I hadn’t felt so fearfully sick …
‘I love you,’ Cyril was saying into my hair. ‘I’m dropping law. I’ve had an attractive job offer from an uncle of mine … I’m twenty-six, I’m not a little boy any more, I’m talking seriously. What do you say?’
I was desperately searching for something eloquent but non-committal to say in reply. I did not want to marry him. I liked him but I did not want to marry him. I did not want to marry anyone. I was tired.
‘It can’t be,’ I stammered. ‘My father …’
‘I’ll deal with your father,’ said Cyril.
‘Anne won’t want it,’ I said. ‘She claims that I’m not an adult. And if she says no, my father will say no too. I’m so tired, Cyril. All this emotion is wearing me out. Let’s sit down. Here comes Elsa.’
She was coming down in her dressing gown, all fresh and radiant. I felt dull and scrawny. They both had a healthy, blooming, excited look about them, which depressed me even more. She made me sit down, fussing over me as if I had just come out of prison.
‘And how is Raymond?’ she asked. ‘Does he know that I’m back?’
She had the happy smile of a woman who has forgiven all and who has cause for hope. I couldn’t tell her that my father had forgotten her any more than I could tell Cyril that I didn’t want to marry him. I closed my eyes. Cyril went to fetch coffee. Elsa talked on and on, she clearly considered me to be someone very discerning whom she could trust. The coffee was very strong and very fragrant. The sun cheered me up a little.
‘I’ve tried my hardest but I haven’t found a solution,’ said Elsa.
‘There is none,’ said Cyril. ‘It’s an infatuation, he’s under her spell. There’s nothing to be done.’
‘Yes, there is,’ I said. ‘There is a way. You just haven’t any imagination.’
It flattered me to see them hanging on my words. They were ten years older than me and they had no idea! I said airily:
‘It’s a question of psychology.’
I talked for a long time, explaining my plan to them. They raised the same objections as I had outlined to myself the day before and I took keen pleasure in refuting them. It was quite gratuitous but, by dint of trying to convince them, I in turn became excited about it. I proved to them that it could be done. It only remained for me to prove to them that it ought not to be done, but I couldn’t find such logical arguments for that.
‘I don’t like this kind of scheming,’ Cyril said. ‘But if it’s the only way of getting to marry you, I’ll sign up to it.’
‘It’s not strictly speaking Anne’s fault,’ I said.
‘You know very well that if she stays, you’ll marry the person she wants you to,’ said Elsa bluntly.
That was perhaps true. I could see Anne on my twentieth birthday introducing me to a young man, also a graduate, with a brilliant future ahead of him, intelligent, sensible and very likely to be faithful. Rather like Cyril, in fact. I began to laugh.
‘Please don’t laugh,’ said Cyril. ‘Tell me you’ll be jealous when I’m pretending to be in love with Elsa. How were you able to envisage such a thing? Do you love me?’
He was speaking in a low voice. Elsa had tactfully moved away. I looked at Cyril’s strained brown face and his sombre eyes. It gave me a strange feeling to think that he loved me. I looked at his lips, red and full, so close to mine … I didn’t feel intellectual any more. He brought his face still closer and our lips, touching, met in a kiss. I sat there with my eyes wide open and with his mouth resting on mine, warm and firm and slightly tremulous. He pressed his mouth a bit more against mine to stop it trembling, then he parted his lips and his kissing became serious. It quickly became urgent and skilful, too skilful … It was dawning on me that I was better suited to kissing a boy in the sunshine than to studying for a degree. I drew away from him a little, gasping.
‘We must live together, Cécile. I’ll go along with the Elsa plan.’
I wondered if my reckoning was correct. I was the driving force, I was directing these theatricals and I could always call a halt to them.
‘You have strange ideas,’ said Cyril with his little crooked smile that made his lip curl up to give him the appearance of a bandit, a very handsome bandit.
‘Kiss me,’ I murmured, ‘quick, kiss me.’
So that is how I set the comedy in motion, in spite of myself, offhandedly and out of curiosity. Sometimes I think I would prefer to have done it deliberately, with hatred and vehemence, so that I could at least blame myself for it, rather than blaming my indolence and the sun and Cyril’s kisses.
After an hour, feeling rather worried, I left the conspirators. I still did have several arguments to fall back on for reassurance: my plan could turn out to be a bad one, my father’s passion for Anne could very well extend to faithfulness. What was more, neither Cyril nor Elsa could do anything much without me. I was sure to find some way of calling a halt to this play-acting if my father appeared likely to be taken in by it. It was amusing, in any case, to see whether my psychological reckonings were correct or not.
And besides, Cyril loved me and wanted to marry me. This thought in itself was enough to make me euphoric. If he could wait for me for a year or two, just long enough for me to grow up, I would accept his offer. I could already see myself living with Cyril, sleeping next to him, never leaving him. We would go for lunch every Sunday with Anne and my father, one happy family, and we could maybe even include Cyril’s mother, which would also contribute to making the meal a family occasion.
I ran into Anne on the terrace as she was on her way down to the beach to join my father. She greeted me in that sardonic way in which you greet people who have been drinking the night before. I asked her what she had been going to say to me the previous evening before I fell asleep, but she laughingly refused to tell me, on the grounds that it would annoy me. My father was just coming out of the water. He was broad-shouldered and muscular, and to me he looked superb. I went for a swim with Anne. She swam gently, with her head out of the water so as not to get her hair wet. Then we all three stretched out side by side on the sand, face down, quiet and at peace, with me in the middle.
It was then that the boat hove into view in full sail at the far end of the inlet. My father saw it first.
‘So our dear Cyril could hold out no longer,’ he said, laughing. ‘Shall we forgive him, Anne? Basically he’s a nice boy.’
I raised my head, scenting danger.
‘But what’s he doing?’ said my father. ‘He’s sailing round the inlet. Ah! He’s not alone …’
Anne had also looked up. The boat was going to pass in front of us and then
go in the opposite direction. I made out Cyril’s face. Inwardly I begged him to go away.
My father’s exclamation made me jump, even though I had been expecting it for a couple of minutes:
‘Good heavens, it’s Elsa! What’s she doing there?’
He turned to Anne:
‘That girl is extraordinary! She must have got that poor boy in her clutches and got herself adopted by the old lady.’
But Anne wasn’t listening to him. She was watching me. I saw that and I buried my face in the sand, full of shame. She stretched out her hand and laid it on my neck.
‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘Do you resent me for this?’
I opened my eyes. She was gazing down at me anxiously, almost imploringly. For the first time she was looking at me as if I were a person with thoughts and feelings and she was doing so the very day that … I groaned and brusquely turned my head towards my father to shake off that hand. He was watching the boat.
‘My poor little girl,’ Anne’s voice went on quietly. ‘My poor little Cécile. It’s my fault in a way. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so strict. Do you believe me when I say that I didn’t wish to cause you distress?’
She was gently stroking my hair and the back of my neck. I didn’t move. I had the same impression as I did when, on the beach, the sand disappeared from beneath my feet, sucked away by a receding wave. A longing for defeat and gentleness had overcome me and no other feeling, not anger, not desire, had ever swept me up as this one did. I wanted to abandon the play-acting, to entrust my life to her, to put myself in her hands for the rest of my days. I had never before experienced such an intense and overwhelming sense of helplessness. I closed my eyes. It seemed to me as if my heart were ceasing to beat.
Four
My father had displayed no emotion other than astonishment. The maid had explained to him that Elsa had come to fetch her suitcase and had left again immediately. I don’t know why she didn’t mention our conversation to him. She was a local woman with a very romantic outlook on life and she must have thought our situation quite spicy, especially with the changes to the bedroom arrangements that she had had to deal with.
Anyway, my father and Anne, being racked with remorse, showed me every consideration and a kindness which, although at first it was unbearable, I quickly learnt to appreciate. The fact was that, even though it was all my doing, I did not find it very pleasant to be always running into Cyril and Elsa arm in arm, showing every sign of being in perfect harmony. I could no longer go sailing but I could see Elsa sailing past with her hair all wind-swept, as mine had been. I had no difficulty in assuming an impassive and deceptively detached expression when we met them. For we met them everywhere, in the wood, in the village, on the road. Anne would glance at me and talk to me about something else. She would put her hand on my shoulder to comfort me. Have I said that she was kind? I don’t know whether her kindness was a refined expression of her intelligence or quite simply of her aloofness but she always had the right word or gesture, and if there had been any real suffering involved, I could not have had better support.
So I let myself drift on without too much concern, for, as I’ve said, my father was showing no sign of jealousy. That was proof to me of his attachment to Anne and it annoyed me somewhat because it also showed up the futility of my plans. One day we were going to the post office, he and I, when we passed Elsa. She appeared not to see us and my father turned round to look at her, giving a little whistle, as if she were someone he didn’t know.
‘I say, she’s got terribly attractive-looking, has Elsa.’
‘Love suits her,’ I said.
He looked at me in surprise.
‘You seem to be taking that better than before …’
‘What do you expect?’ I said. ‘They’re the same age so it was more or less inevitable.’
‘If it hadn’t been for Anne, it wouldn’t have been at all inevitable.’
He was furious.
‘Don’t imagine that some cheeky young devil could take a woman away from me if I didn’t consent to it.’
‘Age does come into it,’ I said solemnly.
He shrugged his shoulders. When we got back I saw that he was preoccupied. Perhaps he was thinking that, yes, Elsa was young and so was Cyril, and that marrying a woman of his own age meant that he would no longer fall into the category of men who were ageless. I couldn’t help feeling triumphant. When I saw the little wrinkles in the corners of Anne’s eyes and the slight creasing round her mouth I did feel angry with myself. But it was so easy to follow my impulses and to repent later …
A week went by. Cyril and Elsa, who did not know how matters were progressing, must have been expecting me every day. But I didn’t dare go to see them. They would have forced me to come up with more ideas and I wasn’t keen on that. In any case, in the afternoons I was going up to my room, supposedly to work. In point of fact, I was doing nothing. I had found a book on yoga and I was getting down to that with great conviction, sometimes succumbing to the most awful fits of giggles, but silently, because I was afraid that Anne might hear. In fact I told her that I was working very hard. I pretended for her benefit to be disappointed in love and to be finding consolation in the thought of one day becoming an accomplished graduate. I got the impression that she thought well of me for that and I took to quoting Kant10 at mealtimes, which quite clearly dismayed my father.
One afternoon I had swathed myself in bath towels in order to achieve a more Hindu look. I had placed my right foot on my left thigh and I was staring at myself in the mirror, not in a self-satisfied way but in the hope of attaining the higher state of the Yogi, when there was a knock at the door. I assumed it was the maid and, as nothing ever alarmed her, I called to her to come in.
It was Anne. She stood stock-still for a moment in the doorway and then she smiled.
‘What do you think you’re playing at?’
‘At yoga,’ I said. ‘But I’m not playing. It’s a Hindu philosophy.’
She went over to the table and picked up my book. I began to get alarmed. It was open at page one hundred and the other pages were covered with notes in my handwriting, such as ‘can’t be done’ or ‘exhausting’.
‘You are very conscientious,’ she said. ‘And what has become of this great essay on Pascal11 that you’ve talked to us about so much?’
It was true that I had enjoyed holding forth at mealtimes on something Pascal says that I pretended to have thought about and worked on. I hadn’t written a word, of course. I stayed perfectly still. Anne looked at me intently and the truth suddenly dawned on her.
‘It’s your own business if you don’t work and if you play the fool in front of the mirror,’ she said. ‘But if you then take delight in lying to your father and me, that’s more serious. I must say, your sudden burst of intellectual activity did surprise me …’
She made her exit, leaving me petrified in my bath towels. I didn’t understand her reference to ‘lies’. I had talked about essays to please her, yet out of the blue she was heaping scorn on me. I had become accustomed to her new attitude towards me, and now the calm, humiliating nature of her disdain filled me with rage. I got out of my attire, pulled on trousers and an old blouse and rushed from the house. The heat was overpowering but I began to run, propelled by a kind of fury that was all the more violent for my suspecting that I was ashamed. I ran all the way to Cyril’s and I stopped, breathless, at the entrance to his villa. In the afternoon heat the houses seemed strangely deep, silent and turned in on their secrets. I went up to Cyril’s bedroom, which he had shown me the day we had gone to see his mother. I opened the door. He was asleep, stretched out across his bed with his cheek resting on his arm. I stood looking at him for a full minute. For the first time ever he appeared defenceless to me, a touching sight. I called out to him in a low voice. He opened his eyes and, on seeing me, sat up immediately.
‘Is it you? Why are you here?’
I signalled to him not to speak so loud. If his m
other were to come and find me in her son’s room, she might think … and who wouldn’t think …? Panic seized me and I made for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ cried Cyril. ‘Come back, Cécile!’
He had caught me by the arm and was laughingly holding me back. I turned towards him and looked at him. He went pale, as I myself must have been pale, and he let go of my wrist, but only to take me in his arms and carry me along with him. In my confusion I kept thinking that this had been bound to happen. And then began love’s merry dance, where fear goes hand in hand with desire and where, too, there is tenderness and rage and then that brutal hurt giving way to the triumph of pleasure. With Cyril’s gentleness playing its part, I had the good fortune to discover it that day.
I stayed close to him for an hour, dazed and amazed. I had always heard love being spoken of as something quite straightforward. I had myself spoken of it crudely, with the ignorance of youth, but it seemed to me now that I would never again be able to speak of it in that way, in that detached and coarse manner. Cyril, lying beside me, was talking about marrying me and having me next to him for as long as he lived. My silence worried him. I sat up and looked at him and called him ‘my lover’. He leant forward. I pressed my mouth on the vein that was still throbbing in his neck, murmuring ‘My darling Cyril, my darling’. I don’t know if it was true love that I felt for him at that moment – I have always been fickle and I don’t believe in seeing myself as anything other than what I am – but at that moment I loved him more than I loved myself, I would have given my life for him. He asked me as I was leaving if I felt reproachful towards him, which made me laugh. How could I feel reproachful towards him for giving me such happiness?
Bonjour Tristesse & a Certain Smile Page 7