‘You don’t understand,’ I said to Catherine. ‘It’s not about Bertrand.’
‘Really?’ she said.
Turning to look at her, I saw on her face such curiosity, such a mania for giving advice and such a vampire-like expression that I had to laugh.
‘I’m thinking of going into a convent,’ I went on solemnly.
At this, Catherine, overcoming her astonishment, embarked on a long discussion of the pleasures of life, the little birds, the sun and so on. These were all things that I was going to leave behind, she said, and it was sheer madness! She also spoke of the pleasures of the flesh, dropping her voice to a whisper: ‘It has got to be said … That’s important too.’ In short, if I had been seriously thinking about taking vows, her description of life’s pleasures would have sent me headlong in that direction. Could it be that life merely amounted to ‘that’ for anyone? As far as I was concerned, if I was bored, at least there was an intensity to my boredom. Besides, she turned out to have at her disposal such a wealth of truisms, and to be so eager for that revolting type of intimacy that girls can share with one other, so eager for a detailed heart-to-heart, that I cheerfully left her standing on the pavement. ‘Let’s ditch Catherine while we’re about it,’ I thought merrily, ‘Catherine and her devotedness.’ I was almost humming this, so strongly did I feel.
I walked around for an hour, went into half a dozen shops, talked to everyone I met with total ease. I felt utterly free and utterly happy. Paris belonged to me. Paris belonged to those who had no scruples, who were free and easy. I had always been pained by my awareness of this, because I myself was not free and easy. This time it was my city, my beautiful city, gilded and sharp-edged, a city you couldn’t hoodwink. I was carried along by something that might have been joy. I walked quickly. I felt full of impatience and of my own strength. I felt young, ridiculously young. In those moments of wild happiness I had the impression of arriving at a truth much more self-evident than the poor, hackneyed little truths learnt in times when I had been unhappy.
I went into a cinema on the Champs-Élysées where they showed old films. A young man came and sat next to me. One glance told me that he was good-looking, though perhaps a bit too fair-haired. Before long he shifted his elbow against mine and ventured a cautious hand in the direction of my knee. I grasped his hand as it advanced and held it in mine. I wanted to giggle, like a schoolgirl. Where were those shocking acts of promiscuity that they said took place in dimly lit cinemas, the furtive embraces and the shame? I had in my hand the warm hand of an unknown young man who meant nothing to me and it made me want to laugh. He turned his hand over in mine and slowly advanced one knee. I watched him do so with a mixture of curiosity, apprehension and encouragement. Like him, I feared that my sense of dignity would assert itself and I felt myself turning into the kind of elderly lady who gets up from her seat in exasperation. My heart was beating quite fast: was it that I was agitated or was it the film? It was a good one, incidentally. They ought to give one cinema over to mediocre films, just for people who are short of companions. The young man turned an enquiring face towards me and, since the film was Swedish, therefore full of luminosity, I saw that he was in fact quite handsome. ‘Quite handsome, but not my type,’ I said to myself, just as he was cautiously bringing his face closer to mine. I thought for a moment of the people behind us and the impression they must be having. He was good at kissing but at the same time he was pressing harder with his knee, putting out his hand and trying stealthily to take some advantage, which was stupid of him, since up to that point I had not rebuffed him. I stood up and walked out. He must have been totally uncomprehending.
I found myself back on the Champs-Élysées with the taste of a strange mouth on my lips and I decided to go home and read a new novel.
It was a very fine work by Sartre, The Age of Reason.9 I threw myself into it with relish. I was young, I was attracted to one man and another man loved me. I had one of those silly little girlish conflicts to resolve. I was acquiring some importance. There was even a married man involved, and another woman; in fact a little game for four players was getting under way in Paris, in the springtime. I was turning it all into a nice, dry little equation, as cynical as you could wish for. What’s more, I was feeling remarkably at ease with myself. I accepted whatever sorrows, conflicts and pleasures might lie ahead; flippantly I accepted them all in advance.
As I read, evening fell. I put down my book, laid my head on my arm and watched the sky turn from mauve to grey. Suddenly I felt weak and without defences. My life was slipping past, I was achieving nothing, all I did was sneer. I imagined someone’s cheek resting on my cheek, someone whom I would not let go, whom I would press close to me with the heart-breaking violence of love. I was not cynical enough to envy Bertrand, but I was sad enough to envy anyone who knew what it was to experience happy love, rapturous meetings, passionate enslavement. I got up and went out.
Five
Over the two weeks that followed I went out with Luc several times, but always in the company of his friends. Generally speaking they were travellers with tales to tell, and quite agreeable individuals. Luc talked fast and amusingly and would look at me in a kindly way, while still appearing to be simultaneously preoccupied and pressed for time, which made me continue to wonder whether he was really interested in me. Afterwards he would drop me off at my front door, getting out of the car and kissing me lightly on the cheek before driving off. He no longer talked about the desire for me that he had previously spoken of and I felt both relieved and disappointed. Eventually he announced that Françoise was coming home in a couple of days’ time and I realized that those two weeks had gone by in a flash and that I had got myself worked up over nothing.
So one morning we went to fetch Françoise from the station, but without Bertrand, who had not been on speaking terms with me for ten days. I was sorry about that, but it gave me the opportunity to lead an idle, carefree life on my own, which I liked. I knew he was unhappy at no longer seeing me and that stopped me from being seriously unhappy myself.
Françoise arrived, all smiles, kissed us and exclaimed that we were not looking well but that, as good luck would have it, we had been invited to spend the weekend at Luc’s sister’s (she being the mother of Bertrand). I protested that I wasn’t invited and that in any case I had rather fallen out with Bertrand. Luc added that his sister exasperated him. But Françoise settled things. She said that Bertrand had asked his mother to invite me, adding with a laugh: ‘probably so that you can make up after this famous falling-out of yours’. And as for Luc, he sometimes really just had to enter into the family spirit.
She looked at me, still laughing, and I smiled back at her, overcome by goodwill. She had put on weight. She was rather on the large side, but she was so warm and trusting that I was delighted to think that nothing had happened between Luc and me and that we could all three of us be happy, as before. I would get back together with Bertrand, who basically did not irritate me all that much and who was so cultured and intelligent. We had been sensible, Luc and I. Even so, when I got into the car between Françoise and Luc I glanced at him for a second and realized that here was someone I was renouncing, and I felt a strange little jolt inside, which was very unpleasant.
We left Paris on a fine evening to drive to Bertrand’s mother’s place. I was aware that her husband had left her a very pretty house in the country and the idea of ‘going to spend the weekend’ somewhere allowed me to indulge in a feeling of superiority when I used this expression, which before then I had not had the opportunity to do. Bertrand had told me that his mother was a very pleasant person. In saying this he had spoken in that detached manner that young people affect when referring to their parents, in order to make the point that they themselves lead their own lives elsewhere. I had gone to the expense of buying some denim trousers,10 since all Catherine’s trousers were really too wide for me. This purchase put a strain on my budget but I knew that Luc and Françoise would provide for me,
should it become necessary. I was astonished at the ease with which I took this for granted but, like all those who are keen to live on good terms with themselves, at least with regard to small matters, I had put it down more to the tactfulness of their generosity than to any indelicacy on my part. In any case, it’s better to credit others with having virtues than to admit to having faults yourself.
Luc came with Françoise to pick us up at a café on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.11 He again seemed tired and rather sad. Once on the motorway he began to drive very fast, almost dangerously. Bertrand succumbed to a fit of terrified giggling and I very soon joined in. Hearing us laugh, Françoise looked round. She was wearing that disconcerted expression that is typical of very nice people who would never dare object to anything, even if their lives depended on it.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘They’re young,’ said Luc. ‘At twenty you’re still young enough to giggle.’
I don’t know why, but that remark annoyed me. I didn’t like Luc to treat Bertrand and me as a couple, especially not as a couple of children.
‘It’s nervous laughter,’ I said. ‘It’s because you’re driving so fast and we don’t feel very brave.’
‘If you come with me,’ Luc said to me, ‘I’ll teach you to drive.’
It was the first time he had spoken to me in a familiar way in public. ‘That’s maybe what people mean by a bit of a gaffe,’ I thought. Françoise looked at Luc for a second. Then the idea of its being a gaffe struck me as ridiculous. I didn’t generally believe in accidental gaffes that resulted in revelations nor in glances that got intercepted nor in sudden intuitions. There was a sentence in novels that always surprised me: ‘And all at once she realized that he was lying.’
We were arriving at our destination. Luc turned sharply down a little lane and I was thrown against Bertrand. He held me against him firmly and tenderly and I was very embarrassed. I couldn’t bear Luc to see us like that. It seemed crass and, what was really stupid, it seemed to me to be lacking in consideration towards him.
‘You’re like a bird,’ said Françoise.
She had turned around and was looking at us. She had a really kind, sensitive way of looking at you. She hadn’t adopted that knowing, approving expression that a mature woman assumes when faced with a teenage couple. She simply seemed to be saying that I looked quite comfortable in Bertrand’s arms and that I was a touching sight. I was happy enough to look touching since it often saved me the bother of having to believe things or think about things or come up with replies.
‘I’m like a bird that’s old,’ I said. ‘I feel old.’
‘So do I,’ said Françoise, ‘but that’s more understandable.’
Luc turned his head in her direction and gave a little smile. I suddenly thought: ‘They’re attractive to each other. They still sleep together, for sure. Luc sleeps next to her, he lies down alongside her and he loves her. Does he similarly think that Bertrand has my body at his disposal? Does he picture it? Does he feel vaguely jealous about it, as I feel jealous about him?’
‘Here we are at the house,’ said Bertrand. ‘There’s another car here. I fear my mother may have some of her usual guests.’
‘In which case, we’ll go away again,’ retorted Luc. ‘I can’t stand my dear sister’s guests. I know a very pleasant inn not far from here.’
‘Come now,’ said Françoise, ‘that’s enough of being negative. This house is very pleasant and Dominique hasn’t been here before. Come with me, Dominique.’
She took me by the hand and led me off in the direction of a fairly attractive house surrounded by lawns. I followed her, saying to myself that I had in fact nearly played her the very nasty trick of deceiving her with her husband, and yet I liked her very much and would rather do anything than hurt her. Of course, she would never have known.
‘You’ve got here at last!’ came a shrill voice.
Bertrand’s mother was emerging from behind a hedge. I had never seen her before. She gave me the kind of interrogating once-over that only the mother of a young man is capable of when the latter is introducing some girl to her. The predominant impression I received was of someone blonde and rather loud. She immediately began to hover round us, twittering away. I quickly felt overwhelmed. Luc was eyeing her as if she were some sort of catastrophe. Bertrand seemed rather embarrassed, which led me to behave very pleasantly. Eventually, with relief, I found myself in my bedroom. The bed was very high, with coarse sheets, like those from my childhood. I opened my window on to rustling green trees, and an intense smell of wet earth and grass filled the room.
‘Do you like it?’ Bertrand asked.
He seemed both pleased and abashed. It occurred to me that this weekend with me at his mother’s must have been a rather important and complicated occasion for him. I gave him a smile.
‘You have a very pretty house. As far as your mother is concerned, I don’t know her, but she seems nice.’
‘So you don’t dislike it. In any case, I’m just next door.’
He gave a conspiratorial laugh which I joined in with. I rather liked strange houses, black-and-white-tiled bathrooms, big windows and imperious young men. He took me in his arms and kissed me gently on the mouth. I knew his breath and his way of kissing. I had not told him about the young man in the cinema. He would have taken it badly. I was taking it badly myself now. When I looked back on it I was left with a rather shameful memory which had its amusing as well as its disturbing side but which was fundamentally unpleasant. For one afternoon I had been free and full of whimsy; I wasn’t any more.
‘Come and have dinner,’ I said to Bertrand, who was bending forward to kiss me again, his eyes slightly dilated. I liked him to desire me. On the other hand, I didn’t like myself much. I had been adopting by turns the role of free-spirited young thing and of cold-hearted miss whose innocent exterior concealed darker intents – yet this now seemed a performance better suited to a public of aged gentlemen.
Dinner was unbelievably boring. There were indeed some friends of Bertrand’s mother’s there, a talkative, up-to-the-minute couple. When dessert was served, the husband, who was called Richard and was chairman of some board or other, could not resist launching into the usual type of remark:
‘And what about you, young lady? Are you one of those wretched existentialists?12 Honestly, my dear Marthe’ – he was at this point addressing himself to Bertrand’s mother – ‘these disillusioned young people are beyond me. At their age, what the deuce, we loved life. In my day we knew how to enjoy ourselves. We may have got up to some shenanigans but whatever we did, we did light-heartedly, I assure you.’
His wife and Bertrand’s mother laughed in a knowing way. Luc was yawning. Bertrand was working up a speech that wouldn’t get a hearing. With her usual good humour, Françoise was visibly trying to understand why these people were so boring. As for me, it was the umpteenth time that a rosy-complexioned, grey-haired gentleman had subjected me to his robust good sense of humour by mouthing the word ‘existentialism’ with a pleasure that was all the greater for his not knowing what it meant. I did not reply.
‘My dear Richard,’ said Luc, ‘I fear that shenanigans are really only for people of your age – I mean, our age. These young people don’t get up to shenanigans, they simply make love and that’s just as good. For shenanigans you need a secretary and an office.’
The self-styled fun-lover did not respond. The rest of the meal passed without incident and with more or less everyone talking, except Luc and myself. Luc was the only one to be as intensely bored as I was and I wondered if that wasn’t the thing that first made for complicity between us, being both in a way unable to tolerate boredom.
After dinner, as it was mild, we moved out on to the terrace. Bertrand went off to fetch some whisky. Luc advised me quietly not to drink too much.
‘Well, anyway, I’m behaving very well,’ I replied, somewhat annoyed.
‘I would be jealous,’ he went on. ‘I only want you to
get drunk and say silly things when you’re with me.’
‘And what would I do the rest of the time?’
‘You would just look rather a sorry sight, as you did at dinner.’
‘And what about how you looked?’ I said. ‘Do you think you were looking very cheerful? You can’t belong to the right generation, contrary to what you said.’
He laughed.
‘Come and take a walk round the garden with me.’
‘In the dark? What about Bertrand and the others?’
I was panic-stricken.
‘They’ve bored us for long enough. Come on, let’s go.’
He took me by the arm and turned to the others. Bertrand had not come back yet with the whisky. I vaguely thought that when he returned he would go and look for us, find us under a tree and maybe kill Luc, just as happens in Pelléas et Mélisande.13
‘I’m taking this young lady for a romantic walk,’ he said, to no one in particular.
I didn’t turn round but I heard Françoise laugh. Luc was already leading me off down a pathway which looked white to start with, where it was gravelled, but which then carried on into the darkness. I was suddenly very frightened. I wanted to be with my parents on the banks of the Yonne.
‘I’m frightened,’ I said to Luc.
Instead of laughing, he took my hand. I wished that he could always be as he was just then, silent, rather solemn, protective and tender, that he would never leave me, that he would say he loved me, I wished that he would cherish me and take me in his arms. He stopped and took me in his arms. I was pressed up against his jacket with my eyes closed. And all those recent days and weeks had merely been a long flight from this instant in time, and from those hands lifting my face and that warm, sweet mouth which was just made for mine. He had kept his fingers around my face and he pressed them down firmly while we kissed. I put my arms around his neck. I was frightened of myself, of him and of everything that was not that moment.
Bonjour Tristesse & a Certain Smile Page 13