Two
But the Yonne was grey and the tedium was unbearable. It wasn’t so much tedium as the tediousness of missing someone. I left after a week. As I was leaving, my mother suddenly came to and asked me if I was happy. I assured her that I was, that I really liked studying law, that I was working hard and that I had some good friends. Reassured, she sank back into her melancholy. Not for one moment did I have any desire to confide in her, which is certainly what would have happened the year before. In any case, what would I have told her? I was definitely growing up.
At the residence I found a note from Bertrand asking me to phone him as soon as I got back. There was no doubt at all that he was looking for an explanation from me – for I didn’t believe much in Catherine’s discretion – but I did owe him that. So I phoned him and we arranged to meet. In the meantime I went to register at the university restaurant.27
At six o’clock I met Bertrand in the café in Rue Saint-Jacques and it was as if nothing had happened and everything was starting up again from where we had left off. But as soon as he stood up and kissed me gravely on the cheek, I was brought back to reality. Like a coward, I tried to adopt a light, irresponsible manner.
‘You’ve got better-looking,’ I said, with genuine sincerity and, deep down, with a cynical little thought: ‘A pity.’
‘So have you,’ he said curtly. ‘I wanted you to know: Catherine has told me everything.’
‘What’s everything?’
‘About your trip to the Côte d’Azur. I made one or two enquiries that led me to the conclusion that it was with Luc. That’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. (I was impressed. Instead of looking furious, he just seemed calm and rather sad.)
‘Well, here’s how it is: I’m not the kind of guy who would be happy to share. I still love you; I love you enough to discount what has happened, but not enough to wallow in jealousy and to suffer because of you, as I did in the spring. You’ll just have to choose.’
He had said it all in one breath.
‘Choose what?’ I was annoyed. Just as Luc had foreseen, I hadn’t thought of Bertrand as being part of the problem.
‘Either you stop seeing Luc and we carry on as before, or you see him and we just stay good friends. That’s all.’
‘Of course, of course.’
I could think of absolutely nothing to say. He seemed more mature and serious; I almost admired him. But he no longer meant anything to me, he meant nothing at all. I laid my hand on his hand.
‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘but I can’t do it.’
He remained silent for a moment, looking out of the window.
‘It’s a bit hard to take,’ he said.
‘I don’t like making you suffer,’ I went on, and I felt utterly miserable.
‘That’s not the most difficult part,’ he said, as if he were talking to himself. ‘You’ll see. Once the decision has been made, it’s fine. The difficulty is when one clings on.’
He turned to me abruptly.
‘Do you love him?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I said, irritated. ‘There’s no question of it. We get on very well together, that’s all.’
‘If you ever have any problem, I’m here,’ he said. ‘And I do think you will have. You’ll see: there’s nothing to Luc, he’s just a very intelligent person with a sad streak. That’s all.’
I thought with a surge of joy of Luc’s tenderness and his laughter.
‘Believe me. In any case,’ he added with a kind of fervour, ‘I’ll always be there for you, you know that, Dominique. I’ve been very happy with you.’
We were both on the verge of tears, he because it was over and because, all the same, he must have hoped it would not be so, and I because it seemed as if I were losing my natural protector in order to throw myself into some bewildering adventure. I stood up and kissed him lightly.
‘Goodbye, Bertrand. Forgive me.’
‘Just go,’ he said gently.
I left feeling completely demoralized. The new academic year was not off to a good start …
Catherine was waiting for me in my room, sitting on the bed looking tragic. She got up when I came in and held out her hand. I shook it without enthusiasm, and sat down.
‘Dominique, I wanted to apologize. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything to Bertrand. What do you think?’
I had to admire her for asking the question.
‘It doesn’t really matter. It would perhaps have been better if I had told him myself, but it doesn’t really matter.’
‘Good,’ she said, obviously relieved.
She sat down on the bed again, looking pleased and excited.
‘So now, tell me all about it.’
I was speechless, then I burst out laughing.
‘Honestly! You’re priceless, Catherine. First you dispose of the Bertrand issue – right, that’s that done! – and once that problem is out of the way, then on to some juicy details!’
‘Don’t tease me,’ she said, acting the little girl. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I answered drily. ‘I spent a fortnight on the Côte d’Azur with someone I liked. For various reasons, the story ends there.’
‘Is he married?’ she asked shrewdly.
‘No, he’s a deaf-mute. Now I have to unpack my case.’
‘I’m quite sure that you’ll tell me everything,’ she said.
‘The worst of it is, that’s probably true,’ I thought as I opened my wardrobe. ‘One day when I’m feeling down in the dumps …’
‘Now, about me,’ she continued, as if she were going to announce some great revelation, ‘I’m in love.’
‘Which one is it this time?’ I said. ‘Oh, the latest one, of course.’
‘If you’re not interested …’
But she went on anyway. I began putting my things away, feeling cross. ‘Why have I such idiotic girlfriends?’ I wondered. ‘Luc wouldn’t stand for her. But what has Luc got to do with it? It’s my life, after all.’
‘… So, to cut a long story short,’ she was concluding, ‘I love him.’
‘What do you mean by “love”?’ I asked curiously.
‘I don’t know. Love means thinking about someone, going out with him, preferring him to other people. Isn’t that it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
I had finished unpacking. I sat down on the bed, disheartened. Catherine came over all sympathetic.
‘Dominique, dear, you’re crazy. You’re not thinking straight. Come out with us this evening. I’ll be with Jean-Louis, of course, and one of his friends, a very intelligent guy who’s interested in literature. It’ll take your mind off things.’
As it happened, I didn’t want to phone Luc until the next day. And then, I was tired. Life seemed to me to be like a dismal vortex with a single stable element glimpsed occasionally at its centre, Luc. He was the only one who could understand or help me. I needed him.
Yes, I needed him. I couldn’t require anything of him but, even so, he was in a sense responsible for me. Above all I mustn’t let him know it. After all, conventions are conventions, even if they make things difficult for people.
‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and see your Jean-Bernard and his intelligent friend. I don’t care about intelligence, Catherine. No, that’s not true, but I only like intelligent people who have a sad streak. Those who can cope with things get on my nerves.’
‘It’s Jean-Louis,’ she protested, ‘not Jean-Bernard. And cope with what?’
‘With that,’ I said theatrically, pointing up through the window to a low sky, all grey and pink, and sweetly, damnably sad.
‘There’s something not right about you,’ said Catherine in a worried voice, and she took my arm as we went down the stairs, watching the steps for me. When all was said and done, I liked her a lot.
The said Jean-Louis was handsome; his good looks had a sort of loucheness about them that was not disagreeable. However, the fri
end, Alain, was much more shrewd and amusing and had in particular the kind of acerbic intelligence and the insincerity and ability always to be changing his stance that Bertrand did not possess. We weren’t long in leaving Catherine and her suitor, who in any case were displaying their passion with an ardour that was out of place, at the very least in a café, and Alain took me back to my residence, talking about Stendhal28 and literature, which interested me for the first time in two years. He was neither ugly nor good-looking, just nothing special. I was happy enough to agree to lunch with him a couple of days from then, while praying that it would not turn out to be Luc’s free day. Everything was already converging on Luc, everything depended on him and was taking its course whether I liked it or not.
Three
In short, I loved Luc and I quickly came to that conclusion on the first night I spent with him again. It was in a hotel facing the Seine; he was lying on his back after we had made love and was talking to me with his eyes closed. He said: ‘Kiss me,’ and I raised myself up on one elbow to kiss him. But as I bent over him I was filled with a kind of malaise and an unyielding conviction that this face and this man were the only things that counted for me, and that the unbearable pleasure and sense of expectation that kept me hovering over that mouth were indeed the pleasure and the expectation of love. And that I loved him. And I stretched out against his shoulder, without kissing him and with a little moan of fear.
‘You’re sleepy,’ he said, putting his hand on my back and laughing a bit. ‘You’re like a little animal; after love you either go to sleep or you’re thirsty.’
‘I was thinking,’ I said, ‘that I really like you.’
‘And I you,’ he said, and he tapped my shoulder. ‘As soon as we don’t see each other for three days you start calling me vous. Why?’
‘Because I respect you,’ I said. ‘I respect you and I love you.’
We both laughed.
‘No, but seriously,’ I went on enthusiastically, as if that brilliant thought had just come into my head, ‘what would you do if I loved you for real?’
‘But you do love me for real,’ he said, with his eyes closed again.
‘I mean, if I couldn’t do without you, if I wanted you to myself all the time …’
‘I would be very worried,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t even be flattered.’
‘And what would you say to me?’
‘I would say: “Dominique, eh … Dominique, forgive me.”’
I gave a sigh of relief. So at least he wouldn’t have had the dreadful reaction of a cautious, conscientious man, and said: ‘I told you so.’
‘I forgive you in advance,’ I said.
‘Pass me a cigarette,’ he said lazily. ‘They’re on your side.’
We smoked in silence. I was saying to myself: ‘So there we are, I love him. This love of mine probably amounts to nothing more than the thought: “I love him.” That’s all it is, but outside of “that”, there is no salvation.’29
In fact there had only been ‘that’ the whole week: the telephone call from Luc asking: ‘Will you be free on the night of the fifteenth?’, those words that had come back to me every three or four hours, just as he had uttered them, coolly, but each time causing a diffuse weight of emotion within me to teeter between happiness and a sense of suffocation. And now I was beside him and time was passing, very slowly and in a featureless blur.
‘I’m going to have to go,’ he said. ‘It’s a quarter to five! It’s late.’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘Is Françoise at home?’
‘I told her I was going out with some Belgians to Montmartre. But the cabarets will be closing now.’
‘What will she say? Five in the morning is late, even for Belgians.’
He was speaking with closed eyes.
‘I’ll get home and I’ll say, “Oh, those Belgians!” and I’ll stretch. She’ll turn over and say: “There are some liver salts in the bathroom,” and she’ll go back to sleep. That’s all.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘And tomorrow you’ll have to give a brief, weary account of the cabarets, and Belgian morals, and …’
‘Oh, just a list … I don’t like lying and, well, even more, I don’t have time to lie.’
‘What do you have time for?’ I said.
‘Nothing. I have neither time nor strength nor inclination. If I had been capable of anything whatsoever, I would have loved you.’
‘What would that have changed?’
‘Nothing, it would have changed nothing for us. At least, I don’t think so. I would simply have been unhappy because of you, whereas now I’m quite content.’
I wondered if this was an admonishment for what I had said earlier, but he placed his hand on my head as if performing a solemn act:
‘I can say anything to you. I really like that. I couldn’t say to Françoise that I don’t really love her or that there is no marvellous, honest basis to our relationship. The basis of everything is my fatigue and boredom. That’s a solid basis, mind you, a superb one. You can build fine, lasting unions on such things: loneliness, boredom. Those things at least don’t change.’
I raised my head from his shoulder:
‘That’s …’
Filled with an energetic surge of protest, I was going to add ‘rubbish’, but I kept quiet.
‘It’s what? So now and then your youthfulness asserts itself, does it?’
He began to laugh, affectionately.
‘My poor pussycat, you are so young and defenceless. Yet, fortunately, so disarming. That reassures me.’
He took me back to the residence. I was to have lunch next day with Françoise and him and a friend of theirs. I kissed him goodbye through the car window. His features were drawn and he looked old, which I found rather distressing, and for a moment it made me love him more.
Four
I woke up the next day full of energy. Lack of sleep always agreed with me. I got up, went over to the window, breathed in the air of Paris and lit a cigarette without really wanting one. Then I went back to bed, though not without first having looked at myself in the mirror and noting that I had dark rings under my eyes and an interesting expression. Anyway, I was looking decent enough. I decided to ask the landlady if she would turn the heating on in the rooms the following day, for, really, it was getting beyond a joke.
‘It’s freezing cold here,’ I said out loud, and my voice sounded hoarse and funny.
‘My dear Dominique,’ I added, ‘you are passionately in love. What you must do is treat it, by going for walks, by doing some serious reading, or you could use young men to treat it, or perhaps some light work. That would do it.’
I couldn’t help feeling quite warm towards myself. I did, after all, have a sense of humour, and a damn good one at that! I felt fine. Wasn’t I just made for passion? What’s more, I was going to lunch with my heart’s desire. So I set off for Françoise and Luc’s with this somewhat fragile sense of detachment fortifying me on my pilgrimage, a sense of detachment which I owed to my physical euphoria, whose causes I knew only too well. I jumped on the bus just as it was moving off and the bus conductor, on the pretext of helping me, took the opportunity to put his arm round my waist. I showed him my ticket and we smiled conspiratorially at each other, he a ladies’ man and myself a woman who was used to ladies’ men. I stayed on the platform, leaning against the rail, as the bus jolted along, crunching over the cobblestones. With lack of sleep creating a tautness between my jaw and my solar plexus, I was feeling really great.
At Françoise’s, their friend, the one I didn’t know, had already arrived, quite a fat, red-faced, cold man. Luc wasn’t there because, as Françoise explained, he had spent the night with Belgian clients and hadn’t got up till ten. Those Belgians were a real bore with their wanting to go to Montmartre. I noticed the fat man looking at me and I felt myself blush.
Luc came in, looking tired.
‘Why, hello, Pierre,’ he said. ‘How are you?’
‘Weren’t you
expecting me?’
There was something aggressive about him. Perhaps it was simply due to the fact that Luc had been surprised, not by my presence, but by his.
‘Yes, I was, old chap, I was,’ said Luc with a weary little smile. ‘Is there nothing to drink round here? What’s that delectable-looking yellow stuff in your glass, Dominique?’
‘It’s a pale whisky,’ I replied. ‘Don’t you even recognize it any more?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, and he sat down on an armchair as you would sit down in a railway station, on the edge of the seat. Then he glanced round at us again, the way you would glance at people in a station – in an absent-minded, indifferent way. He had a childish, obstinate look about him. Françoise began to laugh.
‘My poor Luc, you look almost as rough as Dominique does. And incidentally, my dear child, I’m going to call a halt to all this. I’m going to tell Bertrand that he …’
She told us what she would say to Bertrand. I had not looked at Luc. There had never been any conspiracy between us as far as Françoise was concerned, thank goodness. It was even quite funny. We spoke of her to each other as if we had been talking about a very dear child who was going to cause us a few headaches.
‘That kind of fun and games does nobody any favours,’ said the aforementioned Pierre. All of a sudden I realized that, probably because of Cannes, he knew about us. That explained his look of contempt at the beginning, and his coldness and those semi-allusions. I suddenly remembered that we had run into him there and that Luc had told me that he, Pierre, was a little in love with Françoise. He must have been shocked and was perhaps inclined to gossip, along the same lines as Catherine: not wanting to conceal anything from friends, wanting to be helpful, not wanting to take advantage, and so on. And if Françoise were to find out, and then if she were to look on me with contempt or anger or any of those feelings that were so foreign to her and, it seemed to me, so ill-deserved by me, what would I do?
‘Let’s go for lunch,’ said Françoise. ‘I’m ravenous.’
We set off on foot for a nearby restaurant. Françoise took my arm and the two men followed.
Bonjour Tristesse & a Certain Smile Page 18