She seemed taken aback, lost in thought, then she said with an embarrassed smile, “I don’t know, Dickie, I don’t think I can do things differently … I’m having fun.”
Poor Odile! She seemed so puerile and so sincere as she said that. I then showed her, with my implacable but pointless logic, that it would be easy to “do things differently.”
“Your downfall,” I told her, “is that you accept yourself as you are, as if we were given our characters ready-made. But we can shape our characters, we can alter them …”
“Well, alter yours, then.”
“I’m completely prepared to try. But you could help me by trying too.”
“No, I’ve already told you plenty of times that I can’t. And anyway I don’t want to try.”
When I think of those now long gone days, I wonder whether she had some deep-seated instinct dictating this attitude. If she had changed in the way I was asking her to, would I have carried on loving her so much? Would I have tolerated the constant presence of that futile little creature, if scenes like that had not made it impossible for either of us to be bored? Besides, it was not true that she had never tried. Odile was not unkind. When she could see I was unhappy, she believed she would go to any lengths to make things better for me, but her pride and weakness were stronger than her goodness, and her life stayed the same.
I had come to recognize what I called her “air of triumph,” a heightened cheerfulness, a semitone above the usual, brighter eyes, a more beautiful expression, and her customary languor overcome. When she liked a man, I knew before she did. It was appalling … Sometimes this made me think of the phrase she quoted in Florence: “I am too fond, and therefore thou mayst think my behavior light.”
What saddens me most when I reflect on that unfortunate period, as I still often do, is the thought that, despite her flirtatiousness, Odile was faithful to me and that, with a little more aptitude, I might have been able to keep her love. But it was not easy knowing how to react with Odile. She found tenderness boring and it produced snappy, hostile reactions in her, whereas threats would have made her determined to take drastic action.
One of her most unwavering characteristics was her love of danger. She liked nothing better than being taken out in a yacht in stormy winds, driving a racing car around a tricky circuit, or jumping unnecessarily high obstacles on horseback. A whole band of bracing young men circled around her. But none of them was preferred over the others, and whenever I had an opportunity to hear their conversations, I felt the tone of Odile’s niceties was of the companionable, sporting kind. In fact I am now in possession (I will explain why) of a number of letters these boys wrote to Odile; they all prove that she tolerated a certain amorous banter but had not succumbed to any of them.
“Strange Odile,” one of them wrote, “so wild and yet so chaste; too chaste for my liking.” And another, a sentimental, religious young Englishman, said, “As it is clear, my dear Odile, that I can never have you in this world, I hope to be close to you in the next.” But I am now telling you things I knew only much later and, at the time itself, I could not believe that this free way of life was innocent.
In order to be quite fair to her, I should also add a detail I have been forgetting. Early on in our marriage she had tried to involve me with her friends, old and new; she would happily have shared all her friends with me. We met the Englishman I mentioned during our first summer vacation, in Biarritz. He entertained Odile by teaching her the banjo, which was a new instrument at the time, and by singing her Negro songs. Then, when we left, he insisted on giving her a banjo as a gift, which I found extremely irritating.
Two weeks later she said, “Dickie, I’ve had a letter from little Douglas, a letter in English. Would you read it for me and help me reply?”
I cannot say what sort of demon took hold of me: I told her with ill-contained fury that I sincerely hoped she would not reply, that Douglas was a little cretin and I found him boring … None of this was true. Douglas was well brought up, charming and, before my marriage, I would have liked him very much. But I was getting into the habit of never listening to what my wife was saying without wondering what she was hiding. Every time I spotted something unexplained in what she said, I constructed an ingenious theory to clarify why she wanted it to be unexplained. There was a painful pleasure, a voluptuous torment in believing that she was lying. My memory is usually fairly poor, but where Odile’s words were concerned it became astonishing. I remembered her least utterances, made comparisons between them, weighed them. I would find myself saying, “What? You had a fitting for that jacket? But that makes it the fourth fitting. You already went on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday last week.” She looked at me, smiled at me with no trace of embarrassment, and replied, “You have a devilish memory …” I felt both ashamed of being found out and proud to think I had foiled her tactic. Mind you, my discoveries were pointless, I never acted on them, I had no desire to act, and Odile’s mysterious calm gave me no grounds to make a scene. I was both unhappy and passionately interested.
What stopped me from harshly laying down the law and, for example, forbidding Odile from seeing some of her friends, was my acknowledgment of the ridiculous mistakes that my desperate deductions drove me to. In one instance I remember her complaining of headaches and tiredness for several weeks, and she said she wanted to spend a few days in the country. I could not leave Paris at the time, and for a long while I refused to let her go. Please note, I completely failed to notice how selfish it was of me to deny that she was ill.
Eventually it struck me that it would be still more ingenious to agree, to allow her to go to Chantilly, which was what she wanted, and to surprise her there the following evening. If I did not find her alone (and I was quite sure I would not), at least I would know something concrete at last and, more important, I would be able to act on this, to confound her, to leave her (because I believed that was what I wanted, but I was wrong). She left. On the second day I hired a car (I was predicting a scene and did not want my own chauffeur to witness it) and left for Chantilly after dinner. About halfway there, I gave the man the order to turn back to Paris. Then, after a couple of miles, with my curiosity too acutely aroused, I made him turn toward Chantilly once more. At the hotel I asked for Odile’s room number. They did not want to give it to me. That was quite clear. I showed them my papers, proved I was her husband, and eventually a bellboy took me up. I found her alone, surrounded by books and the countless letters she had written. But surely she had had time to set up this little scene?
“You don’t give up, do you!” she said with a note of pity. “What did you think? What were you afraid of? … That I’d be with a man? What would you have me do with a man? … What you don’t understand is that I want to be alone just to be alone. And, if you want me to be absolutely frank, what I really don’t want is to see you for a few days. I’m so exhausted by your fears and suspicions that I have to watch what I say and be careful not to contradict myself, like a defendant in a court of law. I’ve had the most lovely day here. I’ve been reading, dreaming, sleeping, I went for a walk in the forest. Tomorrow I’m going to the château to see some miniatures … It’s all so simple, if you only knew.”
But I was already thinking, “Now, spurred on by this success, she’ll know that next time she can invite her lover to join her without any danger.”
Oh, this lover of Odile’s, I tried so hard to work out what he was like! I put him together from everything I found inexplicable in my wife’s thoughts and words. I had developed incredible subtlety in my analyses of what Odile said. I made a note of all the finer ideas she expressed, in homage to this stranger. A peculiar relationship had grown between Odile and myself. I now admitted my every thought to her, even those that cast her in the harshest light. She listened to me with an almost indulgent attentiveness, irritated but also flattered to be the object of so much curiosity and interest.
Her health was still poor and she now went to bed very early. I spent almost
every evening at her bedside. Strange and rather pleasant evenings. I explained the flaws in her character to her, she smiled as she listened to me, then reached out her hand and, taking mine, said, “Poor Dickie, what torment over an unhappy little girl who’s unkind, stupid, proud, flirtatious … because I’m all those, aren’t I?”
“You’re not at all stupid,” I told her. “You’re not very intelligent … but you have incredible intuition and a great deal of taste.”
“Ah!” said Odile. “I have taste … So I am left with something. Listen, Dickie, I’m going to read you an English verse that I found. I adore it.”
Her natural tastes were very refined and she rarely liked anything mediocre, but even in the choice of verses she read to me I was disturbed and surprised to identify a taste for love, a profound knowledge of passion, and sometimes a longing for death. I particularly remember one stanza that she often recited:
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank, with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
“ ‘The weariest river,’ I like that,” she often said. “That’s me, Dickie, the weariest river … and I’m heading off gently toward the sea.”
“You’re mad,” I said. “You’re life itself.”
“Oh, I may look like that,” Odile retorted with a comically sad pout, “but I’m a very weary river.”
When I left her after an evening like this, I would say, “Deep down, with all your faults, Odile, I do love you.”
“And so do I, Dickie.” She would say.
. X .
My father had been asking me for some time to make a trip to Sweden in connection with the paper factory. We bought wood pulp there through brokers. There was no doubt we could have it at a better price by dealing directly with the supplier, and he was not in good enough health to make the trip himself. I refused to go if Odile did not come with me, and she was in no hurry to do so. I thought this unwillingness suspect; she enjoyed travel. In case she did not want to cross Germany and Denmark by train, I suggested going by boat from Le Havre or Boulogne, which should have been a pleasure for her.
“No,” she said, “you go alone. I’m not tempted by Sweden. It’s too cold.”
“Not at all, Odile, it’s a charming country … landscapes just made for you, you can get away from things, there are lakes edged with fir trees, old castles …”
“Do you think? No, I don’t feel like leaving Paris at the moment … But your father’s keen for you to do this, so you go. It’ll do you good to see some other women besides me. Swedish women are ravishing, tall, fair-skinned blondes. Just your type … Be unfaithful to me …”
In the end it became impossible for me not to make the trip. I humbly admitted to Odile that I was horrified at the thought of leaving her alone in Paris.
“You are funny,” she said. “I won’t go out, I promise. I’ve lots of books to read and I’ll take all my meals with my mother.”
I left in a state of anxiety, and the first three days were hellish. During the long journey from Paris to Hamburg, I pictured Odile in her boudoir receiving a man whose face I could not see but who played all the music she loved on the piano. I imagined her smiling and animated, her face lit up by the happy expression that had once been reserved for me and that I wished I could catch, shut away, and guard jealously for myself alone. Which of her regular friends had kept her in Paris? Was it that half-wit Bernier or that American friend of her brothers’, Lansdale? In Malmö the varnished new train and unusual colors eventually drew me out of my grim imaginings. In Stockholm I received a letter from Odile. Odile’s letters were odd; she wrote like a little girl. It said: I’m being very good. I’m not doing anything. It’s raining. I’m reading. I’ve read War and Peace again. I had lunch with my mother. Your mother came to see me. And it went on like that with short sentences that implied nothing and—I could not say why but perhaps precisely because they were so vacuous and naïvely simple—had a reassuring effect on me.
The next few days only increased this feeling of relaxation. It was strange, I loved Odile more than in Paris. I pictured her looking serious, lying rather languidly and reading beside a vase in which she had most likely put a beautiful carnation or a rose. Because I was very lucid in spite of my mania, I wondered, “Why on earth isn’t this hurting? I should be unhappy. I have no idea what she’s doing. She’s free and can say whatever she wants in a letter.” I realized that while absence, as I already knew, crystallizes love, it also temporarily lulls jealousy to sleep because, by removing all the minor facts and observations on which jealousy has learned to build its monstrous and dangerous edifices, absence compels it to be calm, to rest.
The business I was handling required me to travel through the Swedish countryside. I stayed with squires who owned swathes of woodland; I was offered local liqueurs, caviar, and smoked salmon; the women had a cold, crystalline radiance; I could spend entire days without thinking about Odile or what she was doing.
I particularly remember one evening when I dined out in the country not far from Stockholm, and after dinner my hostess suggested we take a walk through the grounds. We were wrapped up in furs. The air was icy. Tall blond-haired valets opened up a wrought-iron gate, and we ended up beside a frozen lake that gleamed gently in the night sun. The woman beside me was ravishing and very gay; a few minutes earlier she had played piano preludes for me with a light-fingered grace that brought tears to my eyes. For a moment I felt extraordinarily happy. “The world is such a beautiful place,” I thought, “and it’s so easy to be happy.”
Returning to Paris reawakened my phantom fears. Odile’s accounts of her long days of solitude were so empty that they invited the most painful hypotheses to fill their vast, deserted expanses.
“What have you been doing all this time?”
“Nothing really. I got some rest, I daydreamed, I read.”
“What did you read?”
“I told you in my letter: War and Peace.”
“Come on, you can’t have spent two weeks reading one novel!”
“No, I did things: I tidied my clothes, I sorted out my books, I replied to old letters, I visited some couturiers.”
“But who have you seen?”
“No one. I told you in my letter: your mother, my mother, my brothers, Misa … And I’ve listened to a lot of music.”
She became more animated and told me about the Spanish music by Albéniz and Granados that she had just discovered.
“And another thing, Dickie, I must take you to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice … It’s so intelligent.”
“Is it based on the ballad by Goethe?” I asked.
“Yes,” Odile replied brightly.
I looked at her. How did she know the ballad? I knew Odile had never read anything by Goethe. Who did she go to the concert with? She could read the anxiety in my face.
“It said so in the program,” she said.
. XI .
The Tuesday after I returned from Sweden, we dined with Aunt Cora. She invited us once every two weeks and was the only member of my family for whom Odile felt any liking. Aunt Cora, who saw Odile as a gracious ornament for her table and was good to her, criticized me, saying I had grown silent since my marriage. “You’re gloomy,” she said, “and you spend too much time fussing about your wife; couples only work at a dinner once they’ve reached the indifferent stage. Odile is delightful, but you’ll only be ready in a couple of years, maybe three. At least this time you’ve just come back from Sweden, I hope you’re going to be dazzling.”
In fact, success at this dinner was not granted to me at all but to a young man I knew well because he was friend of André Halff’s. It was at Halff’s house that I had previously met him, and Halff spoke of him with a unique combination of admiration,
fear, and irony. Admiral Garnier, the naval chief of staff, had introduced this man to the avenue Marceau gatherings. His name was François de Crozant, he was a naval lieutenant and had just returned from the Far East. That evening he described Japanese landscapes and talked of Conrad and Gaugin in powerful, vibrant, poetic language that I could not help but admire, although I did not much like him. Listening to him, I gradually remembered things André had told me about him. He had had several postings in the East and had a small house near Toulon full of things brought back from his travels. I knew he composed music and had written an unusual opera on a subject from Chinese history. I also knew, though only obscurely, that he was admired in sporting circles for breaking several automobile speed records and had been one of the first naval officers to go up in a seaplane.
A man in love is an extremely sensitive reagent for the feelings of the woman he loves. I could not see Odile, who was seated at the other end of the table, on the same side as me, but I knew the expression on her face at that moment and with what unnecessarily acute interest she would be listening to François’s tales. I remember that dinner very well. My feelings were those of a father who loves his only daughter above all else, who realizes that, as a result of unfortunate but inevitable circumstances, he has taken her somewhere contaminated by a terrible epidemic and hopes ardently and desperately that he can save her before she is infected. If I could ensure that Odile did not end up in the same group as François after dinner, if no one told her the details that I had already heard about his life (details so likely to attract her attention), perhaps I could take her home at midnight still quite unsullied by the most terrifying of germs.
It so happens that I was lucky in this, and not thanks to some adept maneuver on my part but because straight after dinner François was scooped up by Hélène de Thianges, who took him off to the Chinese salon that Aunt Cora always kept for couples eager to be left alone. Meanwhile I myself had a peculiar conversation, about François himself, no less, with a pretty woman called Yvonne Prévost, whose husband was also a naval man, a captain who worked alongside the admiral at the ministry.
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