We reached the house. Odile mustered a pure and charming smile for the staff. She went to her bedroom, took off her hat, looked at herself in the glass to tidy her hair and, spotting me behind her, looked directly at my reflection and smiled at me too.
“What am I to do with you, Dickie!” she said. “I can’t leave you alone for a week without the black moths descending … You’re thankless, sir. I thought about you the whole time and I’m going to prove it to you. Pass me my bag.”
She opened it and took out a small parcel that she handed to me. It contained two books, Reveries of a Solitary Walker and The Charterhouse, both in vintage editions.
“But, Odile … Thank you … these are incredible … How did you find them?”
“I sifted through the bookshops in Brest, sir. I wanted to bring something back for you.”
“So you went to Brest, then?”
“Of course. It was very close to where I was, there was a ferry service, and I’ve been wanting to see Brest for ten years now … Well, aren’t you going to kiss me for my little present? And there I was thinking it would be such a success … I went to a lot of trouble, you know … They’re very rare, Dickie. All my little savings went on those.”
So I kissed her. I had such complex feelings for her that I had trouble understanding them myself. I loathed her and adored her. I thought her innocent and guilty. The violent scene I had prepared for turned into a friendly, trusting conversation. We talked all evening about Misa’s betrayal as if the revelations made to me (which were no doubt true) had not been about Odile and myself but a couple of friends whose happiness we wanted to protect.
“I do hope,” Odile said, “that you won’t see her again.”
I promised I would not.
I have never known what happened between Odile and Misa the following day. Did they talk it out over the telephone? Did Odile go to see Misa? I knew she was candid and brutal. That was all part of the almost insolent courage that both shocked and charmed my silent inherited reserve. I myself stopped seeing Misa. I did not hear her mentioned again, and my memories of that brief affair were like those left by a dream.
. XVII .
Suspicious planted in the mind are triggered like a series of mines and destroy love gradually with their successive explosions. On the evening that Odile came home, her kindness and adroitness, along with the pleasure I felt seeing her again, managed to delay the catastrophe. But from that moment, we both knew we were living in a minefield and it would all go up one day. Even when I loved her best, I could now talk to Odile only in terms laced, however delicately, with bitterness. Like the shadow of clouds in the distance, my most banal sentences bore the shadow of unspoken resentments. The cheerful optimistic philosophy I had espoused in the first months of our marriage was replaced by a melancholy pessimism. The natural world, which I had so loved since Odile had revealed it to me, now sang only sad tunes in a minor key. Even Odile’s own beauty was no longer perfect, and I could sometimes see traces of deceitfulness in her face. It was fleeting; five minutes later I would see only her smooth forehead and candid eyes, and would love her again.
In early August we left for Gandumas. The isolation, the distance, and the complete absence of letters or telephone calls received reassured me and gave me a few weeks’ respite. The trees, sunny meadows, and dark hillsides covered in firs had a strong influence on Odile. Nature afforded her almost sensual pleasures, and she inadvertently transmitted these to whoever was with her, even if that was me. Shared solitude, if it does not last long enough to produce satiation or boredom, favors a steady rise in affection and trust that brings those concerned much closer together. “Deep down,” Odile thought, “he’s kind …,” and I for my part felt very close to her.
I remember one evening in particular. We were alone on the terrace, which looked out over a vast horizon of hills and woods. I can still see so clearly the heather on the slopes opposite. The sun was setting; it was very quiet, very warm. Human affairs seemed trifling. I suddenly started saying the humblest, most tender things to Odile, but (and this is peculiar) they were the words of a man already resigned to losing her.
“We could have had such a wonderful life, Odile … I’ve loved you so much … Do you remember Florence and the days when I couldn’t last a single minute without looking at you? … I’m still right on the brink of being like that, darling …”
“It makes me happy to hear you say that … I’ve loved you very tenderly too. My God! I had such faith in you … I used to tell my mother, ‘I’ve found the man who’ll settle me down once and for all.’ Then I was disappointed …”
“It was all my fault … Why didn’t you explain all this to me?”
“You know why, Dickie … Because it was impossible. Because you put me on a pedestal. You see, Dickie, your big mistake is you ask too much of women. You expect too much of them. They can’t … But it still makes me happy to think you’ll miss me when I’m no longer here …”
She spoke these words in a painfully prophetic way, which had a profound effect on me.
“But you’ll always be here.”
“You know perfectly well I won’t,” she said.
At that point my parents joined us.
During that stay, I often took Odile to my observatory, and we would spend a long time watching the tiny torrent deep down in the wooded funnel of the gorge. She liked it there and talked about her childhood, Florence, our daydreams along the Thames; I would put my arm around her with no resistance from her. She seemed happy. “Why not accept that we’re constantly beginning new lives?” I thought, “and that, in each of these lives, the past is just a dream? Am I now the same man who put his arms round Denise Aubry in this same spot? Perhaps, since we’ve been here, Odile has quite forgotten François?” But while I tried everything I could to put my happiness back together, I knew this happiness was unrealistic and that the dreamy beatitude on Odile’s face as she leaned on the parapet was due to the fact that she thought François loved her.
———
There was one other person at Gandumas who understood with extraordinary lucidity what was going on in my marriage, and that was my mother. I have said that she never much liked Odile, but she was a good woman, could see I was in love, and had never wanted to reveal her feelings toward my wife. On the morning of the day before we left, I came across her in the vegetable garden, and she asked me if I would like to go for a walk with her. I checked my watch; Odile would not be ready for a long time, so I said, “Yes. What I’d really like is to go right down into the valley. I haven’t done that since I was about twelve or thirteen.”
She was touched by this memory and became more confidential than usual. She spoke first about my father’s health; he had arteriosclerosis, and the doctor was worried. Then, keeping her eyes on the stones along the path, she said, “What’s happened between you two and Misa?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you haven’t seen them a single time since you’ve been here … Last week I asked them to lunch and Misa declined. She’s never done that before … I can see something’s happened.”
“Yes, something has, Mother, but I can’t tell you about it … Misa behaved badly toward Odile.”
My mother walked on in silence for a while, then said quietly and almost reluctantly, “Are you quite sure it’s not Odile who behaved badly toward Misa? Listen, I certainly don’t want to intervene between you and your wife, but I do have to tell you at least once that everyone blames you, even your father. You’re too weak with her. You know how I loathe gossip; I want to believe that everything people say is nonsense but, if it is nonsense, you should insist that she lives in such a way that people don’t say it.”
While I listened to her I flicked seed heads off stalks of grass with my walking stick. I knew she was right and had held this back a long time; I also thought that Misa had probably spoken to her and might have told her everything. My mother had grown very close to Misa since Misa had come to
live at Gandumas and had a great deal of respect for her. Yes, she most likely knew the truth. But hearing this attack on Odile, this fair and measured attack, my reflex reaction was to play the Knight and to defend my wife rigorously. I professed a trust in her that I did not have, I endowed Odile with virtues that I would not grant her when I talked to her in person.
Love develops strange solidarities and, on that morning, I thought it my duty to form a common front with Odile against the truth. I think I needed to make myself believe she still loved me. I told my mother about all the characteristics that might prove Odile cared for me, the two books she had gone to such lengths to find in Brest, her kindness in her letters, the way she had behaved since we had been at Gandumas. I was so ardent that I believe I undermined my mother’s conviction, but—alas!—not my own, which was all too strong.
I did not mention this conversation to Odile.
. XVIII .
As soon as we were back in Paris, François’s shadow hovered over our lives again, vague but ever present. Since the falling-out with Misa, I did not know how he communicated with Odile. I still have no idea, but I noticed that Odile had adopted a new habit of running to the telephone whenever it rang, as if she feared my intercepting a communication that needed to remain secret. The only books she read were about the sea, and she fell into a voluptuous languor looking at the most banal engravings if they happened to be of waves and boats. One evening a telegram arrived for her. She opened it, said, “It’s nothing,” and tore it into little pieces.
“What do you mean nothing, Odile? What is it?”
“A dress that isn’t ready,” she said.
I knew, because I had made inquiries with Admiral Garnier, that François was in Brest. I should have been calm, but was not, and with good reason. But there were still times when, under the influence of a moving concert or a beautiful autumn day, we had brief moments of tenderness.
“What if you told me the truth, darling, the whole truth about the past … I would try to forget and we could start again, trusting each other, start a new, perfectly transparent life.”
She shook her head, not unkindly or resentfully but with a sense of despair. She no longer denied this past, not that she admitted anything to me, but there was a silent, implicit admission.
“No, Dickie, I can’t, I know it would be pointless. It’s all such a muddle now, such a tangle … I’d never find the strength to sort it out … And I couldn’t explain why I said or did certain things … I can’t even remember why I did … No, I can’t do it … I won’t.”
In fact, these tender conversations almost always ended in hostile interrogations. Just one thing she said would strike a chord, and I would embark on a line of reasoning, no longer listening to her as the dangerous question teetered on the tip of my tongue. I would hold it back for a moment, then, suffocating, unleash it. Wherever possible, Odile tried to take the scene lightly but, seeing how serious I was, she eventually flew into a temper.
“Oh! Stop! Stop! Stop!” she said. “An evening with you is like a torture session now. I’d rather leave. If I stay here, I’ll lose my mind …”
My terror of losing her then restrained me. I apologized to her, with only halfhearted sincerity, and could see that each of these quarrels was helping untie an already fragile knot. What on earth was it that kept her there so long, given we had no children? Strong feelings of pity for me, I think, and even a little love, because emotions can sometimes overlap without canceling each other out, and women in particular can have a peculiar desire to keep everything as it is.
Besides, Odile had religious beliefs—she rarely expressed them but they persisted, though much weakened by François’s influence—that meant she abhorred divorce. Perhaps she also felt ties, if not to me then to our life together, thanks to her childish love of material things? She loved this house that she herself had furnished so tastefully. On a small table in her boudoir she kept her favorite books and the little Venetian vase that always held a single flower, just one but a really beautiful one. When she took refuge there alone, she felt sheltered from me and from herself. She would find it difficult tearing herself away from that setting. Leaving me to live with François would mean living in Toulon or Brest for most of the year; this in turn would mean being away from most of her friends. François was no more able to fill her life than I was. What she needed, I now realize, was a sense of movement around her, the strange spectacle of varied characters that all those different men laid on for her.
But she herself did not understand this. She knew it was painful for her being separated from François and believed she would find happiness if she could only be with him. To her, he had all the prestige of those we do not know well, and, their charms not yet exhausted, they seem rich with previously unimagined possibilities. I had once been this mythical seductive character in her eyes, back in Florence and on our trip to England. I had not succeeded in living up to the fictitious person she had attached to me. I was condemned. It was now François’s turn. He too would be put to trial by familiarity. Would he stand up to it?
Had he lived in Paris, I think François’s relationship with Odile would have evolved like almost every illness of this type and ended without incident when Odile discovered how wrong she had been about what sort of man François was. But he was far away, and she could not live without him. What feelings did he have? I do not know. It would be impossible for him not to be touched by conquering so lovely a creature. All the same, if he was the man I had heard described, then the idea of marriage would not have been to his liking.
This I do know: he stopped off in Paris sometime around Christmas, on his way back to Toulon from Brest. He spent two days there, and during this time Odile behaved with a foolish lack of caution. She was alerted to his arrival by telephone in the morning, before I left for the office. I knew instantly that it was him from the astonishing expression on Odile’s face when she talked to him. I had never seen her look so submissive and tender, almost beseeching. She certainly could not have known that standing there holding that black receiver and so far from her love, she betrayed her feelings to me by adopting that pure and ravishing smile.
“Yes,” she said, “I’m delighted to hear from you … Yes … Well, yes but … Yes, yes but …” She looked up at me awkwardly and added, “Listen, call me back in half an hour.”
I asked her who she had been talking to and she hung up with apparent indifference but did not reply, as if she had not heard me. I made sure I was free to come home at lunchtime. The chambermaid gave me piece of paper on which Odile had written: If you come home, don’t worry. I’ve had to go out for lunch. See you this evening, darling.
“Has Madame been out for long?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the chambermaid, “since ten o’clock.”
“In the car?”
“Yes, sir.”
I had lunch alone. Then I felt so terrible that I decided not to go back to the rue de Valois. I wanted to see Odile the moment she came home and had made up my mind that this time I would ask her to choose between us. The afternoon was pure torture. Toward seven o’clock the telephone rang.
“Hello, is that you Juliette?” Odile’s voice asked.
“No,” I said, “it’s me, Philippe.”
“Oh,” she said, “are you home already? Listen, I wanted to ask whether you mind if I have dinner here.”
“What?” I asked. “Where’s ‘here’? And why? You’ve already had lunch out.”
“Yes, but listen … I’m in Compiègne. I’m calling from Compiègne and whatever I do, I’d be home too late for dinner anyway …”
“What are you doing in Compiègne? It’s dark already.”
“I came for a walk in the woods; it’s gorgeous in this clear cold weather. I didn’t think you’d be home for lunch.”
“Odile, I don’t want to discuss this on the telephone, but it’s all quite ridiculous. Come home.”
She came in at ten o’clock in the evening and repl
ied to my reproachful comments with, “Well, it’ll be the same tomorrow. I can’t shut myself away in Paris in weather like this.”
She had the same expression of merciless resolution that so struck me when she took the train to Brest, and it made me think at the time that, even if I had lain down on the tracks, she would still have left.
The following day it was she who asked me very sadly to agree to a divorce and to let her live with her parents until she was able to marry François.
We were in Odile’s boudoir, before dinner. I offered very little resistance. I had known for a long time that it would end like this, and even her behavior during François’s time in Paris had persuaded me that I would be better off not seeing her anymore. And yet the first thought that crossed my mind was a petty one: no Marcenat had ever been divorced and I would feel terribly humiliated when I told my family about this drama in the morning. Then I was so ashamed for thinking this that I made it a point of honor to see only what was in Odile’s best interests. The conversation soon reached high moral ground and, as was often the case when we were sincere, became affectionate. We were told dinner was ready and went downstairs. Sitting facing each other, we hardly spoke a word now because of the servants. I looked at the plates, the glasses, all those things that bore the mark of Odile’s taste. Then I looked at her and thought that it might be the last time I had that face in front of me, that face that had represented so much happiness. She was looking at me too, meeting my eyes, pale and pensive. Perhaps, like me, she wanted to secure in her memory these features she would not see again. The manservant, indifferent and tactful, moved silently between the table and the sideboard. The thought that he knew nothing established a mute complicity between Odile and myself. After dinner, I joined her in her boudoir, and we talked at length, seriously, about what our life would become. She gave me some words of advice.
“You must remarry,” she said. “You’ll be a perfect husband for someone else, I’m sure of it … But I wasn’t right for you … Just don’t marry Misa, it would hurt me and she’s an unkind woman. I know someone who would suit you very well, your cousin Renée …”
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