“Ah, yes!” said Philippe. “Lamiel … Yes, it was quite splendid … If you like.” He gave a bored pout.
“Listen, Philippe. Do you know what you ought to do? Go and say hello to Solange. You haven’t seen her for five months, it would be nice.”
“Do you think? But I don’t want to leave you. And I have no idea whether she’s at home or whether she’s free. Her first evening back she must be with her family, and her husband’s.”
“Telephone her.”
I had hoped he would defend his position better, but he immediately succumbed to the temptation.
“Oh well! I’ll give it a try,” he said and left the room.
Five minutes later he came back, his face beaming, and said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to nip over to see Solange. I’ll be there a quarter of an hour.”
“Stay as long as you like. I’m delighted, it’ll do you so much good. But come and say good night when you come in, even if it’s very late.”
“It won’t be very late. It’s nine o’clock now. I’ll be back at a quarter to ten.”
I saw him again at midnight. While I waited, I had read a little and cried a lot.
. XX .
My mother arrived from China a few days before my child’s birth. When I saw her again I was amazed to find I was closer and yet more estranged from her than I would have thought. She found fault with our way of life, our servants, our furniture, and our friends, and her criticisms struck invisible, long-buried chords in me that reverberated feebly to the same tune. Even the family base inside me had already been covered with a thick “Philippe layer,” and things that amazed and shocked her seemed quite normal to me. It was not long before she commented on the fact that, in the last weeks of my pregnancy, Philippe was not entirely as attentive as he could have been. It pained me when she said, “I’ll come and keep you company this evening, because I don’t imagine your husband will have the heart to stay at home,” and I regretted that it hurt more because of my pride than my love. I was sorry she had not arrived before Solange returned, when, outside his working hours, Philippe had not left my side. I would have liked to show her that I too could be loved. She often stood by my bed, looking at me with a critical eye that reignited all my childhood anxieties. She was attentive, almost hostile as she brought a finger down onto the parting in my hair. “You’re graying,” she said. It was true.
If Philippe came home after midnight when there were fewer and fewer pedestrians on the street, I would listen to their footsteps, trying to recognize his. I can still remember that disappointing sound growing louder, awakening the hope that it might stop, then carrying on, growing quieter and fading away. A man who is really going to stop by a door starts slowing down several paces in advance; I eventually recognized Philippe from this dying rhythm. The soft sound of a bell in the house, a faraway door closing; he was back. I promised myself I would be bright and indulgent yet almost always greeted him with complaints. I myself was hurt by the monotony and vehemence of the things I said to him then.
“Oh, Isabelle!” Philippe would say wearily. “I can’t take this anymore, I tell you … Can’t you see you’re contradicting yourself? You’re the one begging me to go out; I do as I’m told and then you bombard me with criticism … What do you want me to do? Shut myself away in this house? Well, then, say so … I’ll do it … Yes, I promise, I’ll do it … Anything rather than this constant quarreling … But please don’t try to be generous at nine o’clock in the evening and then so mean at midnight …”
“Yes, Philippe, you’re right … I’m awful. I swear I won’t do it again.”
But the following day an inner demon dictated the same pointless words to me. In fact it was mainly Solange who irritated me. I felt that at this particular point in my life she should have had the tact to leave me my husband.
She came to see me, and conversation was fairly awkward. She had a beautiful sable coat and recommended her furrier at some length. Then Philippe arrived; she must have told him she would be visiting because he was home much earlier than usual. The coat became a useless, almost invisible prop, and the garden in Marrakesh took center stage.
“You can’t imagine what it’s like, Isabelle … In the morning, I walk barefoot over the warm tiles between the orange trees … there are roses and jasmines intertwined around all the columns. You can see the pale blue Zellige tiles through the flowers and foliage … and over the rooftops, the snow on the Atlas mountains gleaming like a magnificent diamond (“We already had the diamond back in Saint-Mortitz,” I thought) … And the nights! The cypress trees seem to be pointing at the moon like black fingers … Oh! Marcenat, Marcenat, I do so love it …”
She tilted her head back slightly and seemed to smell her jasmines and roses.
When she left, Philippe saw her to the door and came back looking slightly sheepish, and leaned against the chimney breast in my bedroom.
“You should come to Morocco with me one day,” he said after a long silence. “It really is very beautiful. Oh, by the way, I’ve brought you a book by Robert Etienne about the Berbers, about their way of life … It’s a sort of novel … but also a poem … It’s remarkable.”
“My poor Philippe,” I said. “I do feel sorry for you having to deal with women. Such actresses!”
“What makes you say that, Isabelle?”
“I say it because it’s true, darling. I know plenty about them, women, I mean, and they’re not at all interesting.”
At last I felt the first pains. The labor was long and difficult, but I was happy to see Philippe’s reaction: he was white, more frightened than I was. I could see he cared for my life. His emotion gave me strength: I completely mastered my nerves in order to reassure him, and I talked about our little boy, because I was sure I would have a boy.
“We’ll call him Alain. His eyebrows will be slightly too high like yours; he’ll walk up and down with his hands in his pockets when something’s tormenting him … Because he’ll be terribly tormented, won’t he Philippe? With parents like us … What an inheritance!”
Philippe tried to smile, but I could see he was moved. When I was not in pain I told him to hold my hand.
“Do you remember my hand on yours, Philippe, when we went to see Siegfried … That was the beginning of everything.”
From the bedroom I was in, I heard Doctor Crès talking to Philippe a little later.
“Your wife’s incredibly brave,” he said. “I’ve rarely seen anything like it.”
“Yes,” said Philippe, “my wife is a very good woman. I hope nothing will happen to her.”
“What do you think’s going to happen to her?” asked the doctor. “Everything’s normal.”
They decided I should have chloroform for the end, although I did not want it. When I opened my eyes, I saw Philippe beside me with a happy tender expression on his face. He kissed my hand. “We have a son, darling.” I wanted to see him and was disappointed.
My mother and Philippe’s had made themselves comfortable in the little sitting room next to my bedroom. The door was open and, as I lay half asleep with my eyes closed, I could hear their pessimistic prognostications about the child’s upbringing. Although they were very different and doubtless disagreed on almost any subject, they had a generational loyalty in rebuking a younger couple.
“Oh, it’s going to be a pretty sight!” said Madame Marcenat. “With Philippe taking care of everything except his son’s upbringing, and Isabelle only taking care of Philippe, you’ll see, the child will do whatever he pleases …”
“Well, of course,” said my mother, “the young can think of only one thing: happiness. Children must be happy, the husband must be happy, the mistress must be happy, the servants must be happy and, in order to achieve that, they abolish the rules, ignore barriers, they do away with punishments and sanctions, and they forgive everything before forgiveness has even been—I won’t said deserved—but asked for. It’s unimaginable. And with what results? If at leas
t they were much ‘happier’ than we were, you and I, I mean, Madame, then I might understand. But the funny thing is they’re not as happy as us, much less so. I can see my daughter … Is she asleep? Are you asleep, Isabelle?”
I did not reply.
“It’s odd for her to be so sleepy on the third day,” said my mother.
“Why was she chloroformed?” asked Madame Marcenat. “I told Philippe that, in his shoes, I wouldn’t have allowed it. Women should have their children themselves. I had three children myself; sadly, I lost two, but I had them all naturally. These artificial births are bad for the child and for the mother. I was very angry when I heard Isabelle had been so soft. I think you could search through our whole family (there are Marcenats in ten different provinces), and you wouldn’t find one woman who’d agreed to that.”
“Really?” My mother asked politely, having herself recommended that I have chloroform but, as a diplomat’s wife, not wanting a conflict that might be unfavorable to the combined offensive she was currently enjoying with Madame Marcenat against the younger generation … “As I was saying,” my mother went on very quietly, “I can see my daughter. She says she’s unhappy? Well, it’s not Philippe’s fault, he’s a very kind husband and no more of a womanizer than the next man. No, it’s because she analyzes herself the whole time, she frets and constantly checks the barometer of her relationship, of ‘their love,’ as she calls it … Did you ever give much thought to the state of your marriage, Madame? I gave it very little thought. I tried to help my husband in his career; I had a demanding household to run; we were very busy and everything was fine … It’s the same with bringing up children. Isabelle says what she wants most is for Alain to have a nicer childhood than she did. But I can assure you she didn’t have an unpleasant childhood. I brought her up quite strictly; I don’t regret that. You can see the results.”
“If you hadn’t brought her up the way you did,” Madame Marcenat said, and she too was talking very quietly, “Isabelle wouldn’t have grown into the delightful young woman she is. She owes you a great debt of gratitude, and so does my son.”
I did not move a muscle because their conversation amused me. “Who knows? They could be right,” I thought.
They stopped agreeing when the subject of how Alain was fed was discussed. My mother-in-law thought I should nurse him myself and abhorred English nannies. My mother had told me, “Don’t try. With your nerves, you’ll give up after three weeks, by which time you’ll have made the child ill.” Philippe did not want me to either. But I attached symbolic importance to the decision and dug my heels in. The results were as my mother had predicted. Everything since that longed-for birth disappointed me. I had had such high hopes that reality was powerless to satisfy them. I had thought this child would be a new and much stronger connection between Philippe and myself. He was not. In fact, Philippe took little interest in his son. He went to see him once a day, amused himself speaking English with the nanny for a few minutes, then was back to the Philippe I had always known, gentle and distant, with a haze of boredom encroaching on his tender and melancholy courtesy. I even thought that it was now much more than boredom. Philippe was sad. He did not go out so often. I thought at first this was out of kindness, because he did not feel it right to leave me on my own when I was still so weak. But more than once, when my mother or a friend had said she would visit me, I said, “Philippe, I know you find these family conversations boring. Telephone Solange and take her to the cinema this evening.”
“Why on earth are you always forcing me to go out with Solange?” he replied. “I can last two days without seeing her.”
Poor Philippe! No, he could not last two days without seeing her. Although I did not know precisely why, or know anything about Solange’s private life, I sensed that something had changed between them since she had returned from Morocco, and that Philippe was suffering because of her.
I did not dare ask him about this, but just from the look on his face I could track the progress of his ailing morale. In a few weeks he had lost an almost unbelievable amount of weight; his complexion was yellow, his eyes had dark rings around them. He complained that he was not sleeping well and he had the blank stare usually associated with sleeplessness. At mealtimes he was silent, then had to make an effort to speak to me; this visible effort pained me even more than his silence.
Renée came to visit me and brought a little gown for Alain. I noticed at once how much she had changed. She had organized her life as a working woman and talked about Doctor Gaulin in terms that made me think she had become his mistress. This liaison had been a topic of conversation at Gandumas for several months, but only for its existence to be denied. The family was keen to remain on cordial terms with Renée and would have felt obliged, by its own codes, to stop receiving her if her virtue could not be taken for granted. But when I saw her I knew that, consciously or not, the Marcenats were wrong. Renée was full of joy, she looked like a woman who loved and was loved.
Since my marriage I had grown apart from her a great deal and, in several situations, had found her hard and nearly hostile, but on that day we almost immediately achieved the same mood of our long wartime conversations. We eventually talked about Philippe and talked about him intimately. Renée told me for the first time, very frankly, that she had loved him and it had hurt her terribly when I married him.
“In those days, Isabelle, I almost hated you, and then I rearranged my life and it all seems so far removed from me now … Even our strongest emotions die, don’t you think? And we can look back to the woman we were three years ago with the same curiosity and detachment as if it were someone else.”
“Yes,” I said, “perhaps. I haven’t got to that stage yet. I love Philippe as much as when we were first in love, much more, even. I feel I could make sacrifices for him now that I wouldn’t have been able to make six months ago.”
Renée looked at me for a moment in silence, appraising me as a doctor would.
“Yes, I believe that,” she said eventually. “Do you know, Isabelle, I said earlier I didn’t regret anything, but it’s actually stronger than that. Do you mind if I’m completely frank? I congratulate myself every day for not marrying Philippe.”
“And me for marrying him.”
“Yes, that’s right, because you love him and you’ve adopted his appalling habit of trying to find happiness in suffering. But Philippe is a terrible creature, not at all unkind—quite the opposite—but terrible because he’s obsessed. I knew Philippe when he was a little boy. He was already the same man, except that then there might have been other possible Philippes in him. Then along came Odile and she set his personality as a lover, and probably set it forever. For him, love is associated with a particular sort of face, a particular form of extravagant behavior, a particular gracefulness that is slightly disturbing, not altogether candid … And because he’s also absurdly sensitive, this type of woman, the only type he can love, makes him very unhappy … Wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s true and it’s not, Renée. I do realize that it’s absurd ever to say, ‘I’m loved,’ but Philippe does love me, I can’t be in any doubt about that … It’s just, at the same time, you’re quite right, he needs completely different women, women like Odile, like Solange … Do you know Solange Villier?”
“Very well … I didn’t dare mention her to you, but I was thinking of her.”
“Oh, but you can talk about her; I’m not at all jealous anymore. I was … Are people saying Solange is Philippe’s mistress?”
“Oh no! … Absolutely not. In fact they’re saying that, during her last trip to Morocco, she fell for Robert Etienne, you know, the man who wrote that fascinating book about the Berbers … In her last few weeks in Marrakesh she spent all her time with him. He’s just come back to Paris … He’s a major writer and a wonderful person. Gaulin knows him and thinks very highly of him.”
I was lost in thought for a moment. Yes, it was just as I had suspected, and this name, Etienne, gave me an e
xplanation for several conversations my husband had instigated. He had brought all Etienne’s books home, one after the other. He had read brief passages from them to me, asking me what I thought of them. I had liked them, particularly the long meditation called Prayer to the Oudaïas Gardens. “It’s beautiful,” Philippe had said. “Yes, it really is beautiful, it’s wild.” My poor Philippe, he must have been in such pain! He was now probably analyzing Solange’s every utterance and every move, as he had once analyzed Odile’s, to look for traces of this man he did not know. It was likely to be this pointless, tortuous task that filled his sleepless nights. Oh, I suddenly felt so angry with that woman!
“You were right, Renée, what you said earlier about the appalling habit of deriving pleasure from suffering … It’s just that when circumstances have dictated that you begin your love life in that way, which is what happened in Philippe’s case and in mine, is it still possible to change?”
“I think we can always change, if we really want to.”
“But how do you want to, Renée? Don’t you already need to have changed for that?”
“Gaulin would say, ‘By understanding the mechanism and overcoming it.’ In other words, by being more intelligent.”
“But Philippe is intelligent.”
“Very, but Philippe makes too much use of his sensitivity and not enough of his intelligence.”
We chatted happily until it was time for Philippe to come home. Renée had a scientific way of talking about things, which soothed me because it made me simply one individual like so many others in a clearly labeled group of women in love.
Philippe seemed happy to see Renée, asked her to stay for dinner with us, and for the first time in several weeks talked animatedly throughout the meal. He liked science, and Renée told him about new experiments he had not yet heard of. When she mentioned Gaulin’s name for the second time, Philippe asked abruptly, “Gaulin? do you know him well?”
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