A Frozen Woman

by Annie Ernaux

  We’ve been married for a month, three months now. We’re back at the university, and I’m teaching Latin. The days are shorter. We work at home together. How serious and fragile we are, the touching image of a young, modern, intellectual couple. An image that could still move me if I weren’t trying to discover how it can gently suck you in, and swallow you whole, while you never lift a finger to save yourself. I’m working on La Bruyere or Verlaine in the same room with him, not two yards away from where he’s sitting. The pressure cooker, a wedding present (so useful, you’ll see), is hissing merrily on the stove. United, alike. Shrill ringing of the kitchen timer, another present. Here the resemblance ends. One of the two figures gets up, turns off the gas, waits for the whirling top to slow its crazy dance, opens the cooker, strains the soup, and returns to the table piled with books, wondering, now where was I . . . Me. The difference is off and running.

  The restau universitaire closes for the summer, leaving me on my own to play dolly’s tea party with the pots and pans for lunch and dinner. I have no more idea than he has how to prepare a meal, aside from breaded veal cutlets and that chocolate mousse, nothing really convenient. Neither one of us used to help Mama in the kitchen, so why am I the only one who has to muddle through (how long does a chicken take, and do you take the seeds out of summer squash?), who has to pore over a cookbook, scrape the carrots, wash the dishes as a reward for fixing dinner—while he studies his constitutional law? Who gave him the right? “Come on, do you think I’m going to wear an apron?” This cracks him up. “That sort of thing is for your father, not me!” I’m humiliated. My parents, the freaks, a couple of clowns. No, I haven’t seen many men peeling potatoes. My father, out in the kitchen, is not the right role model, that’s made very clear. His father is beginning to loom on the horizon, the master of the house who lets his wife do all the housework, such a cultivated, eloquent gentleman—and you want him to pick up a broom, that’s a good one, are you crazy or what? Period. Just get on with it, old girl. Despair and discouragement in front of the canary yellow cupboard in the apartment. Pasta, eggs, endives, all this stuff waiting to be dealt with, prepared, no more décor—food, the stacks of canned goods from my childhood, the rainbow-colored candy jars, the surprising dishes of the cheap little Chinese restaurants of the good old days. Now it’s chore-food.

  I don’t kick, scream or coldly announce well today’s your turn, I’ve got my La Bruyère to do. Just some pointed allusions, some tart remarks, the foam of a seething resentment that mustn’t be brought out into the open. Then, nothing more. I don’t want to be a pain in the ass and is it really worth jeopardizing our happy times together by fighting about peeling potatoes? I even begin to wonder what such trifles have to do with the problem of freedom, and worse, I think that I’m perhaps less efficient than other women, and a lazy bitch to boot, hankering after the days when I sat around with my feet up, a useless intellectual who can’t even break an egg properly. Time to change. Back at the university in October, I try to find out how the married women manage; some even have children. What discretion, what mystery: “It’s not easy.” That’s all they say, but proudly, as though it were glorious to be overwhelmed with work. The rich, full lives of married women. No more time for questions, for stupid hairsplitting, that’s what real life is, a man, and you can’t expect him to live on a couple of yogurts and some tea, get with it, girl. So, day after day, from scorched peas to salty quiche, I grimly try to take care of our food, without grumbling. “You know, I really like eating at home instead of at the restau U, it’s much better!” He is sincere, and thinks he is pleasing me no end. I feel as though I were sinking.

  English translation, mashed potatoes, the philosophy of history, quick the supermarket is about to close . . . Studying in stops and starts is diverting, but what you wind up with is a hobby. With much difficulty and no joy, I finish a thesis on Surrealism I had begun the previous year with enthusiasm. Don’t have the time to turn in a single paper in the first trimester, I certainly won’t be able to get the CAPES, the secondary teachers’ training certificate. My former goals are becoming strangely blurred. My determination is flagging. For the first time, the possibility of failure leaves me indifferent. I’m banking on his success, and he is working away harder than ever, intent on getting his licence and passing the poli sci exam in June. He concentrates on his goal, gathering himself for the effort, while I’m growing torpid, spread too thin. Somewhere in the wardrobe lie some short stories; he has read them, not bad, you should keep at it. Of course he encourages me, and hopes that I’ll get my teacher’s diploma, that I’ll “fulfill” myself, like him. When we talk, it’s always in the language of equality. When we first met, off in the Alps, we discussed Dostoyevsky and the Algerian Revolution. He’s not so naive as to think that washing his socks fills me with happiness; he tells me over and over that he can’t stand stay-at-home women. Intellectually, he champions my liberty, he draws up schedules for errands, shopping, vacuuming, so how can I complain? And how can I be angry with him when he puts on his contrite face like a good little boy, finger to his lips, for a laugh, to tell me, “My sweetums, I forgot to dry the dishes . . .” All our disagreements dwindle and become bogged down in the amiableness of the early days of married life, in that baby talk to which we grow so strangely addicted, from “my pet” to “bunnykins,” and which lulls us tenderly, innocently.

  But it doesn’t put me completely to sleep. One day, the scene: I throw it all in his face, higgledy-piggledy, with shouts and tears, that he decides everything and leaves me to do all the work. And suddenly I hear my friend, who only yesterday was talking politics and sociology with me, who took me out sailing, yelling, “I’m sick of this shit, you’re not a man, all right? There’s a small difference here, and when you can piss in the sink standing up, then we ‘ll see!” He’s got to be joking, it’s not possible, him saying things like that, but he’s not laughing. I walk for hours through the silent streets, past the suburban houses and their flowers. Welcome to the surrealist life. All the immediate paths to freedom seem blocked by mountains. The wife leaving after three months, how disgraceful, it must be her fault, one lets a decent length of time go by, after all. Be patient. Perhaps it was just hot air, something he said off the top of his head. The machine that automatically smooths everything over has just turned itself on. I go back. I don’t pack my suitcase, not even half full.

  A few trivial events, markers along the way. One day he brings me Elle, or perhaps it’s a Marie-France. If he bought me this magazine, it’s because he sees me differently now, thinks I might be interested in “100 Ideas for Salads” or “Inexpensive Ways to Brighten Up Your Home.” Or else I’ve already changed and he thinks I’ll be pleased. I’m not putting him on trial, I’m trying to retrace our steps. The two of us begin to settle into routines that bid fair to turn into ruts, leading from cozy comfort to monotony. The afternoon news at one, the satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné on Wednesdays, a movie Saturday night, a tablecloth on Sunday. Love only at night. On the radio, a voice is singing, “Z’étaient belles Jes filles du bord de mer.” The girls were pretty at the seaside . . . I’m stringing beans; through the kitchen window, I can see houses and gardens, while at that moment, on the beaches of Lacanau or Pyla, girls are sunning themselves, bronzed and free. A tacky billboard for suntan lotion, I know. But I feel that I will never again be a girl at the seaside, that I will slip into another image, the one of the perpetually cleaning and permanently smiling woman in those household product ads. From one image to the other: the story of the apprenticeship that makes me into a new woman.

  Quiet entrance of that other family, the model family, the right model this time. They live not far away. Would never impose themselves, well-bred people, short visits, the occasional dinner invitation, a charming couple. The man of the house, as talkative as ever, a constant flow of witty remarks and spoonerisms of all kinds as his indulgent wife looks on, beaming. But watch out, no fool he, behind al
l the jests there’s authority in his voice and eye, in the way he calls for the menu in restaurants, makes pronouncements on the subject of wine or the tactics of bridge. Always perky, his lady wife, never still for a moment, she drags me away, let’s leave the men to their talking, we’ll go fix the dinner, no no no son, we’ll take care of everything, you’d just be in the way! On goes the apron, out comes the chopping board, parsley on the cold sliced meats, a tomato cut in the shape of a rose, tralali, a hard-boiled egg to garnish the salad, tralala. A lively dance accompanied by burbling patter, oh you don’t have a Scruffy pot-scrubber they’re ever so handy. When she burns herself, she says “Shoot.” Sometimes she confides in me—I earned a degree in natural science, I even taught classes for a while and then I met your father-in-law, laughter, and the children came, three, nothing but boys, you can just imagine, more laughter. And that was that. Men, men, she sighs, briskly wiping the sink with a dishrag, they’re not always easy to live with, but she smiles complacently as she speaks, as though they were children and should be forgiven their misbehavior, because “You can’t change them, you know!” She commiserates maternally with me, makes excuses for me, doesn’t all that studying wear you out—it’s no wonder you haven’t time to clean things properly. I hate that insidious way of minding someone else’s business. Her indomitable niceness bothers me, it’s like a sticky trap, obliging me to answer the same way, all sweetness and light, puerility and fakery at the same time. How can I dare say anything? So even-tempered and agreeable. Women like her are relaxing, he tells me one day. Attentive to others. As though there were nothing—but nothing—more wonderful in a woman. I had not been familiar with the catalogue of feminine perfections but I begin to become acquainted with the list. “Coffee!” bellows the lord and master. “Coming, coming!” chirps his bustling spouse. Oh, don’t pay any attention, pet, it’s a game they play: he hollers and she jumps, but they adore each other, believe me, you really shouldn’t let it upset you. It’s getting late, my father-in-law slips behind the wheel of the D.S., she climbs in with youthful agility and waves good-bye, good-bye, with a gloved hand. Each visit leaves me dazed with melancholy. No one else finds her twittering or her domestic spriteliness ridiculous; everyone—her sons, her other daughters-in-law—admires her for having devoted herself to her children’s education and her husband’s happiness. It never occurs to anyone that she might have had a different life.

  Intentional, unintentional. Our methods of contraception leave room for surprises. Even when it’s definite, we can still decide otherwise. The little old lady with the bifocals charges four hundred francs and doesn’t look any dirtier than my Aunt Elise, whom she resembles with her black dress and putty-colored complexion. Why choose yes? Among all the possible meanings, I choose this one for the two of us: to ward off a breakup, to transform what was only chance into fate. For him, at the worst, the satisfaction of virility: everyone would see that he had it in him. And at best, curiosity: what’s it like to be a father? For me, the desire to know everything, the same haste as before when my heart raced with longing as I thought about relations between a man and a woman. Also, the obscure belief that one must live one’s femaleness in its entirety to be “complete’ and therefore happy. Perhaps a petty, unavowable form of revenge . . . He listens to Bach, he studies, so do I but less, because cooking and dishwashing eat away at my Bach and my studies, so I’ll give him some responsibilities and aggravations—nothing like a kid for that. There is all of this in the “yes.” That is how I learn it is possible to want something and its opposite. Just when both sides have been heard, and there’s nothing more to add, I start having doubts. I know I’ll be stuck for months in a life revolving around baby bottles and diapers, forget the CAPES, no time of my own at all, and as for dreaming, what a laugh. I realize that the little old lady would be the responsible solution as far as both he and I are concerned. I’m ashamed to announce our news to my mother, ashamed of the carelessness she’ll see in all this; she’ll immediately imagine me drudging and fussing, and be less than thrilled. In fact she reacts to the announcement of a baby on the way almost as though I’ve disgraced her, and my father is distressed over our wretched luck. Quite a different tune from his parents. I cannot understand my father-in-law’s pride in having a third grandchild. I even feel disgusted by my familial womb.

  There’s the stomach-turning smell of hot milk in the morning, all those foods that taste strange to me. I try to find a fruit or cookie that still has the same flavor as before. Between me and the rest of the world lies a greasy, stagnant pool with a sweetish stench. I feel limp, torn from myself. I read that morning sickness is a bad sign, that deep in my heart J must not want the child. I don’t believe this, finding it normal that the body should rebel and lodge a protest against this tenant. During the first months, it seems more like a stomach ulcer than a life in the making. And lo, the child leapt in her womb, the aged Elisabeth in the Bible, millions of grand words, translated into baby talk by the giving-birth-without-pain midwife: the papas-to-be are just ever so happy to feel babykins wiggle in your tummy-wummy at night, you’ll see. Me, I’m astonished, feel like laughing at this battered-looking belly, while he seems at a loss, and I can see that it must be frightening for a man. The splendid pregnancy, triumphant fulfillment of body and soul—I don’t buy it. Even pregnant dogs snarl for no reason or doze crossly. It isn’t parading my huge belly around the streets or the evening kicking sessions that make me feel my true maternity; that sort of pride isn’t any more worthwhile than gloating over an erection. There is no shortage of reasons to feel melancholy during those nine months. Africa, where we won’t be going now, the way we’d planned. My exam is becoming more and more tentative, and there is a host of worries. Who will take care of the baby? How much will it cost? Secretly, I’d like to remain pregnant for as long as possible, so I won’t have to give birth. I want to hang on to my last months as a woman who is only a woman, not yet a mother, my last days before the six daily breast-feedings, the diapers and the crying. I’m afraid of what will happen after the baby is born; I try not to think about it. My imagination gets no further than the delivery, described in glowing terms by the midwife, a veritable cinch, proof of which is offered by a record on which you can hear a woman in labor breathing rhythmically, every word soft and low, and then suddenly, so touching, the first wail of the newborn, in definite contradiction to the ghastly images from childhood, the blood and forceps, the scenes of agony from Gone with the Wind, the ropes, the hot water, the shrieking. To distract me from my worries, there is also the purchase of all the required paraphernalia. Here we are for the first time, the two of us, in one of those stores crammed with enticing displays of tiny, brightly colored clothing, dainty finery, embroidered bibs, rompers, flashy rattles, all sorts of accessories for your living doll. Mickey and Donald everywhere, on porridge bowls, on crib linens. Unreal, this Lilliputian universe. I have the feeling of a terrible regression, for him and myself. Diapers, infants’ shirts, toddlers’ outfits, baby carriage. High chair next, and the park. You know, says the salesgirl, the first one is expensive, but everything can be used again for the others. More strongly than on our wedding day—such a carefree day, really—I feel the quiet tug, beneath this colorful layette, of a whole new mechanism coming into gear.

  What shall I say about that night? Horror, no—but I leave to others the lyricism, the poetry of torn entrails. I am in pain, damn that midwife, I am a panting, hunched-up animal that prefers darkness to the slightest glimmer of light, since there is no point in seeing the compassion in his eyes: he can’t do a thing for me. The same images, over and over, for six hours—an experience of suffering neither rich nor varied. I’m on a raging sea, counting the seconds between waves of pain trying to engulf me and across which I’m supposed to scamper at top speed, puffing away. Two horses keep trying to pull my hips apart. A door that refuses to open. A single clear, fixed idea: queens gave birth in a seated position and they were right—I dream of a big com
mode, I’m sure it would all be over just like that. It—the pain, naturally; sometime during the middle of the night, the child disappears among the waves. Instead of a big chaise percée there are the glaring lights, the hard table, orders given from the other side of my belly. The worst, my public body—that part like a queen’s delivery, anyway. The water, the blood, the stools, the cervix dilated in front of everyone. Listen, that’s not important at such a time, it’s not the same, just an innocent passageway for the child. Even so. He has to see this whole debacle, get a good eyeful of my misery, has to know what it’s like, “participate,” decked out in a white gown and cap as though he were a doctor. But to be this liquefaction, this thing writhing in front of him—will he ever forget this sight? And what use is he to me in the end? Like the others, he repeats, “Push, breathe, don’t lose the stirrups,” and he panics when I stop behaving like a stoic mater dolorosa and start screaming. “You’re spoiling everything, madame!” “Be quiet,” he says, “get control of yourself!” So I grit my teeth. Not to please them, just to have done with it. I push as though I were trying to shoot a soccer ball up into the clouds. I’m abruptly emptied out, all pain gone, with the doctor scolding me—you’ve torn yourself, it’s a boy. For an instant, the vision of a skinned rabbit; a cry. Often, afterwards, I watch this film again, trying to make sense of this moment. I was in agony, I was alone, and suddenly—this little rabbit, the cry, so unimaginable one minute before. There’s still no meaning, simply that there wasn’t anyone, then there was. I find him again a half hour later in my room in the clinic, completely dressed, with a full head of black hair, lying right in the middle of the pillow with the sheet tucked up around his shoulders, looking strangely civilized. I must have imagined they would hand him to me naked save for a diaper, like an infant Jesus.