The Fires of Autumn

by Irene Nemirovsky

  But Thérèse refused to say a word.

  6

  Thérèse got home and went to bed. It was a cloudy February night; a foggy mist slipped in through the half-open window. She did not cry, but her whole body was trembling. Through the partition, Thérèse listened to the sighs and agitated little groans from Madame Pain. The elderly woman slept lightly, restlessly. But at least she slept! How fortunate the elderly were, their dreams and desires gone, they no longer felt regret, no longer felt bitter despair, no longer thought only of love!

  ‘He was so rude! Why would he do that?’ Thérèse kept asking herself over and over again. She refused to believe in some accident, that something had prevented him from coming, not even that he had simply forgotten. Especially not that he had forgotten!… She would never have forgiven that. She preferred to imagine some well-laid plan made in advance to humiliate her, some evil plan to take his revenge because she had refused to fall into his arms like a whore. ‘So what do I have left now? I’ll never see him again. I’ll never speak to him again. And what about him? Will he pursue me? No, of course not.’ He had made himself quite clear. Men don’t chase after women who turn them down. There are too many other women, and they are far too easy: ‘You don’t want to have some fun? Goodnight then.’

  ‘I was too proud,’ thought Thérèse. ‘When it comes to love, nothing counts, not pride, not virtue. Since he wanted me, all I had to do was give in. After all, men are stronger, more intelligent than we are. If he thinks that this is what love is, nothing more than sleeping around, he must be right. I can’t stand up to him, I can’t. I’m just an ordinary woman. I couldn’t prove to him that he’s wrong. I love him, I’m weak. Let him take me, if he wants to. Women like Renée don’t pretend to be prudes and they’re the ones who are loved, while I … If only he had deigned to say some loving words to me, make promises … anything … even lies … But to act so brutally, with such vulgarity … And then, because I had refused, to insult me this way! Oh, you’re just a little bourgeois woman who needs people to respect her!’ she cried out in anger. ‘If he wants to humiliate you, why should that matter? Accept it all, since you love him, or else, forget him! And you’ll grow old without knowing sensuality, love, pleasure.’

  She suddenly thought that she had never spoken those words ‘sensuality … pleasure’, never dreamt, in any case, that they might apply to her. Two words you read in books. But she now realised that other people enjoyed them, savoured them, that other people’s lives were, in fact, controlled by those feelings, by sensuality and pleasure. While she …!

  ‘But what does the future hold in store for me?’ she murmured in despair. ‘I’ll grow old. I’ll help grandmother in the house. I’ll make new hats out of a few bits of old ribbon. I’ll go to the cinema with grandmother on Saturdays. Then grandmother will die, and I’ll be alone. Even if I become Bernard’s mistress, I’d still be all alone … But at least I will have had a few nights with him, some memories. My God, forgive me! Martial, forgive me! I wanted to remain faithful to you, not simply to your memory but to everything that you loved: a respectable, peaceful, honourable way of life,’ she whispered, ‘a life where no one does any harm or has anything to hide …’ and she looked away from the photograph of Martial lit by her bedside lamp. A photograph, a dead man, a ghost. The dead have no power over the heart of a woman of twenty-five.

  She slipped out of bed. She looked at the time; her watch had stopped at seven o’clock the night before: she had not wound it up. Yesterday, at seven o’clock, she was getting dressed; she had powdered her bare arms and neck, perfumed her fine hair, that spot at the back of the neck that a man breathes in when he helps a woman on with her coat. She knew all the subtle ways of flirting, the cunning little wiles that are in every woman’s blood, yes, even she … If she wanted to, she would be able to make herself just as beautiful, just as seductive, just as easy, so she could compete with Renée or any other woman. The watch had stopped; she raised the curtain and looked through the slats of the shutter; it was dead of night. He would be home by now. Asleep. She would go to him, and then … anything he wanted. She had taken off her long nightdress; she stood motionless for a moment, naked, looking at her body by the pale light of the lamp; it was a beautiful body, she knew that, a body made for love. She had been wrong, she thought bitterly, wrong to set such a high price on the gift of her body. ‘I want him to take me! Even if he casts me away when he no longer wants me!’ She opened the drawer of her dresser, her heart pounding, and took out a pair of silk stockings and some pretty underwear. Yes, anything he wants … and afterwards, never a word of reproach. After all, she was a woman; she was free. Feeling her way around in the dark room, she got dressed; she put on perfume; she brushed her hair. No one wore a corset then, just a slip and a one-piece dress … She understood why now. Everyone around her lived only for those moments of pleasure that they did not even dare call ‘love’. She would do as they did. She did not want to put on the ceiling light: a bright light shining through the little squares of glass on her grandmother’s door would wake her up. Standing in front of the mirror of her wardrobe, Thérèse held the bedside lamp in one hand and with the other, powdered her wide, terrified eyes, her pale cheeks, her cold, trembling mouth. He would warm that mouth with his kisses. He would say nothing to her, but at least he would kiss her, and, with every kiss, she would imagine what he really meant. One kiss would say ‘I won’t make you suffer too much’ and the next, ‘I won’t leave you right away …’ ‘If only he could love me the way I love him … But no, no, that’s impossible! And besides, what’s the difference? Does the love you get really matter? The only love worth anything is the love you give.’ He would mock her faithful heart. She knew that. She was walking towards love the way you walk towards a fire, in full knowledge that you will only end up seriously injured or even dead, that you will have died for nothing, in obscurity, without honour. She had the sure, blind, rapid movements of a sleepwalker; she picked up the small handbag that had fallen to the floor when she had thrown it on her bed after she got home; she counted her money; she would take a taxi. Some powder, a little handkerchief. The key to come home in the morning. Madame Pain would not be surprised if she wasn’t there: she sometimes went out very early to the flower market where they sold such beautiful roses.

  She walked quietly through the apartment; her grandmother was still asleep. She opened the door, went down the stairs and on to the street that was shrouded in fog and full of shadows. Was it later than she had thought? Well, that was just too bad. She was determined. She rushed into the first taxi she saw and gave the driver Bernard’s address. In his house, everything was still quiet; she didn’t take the lift but rushed up the steps, four at a time. When she reached the landing, she had to stop, on the verge of fainting. She rang the doorbell, and it was only when she heard the ring echo through the silent house that a horrible thought crossed her mind: what if he was not alone, what if a woman … Oh, how humiliating! She covered her eyes, then her ears, not wanting to see, not wanting to hear a voice, the laughter of a rival … She longed to flee but her body refused to obey her; she was in love and her terrified body had drawn her to this very spot. Now her body was in control; she leaned against the door that would not open. Bernard was sleeping; he hadn’t heard her. But she had pressed the buzzer very hard. Then she remembered that Madame Jacquelain had put the key back under the mat when they left the night before: her son had asked her to do that if she ever called round when he wasn’t there. She bent down and found the key; she silently opened the door and went inside. ‘The servant isn’t here, if he was, he would have heard the bell ring and come to open the door, and if he does come, that’s just too bad! I’ll tell him that I must see his master, that it’s a matter of life and death. He’ll think that Madame Jacquelain is ill and he’ll let me in.’

  The hallway was empty, as was the large sitting room. The bedroom she walked into was empty. The bed was empty. He had not come home at all. He had sp
ent the night somewhere else. In whose arms? No, he had not intended to take revenge for her coldness; he had quite simply forgotten about her. She fell on to the bed. She would leave. There was nothing more she could do here since he did not even desire her. She stroked the pillow, the bedspread. ‘He’ll never know that I came looking for him,’ she thought, ‘but he’ll be able to sense a strange warmth, the scent of perfume he doesn’t recognise …’ She closed her eyes for a moment then pressed her lips hard against the delicate linen. ‘Enough! Enough! I’ve had my moment of madness. That’s enough. I swear that I will never come near him again.’

  She ran out of the apartment.

  Outside, the fog had lifted and she saw with some surprise that the clock on the church said seven o’clock. She laughed nervously as tears streamed down her face. ‘It’s this cold February morning that’s making me cry,’ she told herself. ‘What a funny time for a tryst! Really, he would have seen at once that I’m not used to such things. You don’t go and throw yourself into someone’s arms at seven o’clock in the morning. Really, Thérèse, honestly! It’s quite obvious that you aren’t cut out for amorous adventures. Set the table and see to the meals. Leave it to other people to …’

  She stopped. No. She would not go home! She would see him. She would know what time he got back, whether he was alone or not, with friends or with a woman. Almost directly opposite his house was a café that was already open, with seats outside on the pavement; it was completely empty in this weather. Too bad! She was dressed in warm clothing. And besides, she would not feel the cold; she was shaking and burning hot. She sat down at a table, ordered a milky coffee and waited. Hours passed by. Every now and again, the fog lifted, allowing a glimmer of wintry, yellowish light to shine through, then fell again to cover the street in mist. Thérèse could smell the sickly odour of rain and swamps; she bought a bouquet of violets from a little girl to block out the unpleasant smell and instinctively breathed in the scent of the flowers. A crowd of people rushed towards the metro. No one even noticed this slim young woman dressed in mourning sitting outside the café. Paris was now awake; you could hear its noises, the shrill bells, the shouts of the newspaper sellers, the taxi horns. The fog had completely gone. From the vast, grey, dreary sky, drops of rain fell every now and then, like tears that are difficult to shed when your heart is too heavy with pain.

  It was almost twelve o’clock when Thérèse recognised Bernard’s car stopping in front of his house. He got out. She ran across the street and rushed inside the house at the same time as him. They met on the stairs. Terrified, she thought: ‘I’ll say I lost a piece of jewellery at his place last night, my brooch …’ But when she was standing facing him, a final surge of pride prevented her from telling any humiliating lie.

  ‘I’ll tell him the truth,’ she thought. ‘I’m not ashamed. I love him.’

  In a cool, emotionless voice that sounded strange even to her, she whispered:

  ‘I waited for you last night and you never came. I waited for you all morning and you never came. I wanted to see you, because …’

  She weakened; he had led her to the lift and they were alone, going up to his floor. They rose slowly together, and Thérèse wished it would never stop, for the lift was dark and she could not see Bernard’s face. They went into his apartment; in the light, Thérèse looked at Bernard. He was pale, dishevelled, his eyes were red and stubble showed on his chin, the light, harsh stubble that you find on a corpse. Suddenly, it was she who felt more in control, stronger. She put her arms around him.

  ‘Bernard, my darling! What have they done to you?’

  She held him close; she held him as if she were his mother; she understood everything.

  ‘It’s Renée, isn’t it? She has another lover? You found out last night?’

  He nodded. Renée had cheated on him with a man who was old and rich. He was ashamed to be tormented by this. How naïve he still was! He had been suspicious for a long time. The night before, he had been struck by her mother’s secretive attitude and followed her to a house that the Détangs had just bought in the woods outside Fontainebleau. There, Madame Humbert had prepared supper and a bedroom for the couple.

  ‘I had no illusions,’ said Bernard. In the effort he had to make to speak, to open his trembling mouth, he had bitten his lip; it started to bleed. Thérèse, distressed, watched the blood running down. He was suffering because of another woman, and yet … this other woman was far away. But she, Thérèse, was with him, in his arms. He would feel consoled.

  No! He had no illusions. He knew what Renée was like. What insult could possibly upset her? He called her a ‘little bitch’, a ‘slut’, and she laughed. Perhaps he should hit her? No, that would make her too happy, he thought bitterly. Forget her? He couldn’t. Logic dictated that he simply had to accept her other lover, but he was jealous. It was a feeling that filled him with shame and fury. That woman, that whole world, all those people, that swarm of animals … In theory, everything was simple. In reality, he would never forget the lights in those windows, her mother who set flowers on the table and turned down the bed.

  ‘It’s over, over,’ he cried, ‘it’s all over! Those people and their vile schemes, their money, their pleasures! I’ve had enough! I loathe them! I’m done with them! They aren’t human beings; they’re a herd of wild beasts. You have no idea how much damage they are doing. They don’t even realise it themselves. Nothing seems important, they’re having fun, joking, making money … They make everything they touch dirty, destroy everything. They have lost all sense of integrity and honour. And I don’t want to be like them, I don’t! Do you understand?’ he shouted in a rage. ‘I don’t want to become a complacent gigolo, then a crook, or a shark, and end up a complete and utter bastard! Help me, Thérèse … You’re a good woman; you love me … Please help me to free myself of them, help me to forget … to forget her …’

  ‘Her … Renée …,’ he said sadly, over and over again, ‘Renée …’ and every time he said the name, Thérèse was overwhelmed by jealous despair. Eventually, he calmed down. Silently, hand in hand, they wandered into the large sitting room. These walls, these masks, these paintings, all this strange furniture would all disappear, thought Thérèse. The memory of Renée, that too would fade with time. She thought of those upsetting, guilty dreams that come to trouble the best of souls and then are gone the next morning. In exactly the same way, he would forget Renée and the life he had known, and it would be because of her. He would not miss Renée once he had a faithful wife and a real home. She wrapped her arms around Bernard’s neck. She kissed him and he kissed her back. By the time they said goodbye, they were engaged.

  7

  In the happiest marriages, the husband and wife either know everything about each other or absolutely nothing. Mediocre marriages are based on partial confidences: one of you lets slip a confession, a sigh; a fragment of some dream or desire is shared, but then fear sets in; it is retracted. ‘No,’ you cry, ‘you misunderstood … You know you shouldn’t take everything I say literally,’ you exclaim like a coward. You rush about trying to fix the mask back in place, but it is too late: the other has seen your tears, a certain smile, an expression that is hard to forget … He pretends not to notice, if he is wise. If not, he becomes fiercely determined, insistent: ‘But you just said … Listen, I don’t understand, you just admitted it yourself …’ Then you say: ‘Swear to me that you don’t miss that woman … Swear to me that you don’t miss that other life …’

  In the darkness of their marriage bed, Thérèse whispered softly once more:

  ‘Swear to me that you never think about Renée any more … Swear that you’re happy …’

  ‘I am,’ he would say. ‘Don’t upset yourself. Go to sleep.’

  Happy? She could not understand. He was bored – and that was an illness impossible to cure. His boredom, a kind of gloomy inertia of the soul, had set in very soon after they were married. They had just settled into a modest, reasonably priced apartment.
They had a son, good health, their youth and enough money to live on. Bernard had a job: he worked at a bank, earning two thousand eight hundred francs a month, and could look forward to becoming a senior banking executive when he was forty, and assistant director at sixty. For several months he had tried to broker personal deals with his friends in the United States, but he realised quite quickly that selling American goods in France with government Ministers backing him was easy, but alone, he was destined to fail: Détang did not forgive anyone who dropped him. Bernard reasoned that he had proved his wisdom by abandoning that other life, by seeking a steady, stable position; he had slipped back into the bourgeois existence of his father just as you find yourself sleeping in the bed where your parents died: you shudder a bit; you feel vaguely nostalgic; then you tell yourself: ‘This furniture is really old-fashioned.’ But it is warm; you snuggle up under the large red quilt; and the old couple had not been unhappy, not really … All you have to do is to be like them; you’ll get used to it.

  Thérèse and Bernard slept in a narrow, warm bedroom; next door, slept their little boy – Yves. In the morning, Bernard went to the office; he came home for lunch; he went back to work; he was not interested in his work; it was simple and soul-destroying. He came home for dinner; he listened to the radio; he read the newspaper; he went to the cinema once a week. He wanted for nothing, really. But he missed everything: he felt that he allowed his professional and home life to touch merely a superficial part of his existence; he went along with everyone; Thérèse understood very well that she did not know the real Bernard, that she caught only brief glimpses of him in sudden, almost terrifying bursts. ‘But, really,’ she thought, ‘what is it that he needs? What does he want?’ He misses the money he used to earn so easily, she thought, bitterly. How wrong she was! It wasn’t the money he missed, it was a way of life that was fun, exciting, that turned every passing minute into an adventure. For four years now, men had adopted all sorts of new habits: anguish, sadness, despair, crass or heroic attitudes towards death. But they had lost the old, healthy habit of being bored. Many people had spoken of boredom in the trenches, but there it was based on either suffering or hope. ‘In fact, perhaps that is what we are really seeking,’ thought Bernard, ‘to tremble with fear, to feel a thrill, to take chances, to cheat death … we should have been offered great new adventures … more battles, a new world to build. All we were offered was money and women. One thing still to dream of: a car, a Hispano-Suiza. In the past, when I did dubious deals for Détang or when I was in love with Renée, I had a taste of deep, sharp, almost painful joy, the joy of pride, of vanity, of being alive (vain, false feelings perhaps, but what did that matter!). While now … And, of course, there was Renée …’