He closed his eyes. He made love to his wife while thinking of another woman. Renée, her whims, her immorality, her mercenary nature, yes, all that was possibly true … But her eyes, her soft skin, always cold on her breasts and hips … He let out a harsh, deep sigh in the darkness.
‘Can’t you sleep, my darling?’ his wife asked.
No, he couldn’t sleep. Shyly, she took his hand. She always was careful with him, behaving fearfully, as if she were standing on a stretch of water covered in thin ice: sometimes it could support your weight, sometimes it would crack and dissolve beneath your feet. Sometimes she believed he was the most dependable of men, honest, lively, energetic … her real husband, the one God had given her and who would grow old with her. At those times, she would say something like: ‘In ten years we’ll buy a little house in the country. In fifteen years …’ But he would reply: ‘Where will we be in ten years?’
Then she would realise he was drifting away from her. He imagined a future that would perhaps be brilliant, wonderful, but instinctively she hated that idea because it did not resemble the present. She only felt comfortable in the present: her bedroom with its pink wallpaper, their large, comfortable bed, the sound of her little boy sleeping in the darkness. She wanted to keep all those things; she wanted nothing more. But he was not content with such simple happiness; he was troubled and anxious; she could not put her finger on what was upsetting him. She did not understand him. Did he regret having married her?
‘No, a thousand times no,’ he would reply, ‘you know that I love you.’
One night, ten years into their marriage, ten years as tepid and constricting as their narrow bedroom (to Bernard it felt as though their existence had taken on the colour of the walls themselves, an old-fashioned pink dotted with pale little flowers), one night he and Thérèse were in bed together. He had turned off the light; he was about to go to sleep when she whispered in his ear:
‘We’re going to have another child, Bernard.’
She knew he did not want another child. But she was struck by the violence of his response:
‘Oh, no!’ he shouted. ‘That’s all we need! What a disaster!’
Tears in her eyes, she tried to laugh.
‘Aren’t you ashamed?’ she protested. ‘What about me? I’m so happy …’
‘My poor Thérèse, think about it …’
‘We’re young. You earn a good living … I don’t think having two children is so terrible.’
‘Terrible? No. But it’s one more tie.’
He had whispered those words very quickly and very quietly; they escaped his lips almost unconsciously, betraying him. During the day, when he was in control of himself, he would never have so clearly admitted that he was tired of his wife, of his home, of his son. Never would he have let the truth slip out: that he had seen Renée a few weeks before and she had become his mistress again. But in the darkness, on the verge of falling asleep, sometimes you simply don’t have the strength to lie. Well, yes, it was one more shackle that chained him to this mediocre existence. God! Why hadn’t he remained free! Renée was just as seductive as ever. He had aged; he was more cynical than before; he would only ask of her what she was capable of giving. He wouldn’t dream of leaving Thérèse. Certainly not! But it was horrifying to realise that she held on to him so tightly, that she had forged so many bonds to keep him forever.
They both fell silent, holding their breath. ‘He doesn’t love me any more,’ thought Thérèse. But the idea came and went in a flash: when reality is too bitter, we reject it; the heart protects itself against the truth and tirelessly invents its own dreams:
‘It will all pass,’ Thérèse told herself. ‘We’re just going through a bad time. He’s tired. He probably has problems I don’t understand. Men often don’t want children. We already have a son. But he’ll grow to love the next one, and … he does love me. And I love him so very, very much.’
8
Renée wanted to invest some money abroad. The markets were volatile. Money was flying from country to country the way terrified skylarks, shocked by the sound of gunfire, scatter and then return, only to fly off again immediately in all directions. One of Détang’s acquaintances – a Dutch financier – advised Renée to beware of holding too much in francs: disturbing rumours were circulating on the Stock Market. He would gladly have taken responsibility for buying some stocks for her, but Renée had become as wary as a cat: this moneyman was too eager … He seemed impressive but did not inspire confidence. His name was Bernheimer.
Nevertheless, any warning from him should not go unheeded. She started to look around for someone discreet who could ‘take care of her little savings’, as she politely termed it. She did not wish to go to the stockbroker who managed Détang’s portfolio: she preferred that her husband remain ignorant of her true wealth – Détang had the annoying habit of merging their two accounts whenever he needed money; ever since the crash of 1929, those times when he needed money were becoming more and more frequent in the couple’s life.
Through Madame Humbert, who sometimes saw Bernard’s mother, Renée learned that he was a senior executive in a major foreign bank.
‘I wonder if I should go and see him?’ Renée thought one morning. She had almost forgotten about everything that had happened between them. One affair among so many others … She remembered him because he had been a childhood friend, because his character inspired her with a kind of respect. ‘A young man who had such a brilliant future with us and who left it all behind to get married, to take a mediocre job, that’s unusual, you don’t see that every day.’
‘You didn’t know how to keep him on,’ she had said to her husband in reproach.
‘You mean I didn’t pay him enough?’
But Détang was brutal in the way he judged people. She thought he had used Bernard as a front, a man of straw, and that he had ended up hurting his pride. It would have perhaps been better to give him the illusion that he was acting freely and responsible for his own decisions. It was a matter of diplomacy, she told herself as she finished powdering her face. In any case, since he had chosen the straight and narrow, she would take advantage of it. ‘I’ll go to see him,’ she thought, ‘and consult him about the dollar. I don’t understand a thing about it, I really don’t. All these important deals on such a large scale frighten me. I’m really still just a little middle-class woman. I want good returns for my money. I don’t want to take any risks. “Russian stocks and Government Bonds”, as Adolphe Brun used to say. Adolphe Brun … how long ago that was … And to think that his daughter ended up marrying Bernard … How very strange …’
Ten years of forgotten memories on one side, ten years of troubling dreams and hidden desire on the other – and this was the result: a meeting with a senior employee at a bank with a client who wanted advice on buying stocks. The interview was brief. Renée had imagined a completely different Bernard, someone wiser, duller. But he was still young with smooth skin and blond hair. She invited him to come and see her. He refused with an angry gesture.
‘No? All right, then. One evening, after work, I’ll come and collect you. We’ll go for a ride in the car.’
He asked how Raymond was doing.
‘Still the same. Still in good form. He misses you. Seriously, you were wrong to drop him. How far have all your scruples got you? What are you earning here? Oh, I see. A pitiful little salary. On the other hand, it’s true that Raymond’s deals sometimes frighten even me. He’s launched himself into important international affairs, you know. It’s like walking a tightrope …’
‘As long as politics help him keep his balance, he has nothing to worry about,’ Bernard remarked.
‘If you only knew how difficult everything is for me, my dear!’ said Renée with a sudden burst of sincerity. ‘We almost never see any young men at home any more. I miss the past. Not ours,’ she said glancing quickly at him. ‘Not the wonderful years after the war, but the old times, the very old memories … The walks down th
e Champs-Élysées on Sundays, the lunches in the Bruns’ little apartment …’
She let out a little sigh:
‘When will we see each other again?’
They agreed to meet the following day after the bank closed. She had her car. They drove to the outskirts of Paris and had something to eat. As they were heading back, she said:
‘Let’s go to Fontainebleau. We can stop in at my place …’
It was a very beautiful house, surrounded by tall trees, set back from the road. Bernard knew it well. In the past, whenever he had come here, all he had noticed was the woman in his arms. Now, he looked at the patio, the walls, the furniture. He remembered what Thérèse had once said to him in a moment of anger:
‘Those people dazzle you like the little bourgeois you really are!’
She could be cruel sometimes. Well, yes, he was … he had always been attracted by luxury, by these enormous houses, by expensive objects and jewellery. ‘Good Lord,’ he mused once more, ‘what else could I aspire to? As for the war, I joined up in good faith. I realised no one gave a damn about me. When I got back, the only thing everyone shouted was “Enjoy yourself!” ten years have passed. It’s getting more and more difficult to enjoy life, but no one has come up with any alternative … Sometimes I envy the Germans and the Italians …’ he thought.
He dropped down on to a large, black divan and closed his eyes.
‘This is nice,’ he murmured.
‘What’s nice?’
She laughed; she stood close to him. He stretched out his arms to her as he used to in the past, held her tightly against him and gently caressed her breasts, her arms, her hips.
‘Nice, soft, sweet-smelling … No worries, no responsibilities … I have the perfect wife, and yet …’
‘What’s life like with Thérèse?’ she asked. There wasn’t the slightest hint of jealousy in her voice, just amused curiosity. ‘Do you have any children?’
‘A son.’
‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘Come and see my Chinese porcelains. I have a wonderful collection. Look at those pink plates … It’s very peaceful here, isn’t it? You know, this is my house, mine and mine alone. Raymond never comes here. I’ll give you a key and when you’re tired of the office, of Thérèse, of taking the metro (that’s your life, isn’t it: Thérèse – the office – the metro? I’ve guessed right, haven’t I? Poor Bernard …). Well, you can come here. You’ll find cigarettes in this cabinet, this is the bar, there are books, paintings, records, no radio. You’ll be able to rest, sleep for a while, and then you’ll leave …’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I could never leave again.’ She laughed and let him kiss her.
9
In 1933, Thérèse gave birth to a daughter – Geneviève – and eighteen months later came a second little girl they named Colette. That same year, the elderly Madame Pain fell ill: she caught a cold and treated it herself with little doses of eggnog that she drank secretly – two egg yolks mixed into some milk laced with rum, half a glass of milk and half a glass of rum. One evening, Thérèse found her looking all red in the face and rather odd, so called for the doctor; he recommended vegetable broth and, after taking Madame Pain’s pulse, took the remaining eggnog that was simmering in a saucepan and threw it on to the fire.
‘You are over eighty years old, Madame,’ he said harshly, ‘and such indulgences will be the death of you.’
‘It will be a happy death,’ whispered Madame Pain defiantly. With feigned humility, she accepted the glass of Vichy water that Thérèse gave her, but as soon as Thérèse was not watching, she got up, opened the window and threw the water into the courtyard. Then she went back to bed. Her temples were throbbing and her legs shaking as she walked. She felt deeply irritated towards a mystical being she could not exactly name so she called him ‘someone’: this ‘someone’ sometimes looked like Bernard, sometimes like the cleaning lady she hated and, tonight, like the doctor. This ‘someone’ was responsible for everything that went wrong in Madame Pain’s life and, recently, nothing was going right. With obstinate perversity, dishes slipped from the old woman’s hands, or she would trip on the carpet; everything she ate seemed heavy and tasteless, and whenever she added salt or spices or mustard to her dishes, ‘someone’ pointed out to her that she was upsetting her stomach. She had gone to live with the Jacquelains, but she missed her old neighbourhood. She liked nothing here; she could no longer hear the sound of the large metal bridge as it vibrated, the plaintive notes that had run through her dreams for so many years. Here, in this new house, the great gates into the courtyard made a harsh, unpleasant noise. The gloss paint in the bathroom smelled foul to her and she couldn’t get used to the central heating (‘Oh, the gentle humming of the wood-burning stove in the past …’). To tell the truth, the entire world was becoming incomprehensible and hostile. In February, there had been fighting in Paris; gunshots had been exchanged at the Place de la Concorde. The event itself did not upset her: she had lived through the siege of Paris, the Commune, the fire at the Bazar de la Charité, the floods of 1910 and the Great War; this was nothing more than another historical event. It was just as she had described the early days of 1914 to Yves, and in a few years’ time, she would tell her granddaughters about the 6th February 1934. She had wanted to go out and see what was happening close up: but ‘someone’ had prevented it. She felt bullied. Growing old was truly irritating. ‘Someone’ hid everything from her. She had been a mother to Thérèse but now she no longer trusted her. Thérèse thought she was fooling her when she said: ‘Of course, Grandmother, everything is fine. Bernard is perfect for me, really he is.’ That poor child …
‘You can’t pull the wool over my eyes … You can’t fool Rosalie Pain.’ (From deep in her past, a very old image suddenly appeared to Rosalie Pain in the little bedroom overlooking a Paris courtyard, and she saw herself as a girl in the Ursuline Convent boarding school, standing in front of the Mother Superior who was shaking her head as she said: ‘You’re a clever one, my girl …’)
Over the years, the sick woman’s face, once round and rosy, had become like a frozen little apple; the shadow of a sly smile from the past slid across her lips.
‘They think I see nothing. They never fight in front of me, but Thérèse … Yesterday … No, Thursday, the day we had that cutlet for dinner that was overdone (in my day, meat was always served perfectly cooked), well, Thérèse’s eyes were all red. I could see right through her. You can’t fool me, no, not me. And then … the way she behaves with the children. She takes refuge in them; she uses them to build a protective wall around her. In the evening, she sits on a little chair; she puts the cradle in front of her; she takes Geneviève on her lap and it’s almost as if she’s thinking: “No one can harm me here, no one can hurt me.” If a woman is happy with her husband, it’s in his arms that she seeks comfort, that she defies the world. She never should have left Martial … But no, I’m rambling, it was Martial who left her to go to war. From what I can see, Bernard is cheating on her, there’s not a shadow of doubt, and she knows it. Men are all the same. I was cheated on, yes, I was. Cheated on and left penniless,’ she continued thinking calmly, for all these things had happened so long ago that she remembered them as if they were sad events that had happened to someone else – a woman with dark eyes that looked even more beautiful when filled with tears.
‘I could have had plenty of men to console me … and so could Thérèse, if she wanted to,’ her grandmother mused. ‘But we come from a long line of decent women. As for him … I don’t know what’s got into him. With a gem of a wife like that, how could he not be content …? But that’s men for you, that’s men …’
She pictured these strange creatures for a moment in her mind: all they liked was change; they chased women; they hoped for war. Yes, even though they talked about peace among men, a kind of restless spirit urged them to battle. She shook her old head, then said out loud:
‘Still, they won’t stop me from eating if I’m hungry.’
>
She scurried into the kitchen and in the dead of night, made herself a little cream dessert that she spiced up with a few drops of kirsch, then took it back to eat in bed. While she was having her dessert, she was listening; her bedroom was next door to the couple’s room. She heard a long sigh; they weren’t asleep. Every now and again, Thérèse’s voice rose angrily:
‘She’s your mistress! I know she is … I know she’s your mistress!’
He replied something that the old lady couldn’t hear. Gently, she put her plate down on the bedside table, taking care not to let it clink against the marble top. If Thérèse kept pushing him, he would admit it. Such scenes were dangerous because men always admitted it in the end … It was extremely upsetting … How could they reconcile afterwards? And you always had to end up doing just that. ‘One of these days,’ thought Madame Pain, ‘I’ll take him aside and tell him: “Never admit it.” A mistress … She listened some more and heard: ‘Renée … Renée Détang …’ What? Her again? This was serious. It would have been much better had it been some actress or dancer like the ones Monsieur Pain had in the past … But the same woman, ten years later …‘She has a hold on him, that’s all there is to it … Her mother was the same: she had affairs … She knew how to hold on to men … And besides, they’re different from us. They have fun, throw their money around. Thérèse is sweet and cheerful, but she is the wife, the obligation. Men nowadays prefer to run away from obligations (sometimes it is really trying). But duty catches up with us, whether we like it or not. “My dear friend,” it tells us, “you wouldn’t come with me willingly,” ’ said Madame Pain with a wry smile, ‘ “so I’ll drag you along now. I’ll drag you by the hair.” ’ She flinched: ‘Oh, she’s crying … He’s making her cry. My poor little girl …’ She recalled Thérèse as a child: she never cried …‘Oh, love … how foolish it makes us … She won’t be able to keep him,’ she thought suddenly in a flash of lucidity that was almost painful: ‘She should have turned the other way, said nothing, waited … She’s too young. She doesn’t know that time heals all, wipes everything away. She doesn’t know that her Bernard will change, that she will change. If they live to be old, they will change body and soul, two or even three times, perhaps more. She can’t hold on to the man Bernard is today. She should leave him be, she should forget. Another Bernard will be there tomorrow. I must explain all this to her … But I can’t … It’s just too bad, and I’m tired … It’s such a shame! They should understand. I wonder how she found out he was cheating on her,’ she mused again, jumping from one idea to another. ‘For me, it was a pair of gloves … perfumed gloves that were left in a pocket … and another time, two return train tickets to Enghien … I cried as well … I didn’t wait either … Well, they’ve stopped talking now … They’ll go to sleep. Sleep. My dear little ones, you can tear each other apart tomorrow. It’s so quiet! Ah, I don’t like it here. I don’t like being in this house any more, with my family, not even on this earth. When Martial was a student, I remember he once said that the body is made up of little fragments that hold together for a long time, then, one day, they break apart. When you are ready to die, I imagine that each little fragment quivers and wants to reclaim its freedom, and that is what causes this unbearable sadness … Still alive, but you’re now in shreds. Am I going to die, then? I’ve never thought about death before. I’m very old, of course, very old, I’m going to sleep now …’
The Fires of Autumn Page 14