The Girls

by Henri de Montherlant

  Costals, I tell you quite simply and sadly: I am not trying to cling on to you. I have always known that, whatever I did, I would not attract you forever. I have lived, I am still living, in the constant expectation of your growing weary of me, forgetting me, and the silence in which you have immured yourself during the past two months confirms my fears. Perhaps this is a psychological error: you have stuck so faithfully to your 'good works' on my behalf for four years! But I don't want to rely on the past as a gauge for the future. And besides, I don't even know if it was a question of 'good works' on your part or a genuine inclination. You have never cared to enlighten me on that point.

  This being so, why should I go on being discreet and circumspect with you? Why should I go on being adroit? I'm inclined to think I've been only too discreet, and I know very well that no sort of finesse means anything to you. You get tired of things for no reason, simply because they have 'gone on long enough', because they have 'served their purpose', because 'one must have a change'. There's no point in trying to deserve well of you; it's simply a matter of trying to make the best of the short period during which one has a place in your life and if possible turn it into something more solid, beautiful, and happy.

  Never, never, never will you be able to accuse me of being the female enemy. Never, no matter what you do, will you see me turn against you, or reproach you. I am your friend. But I cannot go on being nothing but a friend. I am like a soul in Purgatory, a woman of thirty, highly-strung, unhappy, with none of the outlets men have: brief affairs, travel, work, vanity, ambition. For twenty years I've walked in a straight line between two high banks. So you must be a little indulgent when you hear what I have to say to you.

  What I have to say to you is this. Your friendship can do nothing more for my happiness. It is like a pearl found in the desert by a Bedouin dying of thirst. I am no longer at an age when half-measures and half-attachments can suffice; I must have total happiness or total despair. I am hungry for plenitude, and it is a passionate plenitude that I need. I am no longer interested in all those spiritual values which I prized so highly when I was younger; I am no longer interested in you in that sense; I have had enough of being loved fastidiously. This pure friendship is a beautiful thing, but it isn't a tangible thing of which I can be sure as I am sure of what I eat or what I drink; it's a fleshless thing, arid, stifling, intermittent, spasmodic, and in any case flagging, exhausting itself in the long run - all absence, waiting, emptiness - in which I have all the self-denials of love without any of its benefits. A sterile, spent thing, unless it can be infused with new sap. To be loved is to be at once desired, cossetted, possessed and cherished. All the rest is moonshine.

  I should like to have my share of you, to take my fill of you, to be able to live on my repletion. Here, then, is what I propose. I do so calmly and coolly: I've thought a great deal about what I am going to write to you. I propose that we exchange this moribund friendship for two months during which you would give yourself to me passionately, during which I would be entirely yours. I am ready to give you my solemn word that once this time had elapsed you would never hear from me again if that was your wish.

  These brief weeks of desperate plenitude (desperate for me) might perhaps give you some pleasure. For me they would be everything - everything, that is to say something, in this life of mine in which there is nothing, something for me to hold on to, the memory of which would remain with me, inviolate, which nothing and nobody could take away from me, a satisfaction of a different kind from the psychological satisfaction you have, it's true, given me up to now. With such a memory, I could snap my fingers at the banal happiness of married women. Having possessed you once, my life will not have been wasted. What dazzling peace for the rest of my days!

  You must not think that, even at thirty, I have an inordinate need of physical love. A cerebral need, rather. It is really my conscience that tells me I ought to experience it. To get it over with. To be inoculated. Appeased. Mentally appeased, I mean. Like settling down in a train one was afraid of-missing. As far as the senses are concerned, I am still a very little girl. Everything I have to offer you is fresh and new as at the break of day, completely worthy, in its simplicity, of your greatness. I would never forgive you if you forced me to offer it without love.

  And please do not bring up that word 'affair' which you sometimes use so crudely. For me, everything that comes within your aura loses its ordinary meaning. Lover, mistress, liaison, affair - these words no longer mean anything: there is simply love. And, within the context of love, every liberty, every audacity, all consumed by its radiance.

  Yes, it is I who have written this letter! Only two years ago, I should have died rather than contemplate the step which I am taking towards you. But what do I care about the world's opinion, when I know that what I would give you is radiantly pure and perhaps sublime?

  Andrée

  This letter remained unanswered.

  The most striking thing about man's - the male's - conception of happiness is that no such conception exists. There is a book of Alain's entitled: Propos sur le bonheur. But nowhere in this book is there any mention of happiness. This is highly significant. Most men have no conception of happiness.

  Saint-Preux, in La Nouvelle Héloïse, cries out: 'O God, my soul was made for suffering: give me one that is made for happiness!' Well, God did not hear his prayer: the soul of the male is not made for happiness. In his eyes, happiness is a negative state - insipid in the literal sense of the word - which one only becomes aware of as a result of a glaring un-happiness; happiness is obtainable only by not thinking about it. One day you take a look at yourself and realize that you are not too badly off: so you tell yourself you are happy. And you take as your guiding principle the famous platitude that happiness comes only to those who do not seek it. To look for happiness, to speak of it as of something concrete, is regarded as unmanly. It was a man, Goethe, who spoke of 'the duty of happiness'. And it was also a man, Stendhal, who made that magnificent remark, so far-reaching it embodies a whole philosophy and a whole ethic: 'There is nothing in the world I respect as much as happiness.' But these were superior men, and it is precisely because they transcend the ordinary human categories that they think like this. To the average man, anyone who admits to a respect for happiness is suspect. As for 'the duty of happiness', in spite of Goethe it has always received, together with the notion of 'live and let live', the worst possible press. You may say to a man, even a young man: 'One empty hour, one wasted hour - think of the remorse, as death draws near, for not having devoted it to the pursuit of happiness!' and he will be taken aback. 'Whose happiness do you mean?' he will ask. 'Other people's? The country's?' And if you answer fiercely: 'No! MINE!' he will be shocked. He cannot understand how you can think of your own happiness; he has never thought of his. The male is always telling himself, quite cheerfully: 'Tomorrow you'll start living.' And if he knows what he means by 'living' it is already quite an achievement. Another young man, almost a youth, with everything in his favour, having heard someone use the word 'living', in the sense of making the most of life, asks him: 'But what do you mean by "living"?' For him, to live means to work, to scratch a living. If he were asked what happiness was, he would no doubt reply: 'Doing one's duty, finding a task to fulfil, a discipline, etc.' In other words, what he means by happiness is the method he has chosen, or, more probably, has had imposed on him, of killing time. And even this is not enough; when men kill time in too easy and pleasant a way they grow sick of it. One has often heard of the sort of malaise that comes over a man when he reaches a standstill, a state of quiescent equilibrium in which he no longer feels any desires: it is similar to the sort of malaise one feels in a motor-boat on a dead calm sea when the engine fails. Whence the fact that the consciousness of happiness gives such a powerful sensation of loneliness. This is often misunderstood.

  However, it does sometimes happen that a man has a positive conception of happiness. In this case happiness lies in the satisfa
ction of vanity (with all kinds of individual variations, of course, since each man's idea of his own happiness is absolutely incomprehensible to everyone else). Vanity is man's predominant passion. It is not true that one can make a man do absolutely anything for money. But one can make most men do anything one wants by appealing to their vanity. Most men would go without food and drink for a whole day if by doing so they were to obtain a sop to their vanity at the end of it. A man without vanity is a bit of a freak: he casts a chill, and is given a wide berth. Thus for men it is not so much a question of being happy as of making people believe they are. A young doctor in the North African desert, recently married, once remarked ingenuously, without realizing how splendid his remark was: 'I'm extremely happy. But if only I could tell someone about it.' Most men would be only too delighted with the happiness of the sage. Fundamentally, that is what they like: how they all yearn to go into retreat! But people would not believe they were happy, people would think they had given up, or were incompetent, so off they go on the other tack, giving themselves airs, plunging into the shameful and ridiculous bustle we normally find them in, making lots of telephone calls, and soon a day of happiness for them is a day on which they have made plenty of telephone calls, in other words a day on which they have been very important. And in this way happiness-as-the-satisfaction-of-vanity merges with the happiness-which-comes-without-thinking-about-it which we mentioned earlier.

  Women, on the other hand, have a positive idea of happiness. For, if man is more restless, woman is more alive. No woman would ask, like the afore-mentioned young man: 'What do you mean by "living"?' She has no need of explanations. To live, for her, is to feel. All women prefer to burn themselves out rather than be extinguished; all women prefer to be devoured rather than ignored. And in their 'feeling', what mobility, what profuseness of reaction! When one sees how a woman, if the man she loves seems to love her less - even a little less - suffers as much as if he no longer loved her at all; when one sees how, later, if she realizes that he still loves her as much as ever, not only does she feel wonderfully happy, but her joy is redoubled by the joy of being forgiven for having suspected him - when one sees this and compares it with the sluggishness of men, one grasps the meaning of the word 'alive'.

  In fact, the succession of minor pleasures which, according to men, is what ultimately constitutes happiness, as a mass of little stars makes up the Milky Way, seems no more capable of doing so in women's eyes than, for Christians, a thousand venial sins are capable of making up one mortal sin. For women, happiness is a clearly defined state, endowed with its own individual personality, a tangible reality that is extremely alive, powerful and sensitive. A woman will tell you she is happy as she will tell you she is hot or cold. 'What are you thinking?' - 'That I'm happy.' 'Why do you want to do this or that?' - 'In order to be happy!' (this in such a vehement tone, with an 'of course' implied). 'I'm afraid of your doing this or that.' - 'Do you think I want to ruin my happiness?' She will give you a description of her happiness, telling you, for example: 'When I'm happy, I don't talk', or 'When I'm happy I always feel well.' She will know precisely when it begins and when it ends. There is a book in the Bibliothèque Rose entitled A Fortnight of Happiness. It is a book by a woman, and this is obvious from the title alone: no man would ever have had the notion that happiness can be cut into slices like a cake. And a woman will enjoy this 'fortnight of happiness' - meaning any limited period of happiness, any obviously ephemeral happiness - much more than a man would. For a woman any happiness, however short-lived, is better than nothing. If you tell a girl you would love to marry her but for one reason or another it is inevitable that she will begin to be unhappy within a year, she is sure to reply: 'Well then, I shall have had a year of happiness.' A man in her place would think of the threat to his future, and would weigh up the risks. The idea of happiness is so strong in women that they can see nothing else; all risks are blotted out.

  The only acceptable future for a woman is a happy marriage. Thus she is dependent on men, and knows it from an early age. However true it is that male adolescents suffer from their impotence, as boys they live in the present, as young men they think of the future as a substance they will fashion by themselves. Girls, on the other hand, are afraid of the future. A boy knows that his future will be what he wants it to be; a girl knows that her future will be what a man wants it to be. Her dreams of happiness during this period of uncertainty will be all the more ardent if this happiness is threatened in advance.

  Similarly, women attach far more importance than men to the conditions of happiness. It was a woman who once wrote that, as room thermometers indicate the correct temperature for orange-trees, silk-worms, etc., the word happiness ought to be opposite the 25 degrees centigrade line. When one returns from long stays in North Africa, Spain or Italy to the leprous Parisian winter, ten degrees below, to the darkness, the dirt, the ugliness, the inconveniences, the nastiness, the strained unhealthy life, what astonishes one is not so much this accumulation of horrors as the fact that most men put up with it: thanks to them, life goes on. But women, in the midst of this hell on earth, daydream of other things, pine away for other things, and sometimes fall into despair. There was once a novel for girls entitled L'Age où l'on croit aux îles. Women are always at the age when one believes in islands, in other words the age when one believes in happiness.

  This positive idea of happiness that women have, and the demands they make on it, no doubt arise from the state of unsatisfaction which is their lot. Not that all women are martyrs by any means! Nevertheless, when one thinks of the condition of the sexes in society, the word that springs to mind for women is unhappiness, and for men worries. There is a striking custom in the Moslem marriage ceremony as celebrated in Algiers. A woman advances towards the young couple and pours jasmine water into the cupped hands of the bride. The groom bends down and drinks it. The woman proceeds to do the same with the bridegroom; but just as the bride is about to drink from his hands, he opens them and lets the water escape. What an appalling custom - laying it down as a principle that man should be happy and woman not. There is something about the picture of the little girl bending down to drink the water and being refused it that makes one shudder. True, that is the Moslem world; in Europe the unhappiness of woman is not laid down as a sacred principle in advance. But even in Europe, whereas the happiness of women is dependent on that of men, men are not much concerned about making women happy. It is rare to find a public man risking his career, an industrialist endangering his business, a writer sacrificing his work, to make a woman happy (by marrying her, for instance). In fact, quite apart from any question of sacrifice, one never sees a man marrying a woman who wants to marry him more than he wants to marry her, simply in order to make her happy. Whereas there are millions of women who dream of marriage simply in order to discharge an overflow of loving devotion on a husband and children.

  Dreams are born of dissatisfaction: no satisfied person dreams (or, if he is an artist, he dreams only in a calculated way.) Where do people (even men) dream of happiness? In slums, in hospitals, in prisons. Women dream of happiness and think about it, because they have not got it. If a man suffers through a woman, he has everything else to console himself with. But what has she got? A woman can never realize herself completely: she is too dependent on men. She therefore dreams continually of the unattainable. A poetess once wrote a book under the title Waiting - a title as feminine as our Fortnight of Happiness. Women are always waiting, hopefully up to a certain age, hopelessly thereafter. This dreaming of happiness, so peculiar to women, is incomprehensible to men. They call it naivety, emotionalism, romanticism, Bovaryism - always with a suggestion of superiority and disdain. There is an even more contemptuous word: soulfulness. If a woman admits to being happy, a man will tell her it's exhibitionism. If she sings all day long, a man will say she is a bit simple-minded - for him, she could not possibly be happy unless she was simple. If a poet writes that he would rather not go to the Italian lakes at
all than go there without his beloved, there will always be a critic ready to say: 'Shop-girl's talk ' (If it is 'shop-girl's talk' for a woman to say: 'It would be absolute torture for me to see, for example, a Titian I like when I'm in the company of someone I dislike', so much the better for shop-girls.) The girl who waits for a husband a little too long, and vainly decorates the unknown beloved's altar in her heart, would simply appear comic to that same beloved: he thinks, or pretends to think, that it is simply a drama of the flesh, when in fact it is the soul consumed with the desire to give itself. (Whether this unhappiness is greater than that of many married women is another question.) A young woman who dreams of a happiness she does not possess interests him only to the extent that he can hope to benefit from it: he has no more respect for her longing because of this. As for the old maid and all her regrets, for them he has only jeers, not to say insults: the attitude of men towards spinsters, in France at least, is a disgrace.

  The feminine conception of happiness suffers the fate of all feminine conceptions: it does not interest men. Men are not interested in women when their senses are satisfied, and the day she realizes this for the first time is one of the tragedies in a woman's life. Galatea flees into the willows, hoping to be caught; a moment later the man runs from the willows, but this time it's for good - he does not want to be caught. Men are bored or irritated by women as soon as they have ceased to enjoy them, just as the smoke from a cigarette inhaled with pleasure a few moments ago is bothersome when it rises from the cigarette after one has put it down three-quarters finished with no intention of taking it up again. It is because they have nothing to say to each other that couples quarrel; it is a way of passing the time. A man has to make an effort, out of politeness, or good nature, or a sense of duty, to devote some of his time to the woman who has satisfied his desires; when he does so, he always has the feeling that he is doing her a favour. Only rakes are permanently interested in women, because with them curiosity - the soul of desire - is permanently alive: hence the indulgent attitude of women towards them, even the most serious women. 'The happiness of women,' a character in a novel has perceptively remarked, the happiness of women comes from men, but the happiness of men comes from themselves. The only thing a woman can do for a man is avoid disturbing his happiness.' The terrible thing is that women - powerless and naïve - long to do for men what men do for them. A woman who is happy and loved (and who loves) asks for nothing more. A man who loves and is loved needs something else as well. Leaving aside the question of money, a man always makes a present to a woman by marrying her, because marriage is a vital necessity for her but not for him. Women marry because marriage is for them the only key to happiness, whereas men marry because Tom, Dick and Harry do; they marry out of habitude, if not hebetude. Naturally they do not admit this, because they are unaware of it. Thoughtlessness makes men marry, just as thoughtlessness makes them go to war. One shudders at the thought of what would become of society if men began to be governed by reason; it would perish, as we see peoples perish before our very eyes because they are too intelligent.