The Girls

by Henri de Montherlant

  Man and woman confront each other, and society says to them: 'You know nothing about him? You know nothing about her? Well, have a try. Go ahead and make the best of it.' Indeed, were it not for the mating urge, each sex would stay where it was. Not out of shyness, as in Vigny's poem, but simply like two species impervious to each other and with nothing to say to each other. Nature has made them antithetical, incapable of agreeing, or capable of agreeing only on the ruin of something, and we watch this strange spectacle of beings who are driven towards each other although they seem not to be made for each other.

  Woman is made for one man; man is made for life, and incidentally for all women. Woman is made to arrive and stay put; man is made to act and move on: she begins loving when he has finished; people talk of women 'teasing' when they ought to talk of men. Man takes and throws away again; woman gives herself, and, what has once been given cannot be taken back, or only with difficulty. Woman thinks love can do everything - not only her love, but the love man bears her, which she always exaggerates. She will eloquently maintain that love has no limits; man sees the limits not only of woman's love but of his own, whose poverty he is only too well aware of. Not only are they out of step, but supply and demand are badly synchronized between them. Men seldom feel anything for women except desire, which women find tiresome; women seldom feel anything for men except tenderness, which men find tiresome. Women offer more tenderness than men can stand; fortunately there are children to absorb the surplus, as long as they need it. Women say: 'Ah, how foolish men are to sacrifice, for the sake of ideas, or glory, or money, time that should be devoted to love, to true love! It teaches one so many things! Think how many men fail to attain to the highest spheres (intellectual, social, religious, etc.) because they have not allowed love to live and grow in them!' And men reply: 'How can love live and grow in me? It can only die there. These embers cannot be fanned into flame: artifice is worse than useless. Why ask me to be other than what nature made me? Nature made me a man - that is, a member of a loveless species.'

  Such is this hybrid couple from whom spring most of the ills of mankind without either of them being to blame, but only nature, which brought them together without matching them, throwing in the best and the worst as in all her other works, wherein nothing is not muddled, confused, impure, two-sided, pace the ignorant and the sage, who never see more than one side.

  'What!' you will say, '"the source of most of the ills of mankind" - what an exaggeration!' But just open your newspaper. Dramas of jealousy, dramas of adultery, dramas of divorce, dramas of abortion, crimes of passion. And all those family dramas which would not exist without an initial couple. And all the things one never hears about. It is not the free union that seems to be cursed, it is the couple, whatever form it takes, and perhaps more especially in marriage. At the basis of it a monstrous gamble: the man being forced to take a partner for life when there is no good reason why it should be this one rather than the next, since millions of others are equally worthy of his love. The man driven by nature to repeat the same words of love to a dozen women including the one who is destined for him - false if he hides the truth from her, cruel if he admits it. The man driven by nature to deceive his wife, with all the lies and baseness this entails - culpable if he yields to nature's commands, unhappy if he resists them. The girl who grows to womanhood in the midst of tears, and to motherhood in the midst of sighs. The child, a natural occurrence that makes woman ugly and deformed. The act which is supposed to be supremely natural, but which can only be performed at certain periods, in certain conditions, with certain precautions. The terror of pregnancy, or the terror of disease, hovering like a spectre above every love-bed. The so-called supremely natural act surrounded by a whole pharmacopoeia which sullies it and poisons it and makes it ridiculous. What man, indeed, if he only stops to think for a moment, will not admit to himself, when he approaches a woman, that he is entangling himself in a mesh of misfortunes, or at any rate risks, and that he is tempting Providence? And yet he wants it, women want it, society wants it, and nature, if she were capable of wanting anything, would want it too. For that is what love is - the thread of fire which binds the living to the earth and justifies the Creation. You will ask me, dear reader, what I am driving at. The answer is that I am simply registering my astonishment at the fact that an impulse so basic as that of one sex towards the other should be forced by its very nature to cause so many ills. It seems to me that what nature should condemn is what is done against her, not what she prescribes. But no, she reserves all her severity for those who follow her and without whom she would not exist. Unless everything is nature's, and we are mistaken in seeing her in one place rather than another.

  to M. Armand Pailhès

  Toulouse

  Pierre Costals

  Paris

  27 April 1927

  My dear Pailhès,

  A letter from poor Andrée H. She offers herself to me in the most formal terms. If she persists, I shall of course be obliged to refuse her, in no less formal terms.

  In so far as I understand the French attitude in these matters, I should guess that her reaction will be as follows: 'A real man does not behave in such a way. Either he's a cad, or he's impotent. It is disgraceful to insult a woman in such a way.'

  What do you think? But first of all, here is my defence.

  Totally lacking in worldly wisdom, Andrée is incapable of distinguishing the element of civility pure and simple, of complaisance, of good-nature if you like, in my attitude towards her. Where I am concerned, she takes politeness for keen interest, benevolence for predilection, pity for friendship. God forgive me, I suspect that at times she thinks I'm in love with her. If I send a book to a colleague with whom I am on perfectly amicable terms, with the dedication 'affectionate regards', it does not enter his head for a moment that I really have any affection for him. A similar dedication would make Andrée swoon with joy: 'He has declared his love!'

  The truth is that I regard her with sympathy, respect, and a certain admiration. That is all, and it's a great deal.

  All? No, understanding too. I know that people find Andrée antipathetic. They complain that she thinks herself superior - but supposing she is, in some respects? That she is 'literary' - but in fact, although she is stuffed with reading, she is still perfectly natural, completely devoid of affectation, unlike so many of these female bookworms who adopt, more or less unconsciously, opinions and attitudes which they think will impress. Andrée's writing is also revealing: simplicity itself, flowing like water from a spring. The fact is that, unlike all those others, she has a simple, powerful temperament, she's a Natur (and you know that to call anyone eine Natur was for Goethe the highest praise). And I even forgive her, up to a point, her lack of dignity. For after all, the girl loves, and love and dignity make bad bed-fellows. She wants to be happy: what could be more natural? I too, when I want to be happy, go at it as hard as I can. In short, she irritates me but I understand her, and defend her when she is attacked, for I could not swear that in her position I wouldn't be irritating too - more discreetly than she, of course, or at least so I hope.

  When all this is said, the fact remains that she is ugly, graceless, badly dressed, and utterly unfeminine. As you yourself said to me: 'She looks like a housemaid.' The human face is a curious invention: it must be very nice, or else!

  And then, even if she were not obviously unprepossessing, she doesn't attract me, and that in itself is enough to justify my attitude. There are women who have nothing to recommend them, but this nothing arouses my desire. Andrée's nothing gets me down. Drain that cup to the dregs [An untranslatable pun here: Boire cette coupe jusqu'au lit (bed) instead of lie (dregs) (Translator's note).] - no, never!

  I am capable of making the gesture of taking this woman. To succeed in something one despises is a noble and difficult thing - because one must conquer oneself as well as others - but it has always been within my power. To succeed in something that disgusts me is something I am also capa
ble of. I should escape with nothing worse than that deadly depression one experiences after having consummated the carnal act with somebody who doesn't appeal to one. But what I cannot do is feign love. In being possessed by me, she would feel my disgust, and it would stab her to the heart. I should have undergone this harrowing ordeal, and to what end? To make her suffer!

  Even supposing she doesn't suffer, should one take a woman out of pity? It's 'a good talking point', as my fellow-writers say. Of course it can happen that one takes a woman because one is sorry for her, just as it can happen that one takes a woman because she has made one angry. But there must be a basis of desire, which there is not, and never will be, between me and Andrée. One of my friends, who is very unhappily married, said to me one day à propos of his wife: 'I go on with her out of pity. She's young. She needs it.' I've never forgotten that remark, which seemed to me to be appalling. But you can satisfy a woman out of pity, even though she makes you unhappy, if she is your wife, if she is part of your life, someone you see continually. You cannot satisfy, out of pity alone, a stranger who repels you physically and for whom you feel no affection.

  Furthermore, whatever anyone may say, it really is something to make a woman of a well-brought-up young lady, even one of thirty. It creates a bond, involves risks, perhaps responsibilities, perhaps long-term consequences: nothing can alter the fact that the thing has happened. And so, I consider it the purest folly to incur all this for the sake of somebody to whom I am indifferent. Colette's mother used to say to her: 'Don't do anything foolish unless it's really going to give you pleasure.' And I don't want to feel under any obligations to her.

  One final reason, a shabby one if you like, but after all I'm not a saint. By disposition and on principle I have, since adolescence, kept all my love affairs secret, even the most flattering ones. By disposition, being naturally secretive (which goes hand in hand with false confidences). On principle, because a young woman will yield to me all the more easily if she knows that nothing will leak out, and because my reputation as a libertine, since no names can be attached to it, remains on the whole vague enough not to interfere with my enterprises. And inevitably Andrée, who is as incontinent in speech as on paper, would go round advertising the fact that she was my mistress. I have always prided myself on the fact that, with a few rare exceptions, nobody has been able to name my women-friends. And the whole of Paris, faced with an ugly duckling like Andrée, would exclaim: 'Now we know what excites him', and from this one sample imagine the rest!

  And lastly, even without all that, there is something else which in itself would be enough to restrain me from becoming her lover: something about the shape of her face and her forehead reminds me of my great-uncle Costals de Pradels, and you will appreciate that I don't want the family mixed up in all this ... Who would have believed it? I too have my scruples ... [The rest of this letter has no bearing on our subject (Author's note).]

  Costals

  to Pierre Costals

  Paris

  Andrée Hacquebaut

  Saint-Léonard

  30 April 1927

  You have left unanswered the most solemn letter a proud and pure young woman could write to a man. My other letters did not necessarily call for replies; this one demanded one. If you do not answer the letter I am writing to you now, I shall consider that, for the first time, you have behaved badly towards me. It will be the first real crack in my esteem for you.

  I am thirty; I have no experience of love, and unless you change your attitude, I never shall. Because you have occupied too great a place in my heart. Who else could love you as I do? No one - it wouldn't be possible. Not one of your mistresses loves you as I do. (Indeed, this is one reason why you prefer them to me.) You are the being one meets once in a lifetime, the decisive, the definitive being who leaves his mark for ever, without whom a woman's life is bound to be abortive, truncated, without flower or fruit. You are my master. God knows I haven't the soul of a slave, and yet I submit to you without the slightest effort or the slightest humility, remaining nevertheless on the same plane as you, at once your subject and your equal. I do not believe there could possibly be a more delicious sensation than that, for a woman like me, if you were my master in the full sense of the word. Which is to explain that I could not, even if I wanted to, offer to another man a sort of residuum of myself, when all that is best in me belongs to you: in my view, it would be a defilement. And besides, I am now incapable of taking an interest in another man. Men who are not you bore me. They do not dominate me. It is I who would dominate them. And I cannot belong to a man who does not dominate me in everything; it would be impossible, everything inside me rebels against it. My destiny as a woman is to love in submission and respect; I must feel myself transcended. You see, even if I were offered the most tempting marriages, now.... Like women who have a religious vocation, I've weighed it all up. On one side of the scale, all the material goods of this world, and on the other my vocation, which is to love you. And my vocation wins hands down.

  You are both too much and too little in my life. Too much for me to be able to love anyone else. Too little for me to be fulfilled and satisfied. You give me too much for me to be able to break off relations with you without a terrible wrench. You give me too little for it not to be as painfully inadequate as nothing at all. Your friendship is a torture to me, and the rupture of that friendship would be torture too. You are like a knife in my heart. To leave it there is painful; but to pull it out would be to drain my life away. I am torn between my friendship for you, my spiritual need of you, my need to be loved spiritually by you - and my desire for love, my desire to live, if only for a few months: my flesh, too, has a legitimate need to be loved. If I do not want to lose you, I must sacrifice my flesh. I must die a virgin, or forget your very name. I must forgo marriage, sexual pleasure, motherhood, a healthy, normal life, and exhaust myself in a hopeless passion for someone who is fond of me, no doubt, but who has no need of me, either as a person to give to or as a person to take from. For you do not want even my self-sacrifice. You want nothing of me.

  You once told me that women who looked at you with melting eyes 'sent you up the wall'. Have you ever seen me look at you like that? Do I ever foist myself on you or cling to you? If that were the case, I would understand your resistance: one owes nothing to people who bore one. But it is not the case, and I would take good care that it wasn't: a man's boredom is far too humiliating for a woman. My love is a loving comradeship. I do not desire you, but you are the only man whose desires I could accept without revulsion. I repeat, I can only love someone who is superior to me. I would rather be tortured by self-denial than give myself beneath me. I would prefer marriage, even a mediocre marriage, to a mediocre love affair. What then? Marriage, and your friendship on the side? First of all, no husband would tolerate such a friendship. And then, the mere thought of a man touching me sends me back to you, and I imagine all the heart-rending regrets for what might have been.

  I have wanted, and I still want, with all my strength, your well-being and mine. Is it possible that it has all been to no purpose? Hurt me, if honesty demands it of you, but do not let me down. Let us assume that in these two months of intimacy there would be no pleasure for you who are surfeited elsewhere; they might at least be a psychological experiment from which your books could reap some benefit. I should be your guinea-pig, a guinea-pig of a particularly rare and precious species: a thinking guinea-pig, a guinea-pig which could if necessary take notes on what it felt and pass them on to you. In default of pleasure, you would be furthering your work, and as for me, if I knew that I was contributing towards it in however small a way, my happiness would be redoubled. And then, who knows, pleasure may come: your catalogue of women perhaps does not include a thirty-year- old provincial girl, as cultivated in mind as she is intact in body (and much prettier in body than in face). You have so often written that a man's only motive in love is curiosity, how could you not feel curiosity for that sort of object? And after all
, me or another ...

  One of two things. Either you have a genuine affection for me, in which case no harm would be done, for you would know you were making me happy, and your affection would be gratified; and perhaps our relationship, begun in friendship, would end in friendship; love would have been deliciously enclosed between two layers of friendship, like a jewel between two layers of tissue paper. If not, if you are indifferent to me, then what have you to fear? It would cause you no regret to see this experiment detach you completely from me.

  I have the impression of beating against a wall. The wall hasn't given yet, but by dint of perseverance.... You have no idea what a woman's will-power can be.