'Did your mother ask you any awkward questions about what happened between us in the Bois the other night?'
'Fortunately, no.'
'If she had asked you: "How did he behave to you?" what would you have answered?'
She remained silent.
'I can see by your silence that you wouldn't have spared her a single detail.'
'I've never kept anything from my mother.'
'Well, well, that's nice! You really have been well brought up!'
'I've never kept anything from my mother because I never had anything to hide.'
'Which means that if.... Ah! I see you have a grain of intelligence after all.'
Now there occurred an enchanting scene similar to the one the other night in the Bois. A little girl of about five broke away from a party of diners who were settling down to table and advanced towards Solange, gazing at her with an expression of wonder and delight. When her mother came to fetch her, she cried. Thereafter, they could not make her eat, because her eyes were steadily fixed on Solange. And Costals remembered what she had told him about the mysterious attraction she exercised over children.
She went upstairs to the room with great simplicity, without the slightest embarrassment. He was struck by this, and thought to himself (an ugly thought? no, the thought of a man who has lived): 'You'd think she had been doing nothing else all her life.' At first there were great photogenic embraces on the balcony, opposite the trees which glowed a sickly green in the lamp-light, while the sound of the orchestra rose from below. Costals applied himself. 'I must do it well. I must leave her a beautiful memory, worthy of this dear old moon and those rascally violins. Let's get it into our head that éternité is the anagram of étreinte. [étreinte=embrace (Translator's note).] Let's give her a whiff of eternity.'
Now she was lying on the bed, naked except for her shoes, which she had kept on, and her stockings which she had rolled down over them. She had undressed, at his request, without either coquetry or prudishness, with the same naturalness, the same simplicity which she had shown as she climbed the stairs under the noses of the hotel staff. Her legs were a little hairy - a charming trait in a young lady, provided she does not overdo it.
She embraced this gentleman awkwardly and without conviction, and the kisses she gave him - her first since they had known each other - were tight-lipped and decorous. She seemed to be saying to herself each time: 'I must kiss him. It's the thing to do.' But when, with his mouth on hers, he imparted to her the rudiments of the art, he sensed that, among all these caresses, she had at last found the one which suited her, which really gave her pleasure, and that now it was clear that her day had not been wasted. For minutes on end, in this unofficial intercourse of mouths, she gave herself quite as fully as in intercourse under its official form. When he asked: 'Would you like me to turn on the light?' (the first thing she had done on entering the room had been to switch off the light, but the room was flooded with moonlight), she said 'No, please don't', in a new voice, a voice transformed by emotion, the voice of a little girl, at once high and low, as though it came from far away, from a little Dandillot of another age who had remained in the depths of her being. Afterwards he was to call this voice her 'night voice', because she only put it on when they were making love - and the ship of love, when one is on it with little girls, always sails with its lights out.
Now he could no longer see anything of Solange's body, could see nothing of her but her face surrounded by her dishevelled hair, like the heart of a flower surrounded by its petals. It was as if the whole of this woman were concentrated in this great corolla: a woman-corolla.... At first she let him do what he wished, but soon she began to cry. 'No! No!' She cried for some time, with real sobs, while he fondled her without withdrawing from her, and he thought to himself: 'We know all about this.' Partly out of reluctance to hurt her, but mainly in order to keep some of the mystery and attraction for future occasions - while at the same time gratifying his fad of never taking advantage of an easy opportunity - when he let go of her he had not taken the decisive step. It is rare to be able thus to combine pleasure and virtue. Her sobs continued for a while after he had drawn away from her, then grew fainter, then stopped at last; in him, meanwhile, sensation was still as sharp as a fresh wound. They remained motionless and silent, lying there side by side, and he wondered if she was angry. Perhaps she was a false ingénue (it was a hypothesis which his mind could not entirely reject), piqued at not having been taken completely; perhaps, on the other hand, merely a little girl, vexed with him for having gone so far ... But suddenly, turning her head - cloc! – she kissed him on the cheek. The noise of a tree-frog jumping into the water.
He lay there for several minutes, silent by her side, and his thoughts began to take wing. There are elevations, religious or otherwise, which are provoked by fasting. Others - through the identity of opposites - can arise from the digestion of a rich meal, a process that transports us into a better world. With Costals, such elevations often took shape as soon as the carnal act had been accomplished, and they were all the more intense the more wholeheartedly he had thrown himself into that act. This was either because, having used up all his sensuality in the act, only the spiritual part of him remained, or because no sooner was he physically plugged in to a woman than he was filled with light - as when one plugs in an electric lamp - and this light was total: the absolute of sensation followed by the absolute of sentiment (there are certain souls that flow towards the absolute as water flows towards the sea). Almost all his most inspired work had been conceived during these post-coital periods. So now, as he lay by Solange's side, his thoughts turned to Thérèse, and he saw her soul threatened (from the Catholic point of view) without her suspecting it in the least. Yet he had had more than enough pity on her, and was weary of it.
The orchestra had stopped playing. The windows were wide open on to the warm night, and the dark foliage (the lamps had been put out) made a continuous rustling sound as it stirred, like the sound of rain. Now it seemed to Costals that Andrée was standing at the foot of the bed with her tormented face. 'I who feel, know, understand! I who have penetrated to the heart of your work more profoundly than if I were you yourself! And you refuse me what you offer unreservedly to this insignificant little creature, simply because she was born pretty!' Often the injustice of one of his actions would cause him a kind of enthusiasm: the pleasure that God feels when he contemplates his creation. This time, it weighed on him. Nevertheless, he began caressing Solange once more; since it was understood that he was biased in her favour, why make any bones about it? But he made up his mind to write Andrée a nice letter next day. (He did not in fact do so, being exclusively preoccupied with the religious thoughts evoked by a letter he was writing to Thérèse.)
In the taxi, she was less stupefied than she had been on the previous occasion. Several times she raised her head from her lover's breast and gazed into his eyes in silence, as though, after the event, she felt the need to get to know this person to whom she had given herself. And he, suffering her gaze, said to himself: 'My face is that of a man of thirty-four who thinks. How ugly people are who think, or profess to think!' He remained thus, under her scrutiny, like a soldier forcing himself to keep his head above the parapet: the terrible nakedness of a man's face, without powder, without paint, so brave compared with women's faces, which are always patched up. This lasted for what seemed to him a long time. Then she put her head back on his shoulder, as though she were surrendering for a second time.
As he felt he had the right to use the familiar form of address to her, whereas she still said vous, he asked, smilingly: Tu? Vous?' And she replied, quite simply (without in the least meaning to be ungracious):
'I don't know how to say tu.'
He liked this remark, in which he saw a mixture of shyness and pride: the remark of an infanta.
Suddenly, after a silence, she asked him point-blank:
'Do you really love me?'
Rather foolishly, withou
t thinking - and yet perhaps because he still had the feeling at the back of his mind that she might not be sincere - he said to her:
'It's I who should be asking you that question.'
She leapt up at this, and with a violence that he had neither seen nor suspected in her, she said:
'You have no right to say that to me! Haven't I given you enough proofs?'
She had drawn herself up like a little snake.
'You have no right!' Never would he have believed that she could use such a phrase. Might she be capable of passion? He also asked himself, with typical male cruelty, 'What proofs?'
'I,' she went on, 'I shall love you always, I know I shall And you, how long?'
'A long time.'
She made a face. Then he said to her:
'When I was sixteen - sixteen, do you hear - I had a little girl-friend of fourteen. I loved her as one loves for the first time, which is to say with a fervour one never recaptures.
And of course she said to me exactly what you've just said, which is a classic remark: "With me, it's for life. What about you?" And I replied: "For as long as possible." I loved her madly, and I was only sixteen; but I was as clear-sighted as that. I need scarcely add that six months later we had forgotten each other. You see, I like reality. I like to see things as they are,' he insisted passionately. 'People say one's unhappy when one sees things too clearly. I see everything clearly, and I'm very happy. But because I know what reality is, I know that one must never commit the future. What will your feelings be in a year's time? In six months? In three months? What will mine be? That's why I don't give you that "forever", which nevertheless I find quite natural on the lips of a young girl, and which touches me profoundly. I merely say "a long time", and I say it to you as a man who knows what "a long time" means. And it means a great deal. To know that one will love someone for a long time is a great deal, believe me.'
She did not answer.
When they parted, he wanted to give her some sign of encouragement, and said to her with a nice smile:
'I don't feel a bit tired of you, you know ... '
Later, he felt sorry for having doubted her. Not that he had doubted her in the strict sense of the word. He believed her to be pure of heart; he knew her to be intact of body. But he found it impossible, when faced with the 'no, no's' and the tears, and even the night voice, that unforgettable little schoolgirl's voice, not to think of all the counterfeits of these that abound among the fair sex. He was so convinced that Solange was 'genuine' that he found it almost vile of himself to have occasional doubts about her, even if these doubts were, so to speak, forced on him. For Costals' past injected into the present a whole accumulation of knowledge and experience that modified his vision of Solange, and there was nothing to be done about that. Nothing could alter the fact that for him she was only the latest, whereas for her he was the first. Nothing could alter the fact that he had known a great many copies before he knew the original, and that the original seemed less original after these copies. And whereas his attitude towards Andrée caused him no compunction, he felt guilty towards Solange, although he had done her no other wrong than being what he was. For it is a fact that everything conspires to the advantage of that which we love.
But there was another feeling that tended to make him doubt Solange a little: he was astonished that she could love him. Costals was devoid of literary vanity, and one of the things he liked most about Solange was that she never spoke to him about his books and never uttered the faintest word of admiration. His vanity as a male, on the other hand, ran to extremes. His first impulse was to assume that no woman he desired would refuse to give herself to him. But whenever one of them fell into his arms, at the same time surrendering something of her heart, he was taken aback, and repeated to himself the remark of Louis XV: 'I find it hard to understand why they love me so much.' In this way he savoured alternately the pleasure of believing himself invincible and the pleasure of proving himself humble: there is a time for everything, says the sage. That Solange could really love him he found hard to believe. 'She's incapable of appreciating what is great and superior in me. Poor darling, she has the brain of a water-flea. So what can she find to love in me? What is there about me, physically, that's worth loving? It's not at all clear.' This was to ignore the fact that women, unlike men, go from affection to desire. Thus two elements played a part in his distrust: one which could be stigmatized in these terms: 'the disillusionment of a cynic who corrupts simple innocence', and another which it is difficult not to describe as genuine modesty. So his feelings were partly good and partly bad. Like three- quarters of our feelings. Which is what society - which prefers people to be either black or white, so that one 'knows where one is' with them - will not have. But what nature - which loves nothing so much as confusion - will.
'Nothing can alter the fact that I am by nature clearsighted - and clear-sighted always,' he said to himself as he thought of the 'long time' he had opposed to her naïve assurance. 'And moreover nothing can possibly make me want not to be. My clear-sightedness frightens people, but it never frightens me. I'm amused by it; it is a monster I've tamed.
But why "a monster"? Call it rather my tutelary spirit. It's thanks to this clear-sightedness that I lead a thoroughly intelligent life, doing only what I know I can do, and concentrating on that, never going off on the wrong tack, never wasting time, never being taken in either by others or by myself, never letting people cause me suffering and only very rarely being even put out by them. And as this lucidity of mine is combined with all the powers of imagination and poetry, through poetry I can enter the domain of dreams, and through the imagination I can enter the feelings of people who are not clear-sighted; and this allows me to take controlled holidays from my clear-sightedness when I think fit, and thus to win both ways. My life is not a superior life because, although my senses never fail me, my mind, my character and my heart are full of lacunae; but these elements are such that a superior life could be built upon them. As for my dear Dandillot, who is not me, I must see that she does not suffer on my account, and I shall do this sometimes by lying to her and sometimes by not lying to her, in short by letting myself be governed not by principles but by expediency, by flair and tact, with my affection as my guide. It is possible that in other circumstances I might muffle her up with illusions. But I had, at least once, to make her face up to things as they are, even though in future I may conceal from her a spectacle which it would be in the worst possible taste to impose uninterruptedly on a girl of twenty.'
to Thérèse Pantevin
La Vallée Maurienne
Pierre Costals
Paris
19 May 1927
Mademoiselle,
I have had great pity on you before God of late, as you requested me to, and a few hours ago, by virtue of some rather special circumstances, I saw your soul in a dream, and I saw that it was in grave peril. You are like those people who, on the eve of a revolution, believe they are safe because they are liberals. 'Afraid of the revolutionaries? Why should I be? They know I'm with them at heart. And besides, if they condemn me, they'll have to condemn everybody.' The revolution occurs; they are left in peace; they are exultant. Then they are arrested and killed. You sleep in peace, seeing yourself surrounded by such a crowd of petty sinners and false innocents that God must be obliged to spare them. But you ignore the example of the Jews, who all perished in the wilderness save two, and the whole of Scripture, which tends towards the establishment of this doctrine. Jesus Christ tells us that 'few are chosen'; he warns that the way is narrow and rare those who will find it. Christians read this with indifference: they think it's all part of Christ's rhetoric.
A multitude of the damned can be seen in the churches at eleven o'clock Mass, genuflecting and putting money in the plate. Their extenuating circumstances are granted by the Church itself, which has left them in their fools' paradise in order to keep up the numbers on its lists. The contemporary Church has no more right to invoke the example
of a St Augustine or the doctrine of a St Thomas without making itself ridiculous than the dead humanism of our universities has the right to claim descent from Greece or Rome: the ancient world and the Middle Ages were tabernacles of a spirituality which no religion or philosophy has been able to continue or to transform.
The Church of Christ lasted a thousand years or so. I believe (erroneously perhaps) that it survives only in monasteries and convents. I dreamed of seeing you completely cut off from the outside world, in a place where the affairs of the world would revolve beneath your feet, as the affairs of heaven revolve above our heads. Even if nothing in Catholic doctrine were true, you would have given me thereby a noble idea of yourself, and that was not to be despised. If you were damned in any case, it were better to be damned in a lofty and singular quest than in the squalor that surrounds you now. But you do not seem to have followed the advice I gave you, to go and see a priest and let him probe your hidden depths. I will not, therefore, pursue the matter. I cannot waste endless time on you. The living, who merely pass by, can only interest me in passing. And besides, if you yourself turn aside from this path, so much the better: it is a sign that God did not intend you for it. There may be false stirrings of life in a dead soul: some people know this - from experience. I may have been mistaken about you.
You tell me you suffer. That could stand you in lieu of prayer, if you had no other way. Suffering is the prayer of those who neither think nor pray. I do not know the nature of your temptations, but I believe that to be tempted is a sign of God's grace; if you did not interest him, he would leave you in peace. Perhaps, in the state of peril in which I saw you, this temptation will save you. Even supposing that the temptation means not God's presence but his absence, there is probably not a single saint who doesn't feel God appear and disappear in his soul in rapid succession. The soul is like a sunny sky dotted with little clouds which veil it from one moment to the next.
The Girls Page 18