The Woman Destroyed

by Simone de Beauvoir

  My father loved me. No one else. Everything comes from that. All Albert thought of was slipping off I loved him quite madly poor fool that I was. How I suffered in those days, young and as straight as they come! So of course you do silly things: maybe it was a put-up job what is there to show he didn’t know Olivier? A filthy plot it knocked me completely to pieces.

  Now of course that just had to happen they are dancing right over my head. My night is wrecked finished tomorrow I shall be a rag I shall have to dope myself to manage Tristan and the whole thing will end in the shit. You mustn’t do it! Swine! It’s all that matters to me in life sleep. Swine. They are allowed to shatter my ears and trample on me and they’re making the most of it. “The dreary bitch downstairs can’t make a fuss it’s New Year’s Day.” Laugh away I’ll find some way of getting even she’ll bitch you the dreary bitch I’ve never let anyone walk over me ever. Albert was livid. “No need to make a scene!” oh yes indeed there was! He was dancing with Nina belly to belly she was sticking out her big tits she stank of scent but underneath it you got a whiff of bidet and he was jigging about with a prick on him like a bull. Scenes I’ve made scenes all right in my life. I’ve always been that proper little woman who answered “I hate him” fearless open as a book dead straight.

  They’re going to break through the ceiling and come down on my head. I can see them from here it’s too revolting they’re rubbing together sex to sex the women the respectable women it makes them wet they’re charmed with themselves because the fellow’s tail is standing up. And each one of them is getting ready to give his best friend a pair of horns his dearly beloved girlfriend they’ll do it that very night in the bathroom not even lying down dress hitched up on their sweating asses when you go and pee you’ll tread in the mess like at Rose’s the night of my scene. Maybe it’s on the edge of a blue party that couple upstairs they’re in their fifties at that age they need whorehouse tricks to be able to thread the needle. I’m sure Albert and his good lady have whore parties you can see from Christine’s face she’s ready for anything at all he wouldn’t have to hold himself back with her. Poor bleeder that I was at twenty too simpleminded too shamefaced. Touching, that awkwardness: I did really deserve to be loved. Oh I’ve been done dirt life’s given me no sort of a break.

  Hell I’m dying of thirst I’m hungry but it would slay me to get up out of my armchair and go to the kitchen. You freeze to death in this hole only if I turn up the central heating the air will dry out completely there’s no spit left in my mouth my nose is burning. What a bleeding mess their civilization. They can muck up the moon but can’t heat a house. If they had any sense they’d invent robots that would go and fetch me fruit juice when I want some and see to the house without my having to be sweet to them and listen to all their crap.

  Mariette’s not coming tomorrow fine I’m sick of her old father’s cancer. At least I’ve disciplined her she keeps more or less in her place. There are some that put on rubber gloves to do the washing up and play the lady that I cannot bear. I don’t want them to be sluts either so you find hairs in the salad and finger marks on the doors. Tristan is a cunt. I treat my dailies very well. But I want them to do their jobs properly without making a fuss or telling me the story of their lives. For that you have to train them just as you have to train children to make worthwhile grownups out of them.

  Tristan has not trained Francis: that bitch of a Mariette is leaving me in the lurch. The drawing room will be a pigsty after they’ve been here. They’ll come with a plushy present everyone will kiss everyone else I will hand around little cakes Francis will make the answers his father has gone over with him he lies like a grown-up man. I should have made a decent child of him. I shall tell Tristan a kid deprived of his mother always ends up by going to the bad he’ll turn into a hooligan or a fairy you don’t want that. My serious thoughtful voice makes me feel sick: what I should really like to do is scream it’s unnatural to take a child away from its mother! But I’m dependent on him. “Threaten him with divorce,” said Dédé. That made him laugh. Men hold together so the law is so unfair and he has so much pull that it’s him that would get the decree. He would keep Francis and not another penny and you can whistle for the rent. Nothing to be done against this filthy blackmail—an allowance and the flat in exchange for Francis. I am at his mercy. No money you can’t stand up for yourself you’re less than nothing a zero twice over. What a numskull I didn’t give a damn about money unselfish half-wit. I didn’t twist their arms a quarter enough. If I had stayed with Florent I should have made myself a pretty little nest egg. Tristan fell for me fell right on his face I had pity on him. And there you are! This puffed-up little pseudo-Napoleon leaves me flat because I don’t swoon go down on my knees in admiration before him. I’ll fix him. I’ll tell him I’m going to tell Francis the truth: I’m not ill I live alone because your swine of a father ditched me he buttered me up then he tortured me he even knocked me about. Go into hysterics in front of the boy bleed to death on their doormat that or something else. I have weapons I’ll use them he’ll come back to me I shan’t go on rotting all alone in this dump with those people on the next floor who trample me underfoot and the ones next door who wake me every morning with their radio and no one to bring me so much as a crust when I’m hungry. All those fat cows have a man to protect them and kids to wait on them and me nothing: this can’t go on. For a fortnight now the plumber hasn’t come a woman on her own they think they can do anything how despicable people are when you’re down they stamp on you. I kick back I keep my end up but a woman alone is spat on. The concierge gives a dirty laugh. At ten in the morning it is in concordance with the law to have the radio on: if he thinks I’m impressed by his long words, I had them on the telephone four nights running they knew it was me but impossible to pin it I laughed and laughed: they’ve coped by having calls stopped I’ll find something else. What? Drips like that sleep at night work all day go for a walk on Sunday there’s nothing you can get a hold on. A man under my roof. The plumber would have come the concierge would say good day politely the neighbors would turn the volume down. Bloody hell, I want to be treated with respect I want my husband my son my home like everybody else.

  A little boy of eleven it would be fun to take him to the circus to the zoo. I’d train him right away. He was easier to handle than Sylvie. She was a tough one to cope with soft and cunning like that slug Albert. Oh, I don’t hold it against her poor little creep they all put her against me and she was at the age when girls loathe their mothers they call that ambivalence but it’s hatred. There’s another of those truths that make them mad. Etiennette dripped with fury when I told her to look at Claudie’s diary. She didn’t want to look, like those women who don’t go to the doctor because they’re afraid of having cancer so you’re still the dear little mama of a dear little daughter. Sylvie was not a dear little anything I had a dose of that when I read her diary: but as for me I look things straight in the face. I didn’t let it worry me all that much I knew all I had to do was wait and one day she would understand and she would say I was the one who was in the right and not them and cram it down their throats. I was patient never did I raise a hand against her. I took care of myself of course. I told her, “You won’t get me down.” Obstinate as a mule whining for hours on end days on end over a whim there wasn’t the slightest reason for her to see Tristan again. A girl needs a father I ought to know if anybody does: but nobody’s ever said she needs two. Albert was quite enough of a nuisance already he was taking everything the law allowed him and more I had to struggle every inch of the way he’d have corrupted her if I hadn’t fought. The frocks he gave her it was immoral. I didn’t want my daughter to turn into a whore like my mother. Skirts up to her knees at seventy paint all over her face! When I passed her in the street the other day I crossed over to the other sidewalk. With her strutting along like that what a fool I should have looked if she had put on the great reconciliation act. I’m sure her place is as squalid as ever with the cash she
flings away at the hairdresser’s she could afford herself a cleaning woman.

  No more horns blowing I preferred that row to hearing them roaring and bellowing in the street: car doors slamming they shout they laugh some of them are singing they are drunk already and upstairs that racket goes on. They’re making me ill there’s a foul taste in my mouth and these two little pimples on my thigh they horrify me. I take care I only eat health foods but even so there are people who muck about with them hands more or less clean there’s no hygiene anywhere in the world the air is polluted not only because of the cars and the factories but also these millions of filthy mouths swallowing it in and belching it out from morning till night: when I think I’m swimming in their breath I feel like rushing off into the very middle of the desert: how can you keep your body clean in such a lousy disgusting world you’re contaminated through all the pores of your skin and yet I was healthy clean I can’t bear them infecting me. If I had to go to bed there’s not one of them that would move a finger to look after me. I could croak any minute with my poor overloaded heart no one would know anything about it that terrifies the guts out of me. They’ll find a rotting corpse behind the door I’ll stink I’ll have shat the rats will have eaten my nose. Die alone live alone no I can’t bear it. I need to have a man I want Tristan to come back lousy dunghill of a world they are shouting they are laughing and here I am withering on the shelf: forty-three it’s too soon it’s unfair I want to live. Big-time life that’s me: the convertible the apartment the dresses everything. Florent shelled out and no horsing around—except a little in bed right’s right—all he wanted to do was to go to bed with me and show me off in smart joints I was lovely my loveliest time all my girlfriends were dying with envy. It makes me sick to think of those days nobody takes me out anymore I just stay here stewing in my own shit. I’m sick of it I’m sick of it sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick.

  That bastard Tristan I want him to have me out to a restaurant to a theater I’ll insist upon it I don’t insist nearly enough all he does is come drooling along here either by himself or with the kid sits there with a mealy-mouthed smirk on his face and at the end of an hour he drools off again. Not so much as a sign of life even on New Year’s Eve! Swine! I’m bored black I’m bored through the ground it’s inhuman. If I slept that would kill the time. But there is this noise outside. And inside my head they are giving that dirty laugh and saying, “She’s all alone.” They’ll laugh the other side of their faces when Tristan comes back to me. He’ll come back I’ll make him I certainly will. I’ll go to the couturiers again I’ll give cocktail parties evening parties my picture will be in Vogue with a neckline plunging to there I have better breasts than anyone. “Have you seen the picture of Murielle?” They will be utterly fucked and Francis will tell them about how we go to the zoo the circus the skating rink I’ll spoil him that’ll make them choke on their lies their slanders. Such hatred! Clear-sighted too clear-sighted. They don’t like being seen through: as for me I’m straight I don’t join their act I tear masks off. They don’t forgive me for that. A mother jealous of her daughter so now I’ve seen everything. She flung me at Albert’s head to get rid of me for other reasons too no I don’t want to believe it. What a dirty trick to have urged me into that marriage me so vital alive a burning flame and him stuffy middle-class coldhearted prick like limp macaroni. I would have known the kind of man to suit Sylvie. I had her under control yes I was firm but I was always affectionate always ready to talk I wanted to be a friend to her and I would have kissed my mother’s hands if she had behaved like that to me. But what a thankless heart. She’s dead and so all right what of it? The dead are not saints. She wouldn’t cooperate she never confided in me at all. There was someone in her life a boy or maybe a girl who can tell this generation is so twisted. But there wasn’t a precaution she didn’t take. Not a single letter in her drawers and the last two years not a single page of diary: if she went on keeping one she hid it terribly well even after her death I didn’t find anything. Blind with fury just because I was doing my duty as a mother. Me the selfish one when she ran away like that it would have been in my interest to have left her with her father. Without her I still had a chance of making a new life for myself. It was for her own good that I was having none of it. Christine with her three great lumps of children it would have suited her down to the ground to have had a big fifteen-year-old girl she could have given all the chores to poor lamb she had no notion the hysterics she put on for the benefit of the police.… Yes the police. Was I supposed to put on kid gloves? What are the police there for? Stray cats? Albert offering me money to give up Sylvie! Always this money how groveling men are they think everything can be bought anyhow I didn’t give a damn about his money it was peanuts compared with what Tristan allows me. And even if I had been broke I’d never have sold my daughter. “Why don’t you let her go, that chick only brings you headaches” Dédé said to me. She doesn’t understand a mother’s feelings she never thinks of anything but her own pleasure. But one must not always be at the receiving end one must also know how to give. I had a great deal to give Sylvie I should have made her into a fine girl: and I asked nothing from her for myself. I was completely devoted. Such ingratitude! It was perfectly natural I should ask that teacher’s help. According to her diary Sylvie worshiped her and I thought she’d hold her bloody tongue the lousy half-baked intellectual. No doubt there was much more between them than I imagined I’ve always been so clean-minded I never see any harm these alleged brain workers are all bull dykes. Sylvie’s sniveling and fuss after it and my mother who told me on the phone I had no right to intermeddle with my daughter’s friendships. That was the very word she used intermeddle. “Oh as far as that was concerned you never intermeddled. And don’t you begin now if you please.” Straight just like that. And I hung up. My own mother it’s utterly unnatural. In the end Sylvie would have realized. That was one of the things that really shattered me at the cemetery. I said to myself “A little later she would have said I was in the right.” The ghastliness of remembering the blue sky all those flowers Albert crying in front of everyone Christ you exercise some self-control. I controlled myself yet I knew very well I’d never recover from the blow. It was me they were burying. I have been buried. They’ve all got together to cover me over deep. Even on this night not a sign of life. They know very well that nights when there are celebrations everybody laughing gorging stuffing one another the lonely ones the bereaved kill themselves just like that. It would suit them beautifully if I were to vanish they hide me in a hole but it doesn’t work I’m a burr in their pants. I don’t intend to oblige them, thank you very much indeed. I want to live I want to come to life again. Tristan will come back to me I’ll be done right by I’ll get out of this filthy hole. If I talked to him now I should feel better maybe I’d be able to sleep. He must be at home he’s an early bedder, he saves himself up. Be calm friendly don’t get his back up otherwise my night is shot to hell.

  He doesn’t answer. Either he’s not there or he doesn’t want to answer. He’s jammed the bell he doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say. They sit in judgment upon me find me guilty not one of them ever listens to me. I never punished Sylvie without listening to what she had to say first it was she who clammed up who wouldn’t talk. Only yesterday he wouldn’t let me say a quarter of what I had to say and I could hear him dozing at the other end of the line. It’s disheartening. I reason I explain I prove: patiently step by step I force them to the truth I think they’re following me and then I ask “What have I just said?” They don’t know they stuff themselves with mental earplugs and if a remark happens to get through their answer is just so much balls.
I start over again I pile up fresh arguments: same result. Albert is a champion at that game but Tristan is not so bad either. “You ought to take me away with Francis for the holidays.” He doesn’t answer he talks of something else. Children have to listen but they manage they forget. “What have I said, Sylvie?” “You said when one is messy in small things one is messy in big ones and I must tidy my room before I go out.” And then the next day she did not tidy it. When I force Tristan to listen to me and he can’t find anything to reply—a boy needs his mother a mother can’t do without her child it’s so obvious that even the crookedest mind can’t deny it—he goes to the door flies down the stairs four at a time while I shout down the well and cut myself off short in case the neighbors think I’m cracked: how cowardly it is he knows I loathe scenes particularly as I’ve an odd sort of a reputation in this house of course I have they behave so weirdly—unnaturally—that sometimes I do the same. Oh what the hell I used to behave so well it gave me a pain in the ass Tristan’s casualness his big laugh his loud voice I should have liked to see him drop down dead when he used to horse around in public with Sylvie.

  Wind! It’s suddenly started to blow like fury how I should like an enormous disaster that would sweep everything away and me with it a typhoon a cyclone it would be restful to die if there were no one left to think about me: give up my body my poor little life to them no! But for everybody to plunge into nothingness that would be fine: I’m tired of fighting them even when I’m alone they harry me it’s exhausting I wish it would all come to an end! Alas! I shan’t have my typhoon I never have anything I want. It’s only a little very ordinary wind it’ll have torn off a few tiles a few chimney pots everything is mean and piddling in this world nature’s as bad as men. I’m the only one that has splendid dreams and it would have been better to choke them right away everything disappoints me always.