Four Novels

by Marguerite Duras

  “You don’t mind playing it once more,” his mother said laughingly, “just once more.”

  The child turned to her, ignoring his teacher.

  “I don’t like scales.”

  Mademoiselle Giraud watched both of them, first one then the other, not listening to what they were saying, too discouraged even to be indignant.

  “I’m waiting.”

  The child turned back to the piano, but swung as far away as he could from the lady.

  “Darling,” his mother said, “just once more.”

  Her words made him blink. And yet he still hesitated.

  “No scales then.”

  “Yes,” she said, “you must play the scales.”

  He still hesitated; then, just as they were about to give up, he made up his mind and began to play. But Mademoiselle Giraud was too disturbed and frustrated to be placated.

  “You know, Madame Desbaresdes, I don’t know whether I can go on giving him lessons.”

  The G major scale was again perfect, perhaps faster than the time before, but only a trifle.

  “I admit he’s not really trying,” his mother said.

  When he had finished the scale the child, completely unperturbed by the passage of time, raised himself on the piano stool and tried to see what was going on below on the docks, but it was impossible.

  “I’ll explain to him that he’ll have to apply himself,” his mother said with false penitence.

  Mademoiselle Giraud looked upset and said pompously:

  “You shouldn’t explain anything to him. It’s not up to him to decide whether or not he’s going to take piano lessons, Madame Desbaresdes. That’s what is called education.”

  She struck the piano. The child gave up trying to see out the window.

  “And now your sonatina. In four-four time.”

  The child played it as he had played the scales. He knew it perfectly. And although his heart was not in it, he played it musically, there was no denying.

  “There’s no getting around it,” Mademoiselle Giraud went on above the music, “there are some children you have to be strict with. Or else they’ll drive you to distraction.”

  “I’ll try,” Anne Desbaresdes said.

  She listened to the sonatina. It came from the depths of the ages, borne to her by her son. Often, as she listened to it, she felt she was on the verge of fainting.

  “The trouble is, don’t you see, he thinks he can decide for himself he doesn’t like to study the piano. But I know perfectly well I’m wasting my breath saying that to you, Madame Desbaresdes.”

  “I’ll try.”

  The sonatina still resounded, borne like a feather by this young barbarian, whether he liked it or not, and showered again on his mother, sentencing her anew to the damnation of her love. The gates of hell banged shut.

  “Begin again, and this time play it a little more slowly.”

  The child did as she said, playing more slowly and subtly. Music flowed from his fingers as if, in spite of himself, it seemed to make up its mind, and artfully crept out into the world once again, overwhelming and engulfing the unknown heart. Down below, on the docks, they listened to it.

  “He’s been working on it for a month,” the patronne said. “It’s a pretty piece.”

  A first group of men was heading towards the café.

  “Yes, at least a month,” she added. “I know it by heart.”

  Chauvin, at the end of the bar, was still the only customer. He looked at the time, stretched and hummed the sonatina in time to the child’s playing. The patronne kept an eye on him as she arranged the glasses under the counter.

  “You’re young,” she said.

  She estimated how long it would take the first group of men to reach the café. She spoke quickly, but her words were well-meaning.

  “Sometimes, you know, when the weather’s good, I seem to remember that she goes the long way around, by the second dock. She doesn’t always come this way.”

  “No,” the man laughed.

  The group of men passed the door.

  “One, two, three, four,” Mademoiselle Giraud counted, “that’s the way.”

  Beneath the child’s hands the sonatina flowed on, although he was unconscious of it—it built and rebuilt, borne by his indifferent clumsiness to the limits of its power. And as the music built, the light visibly declined. A huge peninsula of flaming clouds rose on the horizon, its frail and fleeting splendor compelling other thoughts. In ten minutes all the color of day would have vanished. For the third time the child finished his task. The sounds of the sea, mingled with the voices of the approaching men, rose to the room.

  “By heart,” said Mademoiselle Giraud. “Next time I want you to know it by heart, do you understand?”

  “All right. By heart.”

  “I promise you he will,” his mother said.

  “Because it can’t go on like this. He’s making fun of me. It’s outrageous.” “I promise.”

  Mademoiselle Giraud reflected, not listening.

  “We might try having someone else come with him to his lessons,” she said. “We could see if it did any good.”

  “No,” the child shouted.

  “I don’t think I could bear that,” Anne Desbaresdes said.

  “And yet I’m afraid that’s what it will have to come to,” said Mademoiselle Giraud.

  When the door was closed, the child stopped on the staircase.

  “You saw how awful she was.”

  “Do you do it deliberately?”

  The child gazed at the cluster of cranes, now motionless in the sky. The lights in the suburbs were coming on.

  “I don’t know,” the child said.

  “I love you so much.”

  The child began slowly descending the stairs.

  “I don’t want to take any more piano lessons.”

  “I never could learn the scales,” Anne Desbaresdes said, “but how else can you learn?”

  Six

  ANNE DESBARESDES DID NOT go in, but paused at the door of the café. Chauvin came over to her. When he reached her she turned towards the Boulevard da la Mer.

  “There are so many people here now,” she said softly. “These piano lessons finish so late.”

  “I heard the lesson,” Chauvin said.

  The child let go of her hand and fled to the sidewalk, wanting to run, as he ran every Friday evening at that time. Chauvin raised his head towards the dark blue sky, which was still faintly lighted, and moved closer to her. She did not move back.

  “It’ll soon be summer,” he said. “Come on.”

  “But here you can hardly tell the difference.”

  “Sometimes you can. If you know how. Like tonight.”

  The child jumped over the rope barriers, singing the Diabelli sonatina. Anne Desbaresdes followed Chauvin. The café was full. The men dutifully drank their wine as soon as it was served, and hurried home. Others, arriving from more distant factories, replaced them at the bar.

  When she entered Anne Desbaresdes lost her nerve and drew back near the door. Chauvin turned and gave her an encouraging smile. She went to the end of the bar, which was fairly secluded, and, like the men, downed her glass of wine quickly. The glass in her hand was still shaking.

  “It’s been seven days now,” Chauvin said.

  “Seven nights,” Anne said casually. “How wonderful wine is.”

  They left the bar, and he took her to the back of the room and had her sit down at the place he had picked out for her. The men at the bar still looked at this woman but distantly, and were still surprised. The room was quiet.

  “So you heard the lesson? And all those scales she made him play?”

  “It was early. I was the only customer. The windows overlooking the docks must have been open. I heard everything, even the scales.”

  She smiled gratefully at him, and drank some more. Her hands, holding the glass, were almost calm now.

  “I had somehow got the idea that he had to learn
music, you know. He’s been studying for two years.”

  “Sure, I understand. So, the grand piano, to the left as you go into the room?”

  “Yes.” Anne Desbaresdes clenched her fists and struggled to maintain her composure. “But he’s still so little, such a little child, you have no idea. When I think about it, I wonder whether I’m not wrong.”

  Chauvin laughed. They were still the only ones seated at the back of the room. There were fewer customers at the bar now.

  “Do you know that he knows his scales perfectly?”

  Anne Desbaresdes laughed, this time wholeheartedly.

  “Yes, he knows them. Even his teacher had to admit that, you see . . . sometimes I get strange ideas . . . They make me laugh to think of them now.”

  As her laughter began to subside Chauvin spoke to her in a different way.

  “You were leaning on this grand piano. Your breasts were naked under your dress, and between them there was that magnolia flower.”

  Anne Desbaresdes listened to his story with rapt attention.

  “Yes.”

  “When you lean forward this flower brushes against the outline of your breasts. You’d pinned it carelessly, too high up. It’s a huge flower, too big for you, you picked it at random. Its petals are too hard, it has already reached full bloom the night before.”

  “I’m looking outside?”

  “Have a little more wine. The child is playing in the garden. Yes, you’re looking outside.”

  Anne Desbaresdes did as she was asked, and drank some more wine, trying to remember, then returned from the depths of her surprise.

  “I can’t remember having picked that flower. Or having worn it.”

  “I only glanced at you, but long enough to see the flower too.”

  She concentrated on holding the glass very tightly, and her voice and gestures seemed slow and wooden.

  “I never really knew how much I liked wine.”

  “Now, talk to me.”

  “Oh, let me alone,” Anne Desbaresdes begged.

  “I can’t, we probably have so little time.”

  Twilight was so far advanced that only the café ceiling reflected the last pale light of day. The bar was brightly lighted, the room in shadow. The child came running up, not surprised at how late it was, and announced:

  “The other little boy’s arrived.”

  In the moment following his departure, Chauvin’s hands moved closer to hers. All four lay flat on the table.

  “As I told you, sometimes I have trouble sleeping. I go into his room and stand there looking at him.”

  “And other times?”

  “And other times it’s summer, and there are people strolling along the boulevard. Especially on Saturday evening, no doubt because people don’t know what to do with themselves in this town.”

  “No doubt,” Chauvin said. “Especially the men. You often watch them from that hallway, or from your garden, or from your room.”

  Anne Desbaresdes leaned forward and finally said to him:

  “Yes, I think I often must have watched them, either from the hallway or from my room, on nights when I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

  Chauvin murmured something to her. Her expression slowly dissolved at the insult, and softened.

  “Go on.”

  “Apart from these walks, the day has a fixed routine. I can’t go on.”

  “There’s very little time left. Go on.”

  “There’s the endless round of meals. And the evenings. One day I got the idea of these piano lessons.”

  They finished their wine. Chauvin ordered another. There were even fewer men at the bar now. Anne Desbaresdes drank again as if she were terribly thirsty.

  “It’s already seven o’clock,” the patronne warned.

  They didn’t hear her. It was dark out. Four men, obviously there to kill time, came to the back room. The radio was announcing the weather for the following day.

  “I was saying that I had the idea of these piano lessons for my darling—at the other end of town—and now I can’t do without them. It’s seven o’clock, you know.”

  “You’re going to arrive home later than usual, maybe too late, you can’t avoid it. You’d better resign yourself to the idea.”

  “How can you avoid a fixed routine? I could tell you that I’m already late for dinner, counting the time it will take me to walk home. And besides, I forgot that I’m supposed to be home for a party tonight.”

  “You know that there’s no way you can avoid arriving home late. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know it.”

  He waited. She spoke to him in a quiet, offhand manner.

  “I could tell you that I told my child about all those women who lived behind that beech tree, and are dead now, and he wanted to know if he could see them, the darling. See, I’ve just told you all I can tell you.”

  “As soon as you’d told him about the women you were sorry you had, and you told him about the vacation he’s going to spend this year—a few days from now—at another seashore?”

  “I promised him a vacation at the seashore, somewhere where it’s hot. In two weeks time. He was terribly upset about the death of those women.”

  Anne Desbaresdes drank some more wine, and found it strong. She smiled, but her eyes were glassy.

  “It’s getting late. And you’re making yourself later and later,” Chauvin said.

  “When being late becomes as serious a matter as it is now for me,” Anne Desbaresdes said, “I think that a little while longer isn’t going to make it any more serious.”

  There was only one customer left at the bar. The four others in the room were talking intermittently. A couple came in. The patronne served them, and resumed knitting her red sweater, which she had put aside as long as the bar was crowded. She turned down the radio. The tide was running high that night, breaking loudly against the docks, rising above the songs.

  “Once he had realized how much she wanted him to do it, I’d like you to tell me why he didn’t do it, say, a little later or . . .a little sooner.”

  “Really, I know very little about it. But I think that he couldn’t make up his mind, couldn’t decide whether he wanted her alive or dead. He must have decided very late in the game that he preferred her dead. But that’s all pure conjecture.”

  Anne Desbaresdes was lost in thought, her pale face lowered hypocritically.

  “She hoped very much that he would do it.”

  “It seems to me that he must have hoped so just as much as she did. I don’t know really.”

  “As much as she did?”

  “Yes. Don’t talk any more.”

  The four men left. The couple was still sitting there in silence. The woman yawned. Chauvin ordered another bottle of wine.

  “Would it be impossible if we didn’t drink so much?”

  “I don’t think it would be possible,” Anne Desbaresdes murmured.

  She gulped down her glass of wine. He let her go on killing herself. Night had completely occupied the town. The lampposts along the docks were lighted. The child was still playing. The last trace of pink had faded from the sky.

  “Before I leave,” Anne Desbaresdes begged, “if you could tell me I’d like to know a little more. Even if you’re not very sure of your facts.”

  Chauvin went on, in a flat, expressionless voice that she had not heard from him before.

  “They lived in an isolated house, I think it was by the sea. It was hot. Before they went there they didn’t realize how quickly things would evolve, that after a few days he would keep having to throw her out. It wasn’t long before he was forced to drive her away, away from him, from the house. Over and over again.”

  “It wasn’t worth the trouble.”

  “It must have been difficult to keep from having such thoughts, you get into the habit, like you get into the habit of living. But it’s only a habit.”

  “And she left?”

  “She left when and how he
wanted her to, although she wanted to stay.”

  Anne Desbaresdes stared at that unknown man without recognizing him, like a trapped animal.

  “Please,” she begged.

  “Then the time came when he sometimes looked at her and no longer saw her as he had seen her before. She ceased to be beautiful or ugly, young or old, similar to anyone else, even to herself. He was afraid. It was the last vacation. Winter came. You’re going back by the Boulevard de la Mer. It will be the eighth night.”

  The child came in and snuggled for a moment against his mother. He was still humming the Diabelli sonatina. She stroked his hair, which was very close to her face. The man avoided looking at them. Then the child left.

  “So the house was isolated,” Anne Desbaresdes said slowly. “It was hot, you said. When he told her to leave she always obeyed. She slept under the trees, or in the fields, like . . .”

  “Yes,” Chauvin said.

  “When he called her she came back. And when he told her to go, she left. To obey him like that was her way of hoping. And even when she reached the threshold she waited for him to tell her to come in.”

  “Yes.”

  In a daze, Anne Desbaresdes brought her face close to Chauvin’s, but he moved back out of reach.

  “And it was there, in that house, that she learned what you said she was, perhaps even . . .”

  “Yes, a bitch,” Chauvin interrupted her again.

  Now it was her turn to draw back. He filled her glass and offered it to her.

  “I was lying,” he said.

  She arranged her hair, which was completely disheveled, and wearily trying to restrain her compassion, got hold of herself.

  “No,” she said.

  Chauvin’s face looked inhumanly harsh under the neon light, but she could not take her eyes off him. Again the child ran in from the sidewalk.

  “It’s dark out now,” he announced.

  He looked out the door and yawned, then turned back to her and stood beside her, humming.

  “See how late it is. Quckly, tell me the rest.”

  “Then the time came when he thought he could no longer touch her , except to . . .”