Marie
Page 7
‘Please, please leave me!’ She’d have liked to shout this in all the space around her. How she longed to have neither past nor future! And yet – on the one hand there were these still burning ashes and on the other there was this new thing, this thing that did not yet have a name. Like a warm beast that moved inside her, making its nest.
ONE EVENING IN THE STUDY, sorting out some papers she wanted to take with her, she came across an old letter from herself to Claudine. She remembered having written it during a short holiday she’d spent away from her family with some friends of her father’s.
Describing her journey to the provinces she wrote: ‘I have a sudden desire for solitude. I take precautions to be alone in my compartment: I shut the door to the corridor, I pull the curtains. People try to open it, they go on trying, then I hear them say: “Let’s give up.” Oh, the joy of being alone in this train that is three-quarters full! Now, for me, life is somewhere else, at the end of this railway journey …’
She told Claudine about the days passed so far away, about her delight in discovering a town that was unknown to her: ‘It is a town that is beautiful in its huge size, beautiful for its stillness, its quiet streets, its big regular houses, its well-placed lights; in the colour of the night all is absence, absence of expectation even. A fixed calm arises from this town that I have ended up loving dearly, loving too much even, for its still, dangerous beauty.’
Such a young letter – and yet Marie liked it because it brought back her whole adolescence: her need for solitude, for an intense life, and that special fear of loving too much. She liked its youthful, graceful awkwardness of expression. And its description of a provincial town conjured up the image of another … All these things superimposed themselves on one another in her heart, as if they were related.
She re-read those short verbless sentences, so common among the two sisters when they wrote to each other; curtailed propositions, as if thrown in by chance, but which were always subtle allusions to everything that Marie and Claudine had said, and which carried a heavy weight of meaning: ‘The splendour of life: failure is not permitted. Life is reality, it does not allow for the imagination. I think of a book I love which ends with the phrase, “Beware of the flight of steps.”’
This book was one that she and Claudine had often discussed, and the sentence had haunted Marie’s adolescence. What had she meant to convey to Claudine when she quoted it that day? The letter was not finished …
She anxiously scrutinised the hasty writing that had produced the last sentence; it wasn’t yet the writing of a woman. These days she understood all too well the deep wound you can inflict on yourself if you fall on the last step; but she also knew that she had now rejected the world of myth. Whatever remained from the past would have to be respected as reality. And facing her lay the delicious dangers of fatality, into which she had to advance with an open heart. You had to become, not simply to be.
Marie stayed like this, reflecting, for a long time. She was still holding in her hands the pages she had just read, as she leaned her beautiful thirty-year-old face on a letter by a seventeen year old. There was a fine, deep serenity inside her that night, as an image from the past was superseded and given new meaning by the reality of the present.
It seemed to Marie, immobile at the top of the steps, that she was holding the lamp up high for herself so that she could safely make her descent.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘SHALL WE TAKE THE LITTLE DESK?’
‘The less furniture the better, you know that. But then …’
‘It’s so pretty!’
‘OK, let’s take it. The tenants might damage it.’
Jean and Marie hadn’t given up their apartment. The current state of Jean’s finances had meant that they were forced to take the most economical option: at Maubeuge, they would occupy a floor of his parents’ house, and since this meant they wouldn’t need much furniture, they would sublet the Paris apartment.
Marie opened the drawers of the desk and emptied them, then took hold of the desk by the edge of a shelf and carried it, with her strong arms, into another room, depositing it among baskets full of clothes and kitchen equipment. Drawing breath, she looked around her at the filled cases, ready to be taken away.
Leaving Paris to go and live in Maubeuge, like a prisoner. She saw dark days to come, days that would stifle her … She left the room and came back with a pile of books. She placed them in a trunk which was only half full, covering them with a towel, and then stopped again. She must make plans to escape from Maubeuge. Yes, the idea would be to bunch the lessons: two hours at a time for each student every two weeks; parents would accept that. Thursdays would be best: she could have one pupil in the morning and two in the afternoon, even three; she must pack in as many as possible.
She could leave Maubeuge by the first train in the morning and return in the evening. Even allowing for the travel costs, there would be quite a bit left over; everyone would agree. And she could write articles for the magazine: at last Denis would serve some sort of function, why not? And as for the money she would earn, she’d ask Jean if she could keep some small part of it for herself. This way, every month, or every other month, she could stay in Paris a little longer than the time strictly necessary for the lessons, and no one would have any claims on her. For one day, or maybe two, she would be alone, with no witness other than herself.
And then – but that was already the future; she ought to stop there, without imagining anything. The future would look after itself, day by day. She would struggle, she knew that: tomorrow might be fine, but for now, there was today to cope with. The present meant finishing this move and following Jean to Maubeuge and being by his side, because she loved him with such a profound tenderness. Tomorrow would be fine but the present mattered, too. Packing the trunks, leaving Paris, spending dark days in Maubeuge … Courage! Move on!
Marie was on her knees in front of the wicker trunk; after checking one more time that the books had been properly wedged in, she lifted the lid and secured it with an iron bar. She stood up, resting her hands on the trunk, in a brisk movement that made the wicker creak.
She found Jean sorting the papers in the desk. Observing that she was looking around her to see whether any important object was being overlooked, he pointed towards a corner of the room. ‘Are we taking that?’
‘Certainly we are! We’ll need it!’
Laughing, she picked up the big chess set with its shiny wooden figures and held them in front of her. Jean stopped her halfway and made a face: ‘We’re going to be bored to death, aren’t we?’
Marie leaned over to him and gave him a big, broad kiss on the cheek. ‘Of course not – you and I can never be bored.’
THEY TOOK AN EVENING TRAIN, a fast one: Paris was ever further away. You could hardly see anything through the windows: from time to time, a few lights would delineate the invisible landscape. The distance increased instead of diminishing; Marie could feel the kilometres mounting up. Everything that was behind her seemed so small.
She looked at the man sitting opposite her. She looked at his strong jaw, his mop of hair. His head was in a newspaper; he was reading with one eyebrow raised, and there were lines on his forehead. He was her husband; and she expected neither joy nor sorrow from her love for him. But she loved him with a friendship in which the flesh was implicated, too: she desired for his happiness in a spiritual as well as a physical sense. He was her dearly beloved brother. He was a friend whose face, arms, legs, veins, blood, and everything that made him live, were so precious to her that they constituted a potential source of sorrow. Her husband: the phrase might also have meant intoxication, desire, love; and that would have been infinitely beautiful. Or again, it might have implied indifference, which would have been easier: this was neither one thing nor the other. It was just something else, for better or for worse – this was how it was. And the number of kilometres continued to increase …
‘You’re not cold, Jean?’
‘I’m fine, too.’
He buried himself in the paper again.
No, she wasn’t cold. Her forehead burned and neither her hands nor her shoulders nor her legs were cold. But her heart, the whole of her heart, was frozen stiff. It felt like a hard, painful block of ice.
She leaned her head on the wall of the compartment and closed her eyes. Put your hands on my heart, my beloved. Don’t say that, you mustn’t say that. Everything is so far away. Iron curtain, silence, farewells without a future. But what about that warm beast stirring inside her, who claims her name? Don’t say that. It cannot move. The train carries on, while people and places disappear somewhere over there. What does it matter? ‘Life is elsewhere, at the end of the journey.’ Let the beast lie low, induced into a state of lethargy, surrounded by cold. Calm, empty, heart of ice. But wait, that is not my heart! That heart isn’t mine! Don’t speak. Everything is so far away. And the distance is diminishing; Maubeuge is getting nearer. So be it. But where, then, is all the world’s tenderness?
A fine rain streaked noiselessly against the windows of the compartment. Jean raised his head and said: ‘It’s started. When I’m going away from Paris, it always begins to rain at this point in the journey – I told you!’
Marie looked out: the wet windows hid only a night without light. She closed her eyes again.
It is raining on Saint-Quentin, on Maubeuge, on Feignies. A sad, soft rain, somewhat harsher, that extends over the whole of Belgium as far as the end of the Ardennes, where the earth is rough and red and where the rainclouds are so low that they brush against the branches of black spruce trees, like fog. If only the train would go right past Maubeuge, and carry straight on … Do hearts find peace in the wet, sad north, with its faded colours, its vast, desolate, marshy solitude?
Perhaps it is raining still, further away, on the wide river where deserted cliffs carry the Wagnerian names of dead goddesses. Perhaps, in the presence of such heart-rending mournfulness, my heart might resign itself to death.
‘WAKE UP, MARIE, we’re at Maubeuge! You’ve slept practically the whole time. You really overtired yourself, what with all the packing and the suitcases.’
‘It was nothing, Jean, really.’
‘But it is. While we’re here you’re going to rest properly, I mean it.’
Marie takes the luggage down from the rack and buttons up her coat. Jean wipes the window, leans his forehead against it and, cupping his hands, looks out for landmarks: ‘Still a few minutes to go.’
She sits down again and lets her hands fall open on to her knees; she’s tired, and her head is empty. She’s waiting.
ON THE PLATFORM Jean looked around the throng of people and said excitedly: ‘There’s Papa!’
Marie kissed his father, let him take a suitcase, let him take an arm. As they pass in front of the station café, she thinks how she would love to go in, order a coffee, smoke a cigarette. If anyone knew what she was thinking, it would seem ridiculous.
‘It’s not far,’ Jean’s father said. ‘We can walk.’
She lagged a little behind them. He went on: ‘Come on now, children! You’re expected at home.’ And he pushed her forward. Jean and his father were talking, giving each other news about the running of the factory. It was late and they were walking through a town which was completely deserted at night. At the corner of a street she saw a little café with a brightly lit front; again she felt a strange temptation to go in, to have a cigarette and a cup of coffee. At other tables, unknown men would be talking – fragments of sentences that she would pick up and reconstruct, so that she could guess at their lives.
The factory loomed up out of the night. Their three silhouettes, dark and silent, moved past the railings, then round a tall heap of scrap iron or coke – it was hard to tell which in the dark. They walked by the side of a long, windowless wall, then came to the house, overshadowed by the ungainly outline of the factory.
Jean’s mother, a small, round woman, was already in the corridor to greet them. She rushed here and there, kissing them several times, making no secret of her pleasure at seeing them. When she had ushered them in and taken their coats, she looked at Marie and said: ‘I always want to say how much you’ve grown!’
Marie let herself be looked at, let herself be kissed. There was a strange, musty smell in that house; she wondered whether it came from the house itself or whether it was the greasy smell of the machines that penetrated as far as this. The little woman was talking to her again: ‘And then there’s your meals – we can sort that out easily – there’s no point in you working separately in your apartment – we can make a big soup, for everybody, down here. Do you prefer to have it in the evening, or at midday?’
Marie turned away with a wild smile, letting the question hang in the air. From morning till night, she thought, these hands were going to want to help her, these eyes were going to follow her movements, this mouth was going to speak to her; this heart was going to demand that they did the housework together. She loathed this woman, a sudden witness to her everyday life.
Jean looked at her, saw her face tense up and thought to himself: God, she’s difficult.
But seeing the look on Jean’s face and the astonishment of the little grey woman who stood there, expecting her to be delighted by what she had just said, Marie turned back and managed to summon up a sweeter smile: ‘How kind you are, Mama, you’ve made us a hot meal – and at this hour!’
BEFORE EATING Jean and Marie went upstairs to leave their suitcases on the first floor, in the rooms that they were to occupy. Their bedroom was scarcely appealing: old and grim. Marie looked round, wondering what she could do to alter it. Jean was sitting at the edge of the bed – dismayed by the ambience, suddenly fed up with the whole situation, he was reduced to silence.
Marie went up to him and said: ‘Come on, don’t be depressed. It’s only a period in our lives, one that will pass. It’ll just be for a few months. We’ll get by. And if it goes on, we can rent an apartment, if you don’t like it here. Besides, I can transform this place. You’ll see, in a few days it’ll be much nicer.’
Looking at her, Jean already felt less unhappy. She took him by the wrists and forced him down on to the bed. ‘Now, young man, I am going to make you laugh. I’m going to give you some Swedish gymnastics …’
She pulled his arms, upwards, downwards, from both sides, then brought them back to his chest. Releasing him, she slipped her hand under his shirt, along the sides of his body. She tickled him, then took his hands and started the exercise again: ‘One, two … one, two …’
They ran out of breath and Jean laughed like a child. She climbed on the bed next to him, showering him with a whole raft of quick little kisses – on his chin, his cheeks, his forehead. She ruffled his hair with both hands, laughing to see him in this state. She let her head fall back on his broad shoulders. Her left hand stayed in his hair; against her right hand, she felt his heart beat regularly. Suddenly she straightened up, raised her voice: ‘And what about your mama’s hot dinner?’
They got up and, seeing Jean’s untidy hair in the mirror, laughed again.
‘Comb your hair quickly,’ she said, ‘and go down. I’ll follow you soon.’
When he’d shut the door behind him, she sat down on the bed, covered her face with her hands and wept. In a tearful, halting voice, she whispered to herself, behind her hands: ‘It’s not right to cry like this; not right.’ Fearing that Jean would come back up to find her, she groped her way to the door and turned the key. She stood there with her face buried in her arms, which were crossed against the door. Now that she was alone, she had no option but to give in to the pressure of her grief.
Still panting, she made her way to the washbasin, did her hair, powdered her nose, composed her face. Opening the door she gave out a deep sigh, as though to liberate herself tearlessly from a final sob.
On the floor below, they were wa
iting for her before serving the late meal. When she sat down to eat, Jean felt he could draw reassurance from the calm, almost joyful expression on her face.
THE NEXT DAY a van turned up, bringing the writing desk, several cases and a few more bits of furniture. Marie helped unload and carry them into the house, her hands blue with cold. She put the furniture in place and sorted the clothes, the pots and pans, the books. She spent the day doing this, and in the days that followed she continued to sort, sweep, hammer nails and attach pictures to walls. Jean was quite satisfied with the apartment now, seeing it inhabited by objects that he knew well. Not so Marie: the place may have been transformed, but deep inside her nothing had changed at all.
ONE MORNING at about six o’clock Jean and Marie were awoken by the telephone: a long, vibrant, urgent ringing.
‘Must be long-distance,’ Jean said, getting out of bed.
The phrase shocked Marie rigid. She got up, wanting to run to the phone, but Jean stopped her: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go. If it’s for Papa, I’ll shout up, and you can go and get him.’
She had no reason to feel so disturbed; she knew that it was impossible for it to be anything to do with that. But the feeling was stronger than she, and her heart beat violently. She waited impatiently. When the ringing stopped, she could hear Jean’s voice, calm and neutral, saying: ‘Yes, I can hear you … Yes, it’s me. What’s the matter?’ A pause, then, incredulously: ‘Are you sure she’s not just asleep?’ More concerned now, and in a muffled voice: ‘Yes, yes, all right, there’s no doubt about it … yes. What’s she taken? You don’t know … Food poisoning? Seems pretty unlikely to me, old chap.’ The voice making an effort to sound stronger now: ‘Let’s hope she’ll be all right … Yes, of course … Phone us again if there is the slightest change in her condition. Don’t tell her mother yet. No, nor her father, let Marie decide about that.’