She came back. He could not help looking at her with a hint of derision at the thought of her lack of response. They stood at the window again for a while. He would always remember that stormy sky. He said to her:
'I suppose you would think me a swine if I were to leave you now.'
'I don't believe I could ever think that of you.'
His esteem for her came flooding back, heart-rendingly.
'You once told me you were afraid of the future. Now it's I who am afraid.'
'And I have complete confidence.'
His pity for her came flooding back, heart-rendingly.
He took her home in a taxi, incapable of banishing his forebodings, incapable of saying a word to her. Every time she had felt something crack between them, she made some affectionate gesture towards him: this time, she had taken his arm. He would have liked to make her understand that this gesture made him gloomier still. 'She does it like a dog putting out its paw.' On the threshold of her house he said, looking up at the sky:
'My heart, too, is full of clouds.'
'And mine is full of stars!'
These words shattered him.
Costals went home and took a sleeping-draught. [What Mme Dandillot, little versed in Latin, daringly called a dormifuge instead of a somnifère (Author's note).]
O healing waters of oblivion! As he lay in bed, he summed up his dilemma for the hundredth time: 'I love this girl up to a certain point, no further, as I've had the honesty to say to her in writing. Why "no further"? Let's say it's because, socially and intellectually, she is too remote from me. Let's say it's because, sexually, she is pretty well rock-bottom. Or rather, don't let's "say" anything. I don't love her more because that's how it is. Obviously, such a marriage has no raison d'être. And yet I love her enough to suffer from her suffering, in particular the suffering that a break would cause her now that I have allowed things to go so far. But the suffering she would undergo from a rupture at this stage would be as nothing compared to what she would go on suffering for months or even years if we married. So that this immediate suffering must not be a bar to breaking it off now. No, the only serious objection to a rupture - who would believe it? - is this: when all is said and done, there is still a chance, a chance in a hundred but a definite chance, that the two of us may find happiness in this marriage. So the sole question at present is this: should one gamble on this minimal chance, or should one refuse to gamble on it, at the risk of regretting it later on in one's moments of depression? But am I the sort of man who ever has moments of depression? Etc.'
He woke up at four and heard the rain trickling down his windows: those famous storm-clouds had burst. Summer rain, always so strange.... Nocturnal summer rain, full of portents, according to the Ancients. Nocturnal rain in July, on the night when, at eighteen, he had had his first woman. Nocturnal rain in June, in the war-time forest, on the eve of his being wounded. Nocturnal rain in August, in Naples, the night before he was stabbed. Nocturnal rain in September, after all hope for Brunet had been given up (cerebro-spinal meningitis) but at dawn the fever had abated. The strong man, the lucid man, on his tormented couch, abandons himself to higher powers. From then on he knows that the coming day will be marked.
He fell asleep again, and had a nightmare such as he had never had before. A body was weighing him down, horribly, a viscous mass covered him, stuck to him, enveloped him, and he struggled to throw it off. A small child who had fallen asleep with a huge cat lying on its chest might have such a nightmare. Although asleep, Costals had the feeling that he was awake, that it was not a dream, and that therefore he must be going mad, or rather that he was possessed, diabolically possessed; and it was a new and terrible thing for him, who had never been possessed by anyone except himself (the most disturbing aspect of himself).
The anguish of his awakening was somewhat similar to an unforgettable awakening he had experienced at the age of eighteen. On that occasion, he had fallen asleep beside his mistress - his first mistress - an Italian girl of sixteen. He knew she wanted to kill him, having heard her express the intention of doing so one night in her sleep. As he emerged from unconsciousness, he felt something cold and hard pressing against the nape of his neck. He guessed that it was the barrel of a revolver. The girl's hands were resting, gentle and motionless, on his head and on his neck. His gradual return to consciousness had been terrifying. His own hands were under the sheet; he would not have time to get them out before she pressed the trigger. But perhaps she was asleep: he could not see her face, which was higher up the pillow than his. What was he to do? He thought for a while, impossible to say how long. Then he murmured several times: 'God bless you, Maria, God bless you' and quietly turned his head. She was sleeping, or pretending to be asleep. He took the revolver. They went on seeing each other for four or five months, but he searched her whenever she came into his flat.
His awakening now, after his night of 'possession', was accompanied, like that other one, by palpitations and a feeling of oppression that lasted for some time. There was no escaping the meaning of his dream. It was crystal clear. The weight that had been smothering him was Solange and the life they would lead together. The 'possession' was Solange, devouring his soul and then creeping into the place where his soul had been. He remembered Dante's lines about 'the dreams of morning, more truthful than those of night'. He remembered the rain, full of portents. He remembered the premonitory dream. And the animal in him shuddered. And fear, which had been prowling round inside him ever since he had been haunted by this marriage, now took complete possession of him, submerging all else - no longer a rational and justifiable fear but the obscure, mysterious fear that makes wild beasts cringe and brings heroes to their knees. And under the impact of this salutary funk, he at last took the decision which his reason and his will had been incapable of taking for the past six weeks. That very day, without seeing Solange again, he would leave France for several months.
'She won't hold it against me. When I asked her "If I were to leave you now, would you consider me a swine?" she said she would never think that of me.' That's what men are like: give them a weapon against you, and they'll use it there and then. No one would have dreamed of regarding Flaubert as a minor writer had he not openly confessed that he sweated blood over every sentence.
In the eyes of the world, Costals' flight must seem the height of boorishness and cowardice. And yet the gods applaud him. Through the path of irrational panic, Costals had regained his reason. His flight would deliver him from the sort of magic spell whose hold over him he had been able to gauge that night, and under which he might have foundered utterly if he had not reacted in time. It would give him a chance to pull himself together. It would put his feelings, as well as those of Solange, to the test of absence. And finally, it answered to that supreme law which men do not take sufficiently into account - to wit, that inestimable advantages can accrue from the mere fact that one has moved from one place to another [When someone is run down the doctors advise a 'change of air', even if (they admit it themselves when pressed a little) the air of the place they recommend is of no better quality than that in which the patient is now living. A shy man, no matter how much he tries to summon up his courage, cannot bring himself to accost an unknown woman he covets in the street. He walks away, makes a detour, lets her walk on for a bit, and then, the locale of their meeting having changed, he accosts her with ease. A bull refuses to respond to the matador's pass. The capes draw it a few yards further on, and there the matador can do what he likes with it. The same is true of a horse that refuses a jump, or a wild animal that refuses to obey its trainer, etc.] – that what was impossible becomes possible simply because one has moved from one place to another. Costals' flight, 'cowardly' and 'boorish' as it undoubtedly was, from a narrow point of view, was from a higher point of view the right thing to do, however incompatible it was with honour, worldly opinion, and everything else.
Costals booked a seat on the 8.45 to Genoa that evening. Why Genoa? Because of M
lle Carlotta Bevilacqua, of Genoa, a little Latin sister who could refuse him nothing: in no matter what sphere, our brilliant novelist was never at a loss for positions to fall back on. Then he wrote to Solange and her mother. He told them he was going to Lausanne; he would not tell them he was in Genoa until he was sure, from the tone of their replies, that there was no risk of their turning up. This was the only insincerity in the two letters, which otherwise expressed nothing that he did not genuinely feel at that moment; in fact, he could not get through them without tears. Later on, he was to wonder how the joy of escaping from that inferno had failed to dry up these tears; why, indeed, he had wept at all, since he did not really love Solange, and knew it. He had wept, then, and wept for some time, because of the pain he was causing to someone whom he loved only up to a point! He concluded that tears must come easily to him, a fact of which he was not unaware.
Usually, when his inner life was going through an interesting phase (and this was certainly one of them: one does not weep for a woman every day), he would describe it in his diary. But today he was ashamed of his emotional turmoil, and was reluctant to dwell upon it. In his entry for 7 September he wrote furiously: 'Suffering. The bristles of my clothes-brush have turned white overnight.' It was the only trace of that entire day that remained in his diary.
to Solange Dandillot
Paris
Pierre Costals
Paris
7 September 1927
Dear Solange,
During the war, one of my parents' maids whose husband had been home on leave, went to see him off on the train that was to take him back to the front. As the moment of parting drew near, before going through the ticket barrier, the man said: 'Wait here while I buy some cigarettes.' He slipped away, and joined the train by another gate, leaving his wife stranded there: he had fled from emotion. By the time the Armistice came, this man had won four citations for bravery in the trenches. Such is the courage of the male.
By the time you read this, I shall have left Paris, fleeing, in the same way, such useless and treacherous enfeeblements. This violent break was necessary to extricate me from the inferno of my uncertainties and my perpetual tergiversations.
I am not impervious to your fate. But if you suffer you are not alone in this. I shall say no more, for fear of showing weakness. Let us move on at once to the consolations.
You suffer now. It will be over in no time. If I had married you, you would have suffered long and deeply. Divorce would have been inevitable. Think of everything that would have preceded and accompanied it. God alone knows what I am capable of when I feel chained: like an old tom-cat, a friendly enough soul who will nevertheless scratch your face to shreds if he feels you are holding him forcibly in your arms. Be grateful to me for sparing you all that. It is my love for you that dictates this separation. [This is going a bit far (Author's note).]
Another consolation. Everything I have just said applies to me just as much as it applies to you. For six weeks I have suffered continuously. Great as were the joys I drew from you, the pangs I have drawn from myself because of you outweigh them: you love me, I love you, and my summer has been poisoned. I am putting an end to this suffering. You should be glad of it.
Another consolation. If you love my work, I want you to know that you have already done much for it. There is a corner of my work, as there is a corner of myself, where, whatever may happen later, you are lodged for the rest of my life. Nothing can alter that.
I want you to know that my affection and regard for you have gone on increasing ever since we met. I want you to realize that if, every time I saw you, I had not become more and more conscious of the extent to which you were worthy of this affection and regard, I should never have wavered in my hostility to the plan for us to marry; that it is because of this affection and regard that I have continually fluctuated; that it is because of them that I got to the point of awakening and nurturing your hopes; that it is because of them that I have now reached the point of appearing to behave badly towards you. And finally, you must forgive me because, whether culpably or not, I nevertheless did raise these hopes, and raised them only to shatter them.
I want you to know that my affection remains ready to play whatever part in your life you may wish. I am not abandoning you; I am simply breaking off in order to give myself a breathing-space. I am ready to give you everything you want of me, in whatever form you wish except marriage.
It is up to you, then, to choose either to forget me or to call me back to you on my return (two months hence). I shall know by the choice you make whether you merely had a hankering for the state of marriage or whether you really loved an individual.
Write to me poste restante Lausanne.
I cannot bring myself to end this letter with the usual form of words. I kiss you - you can guess how. A last embrace.... My eyes are filling with tears.... No, I cannot go on.
C.
to Madame Dandillot
Paris
Pierre Costals
Paris
7 September 1927
Dear Madame,
By the time you read this I shall be in Switzerland for several months.
I feel shattered - to an extent that you cannot possibly be aware of - by the inner struggle that I have been waging for a month and more in connection with Solange. I could not face the prospect of another painful and futile conversation with you, and a leave-taking with Solange that would have been more painful still. I have not the same mastery over myself that she has: I am a sentimentalist, which she is not. And I have already overburdened her with the spectacle of a man torn asunder.
You know my reasons. Too many risks of such a marriage turning out badly, and of my being a cause of suffering to someone for whom I feel a real affection. And, in such an event, the moral impossibility for me to ask for a divorce from someone who would have done me no wrong. Consequently, bondage - and bondage to a person one loves, which is the worst form of bondage. As well as all the other reasons which I have already explained to you. No, when one is perfectly happy in a particular state - celibacy - one does not strain oneself to perform a deed so fraught with menace.
I had never seriously had to debate the problem of marriage with myself. No doubt it is to your daughter's credit that she was the first to bring me to do so. But she is also its victim. Had I been more confident in my objections, I should have given Solange a firm no, irrevocably and at once, instead of nurturing her hopes. Allow me to point out, however, that there was never any promise on my part.
I bitterly regret having raised these hopes in Solange and in yourself; woe to him who arouses false hopes! But after all, if I hesitated it was because I had good reason to do so, and besides, hesitation is of the essence of intelligence. I have wounded her, yet I am not guilty: that is life. If the situation were the same today as it was four months ago, I would not behave any differently. When I told her that this marriage was possible, I believed what I said. Oh no, I have nothing to reproach myself with.
Both you, Madame, and she have treated my idiosyncrasies with the utmost tolerance, and with an intelligence that touches me and adds to my distress.
My deepest desire is to maintain my friendship with Solange. Is that so impossible? I have spoken to you about this.
I remain, etc.
C.
In the train ... and, as always, untarnished by habit, that gust of emotion, almost anxiety, that accompanied all his departures: 'Will I come back? And, if I do, will this journey have brought me all the happiness I expected of it? Will it have brought me more happiness than the last one?' He imagined the little girl settling herself in a corner, then coming to his help because he was struggling with his baggage.... He spoke to her, and she answered him in a whisper.
He had posted the two letters at the station, so that they would not arrive until the next morning, when he would be far away.
Next morning at eight o'clock, at Modane, he said to himself: 'The postman has just been ...' and his thighs b
egan to tremble. And he made a heartfelt wish - that one day she might be entirely happy, and that he might find in himself the inspiration to help her to be so. And he conceived something which, had he been a Christian, would have been a sort of prayer for her. And he told himself that he owed her an eternal debt, for having made her suffer.
Thus was fulfilled, after an interval of four months and a day, the presentiment he had noted in his diary on the 6th of May: that one day he would leave France in order not to hear her voice again.
PART TWO
As soon as he arrived in Genoa, Costals proceeded to organize what he considered to be the ideal life.
He rented a bachelor flat (near the Piazza Fontane Marose), and engaged a daily woman. His lunch was brought in from a near-by restaurant.
He got up at five, and worked from six till noon, then from 12.30 till four. At half past four he went out, and roamed the streets until midnight, doing a great many things he enjoyed doing, each one more outrageous than the last. Whatever he coveted, he took. He had his own special code. This code, indeed, on certain points, was extremely strict. But these were points on which conventional morality is indifferent. Whereas he was lax over points on which conventional morality is strict.
He knew no one in Genoa except women. Only women crossed his threshold. His life was divided into two parts: work and pleasure. The only things that seemed important to him. As his day contained nothing else at all, he had all the time he needed for work and for pleasure, both of which require a great deal if one does not want to botch either.
He had worked the character of Solange into the novel he was writing. The plot bore no relation to his liaison with Solange, but the character was copied as faithfully as he could manage. 'Ah ha, my girl, so you wanted to devour my soul! Now it's my turn to devour you. This will teach you that a writer always has the last word.'
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