‘You look completely worn out,’ said Pierre.
Françoise shuddered. It was to her that he was speaking, and he seemed worried. She tried to control her voice.
‘I think I’ve drunk too much,’ she said. The words stuck in her throat.
Pierre looked at her with distress. ‘You’ve thought me completely hateful this evening, haven’t you?’ he said remorsefully.
Spontaneously he laid his hand on hers. She managed to smile at him. She was touched by his solicitude, but even this tenderness that he was reawakening in her could not tear her out of her solitary anguish.
‘You were a little hateful,’ she said, taking his hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Pierre, ‘for losing control.’ He was so upset at having hurt her, that if their love alone had been at stake Françoise would have been at peace again. ‘Now I’ve spoiled your evening for you,’ he said, ‘and you were so looking forward to it.’
‘Nothing’s been spoiled,’ said Françoise, and with an effort she added more cheerfully, ‘we still have some time ahead of us. It’s delightful to be here.’ She turned to Xavière. ‘Isn’t it? Paule was not fibbing. It is a nice place.’
Xavière wore a peculiar smile. ‘Don’t you think we look a little like American tourists seeing the night-life of Paris? We’re sitting by ourselves so that we won’t be contaminated, and we’re sight-seeing without coming into contact with anything …’
Pierre’s face clouded over. ‘What! Do you expect us to snap our fingers and shout “Olle!” What do you expect?’
‘I don’t expect anything,’ said Xavière coldly, ‘I’m stating a fact.’
It was beginning all over again. Dense vapours of hatred, as corrosive as an acid, were once more emanating from Xavière, and there was no defence against its excruciating bite. There was nothing to do but to endure it and wait. But Françoise felt completely exhausted. Pierre was not so resigned: Xavière did not frighten him.
‘Why do you suddenly hate us?’ he said harshly.
Xavière burst into a strident laugh.
‘No, no! You’re not going to begin all over again,’ she said. Her cheeks were aflame and her mouth was set. She seemed on the point of exasperation. ‘I don’t spend my time hating you. I’m listening to the music’
‘You do hate us.’ Pierre insisted.
‘Definitely not,’ said Xavière. She caught her breath. ‘It’s not the first time that I’ve been astonished at the pleasure you take in looking at things from the outside as if they were stage sets.’ She touched her breast. ‘I,’ she continued with an eloquent smile, ‘I’m made of flesh and blood. Do you understand?’
Pierre threw a despairing glance at Françoice. He hesitated, then seemed to be trying to get control of himself.
‘What happened?’ he said, in a conciliatory tone.
‘Nothing happened,’ said Xavière.
‘You thought we were behaving like lovers?’
Xavière looked him in the eye.
‘Precisely,’ she said arrogantly.
Françoise clenched her teeth. She was struck with a wild desire to thrash Xavière, to trample upon her. She spent hours listening patiently to her duets with Pierre, and Xavière was refusing her the right to exchange the slightest token of friendship with him! That was too much. It could not go on in this way. She would stand it no longer.
‘You’re utterly unfair,’ said Pierre angrily. ‘If Françoise was depressed it was because of my behaviour with you. I don’t think that can be called behaving like lovers.’
Without answering Xavière leaned forward. At a neighbouring table, a young woman had just sprung to her feet and in a raucous voice was beginning to recite a Spanish poem. A great silence fell, and every eye was turned towards her. Even without full knowledge of the meaning of the words, her impassioned accent, and her face illuminated by emotional fervour were deeply moving. The poem was about hatred and death, about hope too perhaps, and by virtue of the rhythmic ebb and flow the fate of ravaged Spain was vividly evoked to every mind. Fire and sword had driven the guitars from the streets, gone were the songs, the dazzling shawls, and the spikenard blossoms. The cabarets were flat, and the bombs had ripped open the goatskin bottles swelled with wine; in the warm evening sweetness, fear and hunger stalked. The flamenco songs and the taste of intoxicating wines were now no more than funeral trappings veiling a dead past. For a little while, her eyes fixed on the red and tragic mouth, Françoise yielded to the power of the desolate pictures evoked by this rasping incantation: she longed to lose herself, body and soul, in these lamentations; in the nostalgia throbbing beneath these mysterious resonances. She turned her head. She was able to stop thinking about herself, but she could not forget that Xavière was beside her.
Xavière was no longer watching the woman: she was staring into space. A cigarette was alight between her fingers and the glowing end was beginning to touch her flesh without her seeming to be aware of it, she seemed to be in the grip of hysterical ecstasy. Françoise passed her hand across her forehead, she was dripping with perspiration. The atmosphere was stifling, and deep down her thoughts were burning like a torch. This hostile presence, which earlier had betrayed itself in a lunatic’s smile, was approaching closer and closer: there was now no way of avoiding its terrifying disclosure. Day after day, minute after minute, Françoise had fled the danger, but the worst had happened, and she had at last come face to face with this insurmountable obstacle which she had sensed, behind a shadowy outline, since her earliest childhood. At the back of Xavière’s maniacal pleasure, at the back of her hatred and jealousy, the abomination loomed, as monstrous and definite as death. Before Françoise’s very eyes, and yet apart from her, something existed like a sentence without an appeal: detached, absolute, unalterable, an alien conscience was taking up its position. It was like death, a total negation, an eternal absence, and yet, by a staggering contradiction, this abyss of nothingness could make itself present to itself and make itself fully exist for itself. The entire universe was engulfed in it, and Françoise, for ever excluded from the world, was herself dissolved in this void, of which the infinite contour no word, no image could encompass.
‘Beautiful!’ said Pierre.
He bent over Xavière and lifted the red-hot stub from her fingers. She stared at him as if waking from a nightmare, then looked at Françoise. Abruptly she took them each by the hand. The palms of her hands were burning. Françoise shuddered when she came in contact with these feverish fingers which tightened on hers; she wanted to withdraw her hand, but she was now unable to move. Riveted to Xavière she contemplated in amazement this body which allowed itself to be touched, and this beautiful face behind which the abomination was concealed. For a long time Xavière had been only a fragment of Françoise’s life, and suddenly she had become the only sovereign reality, and Françoise now possessed no more than the colourless contours of a reflection.
‘Why should it be she rather than I?’ thought Françoise, with anger. She need only say one word, she need only say, ‘It is I.’ But she would have to believe in that word; she would have to know how to choose herself. For many weeks Françoise had no longer been able to dissolve Xavière’s hatred, her affection, her thoughts, to harmless vapours. She had let them bite into her; she had turned herself into a prey. Freely, through her moments of resistance and revolt, she had made use of herself to destroy herself. She was witnessing the course of her own life like an indifferent spectator, without ever daring to assert herself, whereas Xavière, from head to foot, was nothing but a living assertion of herself. She made herself exist with so sure a power, that Françoise, spellbound, had allowed herself to be carried away so far as to prefer Xavière to herself, and thus to obliterate herself. She had gone so far as to be seeing places, people, and Pierre’s smiles, through Xavière’s eyes. She had reached the point of no longer knowing herself, except through Xavière’s feelings for her, and now she was trying to merge into Xavière. But in this hopeless effort she
was only succeeding in destroying herself.
The guitars kept up their monotonous thrumming and the air was throbbing like a sirocco. Xavière’s hands had not let go their prey: her set face bore no expression. Pierre had not moved either. It was as if the same spell had transmogrified all three of them into marble. Visions were flitting through Françoise’s mind: an old jacket, a deserted glade, a corner of the Pôle Nord where Pierre and Xavière were carrying on a mysterious tête-à-tête far apart from her. It had happened to her before, as now it was happening tonight, that she had felt her being dissolve to the advantage of inaccessible other beings; but never had she been aware of her own annihilation with such perfect lucidity. Had she perchance become a complete void! Yet there remained a faint phosphorescence hovering over the surface of things, attended by an infinity of deceptive will-o’-the-wisps. The tension which had been reducing her to rigidity snapped suddenly, and she burst into silent sobs.
The spell was broken. Xavière withdrew her hands. Pierre spoke.
‘Suppose we leave,’ he said.
Françoise rose. In a flash she was drained of all thought, and her body submissively set itself in motion. She put her cape over her arm and crossed the room. The cold outdoor air dried her tears, but her inner trembling never ceased. Pierre touched her shoulder.
‘You aren’t we’ll,’ he said anxiously.
Françoise gave a ghost of an apologetic smile.
‘I’ve definitely drunk too much,’ she said.
Xavière was walking a few paces ahead of them, as stiff as an automaton.
‘She’s also had all she can hold,’ said Pierre. ‘Well take her home, and then we can talk undisturbed.’
‘Yes,’ said Françoise.
The cool of the night and Pierre’s tenderness helped to restore her calm. They caught up with Xavière and each took her by an arm.
‘I think it would do us good to walk a short way,’ said Pierre.
Xavière said nothing. Against a livid face, her lips were set in a stony grin. They walked down the street in silence; day was dawning. Xavière stopped suddenly.
‘Where are we?’ she said.
‘At la Trinité,’ said Pierre.
‘Ah!’ said Xavière. ‘I think I was a little tipsy.’
‘I think so too,’ said Pierre cheerfully. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I don’t know.’ said Xavière. ‘I don’t know what’s happened.’ She frowned as if in pain. ‘I remember a very beautiful woman who was talking in Spanish; after that there’s a blank.’
‘You watched her for a while,’ said Pierre. ‘You were smoking cigarette after cigarette, and you had to have the stubs taken from between your fingers. You were letting them burn you without feeling anything. And then you seemed to wake up a little. You took our hands.’
‘Ah! Yes,’ said Xavière. She shuddered. ‘We were in the depths of hell. I began to think we’d never get out again.’
‘You sat there for some time, as if you’d been turned into a statue,’ said Pierre. ‘And then Françoise began to cry.’
‘I remember,’ said Xavière, with a vague smile. She lowered her eyelids and said, in a faraway voice, ‘I was so glad when she cried, for that’s just what I wanted to do.’
For a second Françoise looked with horror at this delicate but implacable face in which she had not once seen reflected any of her own joys and sorrows. Not for one minute during the whole evening had Xavière given a thought to her distress. She had seen her tears only to rejoice at them. Françoise snatched her arm from Xavière’s and began to run on ahead as if carried away by a tornado. Sobs of revulsion shook her: her anguish, her tears, this night of torture, belonged to her and she would not allow Xavière to rob her of them. She would flee to the end of the world to escape the avid tentacles with which she wanted to drain her of her lifeblood. She heard hurrying steps behind her and a firm hand stopped her.
‘What is it?’ said Pierre. ‘I beg of you, calm yourself.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Françoise. ‘I don’t want to.’ Weeping, she fell against his shoulder. When she looked up she saw Xavière, who had caught up with them and was now looking at her with dismayed curiosity. But she had lost all sense of shame; nothing could affect her now. Pierre pushed them both into a taxi and she continued to weep without restraint.
‘We’re home,’ said Pierre.
She rushed upstairs without looking back, and collapsed on to the couch. Her head was hurting her. There was a sound of voices on the floor below, and almost immediately the door opened.
‘What’s happening?’ said Pierre. Quickly he came to her and took her in his arms. She pressed tightly to him, and for a long while there was nothing but emptiness and night, and a caress that lightly touched her hair.
‘My dear love, what’s happening to you? Speak to me,’ said Pierre’s voice.
She opened her eyes. In the light of dawn the room had an unusual freshness; she felt that it had not come under the influence of the night. With surprise Françoise found herself once again in the presence of familiar shapes which her eyes could take in with composure. This idea of rejected reality was no more indefinitely tenable than the idea of death. She must return to the full consciousness of material objects and of herself. But she remained as overwhelmed as if she had just come out of a death agony. Never more would she forget.
‘I do not know,’ she said. She smiled at him feebly. ‘Everything was so unbearable.’
‘Did I hurt you?’
She seized his hands. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Is it because of Xavière?’
Françoise shrugged her shoulders helplessly. It was too difficult to explain, and her head was aching too much.
‘It was hateful for you to witness her jealousy of you,’ said Pierre. There was a touch of remorse in his voice. ‘I myself found her insufferable. This cannot go on; I shall speak to her tomorrow.’
Françoise started. ‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘She’ll hate you.’
‘I don’t care.’ He got up, took a few steps round the room, then came back to her.
‘I feel guilty,’ he said. ‘I stupidly relied on the good feelings that girl has for me, but there was no question of a stupid little attempt at seduction. We wanted to build a real trio, a well-balanced life for three in which no one would be sacrificed. Perhaps it was taking a risk, but at least it was worth trying! But if Xavière behaves like a jealous little bitch, and you are an unfortunate victim while I play the gallant lover, it becomes a dirty business.’ His face was stern and his voice harsh. ‘I shall speak to her.’
Françoise looked at him tenderly. He judged any weakness he may have shown as severely as she had done. Once more he was himself again, in his strength, in his clarity of thought, and in his proud rejection of everything base. But even the return to this perfect agreement between them did not give her back happiness. She felt exhausted and cowardly at the thought of new complications.
‘You don’t expect to get her to admit that she’s jealous of me out of love for you?’ she said warily.
‘I shall no doubt look like a conceited ass and she will be insanely angry,’ said Pierre, ‘but I’ll take my chance.’
‘No,’ said Françoise. If Pierre were to lose Xavière, she in her turn would feel unbearably guilty. ‘No, please. Besides, that wasn’t why I cried.’
‘Why did you, then?’
‘You’ll laugh at me,’ she said, with a weak smile. There was a glimmer of hope: perhaps if she managed to encompass her anguish in words she might be rid of it. ‘It’s because I discovered that she has a conscience like mine. Have you ever felt, in your inmost being, the conscience of others?’ Again she was trembling, the words were not releasing her. ‘It’s intolerable, you know.’
Pierre was looking at her a little incredulously.
‘You think I’m drunk,’ said Françoise. ‘In one way, I am. It’s true, but it makes no difference. Why are you so astounded?’ She rose sud
denly. ‘If I were to tell you that I’m afraid of death, you would understand. Well, this thing is just as real and just as terrifying. Of course, we all know that we’re not alone in the world. We say these things, just as we say that we’ll die some day. But when we begin to believe in it …’
She leaned against the wall, the room was swirling round her. Pierre took her by the arm.
‘Listen, don’t you think you ought to rest? I am not making light of what you’re telling me, but it would be better to talk about it calmly after you’ve slept a little.’
‘There’s nothing to say about it,’ said Françoise. Again the tears began to flow. She was dead tired.
He laid her on the bed, took off her shoes and threw a blanket over her.
‘I’d rather like to get a breath of air,’ he said, ‘but I’ll stay until you’ve fallen asleep.’
He sat down beside her, and she pressed his hand against her cheek. Tonight Pierre’s love no longer sufficed to bring her peace, he could not defend her against this thing that had revealed itself during the day and evening. It was beyond reach. Françoise no longer even felt its mysterious emanation and yet it continued inexorably to exist. The weariness, the worries, even the disasters, brought by Xavière when she came to Paris, all these Françoise had accepted wholeheartedly because they were moments of her own life. But what had happened during the course of this night was something utterly different. She could not sublimate it. The world now stood before her like a gigantic interdict. The failure of her very existence was now brought to completion.
Chapter Five
Françoise smiled at the concierge and walked on across the courtyard where the old scenery had been left to rot, and ran up the little green wood steps. During the past few days the theatre had suspended performances and she was looking forward to having a long evening with Pierre; twenty-four hours had passed since she had last seen him, and a slight anxiety tempered her impatience. She never succeeded in waiting unmoved for the account of his excursions with Xavière, yet these were all alike: there were kisses, quarrels, tender reconciliations, passionate conversations, and lengthy silences. Françoise opened his door. Pierre was bending over a chest of drawers, rummaging about among bundles of papers.
She Came to Stay Page 36