‘When you have gone off on your trip,’ said Pierre, ‘I’ll take Xavière in hand, and if by the end of the week the question isn’t settled, I will ask her to make a choice.’
‘Yes,’ said Françoise. She hesitated. ‘You’ll have to explain the whole story to Gerbert, otherwise you’ll appear a dirty dog.’
‘I’ll explain it to him,’ said Pierre quickly. ‘I’ll tell him that I didn’t want to use authority over him, but that I thought I had the right to compete as an equal.’ He looked at Françoise without much assurance. ‘You don’t agree with me?’
‘There’s something to be said for it,’ said Françoise.
In one sense, it was true that there was no reason for Pierre to sacrifice himself for Gerbert, but neither had Gerbert deserved the cruel disillusionment awaiting him. Françoise kicked along a little round pebble. Doubtless, she would have to give up the idea of finding the perfect solution to any problem. For some time it had seemed that, whatever decision she made, she must always be in the wrong. And besides, no one worried very much any more about knowing what was right or what was wrong. She herself took no interest in the question.
They walked into the Dôme. Xavière was seated at a table, her head bowed. Françoise touched her shoulder lightly.
‘Good morning,’ she said with a smile.
Xavière shuddered, and raised a surprised face to Françoise, Then she, too, smiled, but with restraint.
‘I couldn’t believe it was you so soon,’ she said.
Françoise sat down beside her. Something in this greeting was painfully familiar to her.
‘How fresh you look!’ said Pierre.
Xavière must have taken advantage of Pierre’s absence to make her face up again meticulously. Her complexion was smooth and clear, her lips brilliant, her hair glossy.
‘Yet I’m tired,’ said Xavière. Her eyes rested first on Françoise and then on Pierre, and she put her hand to her mouth and stifled a yawn. ‘In fact, I think I’d like to go home and go to sleep,’ she said with an embarrassed, affectionate look that was not directed at Françoise.
‘Now?’ said Pierre. ‘You have the whole day.’
Xavière’s face clouded over.
‘I feel very uncomfortable,’ she said. She shook her arms, making the wide sleeves of her blouse puff out. ‘It’s unpleasant to wear the same clothes for hours on end.’
‘At least have a cup of coffee with us,’ said Pierre disappointedly.
‘If you wish,’ said Xavière.
Pierre ordered three coffees. Françoise took a croissant and began to nibble at it. Her courage failed her and she made no attempt to speak a friendly word. She had already lived this scene more than twenty times. She was sickened in advance by the cheerful tone, the bright smiles she felt rising to her lips, and by the irritated disgust she felt welling within her. Xavière was sleepily staring at her fingers. For quite a while no one breathed a word.
‘What did you and Gerbert do?’ said Pierre.
‘We had dinner at the Grille and we planned our walking tour,’ said Françoise. ‘I think we’ll leave the day after tomorrow.’
‘Are you really going to climb mountains?’ said Xavière in a dismal voice.
‘Yes,’ said Françoise curtly. ‘You think that ridiculous?’
Xavière raised her eyebrows.
‘Well … if you enjoy it,’ she said.
Again silence fell. Pierre looked uneasily from one to the other.
‘You both look sleepy,’ he said reproachfully.
‘This isn’t a very good time to look at people,’ said Xavière.
‘Still, I can remember a very pleasant time we spent here at this same hour,’ said Pierre.
‘Oh! It wasn’t so pleasant,’ said Xavière.
Françoise well remembered that morning and the soapy smell of the tiles. It was then, for the first time, that Xavière’s jealousy was openly declared. After every effort to rid her of it, she found her today exactly as before. At this moment, it was not only Françoise’s presence, it was her very existence that Xavière wanted to eradicate.
Xavière pushed away her glass.
‘I’m going home,’ she said firmly.
‘Above all, get a good rest,’ said Françoise ironically.
Xavière shook her head without answering. She smiled vaguely at Pierre and hurried out of the cafe.’
‘It’s a fiasco,’ said Françoise.
‘Yes,’ said Pierre. He seemed vexed. ‘Still, she looked very pleased when I asked her to wait for us.’
‘Doubtless she didn’t want to leave you,’ said Françoise. She laughed slightly. ‘But what a shock she must have had when she saw me standing in front of her.’
‘It’s going to be hellish again,’ said Pierre. He stared dismally at the door through which Xavière had left. ‘I wonder if it’s worth starting again. We’ll never get out of it.’
‘How did she speak to you about me?’ said Françoise.
Pierre hesitated.
‘She seemed to be friendly towards you,’ he said.
‘And what else?’ She looked with annoyance at Pierre’s puzzled face. It was now he who felt bound to spare her. ‘Hasn’t she got any little grievances?’
‘She seems to be slightly angry with you,’ Pierre admitted. ‘I think she’s come to the conclusion that you have no deep love for her.’
Françoise stiffened.
‘What exactly did she say?’
‘She told me that I was the only person who didn’t try to throw cold water on her moods,’ said Pierre. Beneath the indifference in his voice there could be detected a faint satisfaction at feeling himself irreplaceable to this degree. ‘And then at one point she said to me with delight: “You and I are not moral beings: we are capable of doing vile things.” And when I protested, she added: “It’s because of Françoise that you’re so bent on appearing moral, but deep down you’re as treacherous as I am and your soul is just as black.”’
Françoise blushed, for she, too, was beginning to consider this legendary morality at which people laughed indulgently as a ridiculous fault. Perhaps it would not take her long to shake it off. She looked at Pierre. His hesitant expression did not reflect a very clear conscience. It was obvious that Xavière’s words had flattered him in some way.
‘I suppose she holds my effort at reconciliation against me, as proof of lukewarmness,’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Pierre.
‘What else did she say?’ said Françoise. ‘Let me have the full story,’ she added impatiently.
‘Well, she made a bitter allusion to what she calls loves of devotion.’
‘What’s that?’
‘She explained her character to me, and she told me with feigned humility: “I know that I’m often very disagreeable with people, but what can I do? I’m not made for loves of devotion.”’
Françoise was dumbfounded: this was a double-edged betrayal. Xavière blamed Pierre for remaining capable of so wretched a love, while she herself bitterly rejected him. Françoise had far from suspected the degree of this hostility, blended as it was with jealousy and disgust.
‘Is that all?’ she said.
‘I think so,’ said Pierre.
That was not all, but Françoise was suddenly tired of asking questions. She knew enough to have on her lips the treacherous taste of this night in which Xavière’s triumphant rancour had wrenched from Pierre a thousand petty betrayals.
‘Anyway, you know, I don’t give a damn how she feels,’ she said.
It was true. Suddenly, at this culminating point of misery, nothing was of importance. Because of Xavière, she had almost lost Pierre, and in return Xavière gave her only contempt and jealousy. No sooner was Xavière reconciled with Pierre, than she tried to establish between them an underhand complicity which he only half-heartedly disclaimed. Their dual rejection of Françoise left her in such a forlorn state of desolation that there was no room either for anger or for tears. F
rançoise hoped for nothing more from Pierre, and his indifference no longer affected her. With respect to Xavière, she felt rising within her, with a kind of joy, something black and bitter that she did not yet know and which was almost a deliverance: powerful, free, finally bursting unhindered into bloom. It was hate.
Chapter Eight
‘I think we’re almost there at last,’ said Gerbert.
‘Yes, it’s that little house we can see up there,’ said Françoise.
They had covered a considerable distance during the day, and for the past two hours it had been hard uphill going. Night was falling and it was cold. Françoise looked tenderly at Gerbert, who was walking ahead of her up the steep path. They were both tramping at the same pace; they both felt the same happy fatigue; and both together were silently looking forward to the red wine, the supper, and the log fire they hoped to find up there. Whenever they arrived in these isolated villages, it was always something of an adventure. They could never be certain whether they were going to sit down at a noisy table in a peasant kitchen, have their dinner alone in an empty inn, or land up in some small middle-class hotel already filled with holidaymakers. Whichever it was, they would throw their packs down in a corner, and with their muscles relaxed and their hearts content, they would spend quiet hours side by side, talking over the day they had just lived together and making plans for tomorrow. Françoise was hurrying more towards the warmth of this intimacy, than to the rich omelette and the raw, home-made spirits. A gust of wind whipped her face. They were reaching a pass that dominated a fan of valleys lost in the hazy dusk.
‘We won’t be able to pitch the tent,’ she said. ‘The ground is very damp.’
‘We’ll probably find a barn,’ said Gerbert.
A barn. Françoise felt a sickening emptiness within her. Three nights earlier, they had slept in a barn. They had gone to sleep at no great distance from each other, but, in his sleep, Gerbert’s body had slipped towards hers and he had thrown his arms about her. With a vague regret she had thought: ‘He takes me for someone else,’ and she had held her breath so as not to wake him. Then she had dreamed; and in her dream she was in this same barn, and Gerbert, with his eyes wide open, had clasped her in his arms. She had yielded, her heart filled with sweetness and security, till anguish had undermined this state of tender well-being. ‘It’s not true,’ she found herself saying. Gerbert had clasped her tighter, and exclaimed: ‘It is true. It would be too ridiculous if it weren’t true.’ Not many moments later a ray of light had struck her eyelids. She had wakened to find herself still lying in the hay, pressed close to Gerbert, and there was no truth in it at all.
‘You’ve been tossing your hair into my face all night,’ she had said with a laugh.
‘Not at all, you’ve kept on poking your elbows into me,’ Gerbert replied indignantly.
Not without distress did she think about reliving a similar awakening tomorrow. Beneath the tent, huddled in a narrow space, she felt protected by the hardness of the earth, the discomfort, and the wooden tent-pole separating her from Gerbert; but she knew that, later, she would not have the courage to make up her bed far from his. It was useless to keep on trying to under-rate the vague yearning that had been hanging over her all these days. During the two hours of silent climbing, it had been persistently in her thoughts until it had become at length choking desire. Tonight, while Gerbert was innocently sleeping, she would dream again, regret and suffer, all to no purpose.
‘Do you think this place is a café?’ said Gerbert.
On the wall of the house was a red sign bearing the word BYRRH in huge letters, and stuck above the door was a handful of dried branches.
‘It looks like one,’ said Françoise.
They walked up the three steps and into a large warm room that smelled of cooking and dried twigs. There were women seated on benches, peeling potatoes, and three peasants at a table, with glasses of red wine.
‘Good evening,’ said Gerbert.
Every eye turned towards him. He went up to the two women.
‘Could we please have something to eat?’
The women looked at him with distrust.
‘You’ve come far?’ said the elder.
‘We’ve come up from Burzet,’ said Françoise.
‘That’s a fairish distance,’ said the other woman.
‘That’s just why we’re hungry,’ said Françoise.
‘But you aren’t from Burzet,’ said the elder woman, with an accusing look.
‘No, we’re from Paris,’ said Gerbert.
There was a silence. The women looked questioningly at each other.
‘The trouble is that I haven’t much to give you,’ said the old woman.
‘Haven’t you any eggs? Or a bit of pie? Anything at all …’ said Françoise.
The old woman shrugged her shoulders.
‘Eggs, yes. We have plenty of eggs.’ She rose and wiped her hands on her blue apron. ‘Would you care to step inside?’ she said somewhat reluctantly.
They followed her into a low-ceilinged room where a wood fire was burning: it looked like a middle-class provincial dining-room. There was a round table a wooden chest loaded with knick-knacks, and on the arm-chairs, orange satin cushions appliquéd with black velvet.
‘Would you please bring us a bottle of red wine now,’ said Gerbert.
He helped Françoise take off her rucksack and put down his own.
‘We’re as comfortable as kings here,’ said Gerbert with a look of contentment.
‘Yes, it’s wonderfully pleasant,’ said Françoise.
She walked up to the fire. She knew only too well what was lacking in this cosy evening. If only she had been able to touch Gerbert’s hand, to smile at him with affection, then the blaze, the smell of the dinner, the black velvet cats and the sparrows would have rejoiced her heart. But it all remained scattered around her, without touching her. It almost seemed absurd that she should be there.
The innkeeper returned with a bottle of cloudy, heavy wine.
‘You don’t by any chance happen to have a barn where we could spend the night?’ asked Gerbert.
The woman was laying the places on the oilcloth. She looked up.
‘You aren’t going to sleep in a barn?’ she said, looking shocked. She thought for a moment. ‘You’re out of luck. I might have had a room for you, but my son, who’s got a job as a postman, has just come home.’
‘We’d be very happy in the barn, if only it won’t put you out,’ said Françoise. ‘We have blankets.’ She pointed to the rucksacks. ‘But it’s too cold to pitch our tent.’
‘It won’t put me out,’ said the woman. She left the room and brought back a steaming soup tureen. ‘At least this will warm you up a bit,’ she said in a friendly tone.
Gerbert filled the soup bowls and Françoise sat down opposite him.
‘She’s getting tame,’ said Gerbert when they were alone again. ‘Everything’s turning out splendidly.’
‘Splendidly,’ echoed Françoise with conviction.
She looked furtively at Gerbert. The gaiety enlivening his face resembled tenderness. Was he really beyond reach? Or was it just that she had never dared to reach out her hand to him? Who was holding her back? It was neither Pierre nor Xavière. She no longer owed anything to Xavière who, moreover, was preparing to betray Gerbert. They were alone, at the top of a wind-flayed mountain pass, separated from the rest of the world, and their story concerned no one other than themselves.
‘I’m going to do something that will disgust you,’ said Gerbert in a threatening tone.
‘What?’ she said.
‘I’m going to pour some wine into my soup.’ As he was speaking, he suited his action to his words.
‘That must be horrid,’ said Françoise.
Gerbert put a spoonful of the blood-red liquid to his mouth.
‘It’s delicious,’ he said. ‘Try it’
‘Not for anything in the world,’ said Françoise.
She swal
lowed a little wine. Her palms were moist. She had always disregarded her dreams and her desires, but this self-effacing wisdom now revolted her. Why did she not make up her mind to will what she hoped for?
‘The view from the top of the pass was magnificent,’ she said. ‘I think we’ll have good weather tomorrow.’
Gerbert scowled at her.
‘Are you going to insist that we get up at dawn again?’
‘Stop complaining. The real expert is on the peaks at five o’clock in the morning.’
‘They’re all crazy,’ said Gerbert. ‘I’m a cocoon before eight o’clock.’
‘I know,’ said Françoise. She smiled. ‘You know, if you go to Greece, you’ll have to be on your way before dawn.’
‘Yes, but then you take a nap in the afternoon,’ said Gerbert. He thought for a moment. ‘I hope that plan for a tour doesn’t collapse.’
‘If there’s another crisis,’ said Françoise, ‘I’m afraid it’s going to fall through.’
Gerbert resolutely cut himself a huge chunk of bread.
‘In any case, I’ll manage to find a way out. I’m not going to stay in France next year.’ His face lit up. ‘It seems you can make a fortune on Mauritius.’
‘Why Mauritius?’
‘Ramblin told me about it. The place is full of millionaires who’ll pay anything for a little amusement.’
The door opened and the innkeeper came in. She was carrying a huge potato-omelette.
‘Why, this is a feast,’ said Françoise. She helped herself and passed the platter to Gerbert, ‘Here, I’ll leave you the big piece.’
‘Is that all for me?’
‘All for you.’
‘That’s very honest of you,’ said Gerbert.
She glanced at him.
‘Am I not always honest with you?’ she said. There was a boldness in her voice that embarrassed her.
‘Yes, I can’t deny the fact,’ said Gerbert without turning a hair.
Françoise was kneading a tiny pellet of bread between her fingers. She would have to cling fast to the decision which had suddenly come upon her. She did not know how, but something would have to happen before tomorrow.
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