I sent her a long letter in reply, in which I tried to give her some comfort, and the following week she wrote back: ‘Blissfully happy – I’m only just beginning to know what that means, my dear, dear Simone, and oh, how good it feels! I’m now quite certain that nothing can upset me any more, a wonderfully sweet conviction that has triumphed over all my ups and downs and over all my rebellious feelings. When I received your letter . . . I was still in a very unsettled state. I hadn’t enough self-confidence to be able to read properly the very sweet but also very inscrutable letters which Pradelle was writing me, and, giving way to an unreasonable attack of pessimism, I had just sent him one which he didn’t at all deserve – and when I remember how I love to see him radiating happiness as he did that day with you and me on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne, oh! how bitter it all is! Yet I would be ashamed to complain. When one has received this great thing which I feel inside me, unalterable, then one can bear anything. The root of my joy is not at the mercy of external circumstances; it could only be attacked by some fresh difficulty stemming directly from one or other of us. But there’s nothing more to fear on that score; our profound understanding is so complete that he is still the one who is speaking when he is listening to me, and I am still the one who is speaking when I am listening to him, and now, despite physical separation, we can no longer be really disunited. And my great joy, dominating my most cruel thoughts, goes on rising and illuminating everything. . . . Yesterday, after having written Pradelle the letter I found so hard to write, I received from him a note overflowing with that beautiful love of life which until now was less apparent in him than in you. Only it wasn’t quite the pagan love-song of the dear, amoral woman. Speaking of his sister’s engagement, he told me of all the enthusiasm that the phrase Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei* can arouse for “the pure glorification of the universe” and for “a life reconciled to all the sweetness of earthly things”. Oh! Simone! how hard it is to have to give up letters like yesterday’s! One must really believe in the value of suffering and want to bear Christ’s cross for Him in order to accept such pain without complaining, and of course I am not able to do so. But let us leave that subject. Despite everything, life is splendid, and I should be terribly hardhearted if I didn’t at this very moment feel my heart overflowing with gratitude. Can there be many people in the world who have what you and I have, and who will ever know anything else remotely like it? And would it be too much to suffer anything, everything if need be, for this precious gift, and to suffer any length of time? Lili and her husband are here just now; I really think that during the three weeks they have been here the sole topic of their conversations has been the price they will pay for their apartment and how much it will cost to furnish. They are very sweet; I’m not blaming them for anything. But what a relief to know now for sure that there will be nothing in common between their life and mine, to feel that though I have no outward possessions I am a thousand times richer than they are, and that finally, when I am confronted by all those people who are as foreign to me, at least in certain respects, as the wayside stones, I shall never be alone again!’
I suggested what seemed to me an obvious solution: Madame Mabille was worried by the vague nature of the relationship between Zaza and Pradelle. All he had to do was to make a formal request for her daughter’s hand in marriage. In reply I received the following letter:
I found your long-awaited letter here yesterday on my return from the Ariège, where I spent ten utterly exhausting days. Since reading it, I’ve been ceaselessly drafting a reply in my head, speaking quiedy to you all the time, despite all the preoccupations, the weariness and the outward circumstances of my life. The circumstances are awful. During the ten days at the Brévilles, with Bébelle in my room, I didn’t have a moment to myself. I was so unable to bear someone watching me while I wrote certain letters that I had to wait until she was asleep and write them from two to five o’clock in the morning. During the day, we were taken on long excursions, and I had to keep up a flow of conversation all the time without ever daring to allow my attention to wander, and to respond to the kindnesses and pleasantries of the people we were visiting. The last letter he received from me must have been terribly revealing; he must have sensed how weary I was; I had read his last letter in a state of such complete exhaustion that I now realize I must have misunderstood certain passages in it. Perhaps the reply I sent him made him suffer; I wasn’t able to tell him all I wanted to, all I should have told him. All this makes me feel rather desolate; and though until now I wouldn’t acknowledge the slightest merit in my behaviour, I feel that in these last few days I have acquired some, because I have had to use such will-power to resist the desire to write and tell him all I am thinking, all the eloquent and persuasive things through which I would protest from the depths of my being against the accusations that he persists in making against himself, and against the pleas for forgiveness that he in his ignorance of the circumstances addresses to me. Simone, I shouldn’t want to write to Pradelle through you; it would seem to me a worse hypocrisy than a flouting of the decisions which I have accepted. But I keep remembering passages in his later letters which I didn’t give adequate replies to and which keep tearing at my heart: ‘You must have been disappointed by certain of my letters. . . . The sincerity with which I spoke to you must have caused you a certain sadness and distress,’ and other phrases like that which made me wild. Simone, you know what happiness I owe to P., that every word he has written to me and spoken to me, far from disappointing me, only increased and confirmed the admiration and the love I have for him. You know what I was like, and what I am now; you know what I felt was lacking, and what he has now given me in such marvellous profusion. Oh, Simone! try to make him understand a little that it is to him I owe all the beauty with which my life at this moment is overflowing, that there is nothing concerning him which is not precious to me, that it is madness on his part to excuse himself for what he has said, or for the letters whose beauty and profound sweetness I understand better every time I read them. Simone, you who know me better than anyone and have followed this year every beat of my heart, tell him that there is no one else in the world who has given me or could ever give me the total joy, the unalloyed happiness which I have had from him and which I shall always, even if I never tell him so, feel myself unworthy of.
Simone, if what you suggest were possible, everything would be much easier this winter. But Pradelle has reasons for not doing so which to me are as valid as they are to him. Under these conditions, Mama, without asking me to break completely with him, has put so many difficulties and restrictions in the way of our meeting that, in the end, dreading another unrelenting struggle with her, I prefer to face the worst. His reply to what must have been a sad letter made me realize only too well what such a sacrifice would mean to him. Now I no longer have the courage to make it. I am going to try to arrange things better, to be patient and submissive in the hope that Mama may look a little more favourably upon me, and upon us both, and that she may give up her idea of sending me abroad again. It won’t be easy, Simone; it will be very hard, and I feel heart-broken on his account. He spoke twice about fatalism to me. I understand what he’s trying to tell me in that roundabout way of his, and for his sake I am going to try to do all in my power to improve our position. Whatever happens, I shall bear it eagerly, finding a kind of ardent joy in suffering for his sake, and above all finding that whatever the price I have to pay I shall never pay too dearly for the happiness I have been privileged to know, for the joy that no accident of chance can kill. . . . I came here, dying to be alone. I found, besides my brother-in-law, five of his brothers and sisters in the house; I share the room in which I was so happy with you and Stépha with his eldest sister and the twins. I’ve written all this in less than three-quarters of an hour before going to the market in the neighbouring town with the rest of the family; tomorrow all the du Moulins will be spending the whole day here; the day after tomorrow Geneviève de Bréville arrives, and we
shall have to go to a dance at the Mulots. But though no one knows it I remain disengaged. To me it is as if all these things didn’t exist. My real life is spent secretly smiling at the sound of the voice I hear within me all the time, and hoping to find refuge in him, for ever. . . .
I was annoyed with Pradelle: why should he not accept the solution I had suggested? I wrote to him. He replied that his sister had just become engaged; his elder brother – who had married some time ago, and of whom he never spoke – was about to leave for Togoland; if he were to tell his mother that he, too, was thinking of leaving her, he would deal her a mortal blow. And what about Zaza? I asked him when he returned to Paris at the end of September. Didn’t he realize that she was wearing herself out in these deadly struggles? He replied that she approved of the attitude he had taken and however much I inveighed against it he refused to adopt any other.
Zaza I thought was in a very low state; she had grown thin and pale; she had frequent headaches. Madame Mabille had given her permission, provisionally, to see Pradelle again, but in December she was to leave for Berlin once more and would spend a year there; she was terrified at the thought of this exile. I made another suggestion: that Pradelle, without consulting his mother first, should put his case to Madame Mabille. Zaza shook her head. Madame Mabille would not listen to his explanations; she knew all about that already, and in such a meeting with Pradelle would only see an attempt to evade the issue. She was of the opinion that Pradelle had not definitely made up his mind to marry Zaza; if he had, he would have gone through the usual formalities; no mother breaks her heart because her son gets engaged – a likely tale, indeed! I agreed with her on this point; in any case, the marriage would not take place until two years later, and I didn’t see where the tragedy lay for Madame Pradelle: ‘I don’t want her to suffer because of me,’ Zaza told me. Her high-mindedness exasperated me. She understood the reasons for my anger. She understood Pradelle’s scruples and Madame Mabille’s prudence; she understood all these people who were failing to understand each other and she had to bear the brunt of their misapprehensions.
‘There’s only a year to wait: there’s nothing to it!’ Pradelle kept saying irritably. This kind of sage remark, instead of comforting Zaza, put her confidence to a bitter test; in order to be able to accept a long separation without too much pain, she would have had to have that reassurance which she had often longed for in his letters and which in fact was so cruelly withheld from her. My guess had been right: Pradelle wasn’t an easy person to love, especially for someone with Zaza’s violent emotions. With a sincerity that resembled narcissism, he complained to her that she was lacking in passion, and she couldn’t help drawing the conclusion that his love for her was rather lukewarm. His conduct did nothing to reassure her; he had a rather excessive squeamishness about meeting her family and didn’t appear to care when she suffered for it.
They had so far only had a short meeting, and she was impatiently awaiting the afternoon they were to spend together when that very morning she received an express letter from him; one of his uncles had just died, and he felt that his sorrow was not compatible with the happiness he had been hoping for from their meeting that afternoon: he begged to be excused. The next day, she came to my room for a drink with my sister and Stépha, and was unable to raise a single smile. In the evening, she sent me a note:
I’m not going to ask your forgiveness for being so depressing today, despite the vermouth and your warm welcome, because you surely understand that I was still feeling shattered by the express letter I had received the evening before. It came at a very bad time. If Pradelle had known with what expectancy I had been looking forward to our meeting, I believe he wouldn’t have put it off. But it’s just as well he didn’t know; I’m very glad he has acted as he did, and it was good for me to see just how deep my despair could be when I am absolutely all on my own in my attempts to resist the sharp comments and lugubrious admonitions which Mama sees fit to give me. The saddest thing is that I am unable to get in touch with him: I haven’t dared send a letter to his home. If I had seen you alone, I would have written him a short note and you could have addressed the envelope for me in your illegible handwriting. It would be very kind of you if you would send him an express letter telling him what I hope he knows already, that I am with him in his sorrow as in his joy, and that he may write to me at home as much as he likes. It would be as well if he didn’t put this off too long, as it seems hardly likely I shall be seeing him for some time now, and I shall want terribly to have at least a word from him. He needn’t be afraid of finding me too gay: even if I were to speak about ourselves, it would be on a serious note. Even supposing that he could, by his presence, deliver me from care, there are any number of sad things in life which are suitable subjects for conversation when one is in mourning. Dusty Answer, by Rosamund Lehmann, for one thing. I started reading this book again yesterday evening, and found it moved me no less than it did at the beginning of the holidays. Yes, Judy is a magnificent character, very attractive; all the same, she remains somehow incomplete and oh! how sad! I can accept that her love of life and of all created things might be able to save her from the harshness of existence. But such superficial happiness would be no good in the face of death and it’s not enough to live as if death didn’t exist. When I put the book down I felt ashamed of being cast down at times when always I feel, beyond all the difficulties and sadnesses which keep it from me, a real joy – hard to accept and too often denied me through my own weak-mindedness – but which at least depends on no other person in the world, not even on myself. This joy does not alter anything: those whom I love need not feel anxious, I’m not trying to run away from them. And at this moment I feel one with the earth and with my own life as never before.
Despite the optimistic note of this conclusion, despite the determined approval she gave to Pradelle’s decision, Zaza couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her letter; in order to set against ‘all created things’ the supernatural joy ‘which at least depends on no other person in the world’ it was obvious that she no longer hoped to be able to depend on anyone again. I sent an express letter to Pradelle, who wrote to her at once; she thanked me: ‘Since Saturday, thanks to you, I have been delivered from the phantoms that were tormenting me.’ But the phantoms didn’t leave her in peace for long, and she felt very much alone in the face of them. The very concern I felt for her happiness kept us apart, for I was furious with Pradelle, and she accused me of misjudging him; she had chosen the path of renunciation and turned a deaf ear whenever I urged her to make a fight for her happiness. Moreover, her mother had given orders that I was not to be admitted to the house in the rue de Berri, and used all kinds of dodges to keep Zaza at home. Nevertheless we managed to have a long talk in my room, and I talked to her about my own life; the next day she sent me a note to tell me, in the warmest terms, how happy it had made her. But she added: ‘For family reasons which it would take too long to explain, I shan’t be able to see you for some time. Wait a while.’
Pradelle had warned her that his brother had just left for Togoland and that for the next week he would be fully occupied in consoling his mother. Again she seemed to find it quite natural that he should sacrifice her for his mother; but I was sure that she was obsessed by fresh doubts and I felt dismayed that during the next week there would be no word from him to counteract the ‘lugubrious admonitions’ doled out by Madame Mabille.
Ten days later I met her by accident in the Poccardi bar; I had been working in the Nationale, and she was doing some shopping in the neighbourhood: I accompanied her. To my great astonishment, she was bubbling over with gaiety. She had been thinking things over very carefully during the past week, and gradually everything had fallen into place in her mind and heart; she was no longer terrified even at the thought of her departure for Berlin. She would have lots of free time there, and would try to write the novel she had so long been contemplating; she would read and study: never had she felt such a longing for books. She
had just rediscovered Stendhal, and admired him immensely. Her family detested him so completely that until now she had never quite succeeded in surmounting their objections to him: but while reading him again during the last few days she had finally come to understand him and love him without reserve. She felt a need to revise many of her former judgements: she had the impression that an important change had taken place inside her. She talked to me with an almost incredible warmth and exuberance; there was something frenzied in her optimism. All the same, I felt glad for her sake that she had drawn fresh reserves of strength from somewhere and I felt that she was going to be even closer to me than before. I said good-bye to her, and my hopes were high.
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Page 46
