Pity for Women

by Henri de Montherlant

  How strange it is, but I must admit it: failure can be satisfying, or at least can give one a feeling of repose not so very different, I imagine, from the feeling achievement brings. I summoned up my courage and took the plunge. And I failed. You denied me the only thing in the world I wanted. And yet, in spite of it all, something has been gained. Now, all that is being reabsorbed ... What difference is there, when all's said and done, between a body that has known pleasure and one that has not? Renunciation! The peace of the woman who has renounced. If you knew how simple it is, when one has renounced all one's life. How quickly one gets used to it. My love for you was always, a priori, counterpoised by renunciation. My only error was to believe that that impossible love was in fact possible, to believe that tenderness and pity were enough to waken desire in a man, to believe that love could be created in another person as water can be got by turning on a tap. My sacrifices have always been made in advance. And self-imposed suffering is almost ecstasy compared to the suffering imposed on one by others. And then (even though I haven't had my fill of memories of you, not by a long way), I have taken so much from you that it makes it easier for me to renounce it all.

  I must add that if you came to me today and offered me the two months of plenitude I wanted, I should be afraid. I felt passionately that it would be better to lose you after than to lose you before. But now I'm frightened. Some enthusiasm on your part would have been essential. To obtain that from you as an irksome duty ...

  You made it clear to me that the greatest gift my love could offer you was to give you nothing unless you desired and asked for it. And I sometimes think that my love was not so much love as a desire for self-glorification. I regarded you, in fact, as an instrument of my pleasure and happiness. True love would have meant searching, not for what pleased me, but for what pleased you; and thus giving up what I wanted of my own free will. No doubt I must have loved you very imperfectly, since I could not bring myself to make this sacrifice. Perhaps you loved me better than I loved you, since you did not love yourself in me. And perhaps it is now that I am giving you the best of my love. But a lot you care about that...

  For the first time, I can tell you that there is no need for you to answer me. You would be bound to hurt me, with your genius for sadistic phrases, whereas in your silence I recreate and re-discover you, such as I once loved you.

  Yours,

  A.H.

  I should also like to put to you a rather difficult and delicate question. I should like to know whether it has ever occurred to you that you might perpetuate my love by transposing some aspects of it into one of your books. This desire has nothing to do with vanity. It's simply that it would give me the feeling that so much suffering had not been entirely in vain.

  This letter remained unanswered.

  On the evenings when Mlle Dandillot came to the flat in the avenue Henri-Martin, the first thing she did was to switch off the light. And a sort of ritual had developed. He would undress her little by little, while she stood there small and upright in front of him, in her habitual pose, her head bowed a little, gazing at him without an atom of false modesty out of her dark blue eyes which seemed even larger and darker - almost black - in the dim light of the room, as if they had absorbed some of the night's darkness (which was why this night hung so clear above the world). And thus, half-naked, she would seem like a new person, and he would say to her: 'My little one, is it really you?' And sometimes she would answer 'Yes', as though it were a question which demanded a precise answer. And already this 'yes' was in her night voice, her voice of love, that extraordinarily changed voice of night and love, veiled and high-pitched like the voices of those who are about to die - her little girl's voice, her baby girl's voice, the voice of a woman newly-born and the voice of a dying woman.

  And now behold him, vibrant, enveloping her in his coils, while she remains standing, motionless, wordless, only turning her head to follow him with wide-open, unblinking eyes, as the cobra, motionless on its coils, turns its head according to the movement of the snake-charmer's face. He moves as in more ductile air, in the infinite power he has over her; he kisses her now here, now there, according to his whim or with no whim at all; he rests his eyes now here, now there, and each time, as if bewitched, she removes some flimsy garment from the place his eyes have pointed to. Now she stands naked and utterly pure, and still he enfolds her in his coils. Her legs are warm and fragrant as freshly-baked dough. Her belt has left a red weal at her waist, as though she had been whipped. He pulls out two tiny hair-pins from her chignon, the only two he can find (for he is such a fool). She pulls out the rest and hands them to him, one by one, in silence, and their number never varies. Now she stands with her hair over her shoulders, over her breasts with their soft, dune-like curves, more than ever sunk into her childhood; and sometimes it happens that her hair is still damp, like a forest after rain, because she has come to him straight from the swimming- bath. He takes it in his hands, and first he kisses the ends of it, where it is her without yet being quite her, almost foreign to her, like a river which, at the end of its course, no longer knows its mountain or its source. Tracing it back along its whole length, he at last comes to her and the faint odour of her warm scalp.

  He comes back to her face and meets again - like an old acquaintance - the scent of her face-powder which he had forgotten. He wraps her hair around her neck. He spreads it over her mouth and searches for her lips through it. With one lock for the moustache and the rest for the beard, he turns her into a young lady of Saint-Cyr in the role of Joad. And now she is naked in front of the window, practically on the balcony. He warns her, but she does not stir. On crossing his threshold, she has entered a magic circle....

  Lying down, she did not seem very different from what she had been the first time. She lay there, innocent and peaceful, as natural as a little goat in the midst of the flock. Nearly always she kept her eyes closed, and when she opened them, light with dark flecks, she created both light and darkness at the same time; and then she would look at him with astonishment, her face so close to his it made her squint a little. And she would give him short, sharp kisses, like a bird pecking, three, four, five at a time, like constellations; and then a single one, sudden, violent, like a ball shot at goal, or like a lightning flash. In between long silences broken only by a half-hour striking or a towel slipping from the towel-rail in the bathroom, he would say:

  'What are you thinking about?'

  'How nice it is....'

  O little girl!

  'How silent you are!'

  'When I'm happy I never talk.'

  O little girl!

  (When I'm happy . . . Andrée had written the same thing, but he had not thought it to her credit, because he did not love Andrée.)

  Then he would tease her.

  'I'm going to switch on the light.'

  Whereupon her 'No! No's!' would break out with unexpected violence. And he: 'What do you mean, no? Have we, by any chance, a personality of our own?' (The possibility did not seem to please him; and besides, caressing a woman in the dark is like smoking in the dark: no taste). But when after a moment he asked her: 'What would you do if I suddenly switched on the light?' she answered: 'Nothing ... '

  O little girl!

  And oh! that night voice as she said it, the incredibly childlike intonations, rising from the depths of her childhood as from a tomb - that other voice that came to her as soon as she was 'horizontal', like those chaste dolls which automatically lower their eyelids when one lays them on their backs.

  It was on one of these evenings that he wrote this poem for her:

  Since you love me, I you (that's understood)

  Since I am wholly yours today - agreed?

  Since it appears that either finds it good.

  For I suffice you, you are all I need,

  Then lay against my breast, sweet age-old child

  (Don't fear those other heads; their trace is light)

  Your scentless hair and your long eyes, b
east-wild,

  More deep, more dark, for having drunk of night.

  And so it went on, but we shall quote no more, for we do not think it is worth a tinker's curse.

  He never failed to express a little more tenderness towards her than he really felt, to add to that tenderness a sort of halo which spread it further. For instance he would sometimes say 'My little darling' at times when the words did not spring spontaneously to his lips, or else he would clasp her in his arms with greater vigour than his natural impulse called for. He knew that women tend to think one loves them less when one does not love them more and more, and that men, being poor at loving, must keep a constant watch over themselves if they do not wish to disappoint.

  There were moments when he passionately wanted to be the man who would reveal her to herself. There were other moments when he had no such desire.

  He still did not take her completely, for he wished to go on picturing this unknown territory before him, as when on board ship one looks toward that part of the sea where land will appear tomorrow. He would stop at the precise point beyond which he would have hurt her, as a dog that bites its friend in play will check itself delightfully and take care not to go too far. But their kisses were so voracious that the tip of his tongue was split and he had to give up smoking.

  He was always afraid she might catch cold while naked, and would willingly have sacrificed part of his pleasure to have her put on some of her clothes again. She would complain a little: 'You treat me like a child.' To which he would reply: 'A person one loves is always a child.' Often he reminded her of the time, but she did not seem to hear. Sometimes they would stay together in this way until that supreme hour of night when the cats settle down in the middle of the road to attend to their toilet. Clocks chimed the hour, answering one another like cock-crows. He had the impression that if he had not said to her, 'Time to go, little one', she would have stayed there all night, as though her mother and father did not exist. In all their relations, it was never she who took the initiative. And he praised her for it. 'I hate women with a will of their own, and that is why you were always made for me.' (And yet, if we are to believe Schopenhauer, who sees a connection between will-power and sexual passion, he would not have been sorry had she willed a little more....)

  Now she went off to the bathroom without being told, like a kitten that has been house-trained. Meanwhile he brushed the left shoulder of his jacket, where her cheek had left a cloud of face-powder like a milky way deep in the night sky. And now here she was by his side in the avenue, striking the echoing pavement with her short, mule-like steps. What had happened? Had anything happened? Here she was, exactly the same as she had been when she arrived that evening. Terribly womanly, when a moment before she had been such a schoolgirl. Terribly intact in appearance, and yet no longer intact. Terribly prim and proper.

  He knew she never told them at home why she got back so late at night. The thought that she lied to her parents was infinitely pleasing to him. 'That way, we can talk.' He felt that this made her somehow more human.

  Sometimes they walked hand in hand, like well-brought-up children who have been told to go and play in the park and be good - or like Tunisian gendarmes.

  At about that time he had just published a new book, which brought him many flattering letters and reviews. He had taken as his motto Gobineau's phrase, which he twisted round to read thus: 'First love, then work, then nothing.' But his work was his writing, not the relationship between his writing and the public. To this he was more or less indifferent. He skimmed rapidly through both reviews and letters mechanically, without getting involved. Praise was to him like musical instruments being played in a silent film: he knew that they must be producing a pleasant noise, but he could not hear it.

  He was saying to her:

  'You really must try and see things as they are. Michelet says that it's most humiliating for the loved one to keep enough composure to be able to distinguish the truth behind the lover's fine words. There's a piece of nonsense worthy of the 'stupid' nineteenth century. To keep one's composure is never humiliating. And to see things as they are is always admirable. The fact, in our case, is that I am not in love with you. What I feel towards you is, on the one hand, affection tinged with tenderness, together with esteem, and on the other hand, desire. But all this does not constitute love, thank God. It makes up something which is my own particular formula, in which I am entirely myself, and which is wholly commendable: this last point alone would be sufficient to prove that it isn't love. For one likes a woman because, and one loves her although. Besides, experience leads me to believe that my formula pleases women, because according to my own observation they seem to need affection and tenderness more than love properly so called. You're not in love with me either, are you?'

  She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders slightly, with an amused expression on her face - all this very young-lady like and full of charm. And she said:

  'Not exactly, no, I don't think so.... I mean I don't love you in a sentimental way.'

  'There's one sure sign that you don't love me; you never ask me questions about my life. And you don't blush when your parents talk about me, do you? You've never looked me up in Who's Who? You never came round to the avenue Henri- Martin when we first met, to see the house I lived in? You've never scribbled my name on a sheet of note-paper for no reason at all?'

  To each question she shook her head with the same gentle and amused expression on her face. True, the night after he had kissed her for the first time, she had gone to sleep with one of his books under her sheet. But that was right at the beginning; nature had blundered because it had been caught unawares. Never again had Solange done anything of the kind.

  'It's true, isn't it? Before I brought you here myself, you never had enough curiosity to come and see where I lived? Then that settles it: you've never been in love with me. And that's how I want you to be. A loving girl, not a girl in love. I don't want you to get worked up about me. You would be bound to suffer, and it would be absurd for you to suffer on my account when all I want is your happiness. One must know how to handle the absurd, my dear, and I think I can say I'm a master of the art, but it should at least give you some pleasure. It's always stupid to suffer. To say that suffering is something great and remarkable is one of the worst lies spread around by the leaders of the masses (for political ends) and then taken up by the intellectuals (from sheer stupidity). At the end of your first fairly intimate letter you assured me of your 'tender affection'. I don't know whether it was a phrase you just happened to use by chance or whether you had weighed its meaning, but if it represented what you really felt, then it was magnificent, since it corresponds exactly both to what I feel towards you and what I expect from you.'

  'I wrote that because it seemed to convey just what I felt.'

  'Then, my dear, it's splendid, and I can see that we shall get on famously.'

  And yet, that same evening... .

  That same evening, when he asked her: 'Will you come to my flat for a while, later on?' she answered: 'Not tonight if you don't mind ... Perhaps we ought to space out our meetings a little....'

  And she added:

  'When I come to visit you, afterwards I feel you're further away from me

  Although disappointed, he did not take her up on this. They were crossing the Place de la Concorde. He made a few remarks about the colour of the sky at that twilight hour. But inwardly he was turning to stone. Not only was he wounded in his male vanity, but it seemed to him as though she had locked the door on the future: how could he ever make love to her again after that?

  There was a long silence, and then he asked her:

  'Would you like me to take you home, or would you like to go somewhere?'

  It was a terrible thing to suggest leaving her so early, contrary to all their habits, merely because of frustrated desire - terrible for a girl of Mlle Dandillot's temperament; and terrible for him too. He had hoped she would answer: 'Take me home.' How could
she not have realized that she had made the evening untenable? He was surprised at what he deemed her lack of tact when she said: 'Let's go somewhere.'

  The cinema is the cesspool of the twentieth century. Whenever there is something vile between two people, it always leads to a session at the pictures. In the cinema near the Invalides where they finally landed up, she tried from time to time to make small talk. He, as though the muscles of his tongue had been severed, found it literally impossible to say a word. He was convinced that they were meeting for the last time. No, never had a woman said anything so humiliating to her lover; he had thought his caresses brought them infinitely closer to each other, but they made her feel he was further away! Now he wanted to wound her in his turn. 'She may as well know what I'm really like?' During the two and a half hours the show lasted, he never once opened his lips. As it was very hot, she sometimes put her handkerchief (her minute little girl's handkerchief) to her forehead, to her nose - to her eyes perhaps - and he wondered whether she wanted to cry. He noticed that one of her hands was resting in a rather unnatural way on the arm of her seat next to him, and thought she must have put it there so that he would take it and hold it in his. He did no such thing. Once or twice, too, she turned her face towards him without saying anything, as though asking to be kissed. The more he realized how base and vulgar, how petty and ridiculous - how bourgeois, in short - his attitude towards her was, the more he stuck to it. During the intervals he could read the thoughts on the faces of those around him: 'Such an exquisite little thing, and such a ghastly, sulking brute! Talk about pearls and swine!' What sickened him most about the 'scene' he was creating was that it seemed to him the very image of a conjugal row.

  At last, the torture came to an end. They went out, still silent. Then she did something she had never done before: she put her arm through his. He was touched. This gesture seemed to say, with the utmost simplicity: 'Come back to me. Can't you see I'm not cross with you?' Yet, touched as he was by her gesture, at the same time he saw in it a way of hurting her even more: simply by not responding to it. However, when they reached the avenue de Villiers and passed her door without her showing any sign of stopping, he exploded. In a jerky, unrecognizable voice he blurted out: 'You have wounded me deeply. You have said the very worst thing a woman can say to a man. Now I can never touch you again. I shall always think that you let me make love to you out of complaisance, when in fact you feel nothing but disgust....'