Act of Passion

by Georges Simenon

  It was, nevertheless, a difficult confinement. But my father-in-law continued to encourage me:

  ‘With my wife, the first time, it was even worse. But, you’ll see, with the second one …’

  I had always talked about a son, I don’t know why. The women — I mean my mother and Jeanne — had set their minds on this idea of a boy.

  It turned out to be a girl, and my wife was laid up for three months after the baby was born.

  Excuse me, your Honour, if I speak of her in what must seem a somewhat cavalier fashion. The truth is that I did not really know her, that I never knew her.

  She was a part of the background of my daily life. A part of the conventions. I was a doctor. I had an office, a cheerful sunny house. I had married a sweet, well-bred young girl. She had just presented me with a child, and I was giving her the best possible care.

  In retrospect this seems to me terrible. Because I never tried to know what she thought, to know what she really was.

  We slept in the same bed for four years. We spent our evenings together with Mama, sometimes with her father, who would drop in for a nightcap before going to bed.

  For me it is a photograph that has already faded. I would not have been in the least indignant if the Judge had pointed a menacing finger at me and said:

  ‘You killed her …’

  For it is true. Only, in her case, I didn’t know it. If I had suddenly been asked:

  ‘Do you love your wife?’

  I should have answered with perfect candour:

  ‘But, of course!’

  Because it is understood that one loves one’s wife. Because that is as far as I could see. It is understood also that one loves one’s children. Everyone kept saying:

  ‘The next one will be a fine big boy.’

  And I let myself be beguiled by this idea of having a fine big boy. It pleased my mother too.

  I killed her because of this idea of having a fine big boy which they had put into my head and which I finally came to believe was my own wish.

  When Jeanne had a miscarriage after her first baby, I was a little worried.

  ‘It happens to every woman …’ her father said. ‘You’ll see, after you’ve had a few more years practice …’

  ‘She isn’t strong …’

  ‘Don’t you know that the women who seem the most delicate are usually the toughest. Look at your mama …’

  So I went on. I said to myself that Dr Marchandeau was older than I, had more experience and that in consequence he must be right.

  A fine big boy, very big, to the tune of at least twelve pounds, for I weighed twelve pounds when I was born.

  Jeanne never said a word. She would follow in my mother’s wake around the house.

  ‘Can’t I help you, Mama?’

  I was out on my big motor-cycle all day, visiting patients, fishing. But I did not drink. I was just barely unfaithful to Jeanne.

  We spent the evenings together, the three or the four of us. Then we would go upstairs to bed. I used to say to Jeanne jokingly:

  ‘Shall we make that son tonight?’

  She would smile shyly. She was very shy.

  She became pregnant again. Everybody was enchanted and predicted the famous twelve-pound boy. As for me, I gave her tonics, hypodermics.

  ‘The midwife is worth more than all those damn surgeons!’ my father-in-law kept saying.

  When it became necessary to resort to forceps, they sent for me. The sweat poured off my eyelids so that I could hardly see. My father-in-law was there, running back and forth like a little dog who has lost the scent.

  ‘You’ll see — everything will be all right …’ he kept saying.

  Well, I had the child. An enormous baby girl who weighed just under twelve pounds. But the mother died two hours later, without even a look of reproach, murmuring:

  ‘How stupid that I’m not stronger …’

  Chapter Three

  During my wife’s last pregnancy, I had intercourse with Laurette. If you count at least one drunkard to a village, a ‘man who drinks’ to every family, is there, I wonder, a single village at home that is without a girl like Laurette?

  She worked as chambermaid at the mayor’s. She was a good sort, really, and possessed the most amazing frankness, which many people would have called cynicism. Her mother was the priest’s housekeeper, but that did not prevent Laurette from going to him to confess her sins.

  Shortly after my installation at Ormois, she walked calmly into my office, like an old habitué.

  ‘I just came — I always do, from time to time — to make sure there’s nothing the matter with me,’ she explained, pulling up her skirts and removing her white drawers, which were stretched across a pair of plump round buttocks. ‘Didn’t the old doctor tell you about me?’

  He had told me about most of his patients but had forgotten, or voluntarily neglected, to mention her. Yet she was one of his regular patients. Of her own accord, her skirt rolled up to her waist, she stretched out on the leather-covered couch I used for my examinations and, with visible satisfaction, pulled up her knees and separated her large milk-white thighs. One felt that she would have been perfectly happy to keep that pose all day.

  Laurette never missed a chance of sleeping with a man. She confessed that on certain days, when she foresaw this possibility, she went without drawers in order to save time.

  ‘I’m lucky, for it seems I can’t have children. But I’m scared to death of catching some filthy disease so I come around regularly for an examination, just to play safe …’

  I saw her once a month, sometimes oftener. She usually went to confession about the same time. A general house-cleaning, so to speak. Each time she would go through the same motions, would peel off her skin-tight drawers and stretch out on the couch.

  I could have had intercourse with her on her very first visit. But instead I spent months desiring her. I would think about it at night in bed. And, with eyes closed, I would take my wife while conjuring up Laurette’s broad white thighs. I thought of it so much that I began watching for her visits and once, passing her on the square, I could not help launching, with a nervous laugh:

  ‘So, you don’t come to see me any more?’

  Why I resisted so long, I don’t know. Perhaps because of the exalted idea I entertained of my profession. Perhaps because I was born in fear.

  She came. She went through the ritual gestures, watching me with eyes full of curiosity which soon changed to amusement. She was only eighteen, scarcely more than a child herself, yet she looked upon me as a grown person looks upon a child whose thoughts she is able to read.

  I was very red and clumsy. I joked nervously:

  ‘Have you had a lot of them lately?’

  And I imagined all the men, most of whom I knew, pushing the laughing girl down under them.

  ‘I don’t count them, you know. I take things as they come.’

  Then, suddenly frowning, as if an idea had just occurred to her:

  ‘Do I disgust you?’

  With that, I made up my mind. A second later I was on top of her, like a great animal, and it was the first time that I ever made love to a woman in my office. The first time also that I ever made love to a woman who, although not a professional, was totally without a sense of shame, who was only mindful of her pleasure and of mine, increasing both by every possible means and using the very crudest words.

  After Jeanne’s death, Laurette continued to come to my office. Later on she came less often, for she became engaged, and to a very nice young fellow at that. But it didn’t change her.

  Was my mother aware of what was going on between the mayor’s chambermaid and myself? Today, I wonder. There are many questions like this which I ask myself now that I am on the other side, not only about my mother, but about almost everybody I have known.

  My mother has always moved about noiselessly, as though in church. Except when she went out, I can’t remember ever seeing her in anything but bedroom slippers a
nd I have never known any other woman able to come and go as she did, without a sound, without, so to speak, disturbing the air, so that as a small child I was often given a terrible fright when I ran into her, thinking her somewhere else.

  ‘Have you been there all the time?’

  How often I have pronounced those words, blushing as I did so!

  I don’t accuse her of curiosity. I think, however, that she listened at doors, that she has always listened at doors. I even think that, if I told her so, she would not be the least bit ashamed. It is the natural result of the idea she has of her role in life, which is to protect. And in order to protect, one has to know.

  Did she know that I slept with Laurette before Jeanne’s death? I am not sure. Afterwards, she could not have helped knowing. It is only now, after all this time, that I realize it. I can still hear her anxious voice saying:

  ‘It seems that when she is married, Laurette will go to live at La Rochelle with her husband who intends to open a shop again …’

  There are so many things that I understand and among them some which frighten me, frighten me all the more because for years I lived without ever suspecting them! Have I really lived? I begin to wonder if I have, to think that I have spent my whole life in a waking dream.

  Everything was easy. Everything was regulated. My days followed each other in a slow, even rhythm about which I did not need to bother my head.

  Everything was regulated, as I say, everything, except my appetite for women. I don’t say for love, but for women. As the doctor of the village, I thought I was bound to be more discreet than other men. I was haunted by the idea of a scandal that would make people point the finger of shame at me and that would create around me in the village a sort of invisible barrier. The sharper and the more painful my sexual desires, the greater the force of my fear, until it even translated itself into childish nightmares.

  What frightens me, your Honour, is to think that a woman, my mother, guessed all this.

  I began going to La Roche-sur-Yon more and more frequently, for it took no time on my big motor-cycle. I had a few friends there, doctors, lawyers, whom I would meet in a café where there were always two or three women sitting at the back near the bar, and for two years I was obsessed by a desire to sleep with them without ever being able to make up my mind to take them to the nearest hotel.

  Coming back to Ormois, I would often ride through all the village streets and all the roads round the village in the hope of meeting Laurette in some unfrequented spot.

  That was what I was reduced to, and my mother knew it. With my two little girls to take care of she had, it is true, her hands full. But I am sure it was entirely on my account, and in spite of her horror of having a stranger in her house, that one fine day she decided to take a maid.

  I must ask you to forgive me, your Honour, for lingering over these details which very probably seem sordid to you, but, you see, I have the impression that they are extremely important.

  Her name was Lucile and she came, of course, from the country. She was seventeen. She was thin and her black hair was always wild. She was so shy that she would drop the plates if I spoke to her unexpectedly.

  She rose early, at six o’clock in the morning, and she was the first to go downstairs to light the fire so that my mother could look after my little daughters.

  It was in the winter. I can still see the stove smoking, still smell the odour of damp wood which refuses to light, then the aroma of coffee. Almost every morning, inventing some excuse, I would go down to the kitchen — the excuse, for example, of going to gather mushrooms. How many times have I gone out to gather mushrooms in the wet meadows only that I might be alone for a moment with Lucile, who never dressed until later and had nothing on but a wrapper over her nightgown.

  She smelled of bed, warm flannel, and perspiration. I don’t think she suspected my designs. On some pretext or other I would manage to rub against her, to touch her.

  ‘Lucile, my poor girl, you are really too thin, you know.’

  I had finally found this excuse for feeling her and she, with a pot in her hands, would not protest.

  To reach this point took me weeks, months. After that it took weeks longer before I finally got up courage enough to push her over on to the kitchen table, always at six o’clock in the morning while it was still dark outside.

  She got no pleasure out of it herself. She was simply glad to make me happy. Afterwards, when she got up, she would bury her head against my chest. Until the day when, at last, she dared raise her head and kiss me.

  Who knows? If her mother had not died, if her father had not been left alone on his farm with seven children, had not sent for her to come home and take care of them, perhaps many things would have been different.

  It was shortly after this, perhaps two weeks after Lucile left, while instead of a regular maid we had a woman of the neighbourhood who came in by the day to help with the housework, that the incident occurred.

  The postmistress had brought her daughter to see me, a young girl about eighteen or nineteen years old who worked in the city and whose health left much to be desired.

  ‘She doesn’t eat. She keeps losing weight. She has dizzy spells. I wonder if her employer doesn’t work her too hard …’

  She was a stenographer with an insurance company. I have forgotten her name, but I can see her plainly, more heavily made up than the girls of our region, with enamelled finger-nails, high heels and a headstrong air.

  There was nothing really premeditated about it. It is customary in the case of young girls, who often have things to hide from their family, for a doctor to examine them, especially to question them without any witness present.

  ‘We’ll just take a look, Madame Blain. If you would like to wait outside for a moment …’

  Immediately, I had the impression that the girl was laughing at me and I often wonder if I really had the look of a man haunted by sex. It is possible. I can’t help it.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re going to ask me to get undressed …’

  Just like that, without even giving me the time to open my mouth.

  ‘Oh! It’s all the same to me, you know. Anyhow, all doctors are like that, aren’t they!’

  She took off her dress as though she were in a bedroom, looking at herself in the mirror and afterwards smoothing her hair.

  ‘If you’re thinking of tuberculosis, there’s no use examining me, I had an X-ray taken last month …’

  Then, finally turning and facing me:

  ‘Shall I take off my slip?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘As you like. What shall I do?’

  ‘Lie down here and don’t move …’

  ‘You’re going to tickle me … I warn you I’m terribly ticklish …’

  As I might have expected, the moment I touched her she began to giggle and squirm.

  A little bitch, your Honour. I detested her, and I could see her watching me for any tell-tale sign.

  ‘You can’t make me believe that doesn’t do anything to you. I am perfectly certain that if it were my mother or some other old woman, you wouldn’t find it necessary to examine the same places … If you could only see your eyes …’

  I behaved like an idiot. She was no novice, I had the proof of that. She had noticed an unmistakable sign of the state I was in and it amused her, she was laughing, her mouth wide open. That is what I see most clearly about her: that open mouth and a little pink pointed tongue close to my face. I said, in a strangely unnatural voice:

  ‘Don’t move … Just relax …’

  And suddenly she began to struggle:

  ‘Ah no, I should say not … you must be crazy! …’

  Another detail I’ve just remembered, which should have made me more cautious. The cleaning woman was sweeping in the hall behind my office, and from time to time her broom knocked against the door.

  Why did I persist when my chances were so slim? In a very loud voice the girl declared:

&nb
sp; ‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll yell.’

  What exactly did the cleaning woman hear? She knocked at the door. She looked in, asking:

  ‘Did you call, Doctor?’

  I don’t know what she saw. I stammered:

  ‘No, Justine … Thank you …’

  And when the door closed behind her, the little devil burst out laughing.

  ‘You were frightened, weren’t you? Serves you right. I’ll get dressed now. What are you going to tell Mama?’

  It was my mother who learned of it from Justine. She never mentioned it to me. She gave no sign. But that same evening, or perhaps it was the next day, she remarked in her vague way, as though she were talking to herself:

  ‘I wonder if you haven’t made enough money now to think of moving to the city …’

  And then, which is characteristic of her, following it immediately with:

  ‘After all, we shall have to go to live in the city sooner or later on account of your daughters, for they cannot go to the village school and will have to be sent to the convent …’

  I had not made a great deal of money, but I had made some, and had put it aside. Thanks to the home pharmacy, as we called it — that is, the latitude allowed country doctors in the matter of selling medicines.

  We were prosperous. The bit of land my mother had saved from disaster gave us a small income, without counting the wine, the chestnuts, and the few chickens and rabbits it provided, as well as wood for burning.

  ‘You should make inquiries at La Roche-sur-Yon.’

  The truth of the matter is that I had been a widower now for almost two years, and my mother thought it prudent to get me married again. She couldn’t eternally hire obliging maids who, one by one, would become engaged or would go to the city where they could earn more money.

  ‘There’s no hurry but you might begin thinking about it … As for me, you understand, I am happy here and I shall be happy anywhere …’

  I also think that Mama hated to see me in plus-fours and heavy boots all the time, like my father, spending practically all my free time out hunting.

  I was her chick, your Honour, but I was not aware of it. I was a huge chick, six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds, a monstrous chick, bursting with health and strength and obeying his mother like a little boy.