And now, your Honour, I ask myself, and this is more serious, if, after having read me, you will not eventually ask yourself the same question, not with regard to my own affairs, but with regard to yours.
I married her.
All right! The same night she slept in my bed. The same night I made love with her, very badly for her and for me. I was embarrassed because I was sweating — I sweat very easily — and because I felt clumsy and inexperienced.
Do you know what was the most difficult thing of all? To kiss her on the mouth. Because of that smile. For, night and day, she keeps an identical smile, which is her natural expression. Well, it isn’t easy to kiss a smile like that.
After ten years, I had the impression, whenever I ‘climbed her’ (as my father would have said), that she was laughing at me.
What haven’t I thought on the subject of Armande? You don’t know our house. Everybody will tell you that it has become one of the most agreeable houses in La Roche-sur-Yon. Even our old furniture, the few pieces that are left, have taken on such a different aspect that my mother and I hardly recognize them.
Well, for me, it has always been her house.
The food is excellent, but it is her food.
And my friends? After a year I no longer looked upon them as my friends but hers.
And as a matter of fact they all took her part later on when things happened — all of them, including the ones I thought my best friends, those I had known as a student, those I had known as a boy.
‘You’re lucky to have found such a wife!’
Yes, your Honour. Yes, gentlemen. I realize it with due humility. And it is because I realized it, day after day, for ten years that …
Forgive me! I’m off the track again. But I have such a strong feeling that it would take a very little effort to get to the bottom of things, once and for all!
In medicine, diagnosis is the thing that counts. Once the malady has been tracked down, it is only a question of routine or the knife. And what I am furiously attempting is a diagnosis.
I never loved Jeanne and I never asked myself if I loved her. I never loved any of the girls I happened to sleep with. I never felt the need, nor the desire. More than that. The word love, except in the trivial locution to make love, seemed to me a word that a kind of modesty keeps one from pronouncing.
Do people talk about love in the country?
At home they say:
‘I went bulling down in the hollow road with the So-and-So girl …’
My father really loved my mother, and yet I am sure he never mentioned love. As for Mama, I cannot imagine her pronouncing the sentimental phrases one hears in films or reads in novels.
To Armande I never spoke of love either. One evening when she was dining at the house with my mother and me, we were discussing the colour of the curtains we were going to buy for the dining-room. She favoured red, a very bright red, which terrified Mama.
‘You must excuse me,’ she said with that smile of hers. ‘I am giving my opinion just as if I were at home.’
And I heard myself reply without premeditation, without thinking, as though uttering a banal politeness:
‘It only depends on you for it to be so in reality.’
That is how I proposed to her.
‘You’re joking, Charles.’
My poor Mama seconded me!
‘Charles never jokes.’
‘You really want me to become Mme Alavoine?’
‘In any case’ (still my mother at the helm), ‘the children will certainly be happy.’
‘Who knows? … Aren’t you afraid I’ll upset your household too much?’
If Mama had only known! Don’t misunderstand me — Armande has always been very sweet to her. She has behaved exactly like a doctor’s wife concerned about the comfort, the peace of mind, and the good name of her husband.
Always, without exception and with an innate tact — you must have noticed it yourself in court — she does the right thing.
Wasn’t it her first duty to polish my rough edges, since she was more civilized than I and since I, fresh from the country, was trying to make good in the city? Shouldn’t she refine my tastes as much as possible, create for my daughters a more delicate atmosphere than the one my mother and I were used to?
All of which she accomplished with a dexterity peculiar to her, and with exquisite tact.
Oh! That word!
‘She is exquisite.’ For ten years I have had it dinned into my ears in every key. ‘You have an exquisite wife.’
And I would come home with an uneasy feeling and such a sensation of my inferiority that I felt like going to eat in the kitchen with the maid.
As for Mama, your Honour, she was made to dress in black or grey silk, made to dress in a dignified and becoming manner. She was made to arrange her hair differently — before that her bun was always straggling down the nape of her neck — and she was made to sit in the drawing-room in front of a charming little work-table with her sewing.
She was forbidden, for the sake of her health, to come downstairs before nine o’clock, and her breakfast was brought to her in bed — Mama who at home used to feed the animals — the cows, the chickens and the pigs — before sitting down to eat herself!
On her birthday and holidays she was presented with tasteful gifts, including old-lady jewellery.
‘Don’t you think, Charles, that Mama seems a little tired this summer?’
She was urged, but this time in vain, to go to Evian to take the cure for her liver, with which she had had some difficulties.
And all that, your Honour, is perfect. Everything Armande has done, everything she does, everything she will ever do is perfect. Do you realize how discouraging that could be?
On the witness-stand she appeared neither as a heart-broken nor as an irate wife. She did not wear black. She did not call upon society to punish me, nor did she make an appeal for pity. She was simple and calm. She was herself — serene.
It was entirely her idea to engage the services of Maître Gabriel, the most famous leader of the Paris bar (also the most expensive advocate) — her idea also, since I belonged in a way to La Roche-sur-Yon, that it would be a dignified thing to have the Vendée represented by its best lawyer.
She answered all the questions with a naturalness that caused general admiration and several times I really thought that the courtroom was going to burst into applause.
Do you remember the way she said, when my crime was mentioned:
‘I have nothing to say concerning this woman … I received her two or three times at the house, but I hardly knew her …’
Without hate, as the newspapers were careful to emphasize. Almost without bitterness. And with what dignity!
That’s it, your Honour. I think I have just found the right word unwittingly. Armande has dignity. She is dignity itself. And now, try to imagine yourself for ten years in daily tête-à-têtes with Dignity, try to picture yourself in the same bed with Dignity!
I shouldn’t say that. It is false, utterly false. I know it, but I have only just discovered it. I had to make the great leap first. Yet I really must explain, try to make you understand my former state of mind during the years of my married life.
Have you ever dreamed that you had married your schoolmistress? Well, your Honour, that is what happened to me. For ten years my mother and I, both of us, lived at school, waiting to be given a good mark, in fear of receiving a bad one.
And my mother is still there.
Suppose you are walking along a calm street in a provincial town, on a hot August afternoon. The street is divided in two by the line separating the shady side from the sunny side.
You walk along the pavement flooded with sunlight and your shadow walks along with you almost at your side; you can see it broken in two by the angle formed by the white-walled houses and the pavement.
Go on supposing … Do make the effort … All at once, this shadow accompanying you disappears …
It doesn’
t change its position. It doesn’t pass behind you because you have changed your direction. I mean, it just disappears.
And suddenly there you are in the street without a shadow. You turn round and you can’t find it. You look down at your feet and your feet emerge from a pool of sunlight.
The houses on the other side of the street still hold their cool shadows. Chatting peacefully, two men pass by and their shadows precede them, moving in the same cadence, making the same gestures.
There is a dog by the kerb. He, too, has his shadow.
You begin to feel yourself all over. Your body has the same consistency as on any other day. You take a few quick steps and you stop short, hoping to find your shadow again. You run. Still it is not there. You turn on your heel and look down, there is no dark spot on the bright stones of the pavement.
The world is full of reassuring shadows. The shadow of the church on the square alone covers a vast area, where a few old men sit enjoying the cool shade.
You are not dreaming. You have no shadow and, seized with anguish, you stop a passer-by:
‘I beg your pardon …’
He stops. He looks at you. You do exist then, even if you have lost your shadow. He waits to know what you want of him.
‘This is the market-place, isn’t it?’
And he thinks you must be crazy, or else a stranger.
Can you imagine the anguish of wandering alone without a shadow in a world where everybody else has one?
I don’t know whether I dreamed this or whether I read it somewhere. When I first began to talk to you about it, I thought I was inventing a comparison; then it seemed to me that this anguish of the man without a shadow was somehow familiar, that I had lived it before, that it was bringing back confused memories, and so I believe it may be a forgotten dream.
For years — I don’t know just how many — five or six — I went about the city like everybody else. Had anyone asked me if I were happy, I would have absent-mindedly answered yes.
You see that all I have told you before is not really so exact. My house was being organized, became little by little more comfortable and more attractive. My girls were growing up. The elder made her first communion. My clientele increased — not a wealthy clientele, but the common people. That doesn’t bring in as much per visit, but the common people pay cash after coming into your office with your fee in their hand.
I learned to play bridge correctly and that occupied me for several months. We bought a car and that took up some more time. I started playing tennis again because Armande played tennis, which accounted for a considerable number of late afternoons.
All this joined together — these little initiations, these hopes for further improvement, this looking forward to trivial pleasures, to minor joys, and banal satisfactions — ended by filling up five or six years of my life.
‘Next summer we’ll go to the seashore for our vacation.’
Another year there were the winter sports. Another year something else.
As for this business of the shadow, it did not happen all at once, as in the case of my man on the street. But I couldn’t find any better image.
I can’t even place the thing within a year or so. My disposition apparently did not change, I did not lose my appetite, and I had the same inclination for work.
There just came a moment when I began to look around me with different eyes and I saw a city that looked strange to me, a pretty city, very neat, very luminous, very clean, a city in which everybody greeted me affably.
Why did I have that sensation of emptiness then?
I began looking at my house too, and I asked myself why it was my house, what connexion there was between these rooms, this garden, this wrought-iron gate adorned with a brass plate bearing my name, and me.
I looked at Armande and I had to keep telling myself that she was my wife.
Why?
And these little girls who called me Papa …
I repeat, it didn’t happen all at once, for, in that case, I would have been very much worried about myself and would have consulted one of my colleagues.
What was I doing in a peaceful little town, in a charming comfortable house among people who smiled at me and cordially shook my hand?
And who had fixed the order of my days, which I followed as scrupulously as if my life depended on it? What am I saying! As if from the beginning of time it had been decided by the Creator that this order should inexorably be mine!
We entertained frequently, twice or three times a week. Good friends, who had their day, their habits, their little foibles, their armchair. And I watched them with a certain terror, saying:
‘What have I to do with them?’
It was as if my sight had grown too keen, as if, for example, it had suddenly become sensitive to ultraviolet rays.
And I was the only one to see the world in this way, the only one to be troubled in a universe that had no idea of what was happening to me.
In fact, for years and years I lived without being conscious of all this. I had scrupulously done the best I could, everything I had been told to do. Without trying to know the reason. Without trying to understand.
A man must have a profession, and Mama had made a doctor of me. He must have children, and I had children. He must have a house, a wife, and I had all these. He must have distractions, and I drove a car, played bridge and tennis. He must have vacations, and I took my family to the seashore.
My family! I would look at them around the dining-room table and it was as if I didn’t recognize them. I would look at my daughters. Everybody said they resembled me.
In what way? Why?
And what was this woman doing in my house, in my bed?
And these people sitting patiently in my waiting-room, whom I called into my office, one by one? …
Why?
I continued to go through the same daily motions. I was not unhappy, you mustn’t think that, but I had the impression of running around in circles.
Then, little by little, a vague longing took possession of me, so vague that I hardly know how to speak of it. I lacked something and I didn’t know what. Often my mother, between meals, will say:
‘I think maybe I’m a little bit hungry.’
She isn’t sure. Just a diffused uneasiness which she quickly satisfies by eating a piece of bread and butter or some cheese.
I too was hungry, undoubtedly, but for what?
It came so insensibly, this uneasiness, that it is impossible, I repeat, to date the beginning of it within a year or two. I paid no attention to it. We have been so conditioned to think that what exists, exists; that the world is really as we see it, that we must do this or that and never act otherwise …
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Bah! A slight depression …’
Was it, perhaps, because of Armande, who did not give me enough rein?
That is what I decided one day, and thenceforth it was Armande and Armande alone who for me epitomized the over-calm city, the over-harmonious house, the family, work, all that was too monotonous in my daily existence.
‘She is the one who wants to keep it like this. She who keeps me from being free, from living the life of a real man.’
I watched her. I spied on her. Every word of hers, every gesture, confirmed me in my idea.
‘She’s the one who insisted on having the house as it is, on organizing our life in a certain way, on my living as she sees fit …’
And that, your Honour, is what I have understood recently. Armande, little by little, without knowing it herself, took on for me the character of Destiny. And, in revolt against that Destiny, I revolted against her.
‘She’s so jealous she won’t allow me one moment of liberty.’
Was it jealousy? I sometimes wonder. Perhaps simply because she believed that a wife’s place was by her husband’s side?
About this time I went to Caen, for my aunt had just died. I went alone. I can’t remember what kept Armande at home, probably the
illness of one of the children, for one or the other of them was almost always ill.
Passing by the little street, I remembered the girl with the red hat, and the blood rushed to my head. I thought I understood what it was I needed. That evening, in my mourning clothes, I went to the Brasserie Chandivert which I found almost unchanged, except for a few additional lights. It seems to me that the place is more spacious now and that they have still further enlarged it at the back.
I was seeking, I wanted the same adventure. With a sort of anguish I looked round at all the women sitting alone. Not one of them resembled even vaguely the girl of the past.
What of it! I felt the need of deceiving Armande, of deceiving my Destiny as sordidly as possible, and I chose a big blonde with a vulgar smile and a gold tooth in the front of her mouth.
‘You’re a stranger here, aren’t you?’
She did not take me home with her, but to a little hotel behind the church of St John. Her gestures in getting undressed were so professional that it sickened me, and at a certain moment I was on the point of leaving.
‘How much will you pay me?’
And then suddenly it took possession of me. It was like a need for vengeance, I can’t think of any other word. Surprised, she kept repeating, showing her gold tooth:
‘Well, I’ll be damned! …’
That, your Honour, is the first time I was unfaithful to Armande. I put into it as much fury as if I had been trying at any cost to find my shadow.
Chapter Five
The clock outside the station, a great reddish moon suspended in darkness, showed six minutes to seven. Just as I opened the door of my taxi, the big hand advanced one minute, and I remember clearly its jerky movement and how it went on quivering as though, having started too impetuously, it could with difficulty contain itself. A train whistled — mine probably. I was encumbered with a lot of little packages which were threatening to come undone; the taxi-driver could not change the note I handed him. It was pouring and, with my feet in a puddle of water, I had to unbutton my overcoat and my jacket and search through my pockets for small change.
Act of Passion Page 8
