Climates

by Andre Maurois

  Most people did not think the marriage was particularly sound. Yvonne Prévost often spent time in Toulon, and I asked her to tell me very frankly what she knew.

  “It’s terribly difficult to explain,” she said. “I haven’t seen much of them … It strikes me that when they married, they both already knew they were making a mistake. But she does love him … I apologize for telling you that, Marcenat, but you wanted to know. She certainly loves him a great deal more than he loves her, it’s just she’s proud; she doesn’t want to show it. I had a meal at their house, and there was an awkward atmosphere … Do you know what I mean? She kept saying kind little niceties, some of them rather naïve, the sort of things you so liked, and François rebuffed her … He can be so brutal. I can assure you I felt for her … You could see she was trying to please him, that she longed to talk about subjects he would find interesting … of course she didn’t talk about them very skillfully and François answered irritably and contemptuously: ‘Yes, yes, Odile, all right.’ Roger and I felt sorry for her.”

  I spent the whole winter of 1913–14 in trivial intrigues with women, on business trips undertaken rather unnecessarily, and studies that I never pursued in any depth. I did not want to take anything seriously. I broached ideas and people’s lives with caution, always prepared to lose them, so that it would not hurt me if I did. Toward May it was warm enough for Hélène de Thianges to entertain in her garden. She threw cushions on the lawn for the ladies, and the men sat on the grass. On the first Saturday in June, I found an entertaining group of writers and politicians there, surrounding Father Cénival. Hélène’s little dog was lying at his feet, and Hélène asked very earnestly, “Tell me, Father, do animals have a soul? Because if they don’t, then I really don’t understand. How could it be? My poor dog who’s suffered so much …”

  “Well yes, Madame,” said the abbot, “why wouldn’t they have one? … They have a very small soul.”

  “That’s not very orthodox,” someone said, “but it’s disturbing.”

  I myself was sitting some way away with an American woman called Beatrice Howell; we were listening to the conversation.

  “Well, I’m quite sure animals have a soul … When it comes down to it, there’s no difference between them and ourselves. I was thinking that earlier. I spent the afternoon at the Zoological Gardens. I adore animals, Marcenat.”

  “And so do I,” I said. “Would you like to go there together one day?”

  “I’d be delighted … What was I saying? Oh yes! I was watching the sea lions this afternoon. I love them because they gleam like wet rubber. They were swimming around in circles underwater and popping their heads up every two minutes to breathe, and I felt sorry for them. I kept thinking, ‘Poor creatures, what a monotonous life!’ Then I thought, ‘And what about us? What do we do? We go around in circles underwater all week, and at about six o’clock on a Saturday evening we pop our heads out of the water at Hélène de Thianges’s salon, then on Tuesday at the Duchess of Rohan’s, or Madeleine Lemaire’s, and Madame de Marel’s on Sunday …’ It’s all the same thing. Don’t you think?”

  Just then I saw Major Prévost and his wife arrive, and I was struck by their somber expressions. They walked anxiously, as if the gravel in the garden were fragile. Hélène stood up to say hello. I watched her because I liked the gracious, animated way she greeted her guests. I always used to tell her she was like a white butterfly barely coming to rest on people.

  The Prévosts started telling her something and I saw her face darken. She looked around in some embarrassment and, spotting me, averted her eyes. They moved a few paces away.

  “Do you know the Prévosts?” I asked Beatrice Howell.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been a guest of theirs in Toulon. They have a beautiful old house … I do so like the seafront in Toulon. Those old French houses set against the sea … it’s a lovely combination.”

  Several people had now joined Hélène and the Prévosts. They had formed quite a group and were talking almost loudly; I thought I heard my name.

  “What are they up to?” I asked Mrs. Howell. “Let’s go and see.”

  I helped her up and brushed off a few blades of grass clinging to her dress. Hélène de Thianges saw us and came over to me.

  “Do excuse me,” she said to Beatrice, “I’d like a word with Marcenat. Listen,” she said to me, “I’m so sorry to be the first to tell you such a dreadful thing, but I don’t want to run the risk … Well, the Prévosts have just told me that your wife … that Odile took her own life this morning, in Toulon, with a revolver.”

  “Odile?” I said. “My God! Why?”

  I pictured Odile’s frail body punctured by a bleeding wound, and a single sentence went around and around inside my head: “Under the influence of Mars, fatally condemned …”

  “No one knows,” she said. “Leave without saying goodbye to anyone. When I hear anything, I’ll telephone you.”

  I started walking aimlessly toward the Bois de Boulogne. What had happened? My poor little child, why had she not called me if she was so unhappy? I would have gone to help her with such wild joy, would have taken her back home, would have consoled her. From the very first time I saw François, I knew he would be Odile’s downfall. I remembered that dinner and had that same acute impression again, the father who had carelessly taken his child somewhere contaminated. At the time, I felt she had to be saved as soon as possible. I had not saved her … Odile dead … Women who passed me on the street peered at me anxiously. Perhaps I was talking out loud … So much beauty, so much charm … I could see myself beside her bed, holding her hand as she recited:

  From too much love of living,

  From hope and fear set free …

  “The weariest river, Dickie,” she used to say in a comically doleful voice.

  And I would reply, “Don’t say it like that, darling, you’ll make me cry.”

  Odile dead … Ever since I had known her, I had watched her with superstitious concern. Too beautiful … One day when we were in Bagatelle, an old gardener had seen Odile and me, and said, “The most beautiful roses are the first to wilt …” Odile dead … I thought that if I could have seen her once more just for a quarter of an hour and then died with her, I would have agreed at once.

  I do not know how I arrived home, how I got to bed. I fell asleep toward dawn and dreamed I was dining with Aunt Cora. André Halff, Hélène de Thianges, Bertrand, and my cousin Renée were all there. I looked everywhere for Odile. At last, after worrying for ages, I found her lying on a sofa. She was pale and seemed very ill, and I thought, “Yes, she’s unwell but she’s not dead. What a terrible dream I had!”

  . XXII .

  My first thought was to leave for Toulon the next day, but I was feverish and delirious for a week. Bertrand and André tended to me most devotedly; Hélène came several times to bring me flowers. When I felt a little restored, I asked her anxiously what she had gathered. The accounts she had heard, like those I myself had, were contradictory. The truth seemed to be that François, who was used to being very independent, had quickly tired of the marriage. Odile had disappointed him. Spoiled by me, she proved gently demanding at the point when François already loved her less. He had thought her intelligent; she was not, at least not in the popular sense of the word. I knew this perfectly well myself, but it had been of no consequence to me. He tried to insist she respect a degree of discipline in her thinking and her behavior. Odile and François, both proud creatures, had clashed violently.

  Much later, some six months ago, a woman told me some confidential comments François had made about Odile. “She was very beautiful,” he had told her, “and I really loved her. But her first husband had trained her badly. She was an extraordinary coquette. She’s the only woman who’s managed to hurt me, me … I defended myself … I took her to pieces … I laid her out on the table, open and bare … I saw the workings of all her little lies … I showed her I could see them … She thought she could get me b
ack with a bit of her charm … Then she realized she was beaten … Of course I regret what happened, but I feel no remorse. I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  Once I knew of this conversation, I was filled with disgust for François. And yet there were times when I admired him. He was stronger than I had been, and perhaps more intelligent; mostly stronger, because like him I had understood Odile, but the difference between us was that I had not had the courage to tell her. Was François’s cynicism any better than my weakness? After thinking about it at length, I too felt no regret for what I had done. Defeating people and driving them to despair is easy. To this day, after that failure, I still believe it is finer to try to love them, even in spite of themselves.

  Besides, none of this clearly explained Odile’s suicide. One thing is certain: François was not in Toulon the day she killed herself. During the war, Bertrand met a boy who had dined with Odile, along with three other young women and three naval officers, on the eve of her suicide. The conversation had been very gay. Odile had sipped champagne and laughed as she said to the man next to her, “Do you know, I’m going to kill myself at noon tomorrow.” She was very calm throughout the evening, and this stranger noticed (because he described this to Bertrand) the luminous white glow of her beauty.

  I was unwell for three months. Then I left for Toulon. I spent several days there, covering Odile’s grave with white flowers. One evening an old woman came over to me in the cemetery, told me she had been Madame de Crozant’s chambermaid, and said she recognized me because she had seen my photograph in one of her mistress’s drawers. She then told me that in the early weeks, although Odile seemed very cheerful in public, she descended into despair the moment she was alone. “Sometimes,” the woman told me, “when I went into Madame’s room, I would find her sitting in a chair with her head in her hands … As if looking death in the face.”

  I talked to her for a long time and was delighted to see that she had adored Odile.

  There was nothing I could do in Toulon, so in early July I decided to go and live at Gandumas. There I tried to work and read. I took long walks through the heather and managed to sleep by tiring myself out.

  I carried on dreaming of Odile almost every night. Most often I would see myself in a church or a theater, with the place next to me empty. All at once I would think, “Where’s Odile?” and start looking for her. I saw pale women with a mess of hair, but not one of them looked like her. Then I woke up.

  I could not work. I had even stopped going to the factory. I did not want to see a single human being. I liked my heartbreak. Every morning I went down to the village alone. I could hear the sound of an organ coming from the church, so light and fluid that it blended with the air and seemed to be its murmuring voice. I pictured Odile by my side in the light-colored dress she wore on the day we first walked together beside the black Florentine cypresses. Why had I lost her? I wanted to find the word, the action that had transformed that great love into this sad, sad story. I could not. There were roses she would have loved in every garden.

  It was on a Saturday in August, during one of these walks at Chardeuil, that I heard a drumroll followed by the local policeman crying: “Mobilization of land and sea forces.”

  . I .

  Philippe, I have come into your study to work this evening. As I came in I struggled to believe I would not find you here. You still seem so alive to me, Philippe. I can see you in that armchair, book in hand, your legs bent back beneath you. I can see you halfway through a meal, when your gaze had wandered and you had stopped listening to what I was saying. I can see you welcoming one of your friends, and your long fingers endlessly twiddling a pencil or an eraser. I loved your little gestures.

  Three months already since that horrible night. You said, “Isabelle, I can’t breathe. I think I’m going to die.” I can still hear that voice, it was already so different, no longer yours. Will I forget it? The worst thing for me is thinking that even my pain will most likely die. If you only knew how sad I felt when you said so earnestly, “Now I’ve lost Odile forever. I can’t even remember her features.”

  You loved her very much, Philippe. I have just reread the long exposition you sent me around the time we were married, and I envied her. At least that is something that will be left of her. There will be nothing of me. And yet you loved me too. I have your first letters here in front of me, the ones from 1919. Yes, you loved me then, you loved me almost too much. I remember once saying, “You value me at three hundred when I’m worth forty, Philippe, and that’s awful. When you realize your mistake, you’ll think I’m worth ten, or nothing.” You were like that. You told me Odile used to say, “You expect too much of women. You put them on a pedestal; it’s dangerous.” She was right, poor little thing.

  For the last two weeks I have been resisting an urge that is growing stronger by the day. For my own sake, I would like to make a record of my love as you did of yours. Philippe, do you think I will succeed—however ineptly—in writing our story? I shall have to do it as you did, fairly, being very careful to say everything. I can tell it will be difficult. We are always tempted to sentimentalize ourselves and depict ourselves as we would like to be. Particularly me; it is one of the things you held against me. “Don’t be self-pitying,” you used to say. But I have your letters, I have this red notebook that you hid so carefully, and the little journal I started and you asked me to give up on. If I were to try … I am sitting at your desk. The image of your hand is all part of this ink-stained green leather. I am surrounded by terrifying silence. If I were to try …

  . II .

  The house on the rue Ampère. Potted palms in cachepots surrounded by green cloths. The gothic dining room, the sideboard with its protruding gargoyles in high relief, the chairs—they were so hard—with Quasimodo’s head sculpted on the chair back. The red damask living room and its armchairs with too much gilding. The bedroom I grew up in, painted in a white that was once virginal but had grown dirty. The schoolroom, a junk room where I took my meals with my teacher when there were grand dinners. Mademoiselle Chauvière and I often had to wait until ten o’clock. A grumpy, sweating, overstretched valet would bring us a tray of viscous soup and melted ice cream. I felt as if, like me, he understood the unobtrusive, almost humiliating role that the only child played in that household.

  Oh, my childhood was so sad! “Do you think so, darling!” Philippe would say. No, I am not wrong about this. I was very unhappy. Was it my parents’ fault? I have often held it against them. Now soothed by a stronger pain, when I look back at the past with fresh eyes, I can see they thought they were doing the right thing. But their methods were strict and dangerous, and I feel as if the results condemn them.

  I say “my parents” but I should say “my mother” because my father was very busy and scarcely asked more of his daughter than to be invisible and silent. For a long time his distance gave him tremendous prestige in my eyes. I considered him a natural ally against my mother because, two or three times, I heard him reply with amused skepticism when she revealed a bad aspect of my character. “You remind me of my director, Monsieur Delcassé,” he said. “He puts himself behind Europe and says he’s helping it move forward … do you yourself believe we can mold a human being? … well, of course we can’t, dear friend, we think we’re actors in this drama when we’re only ever spectators.” My mother flashed reproachful looks at him, pointing anxiously at me. She was not unkind, but she sacrificed my happiness and her own to her fear of imaginary dangers. “Your mother’s only affliction,” Philippe told me later, “is overdeveloped cautiousness.” That was exactly it. She saw every human life as a hard battle, and we needed to be toughened up for it. “A spoiled little girl makes an unhappy woman,” she would say. “You mustn’t get a child used to thinking she’s rich; God knows what life has in store for her.” And: “It doesn’t do a young woman any favors paying her compliments.” Which was why she repeatedly told me I was far from beautiful and would have a lot of trouble appealing to
anyone. She could see this made me cry, but in her view childhood represented what earthly life was for those who feared hell: even if it meant harsh penitence, my soul and body had to be steered toward a worldly salvation at whose gates marriage would be the final judgment.

  This upbringing might, in fact, have been very wise had I had her strong personality, her self-confidence, and great beauty. But being naturally shy, my fear made me withdrawn. By the age of eleven, I avoided human company and sought refuge in reading. I was particularly passionate about history. At fifteen, my favorite heroines were Joan of Arc and Charlotte Corday; at eighteen, Louise de la Vallière. I felt peculiarly happy reading about a Carmelite’s suffering or Joan of Arc’s final moments. I felt I too could summon infinite physical courage. My father was very contemptuous of fear and had made me stay out in the garden at night when I was very young. He also asked that I not be shown pity or tenderness when I was ill. I learned to view visits to the dentist as stages toward a heroic sanctity.

  When my father left the Foreign Office and was appointed French minister in Belgrade, my mother took to closing our house on the rue Ampère for several months every year and sending me to my grandparents in Lozère. There I was unhappier still. I did not like being in the country. I preferred monuments to landscapes, and churches to woodland. Reading through the journal I wrote as a girl is like flying over a desert of boredom in a very slow airplane. I felt I would go on being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen forever. My parents, who honestly believed they were bringing me up well, killed any taste for happiness in me. My first ball, something most women remember as such a dazzling, lively event, stirs only feelings of painful and enduring humiliation. It was in 1913. My mother had had my dress made at home by her chambermaid. The dress was ugly, I knew that, but my mother was scornful of luxury. “Men don’t look at dresses,” she said. “People don’t like women for what they wear.” I had little success in society. I was very awkward and had a desperate need for affection. I was seen as stiff, clumsy, and pretentious. I was stiff because I spent my life restraining myself, clumsy because I had always been denied any freedom of movement or thought, and pretentious because I was too shy and too modest to talk graciously about myself or anything amusing, so I took refuge in serious subjects. My slightly pedantic seriousness at balls meant the young men kept their distance. Oh! How I longed for the man who would tear me away from this slavery, from those long months in Lozère when I saw no one, when I knew every morning that nothing would interrupt the day except for an hour’s walk with Mademoiselle Chauvière. I pictured him handsome and charming. Every time Siegfried was put on at the opera, I begged Mademoiselle Chauvière to secure permission for me to watch it because, in my view, I was a captive Walkyrie who could only be delivered by a hero.