“They would have gone there. Besides, don’t make so much of all this. You’ll see, they’re very kind and you’ll be glad to have them as companions.”
“Listen then, Philippe. Do this: you go alone with them. I don’t like the idea anymore.”
“You’re mad! They won’t understand at all. And I don’t think it’s very kind of you. I didn’t have any intention of going anywhere, of leaving Paris; you’re the one who asked me to. I agreed to it to make you happy, and now you’re trying to make me go on my own!”
“Not on your own … with your dearest friends.”
“Isabelle, I’m tired of this ridiculous scene,” Philippe said with a violence I had never seen in him. “I’ve done you no wrong. I didn’t invite the Villiers. They invited themselves. Anyway, they mean absolutely nothing to me. I’ve never made overtures to Solange … I’ve had enough,” he went on, hammering out the words and pacing up and down the dining room. “I can feel how jealous and anxious you are, and I daren’t do or say anything anymore … Nothing reduces life more drastically than that, you can take it from me …”
“What reduces life,” I told him, “is sharing it with everyone.”
I listened to what I was saying in amazement. I sounded sarcastic, hostile. I was busy irritating the only person in the world I was interested in, and I could not help myself doing it.
“Poor Isabelle!” Philippe said.
And—because, thanks to him, I knew his past life so well and probably lived in his memories more than he did himself—I could see he was thinking, “Poor Isabelle! It’s happening to you too, it’s your turn …”
I slept very badly that night, blaming myself entirely. What grievances did I actually have? There was certainly no intimacy between my husband and Solange Villier because they had not seen each other for a long time. So I had no legitimate grounds to be jealous. Meeting them might even have been fortuitous. Would Philippe have had fun alone with me in Saint-Moritz? He would have come home to Paris grumpy, feeling as if I had forced him to make a pointless and rather lackluster trip. With the Villiers he would be in a good mood, and some of his happiness would reflect on his wife. But I felt sad.
. X .
We were meant to leave a day before the Villiers but our departure was delayed, and all four of us ended up taking the same train.
In the morning, Philippe woke early, and when I came out of the compartment I found him standing in the corridor deep in conversation with Solange, who was also up and ready. I watched them for a moment and was struck by how happy they looked. I went over to them and said, “Good morning!” Solange Villier turned around and, in spite of myself, I wondered, “Does she look like Odile?” No, she did not look like Odile; she was much more vigorous, and her features were less childlike, less angelic. Solange looked like a woman who had measured herself up against life, who had dominated it. When she smiled at me, I was momentarily won over. Then her husband came to join us. The train was traveling between two tall mountains, and a torrent ran alongside the tracks. I found the scenery otherworldly and sad. Jacques Villier talked to me about boring topics; I knew (because everyone said so) that he was an intelligent man: not only had he been very well received in Morocco, but he had also become a major businessman. “He does a bit of everything,” Philippe had told me, “phosphates, ports, mines.” But the truth is I was trying to listen to the conversation between Philippe and Solange, and the clatter of the train was robbing me of half of it. I heard (Solange’s voice): “Well, what would you say charm is?” (Philippe’s voice): “… very complex … the face plays a part, and the body … but particularly the natural …” (a word I missed, then Solange’s voice): “And taste too, impulsiveness, a spirit of adventure … wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s it,” said Philippe. “A combination. A woman has to be capable of gravity and childishness … What’s intolerable …”
Again the noise of the train snatched the end of the sentence away. The mountains rose up before us. Cut wood, gleaming with resin, was piled up next to a chalet with a wide shallow-sloping roof. Was I going to suffer like this for a whole week? Jacques Villier ended a long description with, “… Anyway, you can see the operation is quite superb.”
He laughed. He had most probably explained some ingenious device to me; all I remembered of it was a name: the Godet Group.
“Superb,” I replied, and I could see he thought me stupid. It did not matter to me. I was starting to hate him.
In my memory, the end of that journey was like a state of delirium. The overheated little train climbed through a backdrop of dazzling white, shrouding itself in clouds of steam that hovered briefly over the snow. It followed mysterious wide curves, which made the white crests topped with fir trees revolve around us. Then a precipice appeared to one side of the tracks and, far down below, we could see the black curve we had just left behind. Solange watched this display with childish glee and kept drawing Philippe’s attention to details in the scenery.
“Look, Marcenat, it’s so beautiful the way the trees keep the snow on their branches … You can just feel the strength of the wood holding all that weight without bowing … And there … Oh, there! … Look at that hotel glittering up there on the peak, like a diamond nestled in white velvet … And the colors on the snow … Do you notice how it’s never white, but bluish white, pinkish white … Oh, Marcenat, Marcenat! I do so love it!”
None of this was spiteful, and even when I think about it in all honesty, there was something gracious about the way she said it, but she irritated me. I was amazed that Philippe, who claimed to prize naturalness above everything else, tolerated this lyrical monologue. “Maybe she’s happy,” I thought, “but still, at thirty-three (perhaps thirty-five … her neck looks drawn), she can’t be happy the way a child is … And, anyway, we can all see that the snow’s blue and pink … Why say so?” I felt Jacques Villier was thinking along the same lines as me because, from time to time, he punctuated his wife’s sentences with a cynical and slightly weary “y-es.” When he said that “y-es,” I liked him for a moment.
I did not understand the Villiers’ relationship. They displayed great courtesy toward each other and she treated him with a familiar sort of tenderness, calling him sometimes Jacquot and sometimes Jacquou, and even kissing him for no apparent reason, just skimming him with her lips. And yet, after spending a few hours with them, it was very clear they were not lovers, that Villier was not jealous and accepted his wife’s excesses in advance with haughty resignation. What did he live for? For another woman? For his mines, his boats, and his Moroccan fields? I could not tell and besides was not interested enough in him to try to tell. I looked down on him for being so indulgent. “He doesn’t want to be here any more than I do,” I thought, “and if he had a bit of drive, neither of us would be here.” Philippe, who had bought a Swiss newspaper, was trying to convert prices on the stock exchange into French francs and, thinking this would please Villier, talking about share values. Villier nonchalantly swept aside the strange names of Greek and Mexican factories like a famous writer raising a weary hand when a flatterer quotes from his works. He turned to me and asked whether I had read Koenigsmark. The little train was still snaking around between the fluid white shapes.
Why when I remember Saint-Moritz does it appear as the set for a play by Musset, simultaneously cheerful, unreal, and melancholy? I can still see the way out of the station by night, the lights on the snow, the piercing hearty cold, the sleds, and the mules whose harnesses were laden with small bells and red, yellow, and blue pompoms. Then the wonderful embracing heat of our hotel, the English in evening dress in the hall, and, in our vast, warm room, the happiness of being alone with my husband for a few minutes, at last.
“Philippe, kiss me, we must consecrate this room … Oh, I would so love to have dinner here alone with you! And we’re going to have to dress up, meet up with those people and talk and talk …”
“But they’re very nice.”
“Very nice …
on condition that we don’t have to see them.”
“You’re so harsh! Didn’t you think Solange was pleasant on the journey?”
“Come on, Philippe, you’re in love with her.”
“Never in my life. Why?”
“Because if you weren’t in love with her you wouldn’t put up with her for two minutes … I mean, what did she talk to you about? Can you think of a single idea in everything she’s told you since this morning?”
“Well, yes … She has a strong feeling for nature. She spoke very prettily about the snow, the fir trees … wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, she occasionally comes out with an image, but I do too. All women would if they let their tongues run away with them … it’s our natural way of thinking … The big difference between Solange and me is that I have far too much respect for you to tell you everything that comes into my head.”
“My dear friend,” Philippe said with tender irony, “I’ve never doubted your aptitude to think pretty things, nor your modesty that keeps you from telling them to me.”
“Don’t make fun of me, darling … I’m being serious … If you weren’t slightly tempted by that young woman, you’d see that she’s incoherent, she jumps about from one subject to another … Isn’t that true? Be honest.”
“It’s not true at all,” said Philippe.
. XI .
In my memory that trip to the mountains is like an appalling form of torture. Before we left I knew I was naturally inept at all physical activities but had thought Philippe and I would tackle the difficulties together, as a couple of novices, and that it would be fun. On the very first morning I discovered that Solange Villier had a divine ability for these games. Philippe was less experienced than her but was supple and relaxed. From the first day I had to watch them skating together jubilantly while I dragged myself along awkwardly, supported by an instructor.
After dinner, Philippe and Solange pulled their chairs closer together in the hotel foyer and chatted all evening, while I had to listen to Jacques Villier’s financial theories. It was the days of the sixty-franc pound, and I remember him saying, “You know, that’s a very long way from the true value of the pound: you should tell your husband to put at least some of his fortune in foreign currency because, you see …”
Sometimes he also talked to me about his mistresses, even naming them. “You must have heard that I’m with Jenny Sorbier, the actress? That’s no longer the case … No … I loved her very much, but it’s over … I’m now with Madame Lhauterie … Do you know her? She’s a pretty woman, and very gentle … A man like me, who’s constantly battling in his business life, needs to find tenderness in women, a tenderness that’s very calm, almost an animal quality …”
Meanwhile I would be maneuvering to get closer to Philippe to try and instigate a general conversation. When I succeeded, there was immediately evidence, between Solange and myself, of the irremediable opposition derived from two different philosophies of life. Solange’s great theme was “adventure.” That is what she called a search for unexpected and dangerous incidents. She claimed to abhor “comfort,” moral or physical.
“I’m glad I’m a woman,” she told me one evening, “because a woman has many more ‘possibilities’ before her than a man.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “A man has his career. He can do something.”
“A man has one career,” Solange said, “while a woman can live the lives of all the men she loves. An officer brings her war, a sailor the ocean, a diplomat intrigue, a writer the pleasures of creation … She can have all the emotion of ten lives without the day-to-day disadvantages of living them.”
“What an awful thought!” I cried. “That presupposes she loves ten different men.”
“And that all ten of them are intelligent, which is highly unrealistic,” Villier interjected, putting a great deal of emphasis on the word highly.
“Mind you,” said Philippe, “you could say the same of men. They too are brought different lives by the successive women they love.”
“Yes, perhaps,” said Solange, “but women are so much less individual; they have nothing to bring.”
Something she said one day particularly struck me because of the tone in which she delivered it. She had been talking about the pleasure to be gained from escaping civilized life, and I had said, “But why escape, if you’re happy?”
“Because happiness never stands still,” Solange said. “Happiness is the respite between periods of worry.”
“Quite right,” said Villier, and this sentiment from him surprised me.
So, in order to please Solange, Philippe picked up on the theme of escape. “Oh yes!” he said. “… To escape … that would be wonderful.”
“You?” Solange asked. “You’re the last person who wants to escape.”
Her words hurt me on his behalf.
Solange rather liked stirring people’s self-esteem with a crack of the whip like that. As soon as Philippe behaved as if he loved me or said a kind word to me, she would treat him sarcastically. But most of the time she and Philippe seemed like a courting couple. Every morning Solange came down in a new brightly colored sweater, and every time Philippe would murmur, “Goodness, you have such taste!” Toward the end of our stay, he had become very intimate with her. What really hurt me was the familiar, tender way they talked together, and the way he helped her into her coat, it looked like a caress. Besides, she knew he liked her, and she played on her power. She was terribly catlike. I can think of no other way to describe it. When she came down in evening dress, I thought I could see electric currents running the length of her naked back.
As we arrived back in our room, I could not help asking, though without bitterness, “So, Philippe, do you love her?”
“Who, my darling?”
“Solange, of course.”
“Oh! God no!”
“And yet you really look as if you do.”
“Me?” Philippe asked, secretly delighted. “But in what way?”
I explained at length what I felt I had seen, and he listened accommodatingly. I had noticed that as soon as it was to do with Solange, Philippe took an interest in what I had to say.
“They do have a peculiar relationship, though,” I said the day before we left. “He told me he spends six months of the year in Morocco, and his wife goes there only once every two years, and just for three months. So she stays in Paris alone for whole seasons. If you had to live in Indochina … or the Kamchatka Peninsula, I know I’d follow you anywhere … like a little dog … mind you, you’d find me terribly annoying, wouldn’t you, Philippe? When it comes down to it, she’s the one who’s right.”
“In other words she’s found the best way to ensure he doesn’t tire of her.”
“A lesson for Isabelle?”
“You’re so sensitive! No, not a lesson for anyone; a statement of fact: Villier adores his wife …”
“She’s the one telling you that, Philippe.”
“Well, he certainly admires her.”
“And doesn’t keep an eye on her.”
“Why would you want him to keep an eye on her?” Philippe asked rather irritably. “I’ve never heard anyone say she behaved badly.”
“Oh, Philippe! I haven’t known her three weeks and I’ve already heard three of her former lovers mentioned.”
“People say that about all women,” Philippe muttered with a shrug.
I felt I had stooped to pettiness, baseness almost, something entirely new for me. Then, because I was not unkind in my heart of hearts, I pulled myself together, made a great effort to be friendly toward Solange, and made a point of going for a walk with Villier to leave her alone with Philippe at the skating rink. I passionately longed for that trip to be over and was scrupulous not to say a word that would bring it to an end.
. XII .
When we returned to Paris, Philippe found that his director was unwell, and he had to work more than usual. He often could not come home for lunch. I won
dered whether he was seeing Solange Villier but did not dare put the question to him. When we went to the Thianges’ on Saturdays, if Solange was there, Philippe made straight for her, took her off into a corner, and did not leave her side all evening. It could have been a favorable sign. If he were seeing her freely during the week, perhaps he would have feigned avoiding her on Saturday. I could not help myself talking to the other women about her; I never said anything detrimental, but I listened. She was said to be a dreadful coquette. One evening when I was sitting next to Maurice de Thianges, he saw Jacques Villier arrive and said under his breath, “Goodness! Hasn’t he left yet? I’d have thought his wife would have sent him back to his Atlas mountains by now!” Almost everyone who mentioned Villier added the words, “Poor fellow!”
Hélène de Thianges was a friend of Solange’s and we spoke about her at length. She painted a portrait of her that was at once rather lovely and rather worrying.
“First and foremost,” she told me, “Solange is a beautiful creature with very strong instincts. She loved Villier passionately at a time when he was very poor, and it was because he was handsome. It was brave. She was the daughter of a certain Comte de Vaulges, a Picardy family, very highborn; she was ravishing; she could have made an excellent marriage. She decided instead to go off to Morocco with Villier, and in the early days they led a colonial life there, a tough life. When Villier was ill for a time, Solange had to keep the books and pay the workmen herself. It’s worth pointing out that she has the tremendous pride of the Vaulges: that sort of life must have grated on her, and yet she played the game. In that sense, she really does have the qualities of an honest man. Only she has two great failings or, if you like, two great weaknesses: she’s terribly sensual and has a need to triumph wherever she goes. For example, she tells people (not men, she says this to women) that whenever she’s wanted a man, she’s always had him, and it’s true, and with quite different types of men.”
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