“Yes,” said Misa, “that was true too, but I think that was on the surface. The real Odile deep down had a sort of audacity like … well, I wouldn’t know how to put it … the audacity of a soldier, a partisan. For example, when she wanted to hide … But no, I don’t want to tell you about that, not you.”
“What you call audacity, Philippe called courage; he says that was one of her great qualities.”
“Yes, if you like. That’s true in a way, but she didn’t have the courage to set limits on herself. She had the courage to do the things she wanted. Which is still a fine thing but not so difficult.”
“Do you have children?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she replied, looking down. “Three: two boys and a girl.”
We talked for the whole evening and parted having sketched the beginnings of a friendship. For the first time, I completely disagreed with a verdict of Philippe’s. No, this woman was not spiteful. She had been in love and jealous. Who was I to blame her? At the last moment I did something impulsive that I later regretted. I said, “Goodbye. I’m glad we talked. I’m on my own at the moment, we could go out together.”
As soon as I left the salon, I realized this had been a mistake and Philippe would not approve. When he learned that I had become friendly with Misa, he would be fiercely critical and would probably be right.
She too must have derived some pleasure from our conversation. Perhaps she was curious about me and my marriage, because she did indeed telephone two days later and we agreed to meet for a walk in the Bois de Boulogne. What I wanted was to get her to talk about Odile, to find out about Odile’s tastes and habits and foibles from her, and I hoped that, with this knowledge, I might find more ways of pleasing Philippe, whom I dared not ask about the past. I asked Misa countless questions: “How did she dress? Who was her milliner? People said she arranged flowers very well … but how can something like flower arranging be so personal? Please explain … Oh, it’s so strange, you tell me and everyone tells me she had so much charm, but some details you’re giving me are actually quite hard, almost unpleasant … So what exactly constituted her charm?”
But Misa proved quite incapable of giving me even an idea of this, and I could tell she herself had often pondered this question without ever finding an answer. All I found in what she told me about Odile was the love of nature that Solange had too, and a spontaneous vivacity that I lacked. “I’m too methodical,” I thought. “I’m too wary of my own enthusiasm. I think Odile’s childish side and her gaiety charmed Philippe as much as, if not more than, her moral qualities.” Then we started to talk more intimately about Philippe, and I told her how much I loved him.
“Yes,” she said, “but are you happy with him?”
“Very happy. Why?”
“No reason … I was just asking. Besides, I completely understand your loving him; he’s endearing. But, at the same time, he has such a weakness for women like Odile that it must make him very difficult to have as a husband.”
“Why do you say ‘women’? Have you known others besides Odile in his life?”
“Oh no! But I can tell. You see he’s a man who’s more likely to be driven away by devotion and passionate love … Well, here I am saying that when I know nothing about it. I don’t know him very well, but that’s what I imagine. Back when I knew him, I found he had moments of futility and frivolity that let him down slightly. But, you know, once again, nothing I say means very much. I’ve seen so little of him in my life.”
I felt very uncomfortable; she seemed to be enjoying this. Was Philippe right? Was she spiteful? When I arrived back home I had a terrible evening. I found a tender letter from Philippe on the mantelpiece and hoped he would forgive me for doubting him. Yes, he was weak, but I liked that weakness too, and all I chose to see in Misa’s ambiguous pronouncements about him was her own disappointment in love. She asked me to go out with her several times and even invited me to dinner. I declined.
. XVIII .
Philippe’s absence was coming to an end, which made me tremendously happy. My health was now restored, and I was even feeling better than before the pregnancy. The waiting, the sense of a life forming inside me, lent me a mood of calm and serenity. I worked hard to ensure Philippe was pleasantly surprised when he came home. He must have seen very beautiful women and perfect houses in America. In spite of my condition, because of my condition, I took great care with my dresses. I changed a few details in the furnishings because Misa had given me some ideas about what Odile might have liked. The day he was due back I filled the house with a ridiculous profusion of white flowers. That day I succeeded in overcoming what Philippe jokingly called my “sordid economizing.”
When Philippe stepped off the transatlantic train at Saint-Lazare station, I thought he looked younger and in high spirits, his face tanned from his days at sea. He was full of memories and stories. The first few days were very pleasant. Solange was still in Morocco; I had made a point of checking. Before going back to work, Philippe allowed himself a week’s vacation, which he gave entirely to me.
It was during this week that an incident clearly demonstrated my husband’s true nature. One morning I went out just before ten o’clock because I had a fitting. Philippe stayed in bed. He told me later that after I left, the telephone rang. He went to answer, and a man’s voice he did not recognize said, “Madame Marcenat?”
“No,” he said. “This is Monsieur Marcenat. Who’s calling?”
A sharp click informed him that the man had hung up.
He was surprised and called the switchboard operator to find out who had been on the line. This required lengthy negotiations and he was eventually told, “a booth at the stock exchange,” which must have been a mistake and explained nothing.
“Who could have telephoned you from the stock exchange?” he asked when I came home.
“From the stock exchange?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes, the stock exchange. They asked for you, I said it was me, and they hung up.”
“How odd! Are you sure?”
“That question’s beneath you, Isabelle. Yes, I’m sure. Anyway, the voice was perfectly clear.”
“A man’s voice or a woman’s?”
“A man’s of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
We had never talked quite like that; in spite of myself I looked embarrassed. Even though he had said “a man’s voice,” I was convinced it was Misa who had telephoned (she often called me), but I dared not name her. I was angry with Philippe, he almost seemed to be accusing a wife who adored him, and yet I was slightly flattered. So could he be jealous of me, then? I felt a woman I did not know blossoming in me with astonishing speed, an Isabelle who could be a little sarcastic, a little coquettish, a little sympathetic. Dear Philippe! If he only knew how utterly my life revolved around him and for him, he could have rested easy, too easy. After lunch he asked with a nonchalance that reminded me of some of my own questions, “What are you doing this afternoon?”
“Me, nothing, a bit of shopping. Then I’m going to tea with Madame Brémont at five o’clock.”
“Would it bother you if I went with you, given I’m on vacation?”
“Oh, no, I’d love it. I’m not used to you being so kind to me. I’ll meet you there at six o’clock.”
“What? You said five o’clock.”
“Well, it’s like all these teas. The invitation says five o’clock but no one gets there before six.”
“Couldn’t I come with you to do your shopping?”
“Of course … I thought you wanted to go to the office to look at your mail?”
“There’s no rush. I’ll go tomorrow.”
“You’re a wonderful husband when you come home from abroad, Philippe.”
So he went out with me and we spent the afternoon in a completely new mood of constraint. There is a note about this in Philippe’s book; it reveals feelings that, at the time, I had not realized were so intense.
I feel as if, whi
le I was away, she developed a sort of strength, a self-assurance she did not have before. Yes, that is it, self-assurance. Why? It’s strange. She stepped out of the car to buy some books and, as she got out, she looked at me tenderly, but I felt there was something odd about that look. At Madame Brémont’s house she had a long conversation with Doctor Gaulin. I was surprised to find myself trying to work out in what terms they were talking. Gaulin was describing experiments on mice.
“You take virgin mice,” he said, “and put them with newborn mice. They don’t look after them; they’d leave them to die of hunger if you didn’t intervene. If you inject them with ovarian extract, they become exemplary mothers in a couple of days.”
“How fascinating!” said Isabelle. “I’d very much like to see that.”
“Come to my laboratory. I’ll show you.”
Then, for a moment, I thought it was Gaulin’s voice I had heard on the telephone.
I have never had a better measure of how absurd jealousy is than reading that note, because no suspicion was ever more foolish. Doctor Gaulin was a likable, intelligent man who was very fashionable in society circles that year and I enjoyed listening to him, but the thought that I could take an interest in him as a man had never occurred to me. Since my marriage to Philippe, I had become incapable of even “seeing” another man; I viewed them all as large objects that might be to Philippe’s advantage or disadvantage. I could never have conceived of myself loving them. And yet I find this on a scrap of paper pinned to the page I have just cited:
Accustomed as I am to confusing love with the agonies of doubt, I find myself thinking I might be feeling its effects once more. The same Isabelle who, three months ago, I deemed too assiduous, too ever-present, I now find hard to keep beside me as much as I would like. Did I really have that sense of invincible boredom when I was with her? Now I’m not so outwardly happy but I’m not bored for one moment. Isabelle is completely astonished by my new attitude; she’s so modest that the true meaning of this change in me remains a mystery to her. This morning she said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go to the Pasteur Institute this afternoon to see Gaulin’s experiments.”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “You won’t go.”
She looked up, dumbstruck by my vehemence. “But why not, Philippe? You heard what he was talking about the other day. I think it’s very interesting.”
“Gaulin has a way of behaving around women that I don’t like.”
“Gaulin? What a peculiar idea! I saw a lot of him last winter and never noticed anything. But you hardly know him; you saw him for ten minutes at the Brémonts’ …”
“That’s just it. It was in those ten minutes …”
And then, for the first time since I have known her, Isabelle smiled a smile that could have been Odile’s.
“Are you jealous?” she asked. “Oh, that’s too funny! That really does make me laugh.”
I remember that incident. I did actually find it quite amusing and, as I said earlier, it made me rather happy. Philippe’s mind had been closed to me such a long time, it was an elusive thing that I tried in vain to pin down and open up, but all of a sudden I felt I had a hold on it. It was very tempting and, if I have a right to any indulgence in my life, I feel it should be for that period, because it seemed to me that—had I wanted to play a particular game, a mysterious, coquettish game—I could have secured my husband’s affections with a quite new assurance. There was no question about it. I allowed myself two or three harmless experiments. Yes, that was how Philippe was made. He was tortured and captivated by doubt. But I also knew that doubt meant constant suffering for him, it was an obsession. I knew because I had read the story of his earlier life, and I saw proof of it every day. Anxious about what I said and did, he fell to wistful meditation, slept badly, and stopped taking an interest in his work. How could he succumb to such wild imaginings? I was expecting a child in four months’ time and all I could think of was this child and him. He could not see that.
I did not want to play that hand even though I could have won it. That is the only small credit I would ask, it is the only important sacrifice I made, but I did make it. And I would like to think that, because of it, you forgave me, Philippe, for my sad, grim jealousy and the pettiness that sometimes—quite rightly—irritated you. I too could have tied you to me, stripped you of your strength, freedom, and happiness; I too could have filled you with the painful anxiety that you feared, that you sought. I did not want to. I wanted to love you without trickery, to fight with an open heart. I handed myself over to you with no defenses, while you yourself were handing me the weapons. I think I did the right thing. I think love should be a greater thing than the cruel war between lovers. It should be possible to admit loving someone and yet also succeed in being loved. That was your weakness, my darling, this need to be spared boredom by the indiscretions of the women you loved. That was not how I saw love. I felt capable of total devotion, slavery, even. There was nothing in the world for me but you. Some catastrophe could have annihilated every single man we knew, but if you were spared it would not have felt calamitous to me. You were my world. Perhaps it was unwise to let you see and know that. With you, my love, I did not want to observe sensible policies. I was incapable of pretence or caution. I loved you.
In just a few days my clear-cut behavior and placid way of life restored Philippe’s peace of mind. I stopped seeing Gaulin (which, incidentally, I regretted because he was a nice man) and I almost completely shut myself up at home.
The last months of my pregnancy were quite difficult. I felt so altered and did not want to go out with Philippe because I was afraid he would not like the way I looked. In the last weeks he kept me company very devotedly, spending time with me every day and reading to me. Our relationship was never closer to what I had always dreamed. We had both returned to some of the great novels. In my youth I had read Balzac and Tolstoy but had not fully understood them. Now everything seeemed loaded with meaning. The character of Dolly at the beginning of Anna Karenina was me; Anna herself was partly Odile, partly Solange. When Philippe read, I could tell he was making the same comparisons. Sometimes a sentence so closely resembled our relationship or me that Philippe looked up at me from his book with a smile he could not contain. I smiled too.
I would have been very happy if Philippe had not still seemed sad. He did not complain of any trouble and was in good health, but he often sighed, sat in his chair beside my bed, wearily stretched his long arms and ran a hand over his eyes.
“Are you tired, darling?” I asked.
“Yes, a little. I think I need a change of air. Being in that office all day …”
“Of course, particularly as you then stay with me all evening. Go out, darling … Have some fun … Why have you stopped going to the theater and concerts?”
“You know I hate going out on my own.”
“Won’t Solange be back soon? She was only meant to be away two months. Have you heard from her?”
“Yes, she’s written to me,” said Philippe. “She’s stayed on in Morocco. She didn’t want to leave her husband on his own.”
“What? But she leaves him on his own every year … Why this sudden concern? How odd.”
“How would I know?” Philippe asked irritably. “That’s what she wrote, that’s all I can tell you.”
. XIX .
Solange eventually came back a few weeks before my baby was due. The abrupt transformation in Philippe made my heart bleed. One evening he suddenly seemed young and cheerful. He brought me flowers and some of the plump pink prawns I liked. He walked briskly around my bed with his hands in his pockets and told me amusing stories about his office and the editors he had seen during the course of the day.
“What’s got into him?” I wondered. “What’s given him that glow?”
He ate his dinner beside my bed and, nonchalantly, without looking at him, I asked, “Still no news of Solange?”
“I beg your pardon?” Philippe asked with rather exagger
ated casualness. “Didn’t I tell you she telephoned this morning? She’s been back in Paris since yesterday.”
“I’m happy for you, Philippe. You’ll have a companion to go out with just when I won’t be able to keep you company.”
“You must be mad, Isabelle. I’m not going to leave you for a moment.”
“I insist that you leave. Besides, I won’t be on my own because my mother will be in Paris soon.”
“That’s true,” said Philippe, clearly delighted. “She can’t be too far away now, your good lady mother. Where was her last telegram from?”
“It was radioed from the boat, but judging by what the shipping company told me, she should be in Suez tomorrow.”
“I’m very happy for you,” said Philippe. “It’s very kind of her to have made this huge journey to attend a birth.”
“My family’s like yours, Philippe, births and deaths are high points. I seem to remember my father’s happiest memories were of his provincial cousins’ funerals.”
“When my Marcenat grandfather was very old,” said Philippe, “his doctor forbade him from going to any funerals, and he complained bitterly. ‘They won’t let me follow poor Ludovic’s cortege,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if I have many other forms of entertainment.’ ”
“You seem very cheerful this evening, Philippe.”
“Me? Oh, no … But the weather’s so lovely. You’re feeling well. This nine-month nightmare is about to end. I’m happy. It’s only normal.”
I was humiliated to see him so alive and to know the cause of this resurrection. That evening he ate with an appetite I had previously seen in Saint-Moritz and which, to my considerable anxiety, he had lost for many months. After dinner he became agitated. He kept yawning.
“Would you like us to read a little?” I asked. “The Stendhal you started yesterday evening was very good …”
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