Sagan, Paris 1954

by Anne Berest

  Virtually bellowing, René Julliard ordered his wife to assist him in getting up from the chair he had nodded off in and to help him to the telephone (which actually had a room of its own, called ‘the telephone room’), since the uncomfortable position he had slept in had made him go numb and had restricted his circulation to such an extent that he was unable to support himself on his own two legs.

  Because his hands had seized up, he asked Gisèle to dial the automatic telephone exchange so that he could speak directly to the mysterious author hiding behind a girl’s name. What’s more, wasn’t the exactness of the date of birth on the manuscript’s folder itself proof that someone was trying to get the better of him? They were trying to lay a trap for him.

  But who could in fact be hiding behind that pseudonym ‘Françoise Quoirez’? It was a man, of that he was sure. Perhaps it was quite simply the father of the girl and she was being sent as a decoy to entice him. In any case, the man had to be in his middle years to be capable of depicting so very exactly the character of a beautiful woman growing old: ‘Being forty must bring with it the fear of loneliness, perhaps the last stirrings of desire … Probably at her age I’ll also be paying young men to love me, because love is the sweetest thing, it’s what in life is most vivid and has the most point. So the price paid hardly matters.’

  How, even for a moment, could he have believed that a girl who was still a minor could have written those lines? How could he have thought of basing the promotion of the book on the youthfulness of the author? He would have laughed at himself and at his gullibility as a publisher ready to believe anything, if he had not felt rather ashamed. Meanwhile his wife, her still dishevelled hair forming a spray of feathers that waggled on her skull, was handing him the receiver.

  ‘Hello, this is René Julliard speaking, of Éditions René Julliard. Is that the home of Mademoiselle Quoirez?’

  ‘To whom exactly do you wish to speak?’ asked Julia, who was not accustomed to elderly men phoning for Françoise, and most certainly not at such an early hour on a Sunday morning.

  ‘I would like to speak to Françoise Quoirez,’ he repeated, pronouncing each syllable distinctly.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t. She’s asleep at this hour of the morning. And I’ve been instructed on no account to wake her.’

  ‘Very good, thank you,’ replied René Julliard, before hanging up.

  This strange response merely confirmed his suspicions. What kind of French family was it that allowed girls to sleep on when they should have been at mass, or doing physical jerks, or breakfasting with the family?

  How could both Javet and Le Grix have failed to voice the slightest doubt as to the author’s identity? They were either very stupid or very naïve. No matter, he was going to lay a trap for whoever it was that had set out to trap him. No one was going to hoodwink the man who had published three Goncourt prize-winners in a row.

  Jean-Jacques Gautier in 1946.

  Jean-Louis Curtis in 1947.

  And Maurice Druon in 1948.

  René Julliard is making arrangements.

  He has a telegram sent to the home of the Sleeping Beauty and asks his secretary if she will travel in specially on a Sunday for the occasion: they will welcome the young girl appropriately even though she is being served up as bait for him to swallow. In the meantime he is going to think up a series of questions with Le Grix, designed to flush out whoever is wielding the fishing hook baited with childish charms.

  ‘Oh, at last,’ says Françoise to herself, when she finds the telegram lying next to her bowl of warm milky coffee.

  Meeting today 5 p.m. at Éditions René Julliard.

  *

  She had never doubted that a reply would come soon, but she had been wondering how many more days she would have to wait. As she bit into her buttered bread with honey – to begin with, it pushes her mouth out of shape and gets wedged against her palate, then the honey mixes with the butter to form a nectar that trickles into the bread, softening it as far as the crust – Françoise, her eyes closed, worked out the number of days. Eleven. She had waited eleven days for a reply regarding publication and in her view that was acceptable. As always, things happened just at the moment when you were no longer thinking about them, for all you have to do is to give up wishing for something, ignore it for a while, and eventually, annoyed at no longer being wished for, it comes to you.

  At around 3 p.m., while Françoise was concocting some vague story to persuade her father to lend her his black Buick, René Julliard was climbing the stairs to the sixth floor of his publishing house to see François Le Grix, who lived there.

  Le Grix loved his attic room, for it made him like the character from Les Misérables, Marius, the baron, who opted for study and poverty rather than for gilded surroundings and chandeliers, and who would read at night by the light of a candle, happier there than in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Whereas his colleagues wondered about the parsimonious existence he led and considered his everyday routine to be grey and monotonous, François Le Grix was able to cast himself as the hero of his own life story – an ability that brings happiness to all those who possess it.

  *

  Françoise Quoirez arrived at 5 p.m. on the dot.

  No one knows exactly what transpired during the three hours of discussion between the girl and her publisher.

  Three hours is a long time for people who don’t know each other. Of course, just as I have imagined the hours that led up to what, in the history of literature, ranks as a legendary meeting, so too I could invent the questions put and answers given. But the hours are passing, as are the days, and I really must move forward through the year 1954, for I have only reached the middle of January. It is a month and a half since I began work on this book and I still have so many things to write.

  Let us not therefore dwell on what was said. The upshot was that when he left his office René Julliard expressed no doubt as to the writer of the work: that strange young girl, sharp-witted as a fox, was indeed the author of Bonjour Tristesse. He had discovered a writer, had asked her how much she wanted as an advance and she had called his bluff with the figure she threw out.

  ‘Twenty-five thousand francs.’

  He had replied, ‘Fine, I’m offering you twice that,’ which certainly pleased Françoise who, on rejoining Florence in the Café de l’Espérance, announced proudly, ‘We’ll buy a Jaguar with the money from the book!’

  Florence Malraux, when I met her in her apartment in Rue de l’Université yesterday afternoon, stressed the word ‘we’.

  I got there far too early; it’s a habit of mine, one that Parisians find so annoying and provincial. Consequently I had to kick my heels for roughly ten minutes on the ground floor of her apartment block, before going up four floors to where she lives.

  For the first time in my life as an author I was going to meet, in the flesh, a ‘character’ from a book, for hitherto I had had knowledge of Florence only through the biographies of Françoise Sagan and from the book by her cousin, Alain Malraux, which I had perused the day before in the André Malraux Library in order to prepare for my interview with her as thoroughly as possible.

  After I have waited for the time of the appointment to come round and walked up four flights because I don’t trust lifts, Florence Malraux comes to open her door to me. I am immediately impressed by her. Gentle in aspect, with intelligent, kindly eyes that are full of merriment, she is just as I have imagined from everything I have managed to read about her, all the descriptions given by those who have been lucky enough to know her personally.

  In the drawing room where we sit together there are books, books everywhere, and the reproduction of a painting of a swimming pool by David Hockney, its colours slightly faded by the sun.

  ‘I remember the first time I met Françoise at the Cours Hattemer; she was wearing a green coat. Because we were physically alike, people often assumed we were sisters. She was a little younger than me and she was the first person wh
o ever asked me specific questions about my life during the war. And questions about the Resistance. She was unique, she wasn’t like other people. She had an intensity that came from her expression and an awareness of the sky and clouds. We used to go for walks in Paris and together we experienced moments of pure poetry. I think that we believed in our lucky star. At least, she believed in it enough for both of us. I remember her father giving us money to go and have dinner at Lipp’s. He took out rolls of banknotes, which impressed me. He adored being with his daughter and his daughter’s friends. He was a whimsical sort of person who loved playing games: one day he served us breakfast in bed dressed up as a maid! You know, it was a funny time to be a girl. We were not allowed to wear trousers or make-up. I even remember that at the Lycée Fénelon we had to have our hands inspected as we went in, for the staff to check that our fingernails were clean. In those days there was no contraception. Accidents did happen. If you were rich, you went to Switzerland. But for the poor it was more complicated and also more risky. I remember that, on several occasions, we helped girls in the office. It was 1954, which was when I started work at Gallimard. They would come in and collapse and they needed help. Françoise would manage to get some money together – she got it from her family and then, later on, it was her own money – and someone would accompany the girls, often to the outskirts of Paris.

  ‘Françoise was always willing to come to people’s aid, she always helped others. We told no one, not even our parents.

  ‘When we met, at the age of sixteen, Françoise was already finding that life was moving too slowly for her liking. She knew that she would be a writer. She had no doubt that she would earn her living by writing books. When she came out of her first meeting with Julliard, she said to me, “We’ll buy a Jaguar with the money from the book!” She said “we” because she did not consider that things belonged just to her. Her greatest pleasure was to share her life.’

  I explain to Florence that my book is taking on a strange form, somewhere between a novel, a biography and a fictionalised autobiography. I tell her, therefore, that she will feature in it significantly and that I hope she will agree to be a character of mine, for I would like this book to talk more than anything else about friendship. That is probably because, at the point where I am in my life, stories about friends are of much more interest to me than love stories. I feel unable to speak of Françoise Sagan’s love affairs. I find it impossible to put myself in the frame of mind of someone in love.

  I say, ‘I get the impression that in 1954, even if, as the evidence of her book shows, her thoughts dwell a lot on physical love, friendship is the really important thing. What’s more, once she has become successful she is going to gather a group of friends around her – Jacques Chazot, Michel Magne, Bernard Frank, Charlotte Aillaud, Nicole Wisniak, Véronique Campion, Frédéric Botton, Juliette Gréco, Annabel Buffet … – long before meeting a “husband”. I want to talk about friendship, for I take a jaundiced view of love relationships, whereas I do believe that, if I had not met my female friends, I would not be the woman I am today. I’m not saying that I would have been the worse for it; I might have been all the better for it – who knows? But what I can state is that my life would have been quite different. It is as if today we bear responsibility for one another, for we have each played an active part in shaping the other person. Love is different. Love is something you live through and that lives through you, but I do not believe that, at any deep level, it makes us who we are.’

  Florence smiles that smile of hers, as gentle as her name, and I am relieved, for to me, at the point where I am in writing this book, she is like the priestess of the oracle at Delphi; she knows.

  I talk to her about Virginia Woolf’s book, which her mother translated and which I have included in my depiction of the teenage Françoise’s room.

  ‘Do you think that in 1954 Françoise might have had A Room of One’s Own on her bedside table? I’ve seen that it was translated by your mother.’

  ‘That’s right, my mother did translate it, but I don’t think people read Virginia Woolf until quite a bit later. In 1954 we were reading Proust, Dostoyevsky … but Woolf, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a pity. I thought it might be a good idea, because it would make the link with you and with your mother.’

  ‘Well then, put it in her room! What does it matter?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to write things that aren’t true.’

  ‘You know, Anne, what counts is that you should write things that ring true.’

  Looking at Florence Malraux, I say to myself that I would really love to be like her, later on. Of course, it’s stupid to say ‘later on’. I would really love to be like her now. Does one write in order to be someone else? I wonder. Very probably. I would have really loved to be Françoise Sagan and to have written an amazing book at the age of eighteen. I would have loved to drink, to love, to drive, to have fun and to drink again. But I am only who I am, and I have failed my driving test four times. Anyway, I prefer to travel by train.

  ‘Since you are now my character, you have to give your approval for me to go on. You must read the beginning and be happy with it.’

  When I get back home I slip the first ten pages into an envelope.

  As I contemplate the yellow postbox, I cross my fingers.

  Françoise too closes her eyes when she thinks of Florence.

  With Florence at her side she has the exhilarating sense that she is someone worthy of being read and listened to. She often thinks of the life her friend led during the war. Or, rather, the non-life, a life of flight and persecution. She must ask her to tell the story once again of how, with her mother Clara Malraux, née Goldschmidt, they slept in a firemen’s barracks in Toulouse and then in a cellar. There was no heating, no food. A young man of nineteen, Edgar Nahoum, steals grains of rice for them in shops, out of pity for the starving little girl. He slips a few grains between his fingers and then into his pocket. It’s better than nothing. After the war he will keep the name he had in the Resistance, Morin. Holed up with them and the vermin in the basement, there is also Vladimir Jankélévitch who tells the little five-year-old girl stories and who will later write: ‘Forgiveness died in the death camps.’23

  At the tender age when children’s lips still bear the traces of mother’s milk, Florence was wondering whether, if the Germans tortured her, she would have the courage to keep silent, in spite of the pain. One day she and her mother are stopped by soldiers of the Gestapo. ‘Your papers!’ They are clearly forged. Just as he is about to arrest them, the German patrol commander decides in the end to let them go on their way.

  ‘Das kleine Mädchen ist zu schön. Und wir werden sie nicht alle festnehmen können!’

  ‘The little girl is just too pretty. And we’ll never be able to arrest them all.’24

  And then there are the rumours that fly around. Her father, André Malraux, has reportedly been killed. But he hasn’t been, he is well and truly alive and, what’s more, they meet up again on a bit of pavement at the Liberation. Both of them, the little girl and the hero, have braved death; they match each other in fearlessness, and the first thing he asks her – a marvellous question – is ‘What book are you reading at the moment?’

  17 January

  The problem that René Julliard referred to at length during his conversation with Françoise is that she is a minor.

  Of course, from a marketing aspect, that’s terrific.

  But from every other aspect, the fact of being a minor is a complication – all the more so when you’re a girl. It is 1954, which means that a married woman, even if she has come of age, even if she is older than her husband, cannot be in charge of her own property, open a bank account or have an occupation without her spouse’s permission.

  René Julliard knows that the parents of young Françoise have not read the manuscript for he has made a point of asking her at their first meeting. Now the publisher is anxiously wondering whether, having read the
book, they will agree to sign their daughter’s contracts. If they were to refuse, there would be a three-year wait before the book could be published, during which time he would have to ensure that the little minx didn’t find herself a husband.

  ‘Will your parents agree to the book’s being published?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ replied Françoise casually, ‘my parents are great people.’

  So now Françoise had to inform them that her book would very soon be published.

  And now they had to read it.

  To know that hundreds, indeed thousands, of strangers are going to read your words is, depending on the individual writer, either vital, or energising, or theoretical, or problematic.

  But to have your manuscript read by those close to you is an altogether different matter, and just as unwelcome as if they were to open your bathroom door while you were naked in the shower. All parties are embarrassed: we have to act as though none of it ever happened and must not speak of it except briefly, with an apologetic smile, and then we try not to think of it any more. I think this is almost always the case, since, in my view, anyone who writes a book that enchants their parents might well question the relevance of their work. (Yesterday I was at a book reading by an author I like who is as young as Sagan was, and he brought up the very topic as a joke when he said, ‘My book is intended to be read by everyone except my mother.’)

  It must be assumed that Françoise was not entirely comfortable with the subject of her book, describing, as it did, a symbiotic and quasi-romantic relationship between a father and a girl who was not unlike her. When she arrived back at Boulevard Malesherbes after her three-hour meeting with René Julliard, the whole family was already seated at the table for the Sunday evening meal: her parents, her brother Jacques, her sister Suzanne and Suzanne’s husband.

  Suzanne and Jacques would have been severely punished if they had arrived back so late for dinner on a Sunday. But with Françoise it was different. It had always been different.