Sagan, Paris 1954

by Anne Berest

  ‘Ah, here are the girls!’ cries Marguerite, as she emerges from the kitchen in her apron and an ivory bracelet.

  ‘It smells very good,’ says Florence politely, before introducing the girl who is with her. ‘My friend Françoise … Sagan,’ she says hesitantly – she still isn’t used to it.

  Marguerite orders the girls to make themselves at home. She senses that they are intimidated and when others are intimidated that in turn intimidates her. So, to distract from the embarrassment, she launches into a description of the Vietnamese omelette she has prepared for this evening. It’s true there were good steaks at the market, but she didn’t know how many people there would be in the end.

  ‘And then, with steaks, one always comes to grief, as with tragedy, though the degrees involved are different,’49 she laughs.

  Françoise and Florence are the first women to arrive, whereas the men are already there. Françoise knows – she doesn’t know how she knows, she just knows, that’s all – that Marguerite Duras likes men. All those men in the life of a woman writer, the idea greatly appeals to her: big, strong men, men who relish the challenges life throws up, darkly romantic men, men who have their own cars (and Marguerite likes that too, a ‘nice set of wheels’) so if that is what it is to be a woman writer, to be loved like Colette and Marguerite Duras, then it’s worth sacrificing everything for, she thinks, it’s worth working for – even though, later, she is going to say the very opposite.

  Françoise is not listening to the political discussions going on round the table: there is fury over the war in Indochina, which is rumbling on; in the newspapers the setting up of the camp at Dien Bien Phu is being hailed as a victory, yet Marguerite knows that each day brings with it new losses among the French paratroops. To Françoise, as to most French people, Hanoi is a faraway place on a map. Right now she is fascinated and thrilled by the spectacle of these creatures who dare to live a different kind of life. Monique Régnier has just arrived, so the foursome from The Little Horses of Tarquinia is now complete: Robert Antelme, his new wife Monique and even Outa, the ‘child’ in the book, who is playing on the drawing-room floor. This evening there is something about Marguerite, Monique, Dionys and Robert that makes them akin to Françoise’s future characters, and even though the expression does not yet exist, you could say of them that, in their own way, they are ‘Saganesque’.

  Naturally, Marguerite is curious about the girl who is her guest and quizzes her.

  ‘Françoise is bringing out a book! Next week,’ adds Florence.

  Round the table, people’s conversations come to a sudden halt. The apprentice novelist is so intriguing that they look her up and down – will she be subjected to their teasing, or false deference, or astonishment? The worst would be to meet with indifference.

  ‘Who’s the publisher?’ It’s a killer question and one that, in Paris, they ask in order to trap you, because it means ‘What are you worth?’

  ‘Julliard.’

  Naturally, for ‘the Rue Saint-Benoît gang’, it’s the wrong answer. Julliard is such a jumped-up newcomer. Curiosity wanes. Even though Florence adds, ‘Plon wanted her, but she had already signed …’ it is too late; they have congratulated the girl stiffly and moved on to another topic.

  But the girl who, this evening, at the far end of the table, squirms on the edge of her chair out of shyness, who is pleased to be in that company, even if she is not ‘of that company’, will tomorrow, perhaps, be fêted throughout the world. Who knows? No one knows. In any case, none of the guests at the dinner can foresee it, for all their brilliance.

  A few days away from the publication of Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan is merely an apprentice writer, somewhat looked down on by those who are her fellows for that evening. But soon she will be much more famous than any of the people round the table.

  When Marguerite recognises the teenager’s face in the papers, she will say to herself, ‘So it was her, the girl who came to dinner.’ And she will be surprised. And she will smile to herself for having forgotten that the unexpected always happens and that life is more improbable than fiction. And Marguerite too will sell several million copies of a book. In exactly thirty years from now. She has thirty years still to live before she will experience that particular frenzy. For Françoise it is now. Everything is in flux. All the time. The cause of my grief is also the reason for my hope: everything is in flux, all the time.

  Things change. I must never forget that.

  *

  After my interview with Florence, I buy Manhood by Michel Leiris, which I have never ever read. I am staggered. How could I have studied literature for so many years and spent so much time talking about books and decided to become a writer without anyone making me read that work? Well, here’s the explanation (for sometimes false questions elicit the truth): I had to wait until I was thirty-four and was at a precise point in my life to discover a book that begins like this: ‘To cut a long story short, I have just turned thirty-four, I am of average height and I am afraid of losing my hair.’

  It’s the powerful self-portrait of an ‘average’ man who wants to be a writer. I close the book and grab my coat. I have arranged to meet my mother outside the crèche.

  And then, on my way to the crèche, something comes back to me.

  ‘Maman, I’ve just read Manhood by Michel Leiris.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s fantastic.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘No, really … fan-tas-tic.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘I’ll lend it to you if you want.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Maman … one day when I was small you explained to me that, at the end of the war, Mamie had arranged for you to have a Catholic baptism because she feared for you as a Jewish girl.’

  ‘Did I tell you that?’

  ‘Yes, I remember it perfectly.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And you even told me that the man who posed as your godfather was Michel Leiris. Do you not remember?’

  ‘It wasn’t Michel Leiris, it was Pierre Leyris, a translator. Right, shall we go in?’

  ‘OK, let’s go in.’

  And we go into the crèche.

  15 March

  The fifteenth of March 1954 is the day that Françoise Sagan’s book Bonjour Tristesse is published. In the history of publishing and the history of literature it ranks as a ‘historic’ date.

  But what happened that day in the life of Françoise Sagan? Not much, probably. She no doubt went to Julliard’s in order to feel surrounded by people involved in the book’s publication. She discovered how very lonely it is for a writer on such a banal yet such a special day.

  The staff in publishing houses, who know the drill by heart, are able to gently reassure those authors troubled by the lack of ceremony. Françoise took refuge in the office of Rolande Prétat, in the sales division, to share a cigarette and a little emotion. Rolande is so gentle, with her plunging necklines and reassuring breasts, her Jean Patou perfume …

  ‘… It’s called Adieu Sagesse and I think of you every morning now when I put it on,’ she says, smiling.

  ‘I hope that will bring me luck!’ replies Françoise.

  ‘Of course. It’s going to do very well. I’ve had very good feedback from the marketing people.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, yes, really. Shall we bet on it? I’ve never lost out yet with my forecasts,’ says Rolande.

  ‘Great. Well … let’s say that, beyond 100,000 copies, I’ll give you a franc for every book sold.’

  ‘Right, you’re on,’ cries the sales director in a burst of laughter.

  It wasn’t going to happen, for even though Rolande believed in the book, success in her eyes meant sales of 15,000 or 20,000 copies. However, she did not put Françoise right: authors, be they young or old – in this respect their age is immaterial – have no idea about the reality of sa
les figures … You might as well let them dream.

  But everything is in flux. All the time. And in December 1955 Rolande Prétat will receive a splendid Christmas present from Françoise Sagan: a cheque for 100,000 francs.50

  Françoise will not always keep her accounts but she will always keep her promises. Better to die poor than dishonoured.

  24 March

  On the front cover of the British magazine Picture Post, Brigitte Bardot is posing in a flowing red satin dress which might have been stolen from her great-aunt’s wardrobe. She challenges us with her mighty tits and eyebrows, while the magazine’s headline reads: ‘Brigitte Bardot, two pages in colour’.

  On that day, you will find no mention of Françoise Sagan in the latest issue of Paris Match. Yet Michel Déon, who had read the manuscript for Plon, has suggested her as a subject.

  The response was merely ‘No, no, she’s not well enough known.’

  As for Rolande Prétat, she has just replaced the receiver after a long conversation with her brother Jean, who goes round bookshops as a sales rep.

  ‘The book is taking off in the most amazing way,’ he has warned her. ‘The shops will have run out of copies by the end of the week.’

  ‘Just fancy that! And there was no publicity.’

  ‘You’ve got to do a reprint immediately.’

  ‘I can’t possibly. I’m on my own here until next week.’

  And, in fact, Rolande’s bosses, René Julliard and Pierre Javet, have both gone off to enjoy some winter sports. There is obviously no way of getting in touch with them and Rolande on her own is not permitted to take as important a decision as authorising a reprint. Not only does her position not give her the authority … but as a woman she would run the enormous risk of being seen as an incompetent female issuing crazy orders in the absence of the company’s men.

  What should she do? René Julliard had decided on a first print run of 4,500 copies, a lot for a first novel, the average run of which is 1,500 – it has got to be said that everyone in the firm had been won over by young Françoise’s book, sensing that they had a winner on their hands.

  Rolande doesn’t know what to do. Not to reprint would be a mistake: if booksellers ran out of books, they might lose a quarter of possible sales (the reader borrows the book from his neighbour or decides meanwhile to buy a thriller …). But to issue such an order while her superiors are away is unthinkable. Why has no one foreseen such a situation?

  While Rolande Prétat, with trembling hand, takes the initiative and orders a new print run of 3,000 copies, Françoise, completely unaware of the cogs that are turning in order to get her book reprinted, is browsing among the shelves in a bookshop.

  For all young writers, the physical relationship with bookshops in the early days of the publication of their book is a delicate matter. (I myself always experience a kind of fear, I might even say terror, which lasts for some time and almost makes me cross to the other side of the street when a bookshop comes into view.)

  Françoise, for her part, her curiosity getting the better of her, decides to go into a bookshop with the intention of passing herself off as just another customer. As she opens the door she hears the doorbell tinkling, but the peal of little bells is not followed by the usual ‘Good day to you’ … The man seated behind the cash register is so absorbed in what he is reading that he has forgotten he has a job to do as a bookseller. At this very point he is completely wrapped up in Cécile, the heroine of the book that he is just getting into, and is enjoying a moment of illicit pleasure in which the girl’s description of physical love (she being devoid of all morality in matters of the heart) is giving him such a large bulge in the trouser department that he is in any case incapable of standing up to greet the new customer.

  I discovered the pleasure to be had from kissing. I am not able to put a specific boy’s name to these memories – whether it was Jean or Hubert or Jacques, which are names familiar to all nice young girls.

  The presence of an insubstantial shape moving about in his field of vision dismays him. The bookseller closes the book and hides it in the drawer below his cash register.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mademoiselle?’ he asks the girl. He is as shaken as a child whose parents have just caught him out.

  ‘I’m looking for a book … one that has just come out … Bonjour Tristesse.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we haven’t a single copy left.’

  ‘Oh. Will you be getting any more?’

  ‘I suggest you go elsewhere. We wish to preserve the moral tone of our establishment so we are not selling that book any more.’

  But Françoise, who has recognised her book among all the others (by its thickness, by the colour of its paper, by the texture of its cover), knows full well that this man possesses one last copy which he refuses to sell to her. ‘Thank you,’ she replies politely as she leaves the shop.

  I recall that the first big impression literature made on me while I was reading a novel was an erotic impression.

  A book had the power to give me ‘the hots’. I was twelve when I read The Lover by Marguerite Duras. There was no question of my being allowed to see the film at the cinema but on the other hand the book was easily accessible in one of my parents’ bookcases. So that was what literature was all about – making extraordinary discoveries which one couldn’t refer to out loud but which it was accepted could resonate silently in one’s head, like those words which I read and reread and read again, hoping that all at once I would understand what they meant:

  I asked him to do it over and over, to do that thing to me. He had done so. He had done so through the lubricity that the blood provided. I could have died from the pleasure of it.

  I was twelve and for me literature meant sex. There you are. It couldn’t be simpler. I am one of those people that got their first pornographic thrills from words. I tell myself today that in fact I am not far removed from a girl of 1954, enjoying clandestine pleasure beneath the sheets with a book by Françoise Sagan – I have known the same thrill as those girls born forty years before me. Literature will never again, for the children of the future, be a gateway to the fabulous world of eroticism. I am not sad for those children, since, after all, the important thing for each person is to discover his or her own path to sexual enjoyment. But I am rather sad, it is true, for literature, since literature is being deprived of a fine role – it is rather like those ageing actresses in the theatre who know that they will never again be able to utter on stage the words of Molière’s young heroine: ‘Pussy has just had it.’

  1 April

  In the end I arranged to meet the student; his being so young puts a spring in my step and brings out an enterprising side to my nature – just as, in a new relationship, we have a tendency to invert the roles that characterised the previous one and make the other person go through the ordeals that we ourselves have endured in the past.

  I have invited him to spend a day in Deauville, for it struck me as being impossible to end this book without at least once in my life experiencing what a casino is like. Françoise is attempting to feel, through my fingers, the smooth warmth of a gambling chip and deep down I am grateful to her for providing me with a novelist’s pretext, though in actual fact the trip has only one aim: that of finding myself in a hotel room with the young man.

  We have arranged to meet on the platform of the Gare Saint-Lazare ten minutes before the train leaves. I should have guessed that he would not be early, unlike me. The train’s departure is announced. My heart becomes one big bruise at the thought of being left standing. But all of a sudden his blond head appears in the crowd; he’s walking along calmly with a strange bundle over his shoulder: ‘I put my things in a pillow slip because my suitcase is at my parents’ house.’

  We take our seats on the train and talk about the colour of his hair. He tells me that in Japan, in restaurants, men would come up to touch it, for they had never seen anything like it. I say, ‘It’s true your hair is a wonderful colour,’ then he
opens Le Canard Enchaîné, before leaning against the window and closing his eyes as if I were not there. I am relieved that he is going to sleep because it saves me from having to think up new topics of conversation and I can take advantage of this momentary respite to finish the book I am reading, a biography of Maurice Ravel by Jean Echenoz.

  Having read all the biographies of Françoise Sagan, those of some of her contemporaries, and certain novels that came out at the same time as hers, as well as books about Paris in the fifties, I now have to read biographies written by writers. For the same reasons that books have taught me how to live, authors have taught me how to write, and in Echenoz’s book I find answers, ways forward and solutions to the problems I am currently faced with. I am sure that Françoise Sagan would have liked this book, which tells of the musician’s final ten years, because Echenoz has a painter’s eye (‘The sea is so green it is almost black’) but also because of his skill in describing machines, especially cars.

  When we arrive in Deauville, the blond opens his eyes and I close my book, somewhat put out by my reading, for if great books fire you up by showing you that anything is possible provided you are unconstrained and sincere, they can also force you to confront your own limitations. You think that you will never manage to write your own book.

  Our hotel room is entirely decked out in toile de Jouy, with its comely swains and shepherdesses: the wallpaper matches the curtains which match the bedspread, not to mention the cushions. It’s as if all that comeliness is urging us to ‘Come! Come! Come!’ and it almost hurts your eyes if you look too long at the walls.