Here is one of the reasons—indeed the main reason—why I have not the least wish to be tied down to a job: I should find it hard to bear if I were not entirely free to help the people who need me. I spend almost all my days at Colette’s bedside. Her temperature will not go down. “It’s nothing serious,” says Maurice. But Talbot wants analyses. Terrifying notions run through my mind.
Judge Barron saw me this morning. Very friendly. He thinks Marguerite Drin’s case heartbreaking: and there are thousands like it. The shocking thing is that there is no place designed for these children and no staff capable of looking after them properly. The government does nothing. So the efforts of the juvenile courts and the social workers come to nothing—run up against a wall. The center where Marguerite is staying is only a transit point: after three or four days she ought to have been sent on elsewhere. But where? It is a complete vacuum. These girls stay on at the center, where nothing has been arranged in the way of occupation or amusement. But still he will try to find Marguerite some sort of a place somewhere. And he is going to advise the workers at the center to let me see her. The parents have not signed the paper that would finally do away with their rights, but there is no question of their taking the child back: they do not want her and from her point of view too it would be the worst possible solution.
I left the law courts vexed with the system’s ineptitude. The number of juvenile delinquents is rising: and the only measure contemplated is greater severity.
I happened to find myself in front of the door of the Sainte Chapelle, so I went in and climbed the spiral staircase. There were foreign tourists and a couple gazing at the stained glass, hand in hand. For my part I could not concentrate upon it. I was thinking of Colette again, and I was worried.
And I am worried now. Reading is impossible. The only thing that could ease my mind would be talking to Maurice: he will not be here before midnight. Since he came back from Rome he spends his evenings at the laboratory with Talbot and Couturier. He says they are getting near to their goal. I can understand his giving up everything to his research. But this is the first time in my life that I have a serious worry that he does not share.
Saturday 25 September.
The window was black. I had expected it. Before—before what?—when by some extraordinary chance I went out without Maurice there was always a streak of light between the red curtains when I came back. I would run up the two flights of stairs and ring, too impatient to look for my key. This time I went up the stairs without running; I pushed my key into the lock. How empty the apartment was! How empty it is! Of course it is, since there is no one in it. No, that’s not it: usually when I come home I find Maurice here, even when he is out. This evening the doors open onto wholly empty rooms. Eleven o’clock. Tomorrow the results of the analyses will be known, and I am afraid. I am afraid, and Maurice is not here. I know. His research must be carried through. Still, I am angry with him. I need you, and you aren’t here! I feel like writing those words on a piece of paper and leaving it in an obvious place in the hall before I go to bed. Otherwise I shall be bottling it in, as I did yesterday, and as I did the day before that. He always used to be there when I needed him.
I watered the potted plants; I began to tidy the books and I stopped dead. I had been astonished by his lack of interest when I talked to him about arranging this sitting room. I must tell myself the truth: I have always wanted the truth and the reason why I have had it is that I desired it. Well, then. Maurice has changed. He has let himself be eaten up by his profession. He no longer reads. He no longer listens to music. (I used so to love our silence and his attentive face as we listened to Monteverdi or Charlie Parker.) We no longer go out together in or around Paris. It might almost be said we no longer have any real conversation. He is beginning to be like his colleagues who are merely machines for getting on and for making money. I’m being unfair. He doesn’t give a damn for money or social success. But ever since he decided, ten years ago, against my wishes, to specialize, gradually (and that was what I had been afraid of) he has grown hard. Even at Mougins this year I thought him remote—intensely eager to get back to the hospital and the laboratory, absent-minded and indeed moody. Come! I might as well tell myself the truth right through to the end. The reason why my heart was so heavy at Nice airfield was those dismal holidays behind us. And the reason why I had so vivid a happiness in the deserted saltworks was that Maurice, hundreds of miles away, was close to me again. (What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.) Anyone would say he was no longer interested in his private life. How easily he gave up our trip to Alsace last spring! Yet my disappointment grieved him deeply. I said cheerfully, “A cure for leukemia is certainly worth a few sacrifices!” But there was a time when for Maurice medicine meant the relief of men and women made of flesh and blood. (I was so disappointed, so taken aback, when I did my course at the Cochin, by the professors’ coldhearted jollity and the students’ uncaring attitude; and in that extern’s fine dark eyes I saw distress and fury of the same kind as mine. I believe I loved him from that moment on.) I am afraid that now his patients are merely cases for him. Knowing concerns him more than healing. And even in his relations with people close to him he is growing remote, he who was so alive, so cheerful, as young at forty-five as when I first met him.… Yes, something has changed, since here I am writing about him, about myself, behind his back. If he had done so, I should have felt betrayed. Each of us used to be able to see entirely into the other.
So we can still; it is my anger that is keeping us apart—he will soon make it die away. He will ask me to be patient a little longer: after spells of furious overwork come the calm, easy days. Last year too he often worked in the evenings. Yes, but then I had Lucienne. And above all there was nothing tormenting me. He knows very well that at present I can neither read nor listen to a record, because I am afraid. I shall not leave a note in the hall, but I shall talk to him. After twenty—twenty-two—years of marriage one relies too much upon silence—it is dangerous. I believe these last years I was too wrapped up in the girls—Colette was so lovable and Lucienne so difficult. Perhaps I was not as free, as available, as Maurice might have wished. He ought to have pointed it out instead of flinging himself into work that now cuts him off from me. We must have it out together.
Midnight. I am in such a hurry to be at one with him again and to stifle the anger that is still rumbling inside me that I keep my eyes fixed on the clock. Its hands do not move: I grow irritated, all on edge. My mental image of Maurice falls to pieces: what sense is there in fighting against illness and suffering if you behave so stupidly toward your own wife? It’s indifference. It’s hardness of heart. No point in losing one’s temper. Stop it. If Colette’s analyses are not good, I shall need all my self-control tomorrow. I must try to go to sleep, then.
Sunday 26 September.
So it’s happened. It’s happened to me.
Monday 27 September.
Yes, here I am! It’s happened to me. It is perfectly usual. I must convince myself of that and strangle this fury that shattered me all yesterday. Maurice lied to me: yes, that too is perfectly usual. He might have gone on doing so instead of telling me. However late it is, I ought to feel grateful to him for his candor.
In the end I did go to sleep on Saturday. From time to time I stretched out to touch the other bed—its sheet was flat. (I like going to sleep before him when he is working in his consulting room. Through my dreams I hear water running, smell a faint whiff of eau de Cologne; I reach out, his body molds the sheet, and I sink deep down into happiness.) The front door slammed. I called, “Maurice!” It was three in the morning. They had not been working until three: they had been drinking and gossiping. I sat up in bed. “What kind of time is this to come home? Where have you been?”
He sat down in an armchair. He was holding a glass of whiskey in his hand.
“It’s three o’clock, I know.”
“Colette is ill, I’m r
acked with anxiety, and you come home at three. You haven’t all been working until three?”
“Is Colette worse?”
“She’s not better. You don’t care! Clearly, when you take the health of all mankind under your wing an ill daughter doesn’t amount to much.”
“Don’t be inimical.” He looked at me with a rather saddened gravity, and I melted as I always do melt when he envelops me in that dark, warm light. Gently I asked, “Tell me why you have come home so late.”
He made no reply.
“Were you drinking? Playing poker? Did you all go out? Did you forget the time?” He went on being silent, as it were emphatically silent, twirling his glass between his fingers. I flung out nonsensical words to make him lose his temper—to jerk an explanation out of him. “What’s the matter? Is there a woman in your life?”
Looking at me steadily he said, “Yes, Monique, there is a woman in my life.”
(Everything was blue above our heads and beneath our feet: on the other side of the strait loomed the coast of Africa. He squeezed me against him. “If you were to deceive me I should kill myself.” “If you were to deceive me I should have no need to kill myself. I should die of grief.” Fifteen years ago. Already? What do fifteen years count? Twice two is four. I love you, I love you alone. Truth cannot be destroyed: time has no effect upon it.)
“Who is it?”
“Noëllie Guérard.”
“Noëllie! Why?”
He shrugged. Of course. I knew the answer—pretty, dashing, bitchy, available. The sort of adventure that has no importance and that flatters a man. Did he need flattery?
He smiled at me. “I’m glad you questioned me. I hated lying to you.”
“Since when have you been lying to me?”
He scarcely hesitated at all. “I lied to you at Mougins. And since I came back.”
That made five weeks. Was he thinking about her at Mougins? “Did you go to bed with her when you stayed in Paris by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see her often?”
“Oh, no! You know very well I am working.…”
I asked him to be more exact. Two evenings and one afternoon since he came back: that seems often enough to me.
“Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
He looked at me shyly, and with sorrow in his voice he said, “You used to say you would die of grief.…”
“One says that.”
Suddenly I wanted to cry: I should not die of it—that was the saddest thing about it. We gazed at Africa, a great way off through the blue haze, and the words we uttered were merely words. I lay back. The blow had stunned me. My head went empty with shock. I had to have a pause, a break in time, to understand what had happened to me. “Let’s go to sleep,” I said.
Anger woke me early. How innocent he looked lying there, with his hair tangled over a forehead that sleep had made young again. (In August, when I was away, she woke up at his side: I can’t bring myself to believe it! Why did I go to the mountains with Colette? It was not as though she very much wanted to—I was the one who insisted.) For five weeks he had been lying to me. “This evening we made an important step forward.” And he had just come from Noëllie’s. I felt like shaking him, insulting him, shrieking. I took myself in hand. I left a note on my pillow: See you this evening. I was sure my absence would affect him more than any reproaches: there is no possible reply to absence. I walked through the streets, wherever chance led me, obsessed by the words: He lied to me. Mental images pierced me through—Maurice’s eyes set on Noëllie, his smile. I dismissed them. He doesn’t look at her as he looks at me. I did not want to suffer; I did not suffer; but I choked with bitterness. He lied to me! I had said, “I should die of grief”: yes, but he had made me say it. He had been more eager than I in drawing up our pact—no compromise, no deviating. We were driving along the little road to Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, and he pressed me: “Shall I always be enough for you?” He blazed up because there was not enough ardor in my reply (but what a reconciliation in our room at the old inn, with the scent of honeysuckle coming in at the window! Twenty years ago—it was yesterday). He has been enough for me: I have lived only for him. And for a mere whim he has betrayed our vows. I said to myself, I shall insist upon his breaking it off, right away.… I went to Colette’s apartment; all day long I looked after her, but inside I was boiling. I came home, quite worn out. “I’m going to insist upon his breaking it off.” But what does the word insist mean after a whole life of love and understanding? I have never asked anything for myself that I did not also wish for him.
He took me in his arms, looking quite distraught. He had telephoned to Colette’s several times and no one had answered (I had jammed the bell, so that she would not be disturbed). He was out of his mind with anxiety.
“But you didn’t really imagine I was going to do myself in?”
“There was nothing I didn’t imagine.”
His anxiety went to my heart, and I listened to him without hostility. Of course he had been wrong to lie, but I had to understand: the first reluctance snowballs—you no longer dare confess because then you would also have to admit to having lied. It is an even more impossible hurdle for people who rate sincerity so very high, as we do. (I admit that: how furiously I should have lied to conceal a falsehood.) I have never made proper allowance for untruth. Lucienne’s and Colette’s first fibs utterly flabbergasted me. I found it very hard to accept that all children lie to their mothers. Not to me! I am not the kind of mother that is lied to: not a wife that is lied to. Idiotic vanity. All women think they are different; they all think there are some things that will never happen to them; and they are all wrong.
I have spent a great deal of today thinking. (What luck Lucienne is in America. I should have had to play a part with her. She would never have left me in peace.) And I went to have a talk with Isabelle. She helped me, as she always does. I was afraid she might not really understand me, since she and Charles put their money on freedom and not on faithfulness, as Maurice and I did. But she tells me that that has not prevented her from flying into rages with her husband nor from sometimes feeling that she was in danger—five years ago she thought he was going to leave her. She advised me to be patient. She has a great regard for Maurice. She thinks it natural that he should have wanted an adventure and excusable that he should have hidden it from me at first: but he will certainly soon grow tired of it. What gives this sort of affair its piquancy is its newness; time works against Noëllie; the glamour she may have in Maurice’s eyes will fade. But if I want our love to emerge from this trial unhurt I must play neither the victim nor the shrew. “Be understanding, be cheerful. Above all be friendly,” she said to me. That was how she won Charles back in the end. Patience is not my outstanding virtue. But I certainly must do my best. And not only from a tactical point of view, but from a moral one too. I have had exactly the kind of life I wanted—now I must deserve that privilege. If I fail at the first little snag, everything I have thought about myself will have been mere vapor. I am uncompromising: I take after Papa, and Maurice respects me for it; but even so I must understand others and learn to adjust myself to them. Isabelle is quite right—it is perfectly natural for a man to have an affair after twenty-two years of marriage. It is I who would be unnatural—childish, really—if I were not to accept this.
When I left Isabelle I did not feel much like going to see Marguerite; but she had written me a touching little letter and I did not want to disappoint her. The sadness of that visiting room and of the oppressed faces of those girls. She showed me some drawings—not bad at all. She would like to take up interior decoration; or at least be a window dresser. Work at all events. I told her about the judge’s promises. I told her about the steps I had taken to be allowed to have her on Sundays. She trusts me; she really likes me; she will be patient: but not indefinitely.
This evening I am going out with Maurice. The advice of Isabelle and of Miss Lonelyheart’s column—to get y
our husband back, be cheerful and elegant and go out with him, just the two of you. I don’t have to get him back: I have never lost him. But I still have masses of questions to ask him, and the talk will be easier if we dine out. Above all I don’t want it to look like a formal summons to confess.
There is one idiotic detail that nags my mind—why did he have a glass of whiskey in his hand? I called out, “Maurice!” Since I had been awakened at three in the morning he must have guessed I was going to question him. Usually he does not slam the front door so noisily.
Tuesday 28 September.
I had too much to drink; but Maurice laughed and told me I was charming. It’s funny: he had to deceive me for us to be able to revive the nights of our youth. There is nothing worse than the daily round: shocks wake one up again. Saint-Germain-des-Prés has changed since ’46: a different sort of people go there. “And it’s another era,” said Maurice, rather sadly. But I had not set foot in a nightclub for nearly fifteen years, and I was delighted with everything. We danced. At one moment he squeezed me very tightly and said, “Nothing has changed between us.” And we talked of all sorts of things at random: but I was half-seas over, and I have rather forgotten what he told me. Generally speaking it was just what I had imagined: Noëllie is an outstanding attorney and she is eaten up with ambition; she is a woman on her own—divorced, with one daughter—with very free and easy ways, fashionable, very much in the swim. Exactly my opposite. Maurice had wanted to know whether he could be attractive to a woman of that kind. “If I wanted to.…” I had asked myself that question when I flirted with Quillan: the only time I ever flirted in my life, and I soon stopped it. Slumbering in Maurice, as in most men, there is a young man who is far from certain of himself. Noëllie reassured him. And obviously it is also a question of direct desire—she is appetizing.
Wednesday 29 September.
It was the first time Maurice spent the evening with Noëllie, me knowing about it. I went to see an old Bergman film with Isabelle, and we ate fondue bourguignonne at the Hochepot. I always like being with her. She has preserved the eagerness of our teen-age days, when every film, every book, every picture was so immensely important: now that my daughters have left me I shall go to shows and concerts with her more often. She too left off her studies when she married, but she has kept up a more vigorous intellectual life than I have. Though it is true that she has only had one son to bring up, not two daughters. Then again she is not hung about with lame ducks as I am; with an engineer for a husband she has few opportunities of coming across any. I told her that I had easily adopted the tactics of the smile because I was sure that in fact this affair had not much importance for Maurice. “Nothing has changed between us,” he told me the day before yesterday.
The Woman Destroyed Page 11
