The Devil in the Flesh

by Raymond Radiguet

  WHEN THE END OF SEPTEMBER CAME, I SENSED that to leave this house was to leave happiness behind. Just a few months’ grace, then we would have to choose between living a lie or living with the truth, unable to relax wherever we were. Since the important thing was that Marthe’s parents didn’t abandon her before our child was born, I eventually dared ask if she had told Madame Grangier that she was pregnant. She said yes, and that she had also told Jacques. So I couldn’t help noting that she sometimes lied to me, because in May, after Jacques had been staying, she had promised that he hadn’t had any contact with her.

  XXVI

  IT WAS GETTING DARK EARLIER AND EARLIER now; the evenings were too chilly to go for a walk. It was difficult for us to meet at J.… In order not to cause a scandal we had to behave like burglars, keep a lookout in the street to make sure the Marins and the landlord were not at home.

  The melancholy of that October, its chilly nights, although not cold enough to light the fire, gave us good reason to go to bed at five o’clock. To my parents, being in bed during the daytime meant you were ill; while for me, bed at five o’clock was enchanting. I never dreamt that other people might be doing the same thing. I was alone with Marthe, in bed, motionless in the midst of a busy world. I hardly dared look at her when she was naked. So was I a monster? I was filled with remorse over man’s most honourable activity. I regarded myself as a barbarian for having impaired Marthe’s gracefulness. When we first became lovers, when I bit her, hadn’t she said: “Mark me”? And hadn’t I marked in the worst possible way?

  Marthe was no longer simply the woman I loved most, which isn’t the same as saying that she was the most beloved of mistresses: she was everything to me. I didn’t spare a thought for my friends; in fact I feared them, realising that they think they are doing us a kindness by turning us away from our path. Luckily they regard mistresses as insufferable, beneath one’s dignity. This is our one and only safeguard. When it ceases to be so, there is a chance that our mistresses might become theirs.

  XXVII

  MY FATHER BEGAN TO GET FRIGHTENED. BUT since he had always stood up for me against his sister and my mother, he didn’t want to appear to be backing down, and it was by not saying anything to them that he went over to their side. When he was alone with me, he told me he would stop at nothing to split me up from Marthe. He would inform her parents, her husband … But the next day he let me do just as I pleased.

  I knew his weaknesses. I took advantage of them. I answered him back. I berated him in the same way as my mother and my aunt, criticising him for leaving it too late to exercise his authority. Wasn’t he the one who had introduced me to Marthe? It was then his turn to reproach himself. An atmosphere of tragedy filled the house. What an example to set to my brothers! My father could already foresee the day when there would be nothing he could say to them when they used my lack of discipline to defend their own.

  Until now he had thought it was just a dalliance, but my mother intercepted my mail again. Triumphantly she handed him the evidence for the prosecution. In it Marthe talked about our future, our child!

  My mother still saw me as too much of a baby to think it feasible that I was the one she had to thank for this grandson or granddaughter. She didn’t believe it possible to be a grandmother at her age. Deep down, it was this that convinced her that the child wasn’t mine.

  Respectability and strong emotions aren’t mutually exclusive. With her deep-seated sense of respectability, my mother couldn’t accept that a woman might cheat on her husband. For her this constituted such immorality that it couldn’t possibly be anything to do with love. To my mother’s way of thinking, the fact that I was Marthe’s lover meant that there were others. My father knew how fallacious such logic could be, but he used it to sow the seeds of doubt in my mind and disparage Marthe. He led me to believe that I was the only one who didn’t ‘know’. My answer was that she was only being maligned in this way because it was me she loved. Not wishing me to profit by these rumours, my father assured me that it had happened before we became lovers, even before she was married.

  Having maintained an outward show of dignity among the family, my father lost all self-control and, when I didn’t come home for several days, he despatched the chambermaid to Marthe’s house with a note addressed to me, demanding that I come back immediately; if not he would report me to the police for running away, and would take Madame L to court for corrupting a minor.

  Marthe kept up appearances, pretended to be surprised and told the maid that she would give me the letter the next time she saw me. I went home later, cursing my age. It was preventing me from having a life of my own. My father didn’t say a word, nor did my mother. I scoured the Code Civil, but couldn’t find any laws relating to minors. With extraordinary unworldliness I didn’t think that my behaviour could land me in the reformatory. Eventually, having gone through the Code from cover to cover to no avail, I tried the Grand Larousse, where I read the entry on ‘minor’ a dozen times without finding anything that affected us.

  The next day my father again left me to my own devices.

  For those who are interested in the motives behind his peculiar behaviour, I can sum them up in three points: first he allowed me to do as I liked. Then he was ashamed about it. He made threats, angrier with himself than he was with me. After that, the shame of having flown into a rage made him give me free rein again.

  When she got back from the country, Madame Grangier’s suspicions had been aroused by her neighbours’ insidious questions. Pretending that they thought I was Jacques’s brother, they told her about us living together. Added to the fact that Marthe couldn’t help constantly mentioning me for no apparent reason, or talking about something I had said or done, it wasn’t long before her mother guessed who ‘Jacques’s brother’ really was.

  Yet she still forgave her, convinced that the child, which she thought was Jacques’s, would put an end to our liaison. She didn’t tell Monsieur Grangier, for fear of a scene. But she put her discretion down to her own natural generosity, of which she was keen for Marthe to be aware so she would then be grateful to her. And in order to show her daughter that she knew everything, she harrassed her continually, used such tactless innuendos that when Monsieur Grangier got his wife on her own, he begged her to go gently with their poor innocent girl, because all this surmising would eventually make her do something foolish. To which Madame Grangier just gave a little smile, to make him think that her daughter had told her everything.

  This attitude of hers, like the one she had displayed before while Jacques was on leave the first time, made me think that even if Madame Grangier had totally disapproved of her daughter’s behaviour, she would still have sided with her against her husband and son-in-law, purely for the satisfaction of proving them wrong. Because at heart Madame Grangier admired Marthe for cheating on her husband, something she had never dared do, whether out of principles or lack of opportunity. Her daughter was avenging her, or so she thought, for being misunderstood. Absurdly idealistic, she confined herself to resenting her for loving a boy of my age, who was less capable than anyone of understanding ‘feminine sensitivities’.

  Since they lived in Paris, the Lacombes, who Marthe went to see more and more rarely, didn’t suspect a thing. They simply thought she was becoming increasingly odd, and found her less and less to their liking. They were worried about what the future might hold. They wondered where this marriage would be in a few years’ time. All mothers want nothing so much for their sons than for them to get married, but make it a matter of principle to disapprove of the wife they choose. So Jacques’s mother felt sorry for him for having such a wife. As for Mademoiselle Lacombe, the main reason for her spiteful tongue was the fact that Marthe was the sole possessor of the secret of the perfect romantic idyll, having spent a summer by the sea with Jacques. His sister predicted the most dismal future for their marriage, and said that Marthe would cheat on Jacques, if indeed she hadn’t already done so.

  The relentles
s fury displayed by his wife and daughter sometimes forced Monsieur Lacombe, a decent man who loved Marthe, to leave the dinner table. At which point mother and daughter would give each other meaningful glances. Madame Lacombe’s was saying: “There, my girl, see how a woman like that knows how to cast a spell over our menfolk.” While Mademoiselle Lacombe’s meant: “It’s because I’m not like Marthe that I can’t find a husband.” The truth was, by assuming that manners changed with the times and using the fact that marriage wasn’t what it was as an excuse, the hapless young woman scared off any likely husbands by giving the impression of not being feisty enough. Her matrimonial aspirations lasted as long as a summer holiday by the sea. Young men would promise to come and ask for her hand the moment they were back in Paris. They were never seen again. Perhaps the main injustice that piqued Mademoiselle Lacombe, who would be going to that year’s St Catherine’s Day ball, was that Marthe had found a husband so easily. She consoled herself with the thought that only a fool like her brother could have been caught with so little effort.

  XXVIII

  YET WHATEVER SUSPICIONS THE TWO FAMILIES might have had, no one imagined that the child’s father could be anyone but Jacques. This rather offended me. There were even times when I accused Marthe of cowardice for not telling them the truth. Being prone to see weakness in everyone except myself, I thought that since Madame Grangier had made light of the beginnings of this crisis, she would turn a blind eye right to the end.

  The storm drew nearer. My father threatened to send certain letters to Madame Grangier. I wished he would carry out his threats. But then I stopped to think. Madame Grangier would conceal them from her husband. Neither of them would want there to be a storm. I felt oppressed. So I brought the storm to me. My father had to send the letters to Jacques personally.

  On the day of wrath, when he told me he had done it, I wanted to throw my arms round him and kiss him. At last! At last! He had done me the kindness of telling Jacques what he had to know. I felt sorry for my father for thinking that my love was so weak. Besides, these letters would put a stop to any others in which Jacques might express affection for what was our child. In the heat of the moment I failed to see just how crazy, ridiculous, this course of action was. I only began to understand the next day, when my father, now in calmer mood, reassured me—or so he thought—by admitting that he had been lying. He regarded it as inhuman. Undoubtedly so. But what is human, and what is inhuman?

  I was using up all my nervous energy on cowardice and effrontery, exhausted by the thousand and one paradoxes faced by a person of my age wrestling with an experience that belonged to the world of men.

  XXIX

  LOVE NUMBED ME TO ANYTHING THAT WASN’T Marthe. I didn’t believe that my father might be suffering. I viewed everything in such a narrow, mistaken way that in the end I thought the two of us were at war. And, dare I admit it, it wasn’t just out of love for Marthe that I was trampling on my filial obligations, it was sometimes a way of retaliating!

  I didn’t take much notice of the letters that my father sent to Marthe’s house now. It was her who begged me to spend more time at home, to behave sensibly. At which point I would burst out: “Go on then, why don’t you gang up on me as well?” I would clench my teeth, stamp my foot. The fact that I could work myself into such a state at the thought of being away from her for a few hours, Marthe interpreted as a sign of passion. The certainty that she was loved gave her a determination I’d never noticed before. Confident I would be thinking of her, she would insist that I go home.

  I soon realised what it was that made her so brave. So I changed tactics. I pretended to see reason. Suddenly her attitude changed. Seeing me so sensible (or so fickle), she was frightened I might not love her so much. It was her turn to beg me to stay, because she so needed reassurance.

  There was one time, however, when nothing worked. I hadn’t shown my face at home for three days, and I announced to Marthe that I was going to spend another night with her. She tried everything to get me to change my mind: cajolery, threats. She was capable of putting on an act as well. In the end she said that if I didn’t go back to my parents’ house then she would sleep at hers.

  I told her that my father would completely disregard this noble gesture. Fine—she wouldn’t go to her mother’s then! She would go down by the Marne. She would catch cold and die; she would be free of me at last: “Show some pity for our child at least,” she said. “Don’t put its life at risk for the sake of pleasure.” She accused me of playing games with her love, of trying to find out how far I could push it. Faced with such an assertion, I told her what my father had said—that she was cheating on me with all and sundry; I wasn’t going to be made a fool of. “There’s only one thing stopping you from giving in to me,” I said. “You’re seeing one of your lovers here tonight.” What response is there to such wild accusations? She turned away. I berated her for not springing to her own defence. My words eventually had their effect, because she agreed to spend the night with me. On condition that it wasn’t in her apartment. When the messenger came from my parents the next day, the last thing she wanted was for her landlord to be able to tell him that she was here.

  So where were we going to sleep?

  We were like children standing on a chair, proud of being taller than the grown-ups. Circumstances had put us in this lofty position, but we were unable to live up to it. Yet if lack of experience made us see certain complexities as simple, then very simple things, in contrast, turned into obstacles. We’d never dared make use of Paul’s bachelor apartment. I didn’t believe it possible that we could just slip the concierge something and tell her that we would occasionally be there.

  So we would have to go to a hotel. I’d never been to one. I was terrified at the prospect of even walking in the door.

  A child always tries to find excuses. Constantly required to explain himself to his parents, it is inevitable that he will lie.

  I even imagined that I would have to explain myself to a shady hotel desk clerk. Which was why, claiming we would need a change of clothes and a few toiletries, I made Marthe pack a case. We would ask for two rooms. People would think we were brother and sister. I would never have dared ask for a double room, because at my age (the age when you get thrown out of nightclubs) I risked humiliation.

  The journey, at eleven at night, seemed endless. There were two other people in our carriage—a woman taking her captain husband to the Gare de l’Est. There was no heating or light. Marthe rested her head against the damp window. She was being subjected to the whims of a callous boy. I felt rather ashamed of myself, and it grieved me to think that Jacques, who was always so affectionate with her, was more deserving of her love than I was.

  I couldn’t help mumbling excuses. She shook her head: “I prefer being unhappy with you than being happy with him,” she whispered. There they were, those meaningless words of love which we are ashamed to admit having used, but which, coming from the mouth of the loved one, make you feel exhilarated. I even thought I understood what she was saying. And yet what exactly did Marthe mean? Can you be happy with someone you don’t love?

  And I wondered, I wonder still, if love gives you the right to drag a woman away from a fate that might be prosaic, but which gives her peace of mind. “I prefer being unhappy with you …” Did these words contain a subconscious rebuke? Because she loved me, Marthe had undoubtedly enjoyed moments with me that she had never imagined having with Jacques, but did these happy times give me the right to be cruel?

  We got off at the Bastille. Inside the station building, the cold, which doesn’t bother me because I think of it as the cleanest thing in the world, was worse than the vile heat at a seaside harbour, only without the cheerful atmosphere that makes up for it. Marthe complained of the cramps. She clung to my arm. What a pathetic couple, their youth and beauty forgotten, as ashamed of themselves as a pair of beggars!

  I found the fact of Marthe being pregnant grotesque, and walked with my eyes downcast. I was far
from being filled with paternal pride.

  We roamed around between the Bastille and the Gare de Lyons in the freezing rain. Every time we saw a hotel, I made up some feeble excuse for not going in. I told Marthe I was looking for a respectable hotel, a hotel for travellers, nothing but travellers.

  By the time we got to the Place de la Gare de Lyon it was difficult for me to shy away from the issue any longer. Marthe ordered me to put an end to this agony.

  While she waited outside, I went into a hotel lobby, with no real idea of what I was expecting. The man at the desk asked if I wanted a room. The easiest thing would have been to say yes. But that was too easy, and, looking for an excuse like a hotel thief caught in the act, I asked for Madame Lacombe. I blushed as I did so, afraid that he would reply: “Are you playing the fool, young man? She’s out there in the street.” He looked through the register. I must have got the wrong address. I went back outside and told Marthe that they hadn’t got any rooms and that we wouldn’t find one anywhere in the neighbourhood. I could breathe again. I was in a hurry, like a thief in the night.

  Until that moment, my fixation with avoiding the very hotels where I was forcing Marthe to go had prevented me from thinking of her. But now I looked at the poor girl. I fought back my tears, and when she asked where we were going to sleep, I begged her not to hold it against me for being a madman, and to be sensible and go home, her to J …, and me to my parents. Madman! Sensible! She just smiled mechanically to hear these words, so out of place.

  My feelings of shame turned the return journey into a tragic scene. When after all this brutal behaviour, Marthe made the mistake of saying: “Honestly, it was very unkind of you,” I lost my temper, told her she was uncharitable. Yet if she kept quiet, seemed to have forgotten about it, I was frightened that she was behaving like that because she thought I was a madman, insane. So I wouldn’t give her any peace until I’d made her say that she wouldn’t forget, and that even if she did forgive me I mustn’t take advantage of her generosity, and that eventually, weary of my ill-treatment, the strain would get the better of our love and she would leave me. While I was making her speak to me so forcefully, and despite not believing her threats, I had a wonderful sensation of distress, not unlike the excitement I feel on the roller coaster, only more intense. So I threw myself into her arms and kissed her more passionately than ever.