The Misunderstanding

by Irene Nemirovsky

  ‘I must be dreaming,’ thought Denise.

  All of this had happened so quickly that her confused impressions dissolved almost immediately. They drove around the Bois once more and in a little side road, where it was cool, Jaja kissed her again. But when he moved his lips to kiss her cheek, on Yves’s favourite place, she instinctively pulled away.

  ‘No, not there …’

  He looked at her in surprise.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ she said curtly.

  He obeyed, realising that her moment of weakness had passed.

  As soon as she got home she called for Marie.

  ‘Has anyone telephoned for me?’

  ‘Yes, Madame,’ the maid replied, ‘Monsieur Harteloup.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Oh, quite a while; almost right after Madame went out.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘No, Madame. He said he’d phone back tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you, Marie. That will be all.’

  That evening, right after dinner, Yves had in fact telephoned her. When he heard the maid say ‘Madame has just gone out’ he was almost annoyed. Never in the eleven months of their affair had anything like this happened. Denise had always been there, at his beck and call, awaiting his pleasure, waiting to be summoned. He was ashamed at the frustration his disappointment made him feel, yet he couldn’t manage to shake it off. He started pacing back and forth through his apartment, vaguely hoping there was some misunderstanding, that she would phone him back. But no. It was actually true. She wasn’t there.

  ‘Where the hell could she be?’ he wondered. ‘Her husband hasn’t come home yet … Where is she?’

  Then he thought better of it, made an effort to smile.

  ‘This is a fine state of affairs … My poor Denise … Oh, good Lord, she’s free to do as she pleases … If she started making a fuss like this every time I went out without telling her first, I’d be really irritated …’

  But even though he talked like this to himself, or rather to Pierrot, which he usually did, as the dog sat there watching the flies buzz around the lamp, Yves could not calm himself down. He thought back to that day in Hendaye when she had been gone since morning and he had wandered around everywhere looking for her, from the Casino to the beach. And that same evening she had found him crying by the Bidassoa river … He didn’t know why, but this memory was painful … He threw his cigarette across the room angrily; it sent sparks flying as it hit the marble fireplace.

  ‘I’m going out, Pierrot.’

  Pierrot wagged his tail.

  Yves gave his ears a gentle tug to say goodbye and left.

  Once in the street, he walked for a little while and ended up hailing a taxi to take him to the Bois de Boulogne. He thought he would go to the Pavillon Royal to get something cool to drink; but in the milky mist, the night was so extraordinarily beautiful that he told the driver to keep going until they reached Longchamp. And while he was there, in the darkness, a few cars came and parked alongside him, including a small open-topped convertible, where he could just about see a couple in each other’s arms. He had been watching them for a short time when the harsh headlights from another car suddenly fell on them. Denise’s face appeared just a few feet away from him; she was leaning back a little; a young man was kissing her; she was acquiescing and smiling.

  All of a sudden he saw her push the man away. In the eerie white light he could see her hair with its curls blown by the night breeze, her delicate, sculpted face, her serious mouth and the beautiful, frank expression in her eyes that he loved and that stared at him through the darkness without recognising him.

  And then, as if it had been a mirage, everything vanished.

  The taxi was already heading towards the lake even though he was still standing up, stunned, both hands clutching on to the door of the cab. A sudden jolt when the taxi hit something as it turned a corner brought him back to reality.

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted. Then he got out, paid and started walking into the woods towards Longchamp. He had no particular plan; he was simply heading for the place where he had caught a glimpse of Denise, as if she might still be there. After a few minutes he stopped. ‘I’m going mad,’ he said out loud. ‘She will have gone a long time ago.’ Yet he continued walking aimlessly, knocking against the trees he couldn’t see in the dark.

  He experienced not a single moment of doubt. He did not wish to doubt. He never ran away from misfortune, but threw himself towards it at once, as if it were a frightening abyss that is both terrifying and enticing. Who was that man? He hadn’t been able to see him. Just a young face with smooth, combed-back hair. Besides, that hardly mattered. So Denise was cheating on him, she was lying – Denise? He stopped, utterly defeated. Only now did he understand how rare, how extraordinary, how precious was the blind trust he had placed in her. But why? After all, she was a woman and, like all women, weak and a liar. Had she really been just ‘any other woman’ to him? Had she been a passing fancy, the memory of a beautiful summer’s day, as so many others before? Had he not always treated her more or less like a wife? He had respected her for a long time, in Hendaye, as if she were a virgin. And ever since then had he ever knowingly offended her, even unconsciously, by suspecting the slightest word she said or a single thing she had done? The beautiful, frank expression in her eyes … But that, that was nothing … He might eventually have come to doubt her honesty, but her love for him? Never!

  He had never even thought about her love. Does anyone ever think about something he possesses, something he believes he will always possess? Her love had been firmly rooted in his heart as a basic truth, a premise it was pointless to attempt to prove. He knew that she would never stop loving him, just as he knew that the earth would turn, that the sun would give light and that day would always, always, follow night. Like a sick child who lashes out against the people trying to make him well again, he could be harsh towards her, send her away: that was his right, she belonged to him. He knew absolutely that as long as he wanted her she would be there. This love had lit up his life like the softly caressing, hazy light from a lamp … Now, that light had gone out … Could he forgive her? The idea never even crossed his mind. What was the point? What he had loved in her was the security she gave him. Her beautiful eyes, her lips, her slim figure: other women were just as lovely, but he could never have trusted any other woman the way he had trusted her. So there was no point in trying … Denise was dead.

  He stopped. He had wandered through the woods and ended up back near the lake. He walked over to it and stared at the water long and hard. The ripples made him feel slightly dizzy, almost slightly sick; the water moved and shone dimly. He left. He found himself outside the Bois. He walked along the deserted boulevard, then headed down a narrow street. Suddenly he felt weary. There was a wine merchant’s that was still lit up. He went inside, sank down on a bench against the wall and ordered a drink from the bar. He was brought some wine. He emptied his glass in one go and refilled it. He almost felt like getting drunk. But the cheap wine made him feel sick. He put the glass down, leaned on the table and put his head in his hands. Some workmen sat at the counter, drinking. They were chatting to one another. He listened to them talk without understanding what they said. The sound of human voices made him feel better. He was struck by one particular word: ‘Tomorrow’.

  ‘Ah, yes, tomorrow,’ he murmured.

  All his problems weighed down on him like a high wall that comes crashing down. Tomorrow. No word from Vendômois. No money. Bills due to be paid in three days. The office he hated. Tomorrow. The terrible heat. And then, nothing … Not a glimmer of light. The darkness, the emptiness … All the possibilities of salvation he had imagined in case Vendômois did not come to his rescue were brushed aside with stubborn hatred.

  ‘We’re closing, Monsieur,’ said the bartender.

  He automatically stood up, paid and left. And then he walked some more, for a long time, wandering aimlessly. The night passed. Suddenl
y he looked up and recognised his house. Later on he could never explain how he had got there. He went upstairs. In the hallway, he knocked into something on the floor. He leaned over. It was a suitcase. Jeanne came out of the servant’s pantry; she was still half asleep.

  ‘Monsieur, there is a gentleman waiting for you.’

  He pushed open the door. Vendômois.

  As if in a dream, he heard him say: ‘Hello there … Forgive me for not coming sooner … But I had to leave everything more or less in order back there, you understand … Then, as soon as I could, I hopped on a train … Things are clearer face to face than by letter, don’t you think? And besides, I had some business to attend to in Paris this month … Why didn’t I send you a telegram? Because there’s no telegraph office in my little village buried in the snow. A letter would have arrived at the same time as me … But what’s the matter? You look like a ghost … Don’t worry, now … we’ll sort everything out …’

  Yves wiped his forehead with a trembling hand; all he could say was ‘Thank you, thank you’; his voice was so blank that even he was surprised when he heard it.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Vendômois asked quickly.

  ‘No, forgive me.’

  ‘Is it just the money?’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  Vendômois nodded. All he said was ‘Ah’.

  Yves smiled gratefully; this masculine restraint that silences even pity was exactly what he needed. He looked at his friend.

  ‘Jean,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When are you going back?’

  ‘Day after tomorrow, two o’clock.’

  ‘Could you stay for two more days?’

  ‘I could.’

  He had looked up and was watching Yves carefully. Yves looked like a little boy who was about to cry.

  ‘Jean, take me with you.’

  Vendômois shrugged his shoulders. ‘Of course,’ he said.

  22

  THAT MORNING IN July, Denise waited with feverish anxiety for everyone in the house to wake up so she could get dressed and go out without arousing suspicion. She hadn’t slept a wink all night: her heart was filled with a horrible fear, and this time her anguish was, alas, all too appropriate. Another week had passed with no sign of Yves. At first she had thought it was quite normal. However, after a while his absence began to feel different to her. After waiting two days she finally decided to telephone him. For twenty minutes she listened to the phone ringing in the apartment. No reply. She phoned two or three times. Nothing. It was a mystery. She was about to go and find out what was happening when her husband came home. Throughout the evening she had not dared make a move. The night had been dreadful. ‘He must surely be ill,’ she thought. She remembered how terrible he had looked for some time now. Perhaps he had ended up in some hospital? My God, my God, if it were true that he was somewhere like that, in pain, hidden away in Paris, all alone in this big city, she would abandon everything in the world – her husband, her child – to run to him. Collapsed on her bed, she was tormented by a slow, subtle, obsessive form of torture … And this night that seemed to never end … At last it was morning. As soon as she heard her husband waking up in the room next door, his smoker’s cough, then his voice, she rang for her chambermaid. Within a quarter of an hour she had washed, dressed and was in the street outside her house.

  It was a stormy, oppressive July day. In spite of the early hour, a sickly-smelling mist was already rising from the overheated asphalt; the trees were losing their little yellow leaves; they were curling up, cracking, scorched by the heat. In the taxi, Denise gritted her teeth and clasped her burning hands together. The taxi stopped. There was Yves’s house. Denise walked by the concierge’s lodge with her head down, as she always did, and bounded up the stairs. She rang the bell. Its sound echoed sharp and clear. She waited. No one came. She rang again, longer this time. She could hear the shrill, panicky sound resonating throughout the rooms. But there were no footsteps, not even the sound of breathing from inside. She started banging her fists against the door. The concierge came running up when she heard the noise.

  ‘Can I help you, Madame?’

  ‘Monsieur Harteloup?’ Denise whispered.

  ‘He’s gone, Madame.’

  Denise stared at her wide-eyed, so the woman felt she should explain: ‘He’s left Paris.’

  ‘Will he be gone for long?’

  ‘Oh, yes! I think so … He’s broken his lease. They’re supposed to come and move the furniture out tomorrow.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  The concierge either didn’t want to say anything to avoid any problems, or she genuinely did not know. She just shook her head.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right,’ Denise murmured.

  She was stunned, as if a bomb had fallen straight on her. It didn’t even occur to her to insist, to force the concierge to break her silence with a large bribe. A distant memory flashed into her mind. When she was a very small child, she often had a dream that her father was dying; they were horrible nightmares that woke her with a start, all covered in sweat. Perhaps it was a premonition? Perhaps she’d overheard someone talking about his heart condition. In the end, he died suddenly, as she had seen twenty times over in her dreams; she remembered how that tragedy had left her dazed and resigned. ‘It’ had to happen. She had known that, on some level, for a long time. Now, standing outside this closed door, a similar feeling of fatality crushed her. Her anguish and worries, her frustrated need always to have her lover at her side, the despair that gripped her if he was away for two days, were not all these things a premonition of what was to come? – this silent door, the bell ringing in the empty apartment, this horrible helplessness that utterly overwhelmed her, here, on the sunlit landing, in front of this indifferent woman.

  Without a word she started down the stairs, her shoulders hunched, as if someone had hit her very hard on the nape of the neck. At the bottom of the stairs she stopped. Her heart missed a beat. How many times had she put on her gloves, straightened her hat, powdered her face right here behind the large carriage doors before walking out into the street. And now she would never do that again, never again … She was surprised to hear herself groan out loud. But there was still one lucid thought in her mind. She wanted to know where he was. She hailed a taxi and was taken to his office. The director agreed to see her at once, for she had sent in her card; she was aware that he was staring at her in astonishment, but the thought of her outrageous behaviour in revealing her husband’s name did not even bother her. The director was happy to tell her everything he knew. Harteloup had gone to Finland, suddenly called there, he believed, on family business; he had his address.

  ‘Do you think he will be gone for long, Monsieur?’ she asked in a breaking, poignant voice.

  ‘He told me he wasn’t ever coming back,’ the director replied, somewhat hesitantly.

  ‘Ah!’ she said and stood absolutely still. But her cheeks had turned very pale and the corners of her mouth fell, suddenly making her look older.

  ‘Would you like his address?’ the director asked, embarrassed.

  ‘Oh, yes! Please, Monsieur,’ she said as if she were a little girl who believes she will get what she wants if only she is sweet and patient.

  Indeed, she was given an envelope on which was written:

  Savitaipole.

  Commune of Koirami,

  near Haparanda

  (Finland)

  And it was only when she read those strange words that she clearly understood how far away he really was.

  The director looked at her with a mixture of pity and curiosity, vaguely expecting her to faint. But she suddenly regained her composure, as if she had been whipped.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He tried to mutter something sympathetic. She looked at him so strangely that he fell silent.

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur.’

  And, brushing past him, she le
ft.

  She was back in the street again, holding the bit of paper where Yves’s address was written. She threw it far away. What was the point? Had she ever dared defy his will? And wasn’t his will clearly obvious from the fact that he had gone without even saying goodbye? ‘I’ve always known …’ she thought once more, ‘I’ve always known that he would leave one day without a word …’

  In a daze, she headed towards her house; at the corner of the street she stopped: she recognised her husband’s car parked in front of the door. She checked the time and was surprised: it was nearly noon. Soon she would have to sit down for lunch, sit down opposite Jacques, let him see her poor face ravaged by tears … She would never, ever have the strength to do that! The moment her husband asked her what was wrong she would burst into tears and confess everything.

  She walked to the nearest post office and telephoned her house to speak to Marie.

  ‘Marie, I won’t be coming home for lunch … I’ve been delayed … I’m with a friend who isn’t well …’

  Leaving Marie to explain, she went outside. The horrible heat did her good: it prevented her from thinking, from remembering … She had almost stopped suffering; all she could feel was the asphalt burning her feet through her thin-soled shoes. She walked, just walked, unaware that she was perhaps retracing the tragic steps of her lover on a different night …

  Without quite knowing how, she found herself on the quayside along the Seine. She crossed a bridge. Some cool air wafted up from the water. Suddenly her resignation, which was nothing more than a kind of physical numbness, dissolved in a rush of despair that made her stop dead and clasp her throat as if she were suffocating.

  ‘Yves, Yves …’

  She didn’t judge him. She had always felt a mixture of incomprehension and superstitious respect for him that was almost the definition of how a woman loves a man. She felt neither hatred, nor bitterness, nor contempt. Simply immense astonishment. She did not even read into his disappearance any reason other than his masculine will that must be blindly accepted, like the will of God. She had not the slightest inkling of the truth. And besides, had she known, had she even suspected that Yves was alongside her that dark night in the Bois de Boulogne, she probably still would not have understood any more than she did now … Could what she had done been called ‘cheating’, a joyless game, a way to pass the time that had taken her mind off things for a few hours? Hadn’t she really done it for him, in fact, to try to control the overwhelming love that obsessed her, was suffocating her? She certainly did not feel guilty where Yves was concerned. But she didn’t really try to understand. When you are dying, you don’t ask ‘why?’. It’s just inevitable.