She Came to Stay

by Simone de Beauvoir

  ‘I don’t deserve that you should think that of me,’ said Françoise with a kind of remorse.

  Pierre was approaching cheerfully.

  ‘He was there. I asked him to be at the theatre at eight o’clock and told him I wanted to speak to him.’

  ‘What did he answer?’

  ‘He said “Good”.’

  ‘Don’t beat about the bush with him,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Just leave it to me,’ said Pierre. He smiled at Xavière: ‘Let’s go to the Pôle Nord for a drink before saying goodbye.’

  ‘Oh, yes, do let’s go to the Pôle Nord,’ said Xavière sweetly.

  That was where they had sealed their friendship and the place had already become legendary and symbolic. When they left the café, Xavière, of her own accord, took Pierre’s and Françoise’s arms and, all three walking in step, they set out on their pilgrimage to the Pôle Nord.

  Because of some latent uneasiness and also because she objected to having any strange hand, even that of a divinity, touch her bits and pieces, it was clear that Xavière did not want Françoise to help her tidy her room. Françoise went up to her own room, put on a dressing-gown, and spread out her papers on her table. It was most often at this time of day, while Pierre was acting, that she worked on her novel; she began to read over the pages she had written the night before, but she had difficulty in concentrating. In the next room the Negro was giving the blonde tart a lesson in tap-dancing; with them was a little Spanish girl, who was a barmaid at the Topsy; Françoise recognized their voices. She took a nail file out of her bag, and began to file her nails. Even if Pierre succeeded in convincing Gerbert, wouldn’t there always be a shadow between them? How angry would Aunt Christine be tomorrow? She couldn’t get these irritating thoughts out of her head. But above all, she couldn’t dismiss the thought that she and Pierre had not been at one during the afternoon. No doubt, when she talked it over with him, this unpleasant impression would be dissipated; but, in the meantime, it weighed heavily on her heart. She looked at her nails. It was stupid. She ought not to attach so much importance to a slight disagreement. She ought not to have felt herself so lost the minute Pierre’s support failed her.

  Her nails were not nicely shaped, she couldn’t get them to match. Françoise picked up her file again. She was wrong to depend so entirely on Pierre: that was a real mistake, she ought not to thrust responsibility for herself upon someone else. With impatience, she shook from her dressing-gown the white nail dust clinging to it. In order to become totally responsible for herself, she had only to will it; but she did not really want to do so. She would still ask Pierre to sanction the very censure she inflicted on herself; her every thought was with him and for him; an act, self-initiated and having no connexion with him, an act that bespoke genuine independence, was beyond her imagination. Yet this was not disturbing; she would never find it necessary to fall back on herself in opposition to Pierre.

  Françoise threw down her nail file. It was absurd to waste three precious working hours. This was not the first time Pierre had shown considerable interest in other women. Why, then, did she feel injured? What was disturbing was this feeling of rigid hostility which she had discovered in herself, and which had not been completely dissipated. She hesitated, and, for a moment, she was persuaded to try to clarify her uneasiness; but really it took too much effort. She bent over her papers.

  It was barely midnight when Pierre returned from the theatre. His face was red with the cold.

  ‘Did you see Gerbert?’ said Françoise anxiously.

  ‘Yes, everything’s all right,’ said Pierre cheerfully. He took off his muffler and overcoat.

  ‘He began by telling me that it didn’t matter and that he didn’t want any explanation; but I insisted. I argued that we never stood on ceremony with him and that if we’d wanted to chuck him we’d have said so roundly. He was a little mistrustful, but that was just to keep up appearances.’

  ‘You really are a little Chrysostom,’ said Françoise. There was a tinge of bitterness blended with her relief. It annoyed her to feel that she was conspiring with Xavière against Gerbert, and she would have liked Pierre himself to have felt it as well, instead of happily rubbing his hands together. A slight tampering with truth was next to nothing, but to repeat lies, from soul to soul, did spoil something between people.

  ‘Still, Xavière’s little trick was pretty rotten,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you were extremely severe,’ said Pierre. He smiled. ‘You’ll be terribly stern when you get old!’

  ‘At the outset you were more strict than I,’ said Françoise, ‘in fact you were almost insufferable.’

  With a feeling of distress she recognized that it would not be so easy to blot out the day’s misunderstandings by a friendly conversation; a persistent bitterness overwhelmed her as soon as she brought them back to mind.

  Pierre began to undo the tie he had put on in honour of the private view.

  ‘I consider it’s unspeakably feather-brained that she should have forgotten an appointment with us,’ he said in an offended tone, but with a smile that, in retrospect, mocked its significance. ‘And besides, when I went to take a little walk to calm me down, I saw things in another light.’

  His careless good humour only served to increase Françoise’s edginess.

  ‘I saw that her behaviour with Gerbert suddenly made you indulgent: you almost congratulated her.’

  ‘It was becoming too serious to be merely feather-brained,’ said Pierre. ‘I thought that all that – her nervousness, her need for entertainment, the forgotten appointment and yesterday’s betrayal, was part of the same thing and that there must have been some reason for it.’

  ‘She told you the reason,’ said Françoise.

  ‘You mustn’t believe what she says, just because she makes up stories for the fun of it,’ said Pierre.

  ‘Well, it isn’t really worth the effort of insisting on them so much,’ said Françoise, who was bitterly turning over in her mind his endless cross-questionings.

  ‘She isn’t really lying either. You have to interpret her words,’ said Pierre.

  It seemed almost as if they were talking about a Pythian oracle.

  ‘Just what is your point?’ asked Françoise impatiently.

  Pierre smiled on one side of his mouth.

  ‘Didn’t it strike you that, all in all, she was blaming me for not having seen her since Friday?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Françoise, ‘that proves that she’s beginning to grow very fond of you.’

  ‘For that girl, beginning and going on to the end are one and the same thing,’ said Pierre.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I feel that she is very well disposed towards me,’ said Pierre in a fatuous manner, partly assumed, but all the same betraying deep personal satisfaction. Françoise was shocked by this; usually, Pierre’s discreet caddishness amused her, but Pierre respected Xavière, the affection that had shone in his every smile, at the Pôle Nord, had not been affected. This cynical tone became disquieting.

  ‘I am wondering how far the fact that Xavière’s well disposed towards you excuses her?’ she said.

  ‘You must put yourself in her place,’ said Pierre. ‘She’s a proud, emotional creature. I solemnly offered her my friendship, and the very first time that there was a question of seeing her again, I gave her the impression of having to move mountains to devote a few hours to her. That hurt her.’

  ‘Not at the time, at any rate,’ said Françoise.

  ‘I dare say. But she thought it over, and since she didn’t see me when she wanted to during the following days it became a terrible grievance. Add to that the fact that on Friday it was you who raised the objections about Gerbert. However much she may be devoted to you, in her possessive little soul you are still the biggest obstacle between her and me. Behind that secret we insisted on her keeping, she suddenly perceived a whole fate. And she behaved like a child who mixes up all the cards when it sees that it’s los
ing the game.’

  ‘You give her credit for a lot,’ said Françoise.

  ‘You don’t credit her with enough,’ said Pierre impatiently, and it was not the first time that day that he had used this biting tone on the subject of Xavière.

  ‘I don’t say that she put it all into just such precise words, but that was the meaning of what she did.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Françoise.

  So, according to Pierre, Xavière regarded her as an undesirable of whom she was jealous. Françoise remembered with displeasure how moved she had been by Xavière’s worshipping face; it now appeared to her as an act.

  ‘That’s an ingenious explanation,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think there can ever be any such thing as a clear-cut explanation of Xavière; she lives far too much according to her moods.’

  ‘Well, that’s just it, her moods have a twofold basis,’ said Pierre. ‘Do you think she would have flown into a rage over a wash-hand basin if she hadn’t already lost control of herself? This idea of moving was a form of escape; and I’m certain that she was escaping from me, because she was angry with herself for being fond of me.’

  ‘In short, you think there’s a key to her strange conduct and that key is a sudden passion for you?’

  Pierre’s lip jutted out slightly.

  ‘I didn’t say that it was a passion.’

  Françoise’s phrase had irritated him. In fact, it was the kind of brutal statement for which they so often criticized Elisabeth.

  ‘A truly deep love!’ said Françoise. ‘I don’t think that Xavière is capable of such a thing.’ She thought a moment. ‘Ecstasy, desire, resentment, unreasonable demands, most certainly; but the sort of assent that’s needed to make a real emotion of all these feelings, that she’ll never possess, to my way of thinking.’

  ‘That’s what the future will show,’ said Pierre, whose profile became still sharper.

  He took off his jacket and disappeared behind the screen. Françoise began to undress. She had spoken openly; she never hedged with Pierre, there was no self-pity about him, nor did he have any secrets which had to be handled with excessive care; and she had been in the wrong. This evening she had to think things over twice before speaking.

  ‘Surely, she’s never looked at you in the way she did tonight at the Pôle Nord,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Did you notice that, too?’ said Pierre.

  Françoise felt a lump in her throat. That sentence had been well thought out, a sentence for a stranger, and it had struck its mark. The man brushing his teeth behind the screen was a stranger. An idea flashed into her mind. Hadn’t Xavière refused her help chiefly because she would all the sooner be left alone with Pierre’s image? It was possible that he had guessed the truth; it was indeed a dialogue that had gone on all day between them; it was to Pierre that Xavière showed her inner self most willingly and there was a kind of conspiracy between him and her. Well, that was perfectly satisfactory, for it relieved her of the whole business, which was beginning to weigh on her. Pierre had already adopted Xavière to a far greater extent than Françoise had ever agreed to do; she was handing her over to him. Henceforth, Xavière belonged to Pierre.

  Chapter Six

  ‘You can’t drink better coffee than this anywhere,’ said Françoise as she put her cup down on the saucer.

  Madame Miquel smiled.

  ‘Well, of course, this isn’t what they give you in your cheap restaurants.’

  She was looking through a fashion magazine and Françoise came over and sat down on the arm of her chair. Monsieur Miquel was reading Le Temps, sitting beside the fireplace in which a wood fire was crackling. Things had barely changed during the past twenty years, the atmosphere was oppressive. Whenever Françoise came back to this flat, she felt that all those years had led absolutely nowhere: time was spread out all round her in a quiet, stagnant pool. To live was to grow old, nothing more.

  ‘Daladier really spoke very well,’ said Monsieur Miquel. ‘With great firmness, with great dignity; he won’t give way an inch.’

  ‘It’s rumoured that Bonnet, personally, would be willing to make concessions,’ said Françoise. ‘It’s even said that he embarked on secret negotiations over Djibouti.’

  ‘Mind you, as such, the Italian demands aren’t so outrageous,’ said Monsieur Miquel, ‘but it’s their tone that’s insufferable. After being told off like that, we couldn’t agree to a compromise at any price.’

  ‘All the same, you wouldn’t start a war over a question of prestige?’ said Françoise.

  ‘No more can we resign ourselves to becoming a second-rate nation, huddled behind our Maginot Line.’

  ‘No,’ said Françoise. ‘It’s very difficult.’

  By always avoiding questions of principle, she could easily come to a kind of understanding with her parents.

  ‘Do you think I’d look well in this sort of dress?’ asked her mother.

  ‘Of course you would, Mother, you’re so slim.’

  She looked at the clock; it was almost two; Pierre would already be sitting at a table with a cup of that cheap coffee in front of him. Xavière had arrived so late for her lesson on the first two occasions that they had decided to meet an hour earlier at the Dôme today, and they could then be sure of beginning their work at the proper time. Perhaps she was already there – she was unpredictable.

  ‘I must have a new evening gown for the hundredth performance of Julius Caesar,’ said Françoise. ‘I don’t really know what to choose.’

  ‘We’ll have to think about it,’ said Madame Miquel.

  Monsieur Miquel put down his newspaper.

  ‘Are you really counting on a hundred performances?’

  ‘At least that. The house is full every night.’

  She roused herself and walked over to the looking-glass; this atmosphere sapped her spirits.

  ‘I’ll have to be going,’ she said, ‘I have an appointment.’

  ‘I don’t like this fashion of going without a hat,’ said Madame Miquel, as she fingered Françoise’s coat. ‘Why didn’t you buy a fur coat as I told you? You’ve nothing to keep you warm.’

  ‘Don’t you like this three-quarter style? I think it’s charming,’ said Françoise.

  ‘It’s a between-season coat,’ said her mother. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I can’t imagine what you do with your money.’

  ‘When are you coming again?’ said Monsieur Miquel. ‘Wednesday evening Maurice and his wife will be here.’

  ‘Then I’ll come on Thursday evening,’ said Françoise, ‘I’d rather see you alone.’

  She walked slowly downstairs and out into the rue de Médicis. The air was sticky and damp, but once outside she felt better than in the warm library. Slowly, time had begun to move again: she was going to meet Gerbert; that at least gave some small meaning to these moments.

  ‘Xavière must have arrived by now,’ thought Françoise with a slight tightening of her heart. She would be wearing either her blue dress or her beautiful red-and-white striped blouse, with the smooth folds of her hair framing her face, and she would be smiling. What was this unknown smile? How was Pierre looking at her? Françoise stopped short on the edge of the pavement: she had the painful impression of being in exile. In the ordinary way, the centre of Paris was wherever she happened to be. Today, everything had changed. The centre of Paris was the café where Pierre and Xavière were sitting, and Françoise was wandering about in some vague suburb.

  Françoise sat down near a brazier on the terrace of the Deux Magots. Tonight, Pierre would tell her the whole story, but for some little time now she hadn’t altogether trusted the spoken word.

  ‘A black coffee,’ she said to the waiter.

  Anguish pierced her: it was not a definite pain, she would have to delve very deep into the past to unearth a similar uneasiness. Then she remembered. The house was empty, the blinds had been drawn to shut out the sun, and it was dark; on the first-floor landing, a little girl was standing close up against the wa
ll, holding her breath. It was funny to be there all alone when everyone else was in the garden, it was funny and frightening; the furniture looked just as it always did, but at the same time it was completely changed: thick and heavy and secret; under the book-stand and under the marble console there lurked an ominous shadow. She did not want to run away but her heart turned over.

  Her old jacket was hanging over the back of a chair. Anna had probably cleaned it with petrol, or else she had just taken it out of camphor-balls and put it there to air; it was very old and it looked very worn out. It was old and worn but it could not complain as Françoise complained when she had hurt herself; it could not say to itself: ‘I’m an old worn jacket.’ It was strange; Françoise tried to imagine what it would be like supposing she couldn’t say: ‘I’m Françoise, I’m six years old, and I’m in Grandma’s house,’ if she could say absolutely nothing: she closed her eyes. It was as if she did not exist at all; and yet other people would be coming here, and would see her, and would speak about her. She opened her eyes again; she could see the jacket, it existed, yet it was not aware of it. There was something a little disturbing, a little frightening, about it all. What was the use of existing, if it wasn’t aware of his own existence? She thought it over; perhaps there was a way. Since I can say: ‘I’, what would happen if I said it for the jacket? It was very disappointing; it was useless to look at the jacket, to see absolutely nothing but it, and to say very quickly: ‘I’m old, I’m worn’; nothing happened. The jacket stayed there, indifferent, a complete stranger, and she was still Françoise. Besides, if she were to become the jacket, then she, Françoise, wouldn’t know anything. Everything began to spin round in her head and she raced down and out into the garden.

  Françoise emptied her coffee-cup in one gulp, it was almost stone cold; the incident was irrelevant, why had she remembered it? She looked at the clouded sky. What had happened now was that the present world was out of reach; not only was she exiled from Paris, she was exiled from the whole world. The people who were sitting on the terrace, the people who were walking in the street, were insubstantial, were shadows; the houses were nothing but painted back-cloths with no depth. And Gerbert, who was coming towards her with a smile, he too was nothing but a light and charming shadow.