‘It seems odd to be making plans at this time of day,’ said Françoise. ‘We’ve grown so used to living from day to day.’
‘Then you’ve never really believed there’d be a war,’ said Pierre. He smiled. ‘Don’t start now that things seem just about settled.’
‘I don’t think about it positively,’ said Françoise, ‘but the future is utterly obstructed.’
It was not so much because of the war; but it did not matter. She was happy enough, thanks to this ambiguity, to have had a chance to express her thoughts; she had long since ceased to be so scrupulously honest.
‘It’s true that we’ve imperceptibly begun to live without thinking of a tomorrow,’ said Pierre. ‘Almost everyone has reached that stage, even the most extreme optimists, I think.’
‘That takes the meaning out of everything,’ said Françoise. ‘Nothing can be said to have any future now.’
‘Wait! I don’t think so,’ said Pierre with an air of interest. ‘On the contrary, it makes everything more precious, to my mind, to be menaced on all sides.’
‘Everything seems pointless to me,’ said Françoise. ‘How can I explain it to you? In the old days, whatever I did, I had the impression of being thoroughly involved in things: for instance, in my novel. It existed. It demanded to be written. Nowadays, writing is simply heaping up pagès.’
She pushed away the mound of tiny pink shells she had emptied of their flesh. The young woman with her precious hair was now alone with two empty glasses; she had lost her animated look and was thoughtfully applying lipstick to her mouth.
‘The point is that we’ve been torn from our own personal history,’ said Pierre, ‘but that seems to me to be all to the good.’
‘Of course,’ said Françoise with a smile. ‘Even if there’s war, you’ll still find a way of getting something out of it.’
‘But how can you expect a thing like that to happen?’ said Xavière suddenly. She had an air of superiority. ‘Surely people aren’t stupid enough to wish to get themselves killed.’
‘They aren’t asked for their opinion,’ said Françoise.
‘All the same, it’s the public who decide, and they’re not all fools,’ said Xavière with angry contempt.
Conversations about war or politics always irritated her, because of their empty frivolity. Nevertheless, Françoise was surprised by her aggressive tone.
‘They’re not all fools,’ said Pierre, ‘but they’re abused. Society is a strange piece of mechanism; nobody can control it.’
‘Well! I don’t understand why people let themselves be crushed by that machine,’ said Xavière.
‘What do you want them to do?’ said Françoise.
‘Not to bow down their heads like sheep,’ said Xavière.
‘Then you must join a political party,’ said Françoise.
Xavière interrupted her.
‘Good God! I wouldn’t want to dirty my hands by doing that.’
‘In that case, you’ll be one of the sheep,’ said Pierre. ‘It’s always the same. You can’t fight society except by social means.’
‘In that case,’ said Xavière, whose face had grown florid with rage, ‘if I were a man, I wouldn’t go when they came to get me.’
‘That would be a great help,’ said Françoise. ‘They’d march you off between two policemen, and, if you were stubborn about it, they’d shove you up against a wall and shoot you.’
Xavière made a faint pout.
‘Does it really seem to you so terrible to die?’ she asked.
Xavière must be in a blind rage to argue with such deep dishonesty. Françoise felt that this outburst had been directed particularly at her, but she had no notion as to what fault she had committed. She looked at Xavière in horror. What venomous thoughts had suddenly transformed this fragrant face which was lately redolent with tenderness? Malignantly they blossomed beneath her stubborn little forehead, under the shelter of her silky locks, and Françoise was defenceless against them. She loved Xavière. She could no longer stand her hatred.
‘You said a little while ago that it was disgusting to let yourself be killed,’ she said.
‘But it’s not the same if you die intentionally,’ said Xavière.
‘Killing yourself in order not to be killed is not dying intentionally!’ said Françoise.
‘In any case, I would prefer it,’ said Xavière. She added with a faraway, weary air: ‘And besides, there are other ways. It’s always possible to desert.’
‘That’s not so easy, you know,’ said Pierre.
Xavière’s eyes softened, and she gave Pierre an ingratiating smile.
‘Would you do it, if it were possible?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Pierre, ‘for a thousand reasons. First of all, I’d have to give up the idea of ever returning to France, and that’s where I have my theatre, my public, that’s where my work has a meaning and a chance of leaving some trace.’
Xavière sighed.
‘That’s true,’ she said with a sad and disappointed expression. ‘You drag so much dead weight about with you.’
Françoise shuddered. Xavière’s words always held a double meaning. Did she also include Françoise in that dead weight? Did she resent Pierre’s still loving her? Françoise had at times noticed sudden silences were she to break into a tête-à-tête, short spells of surliness were Pierre to speak to her for a little too long. These she had disregarded; but today, they seemed obvious. Xavière would have liked to feel that Pierre was free and alone in front of her.
‘The dead weight,’ said Pierre, ‘why, it’s myself! You can’t differentiate between what a man feels and loves, and the life he’s built for himself.’
Xavière’s eyes were glistening.
‘Well, as far as I’m concerned,’ she said with a slightly theatrical shiver, ‘I’d go anywhere, at any time. One should never be bound to a country or a profession: or to anybody or anything,’ she concluded impetuously.
‘But that’s because you don’t understand what a person does and what a person is. It’s one and the same thing,’ said Pierre.
‘That depends on who the person is,’ said Xavière. She was smiling to herself and bristling with defiance; she did nothing and she was Xavière; she was irrevocably Xavière.
After a short silence she said with vindictive modesty: ‘Of course you know more about these things than I.’
‘But you think that a little common sense is worth more than all this knowledge?’ said Pierre cheerfully. ‘Why did you suddenly decide to hate us?’
‘I, hate you?’ said Xavière. She stared with wide-eyed innocence, but her mouth remained tight ‘I’d have to be insane.’
‘Did it irritate you to hear us drivelling on again about the war, when we were busy making such pleasant plans?’
‘You surely have the right to talk about whatever you choose,’ said Xavière.
‘You think we enjoy creating a tragedy out of nothing,’ said Pierre, ‘but I assure you that it’s not so. The situation demands careful consideration; the course of events is equally important to us and to you.’
‘I know,’ said Xavière with some embarrassment. ‘But what good does it do to talk about it?’
‘That we may be ready for anything,’ said Pierre. He smiled. ‘It’s not bourgeois prudence. But if you really have a horror of being crushed in this world, if you don’t want to be a sheep, there’s nothing to do but to begin by weighing up your position very carefully.’
‘But I don’t understand anything about it,’ said Xavière in a plaintive voice.
‘No one can begin to understand in one day. First of all, you’ll have to start reading the newspapers.’
Xavière pressed her hands against her temples.
‘Oh! That’s so boring,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to make of them.’
‘That’s quite true,’ said Françoise. ‘If you’re not already well informed, the news slips between your fingers.’
Her heart was
constricted by suffering and anger, it was through jealousy that Xavière hated these adult conversations in which she was unable to participate. The origin of all this fuss was that she could not bear Pierre’s attention not to be directed to her every moment.
‘Well, I know what I’ll do,’ said Pierre. ‘One of these days, I’ll give you a long lecture on politics, and after that I’ll keep you regularly informed. It’s really not so complicated, you know.’
‘I’d like you to do that,’ said Xavière happily. She leaned over towards Françoise and Pierre. ‘Have you noticed Eloy? She’s sat herself down at a table near the door, so that she can wheedle a few words out of you when you pass her.’
Eloy was dipping a croissant into her cup of coffee, and she was not made up. She looked shy and lonely and the effect was not unpleasing.
‘Anyone seeing her like that and not knowing her would think her attractive,’ said Françoise.
‘I feel sure that she comes here for breakfast with the express purpose of meeting you,’ said Xavière.
‘She’s quite capable of that,’ said Pierre.
The café had been filling up. At a near-by table, a woman was writing letters with one eye on the cashier’s desk, obviously haunted by the fear that a waiter would discover her and insist on her ordering something. But no waiter put in an appearance, even though a man near the window was rapping on his table with increasing vigour.
Pierre looked at the clock.
‘We’ll have to go home,’ he said. ‘I still have a hundred and one things to do before going to lunch with Berger.’
‘Yes, now you’ve got to go just when everything’s coming right again,’ said Xavière resentfully.
‘But everything was all right,’ said Pierre. ‘What’s a little five-minute disagreement compared with the full enjoyment of this night?’
Xavière smiled shyly and they left the Dôme, waving a faint greeting to Eloy from a distance. Françoise found little pleasure in the thought of going to Berger’s for lunch, but she was happy to have the opportunity of seeing Pierre by himself for a while, or at least of seeing him without Xavière. It was a brief glimpse of the outside world: she was beginning to feel stifled in this trio, which was in danger of becoming hermetically sealed.
Xavière amiably linked her arms with Françoise and Pierre, but her face was still downcast. They crossed over the road and reached the hotel without a word being spoken. There was an express letter in Françoise’s pigeon-hole.
‘It looks like Paule’s handwriting,’ said Françoise, as she opened the envelope.
‘She’s put us off,’ she said. ‘She has invited us to supper on the sixteenth instead.’
‘Oh! What a godsend!’ said Xavière, her eyes sparkling.
‘It’s a real bit of luck,’ said Pierre.
Françoise said nothing. She kept turning the paper over in her hand. If only she had not opened it in front of Xavière, she might have withheld its message and spent the day alone with Pierre. Now it was too late.
‘We’ll go upstairs and freshen ourselves up a bit, and meet at the Dôme later,’ she said.
‘It’s Saturday,’ said Pierre. ‘We can go to the flea-market, and we’ll have lunch in the big blue shed.’
‘Oh yes! That will be wonderful! What a godsend!’ Xavière repeated with delight.
There was an almost tactless insistence in her joy.
They went upstairs. Xavière went into her room, and Pierre followed Françoise into hers.
‘Aren’t you sleepy?’ he said.
‘No, when we walk like that, a sleepless night isn’t too tiring,’ she said.
She began to wipe off her make-up. A nice cold sponge would soon put her right again.
‘The weather is wonderful, we’ll have a delightful day,’ said Pierre.
‘If Xavière is pleasant,’ said Françoise.
‘She will be; she always gets sullen when she thinks we’re going to leave her behind.’
‘That wasn’t the only reason.’ She hesitated, she was afraid that Pierre might think her accusations outrageous. ‘I think she was angry because we’d had five minutes’ conversation together.’ Again she hesitated. ‘I think she’s a little jealous.’
‘She’s terribly jealous,’ said Pierre. ‘Have you only just noticed it?’
‘I was wondering if I mightn’t be wrong,’ said Françoise. It always shocked her to see Pierre welcome with approval feelings she had been determinedly fighting within herself. ‘She’s jealous of me,’ she added.
‘She’s jealous of everything,’ said Pierre. ‘Of Eloy, of Berger, of the theatre, of politics, of the fact that we think about war. She feels that it’s disloyal of us. We’re not supposed to worry about anything but her.’
‘She was angry with me today,’ said Françoise.
‘Yes, because you expressed reservations about our future plans. She’s jealous of you, not only because of me, but of you yourself.’
‘I know,’ said Françoise.
If Pierre had the intention of making her feel better, he was going the wrong way about it. She felt more and more oppressed.
‘I find it wretched,’ she said, ‘for it means a love without any friendship. It makes you feel that you are simply an object of love, and not being loved for yourself alone.’
‘That is her way of loving,’ said Pierre.
He adjusted himself very nicely to this love. He even felt he had gained a victory over Xavière, while Françoise felt painfully at the mercy of this passionate, touchy heart, and she now existed only through Xavière’s capricious feelings for her. This sorceress had taken possession of her wax image and was sticking pins into it to her heart’s content. At this moment, Françoise was an undesirable, wretched, withered creature. She must wait for a smile from Xavière before regaining some self-respect.
‘Well, we’ll see what sort of mood she’s in,’ she said.
But it was true anguish to be dependent to this extent on that strange and rebellious conscience for her happiness and for her very being itself.
Joylessly, Françoise bit into a thick slice of chocolate cake: every mouthful stuck in her throat; she was furious with Pierre. He knew that Xavière, weary after a night without sleep, would be sure to go to bed early; and he might have guessed that, after the morning’s misunderstanding, Françoise was eager to spend some time with her alone. When Françoise had recovered from her illness, they had drawn up certain hard and fast rules. On alternate days, she was to go out with Xavière from seven in the evening till midnight; and every other day Pierre was to see Xavière from two till seven. Each was free to spend the rest of the time as desired, but any tête à-tête with Xavière was taboo. Françoise, at least, kept scrupulously to this curriculum: Pierre was more apt to suit his convenience. This evening he had really gone too far, in asking in a plaintive if playful tone not to be sent away before he had to go back to the theatre; he seemed to have no feeling of guilt. Perched on a high stool next to Xavière, he was telling her the story of Rimbaud’s life with great animation. This story had been in the telling ever since they had been to the flea-market, but it had been interspersed with so many digressions that Rimbaud had not yet met Verlaine. Pierre was speaking. His words were giving a description of Rimbaud, but his voice seemed enriched by countless intimate allusions and Xavière was watching him with a kind of voluptuous docility. Their relationship was virtually chaste, and yet, through a few kisses and light caresses, he had established between them a sensual understanding, which was clearly visible beneath their reserve. Françoise looked away; she, as a rule, loved Pierre’s story-telling, but tonight neither the inflections of his voice, nor his enchanting figures of speech, nor his unexpected turns of phrase affected her: she felt too much bitterness towards him. He was careful to explain almost daily to Françoise that Xavière was as fond of her as she was of him, but he deliberately behaved as if this feminine friendship seemed unimportant to him. It was certain that he easily held the first
place, but that was no justification of his indiscreetness. Of course, there was no question of refusing him what he asked: he would have flown into a rage, and perhaps so would Xavière also. Yet, by cheerfully accepting Pierre’s presence, Françoise seemed to take little account of Xavière. Françoise glanced into the floor-to-ceiling looking-glass behind the bar; Xavière was smiling at Pierre; she was obviously pleased that he was trying to monopolize her, but that was no good reason for her not to be angry with Françoise for permitting him to do so.
‘Ah! I can just imagine how furious Madame Verlaine was,’ said Xavière with a burst of laughter.
Françoise felt as if her heart were drowning in misery. Did Xavière always hate her? She had been amiable throughout the afternoon, but in some superficial way, because the weather was heavenly and the flea-market had enchanted her. It was all meaningless. ‘And what can I do if she does hate me?’ thought Françoise. She lifted her glass to her lips and noticed that her hands were trembling; she had drunk too much coffee during the day, and impatience was making her jittery. She could do nothing, she had no real hold on this stubborn little soul, not even on the beautiful living body protecting it: a warm, lithe body, not aloof to a man’s hands, but one which now confronted Françoise like a rigid suit of armour. She could only wait, without stirring, for the verdict that would acquit or condemn her; and she had now been waiting ten hours.
‘It’s squalid!’ she thought suddenly.
She had spent the day watching Xavière’s every frown, her every intonation; at this moment, she was still absorbed in this despicable anguish, separated from Pierre and the delightful surroundings reflected back to her by the looking-glass, and separated from herself.
‘And if she hates me, what then?’ she thought defiantly. Was it not possible to consider Xavière’s hatred exactly as she did the cheese-cakes on a plate? They were a beautiful pale yellow, decorated with pink arabesques; she might also have been tempted to eat one, had she not known their taste too well, as sour as that of a new-born child. Xavière’s small round head did not occupy much more space in the world, it could be enveloped in a single glance; and if this haze of hatred issuing from it in clouds could only be forced back into its container, then it, too, could be kept under control. She had only to say the word, and, with the sound of crumbling plaster, the hatred would dissolve into a cloud of dust, to be perfectly contained in Xavière’s body, and become as harmless as the familiar taste hidden under the yellow cream of the cakes. She felt that she existed, but that made very little difference, for she was writhing hopelessly in whorls of rage: she could see passing over Xavière’s defenceless face only a few faint eddies, as unexpected and steadily errant as clouds in the sky. ‘They’re simply thoughts passing through her head,’ thought Françoise. For a moment she thought the words must have taken effect, for nothing but little trails were now flitting in disorder over her face beneath its fair tresses, and, if she took her eye off them, even for an instant, they were no longer to be seen.
She Came to Stay Page 29
