She Came to Stay

by Simone de Beauvoir

  He ran towards her. ‘Ah! How slowly the time has passed without you!’ he said. ‘How I cursed Bernheim and his business luncheons! They didn’t let me go until rehearsal time.’ He took Françoise by the shoulders. ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’

  ‘I’ve a hundred and one things to tell you,’ said Françoise.

  She touched his hair and the nape of his neck. Every time she saw him again, she liked to make certain that he was made of flesh and blood.

  ‘What were you doing? Having a good tidy?’

  ‘Oh! I give up. It’s hopeless,’ said Pierre, casting a vindictive glance at the chest of drawers. ‘Anyhow, it’s not so urgent now.’

  ‘The atmosphere was certainly much less tense at that dress rehearsal,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Yes, I believe that we’ve escaped once again; for how long, is another matter.’ Pierre rubbed his pipe against his nose to make it shine. ‘Was it a success?’

  ‘People laughed a lot. I’m not sure that that was the effect intended; but, in any case, I really enjoyed myself. Blanche Bouguet wanted me to stay for supper, but I escaped with Ramblin. He trotted me round to I don’t know how many bars. I kept my end up, and it hasn’t stopped me from working hard all day.’

  ‘You must give me a detailed account of the play, and of Bouguet and Ramblin. Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘Give me a little whisky,’ said Françoise. ‘And then you tell me first what you’ve been doing. Did you spend a pleasant evening with Xavière?’

  ‘Whew!’ said Pierre. He threw up his hands. ‘You never saw such a bear-garden. Luckily, it’s all over, but for two hours we sat side by side in a corner at the Pôle Nord, quivering with hatred. We’ve never before had such high tragedy.’

  He took a bottle of Vat 69 from his cupboard, and half filled two glasses.

  ‘What happened?’ said Françoise.

  ‘Well, I finally broached the question of her jealousy towards you,’ said Pierre.

  ‘You shouldn’t have,’ said Françoise.

  ‘I told you that I had made up my mind to do so.’

  ‘How did you lead up to it?’

  ‘We talked about her exclusiveness, and I told her that, on the whole, it was something strong and estimable in her, but that there was one place where it did not fit, and that was within the trio. She willingly agreed with me, but when I added that she was, nevertheless, showing signs of being jealous of you, she turned scarlet with surprise and anger.’

  ‘You were in a difficult position,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pierre. ‘I might easily have appeared ridiculous or obnoxious to her. But her mind’s not petty – it was only the basis of the accusation that bowled her over. She fought like a tigress, but I didn’t budge. I pointed out a number of instances to her. She wept with rage. She hated me so much that it frightened me. I thought she was going to die of suffocation.’

  Françoise looked at him anxiously.

  ‘Are you at least quite sure that she doesn’t bear you any grudge?’

  ‘Absolutely sure,’ said Pierre. ‘I lost my temper, too, at the beginning. But later, I made it abundantly clear to her that I was only trying to help her because she was beginning to become odious in your eyes. I gave her to understand that what we had set out minds on, all three of us, was something difficult to achieve, and that it required the complete good will of each one of us. When she was quite convinced that my words had carried no censure, that I’d only warned her against a danger, she stopped being angry with me. I believe that not only did she forgive me, but that she has decided to try her utmost to control herself.’

  ‘If it’s true, it does her great credit,’ said Françoise. She felt a sudden surge of confidence.

  ‘We talked far more sincerely than usual,’ said Pierre. ‘And I had the feeling that after this conversation something was released within her. You know that look she has, of always withholding the best of herself, had disappeared. She seemed to be completely at one with me, without any reserve, as if she saw no objections to loving me openly.’

  ‘By honestly acknowledging her jealousy, she was perhaps delivered from it,’ said Françoise. She took a cigarette and looked fondly at Pierre.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ said Pierre.

  ‘I’m always amused at the way you have of regarding the good feelings anyone may have for you as a sign of grace. It’s one more way of taking yourself for God in person.’

  ‘There’s something in that,’ said Pierre with embarrassment. He smiled abstractedly and his face was wreathed in the happy innocence that Françoise had seen on it only in sleep. ‘She invited me to have tea with her, and for the first time, when I kissed her, she returned my kisses. In a state of complete submission, she stayed in my arms until three o’clock in the morning.’

  Françoise felt a stab in her heart. She, too, would have to learn to become mistress of herself. It had always pained her that Pierre could embrace that body, whose bestowal she would not even have known how to accept.

  ‘I told you you’d end up by sleeping with her.’ She tried to mitigate the brutality of these words by smiling.

  Pierre made an evasive gesture.

  ‘It will depend on her,’ he said. ‘I, certainly … but I wouldn’t want to lead her into anything that might be displeasing to her.’

  ‘She’s not got the temperament of a virgin,’ said Françoise. From the moment she uttered them these words entered cruelly into her and she blushed. She hated to look upon Xavière as a woman with the desires of a woman, but the truth forced itself upon her. ‘I loathe purity. I’m made of flesh and blood.’ With all the strength at her command, Xavière was in revolt against this uneasy chastity to which she had been sentenced. In her bad moods, her bitter resentment was apparent.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Pierre. ‘And I even go so far as to think that she’ll never be happy until she has achieved a sensual equilibrium. She’s in a state of crisis at this present moment, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, I believe it implicitly,’ said Françoise.

  Perhaps Pierre’s kisses, his caresses, were precisely what had awakened Xavière’s senses: surely, matters could not rest at their present stage. Françoise was carefully examining her fingers: she would grow accustomed to this idea in the end, the unpleasantness of it already seemed a little less sharp. Since she was certain of Pierre’s love and of Xavière’s tenderness, no thought could now be obnoxious.

  ‘What we’re demanding of her is most unusual,’ said Pierre. ‘We were able to envisage such a way of living only by reason of the exceptional love between us two, and she can only conform to it because she herself is exceptional. It’s quite understandable that she should have moments of uncertainty and even of revolt.’

  ‘Yes, you must give us time,’ said Françoise.

  She got up, walked over to the drawer Pierre had left open and plunged her hands among the scattered papers. She herself had sinned through mistrust. She had not forgiven Pierre his shortcomings which were frequently very minor: she had kept to herself a mass of thoughts she should have shared with him, and often, she had sought less to understand him than to oppose him. She picked out an old photograph and smiled. Dressed in a Greek tunic and wearing a curled wig, Pierre was gazing at the heavens with a youthful and stern expression.

  ‘That’s how you looked when I first set eyes on you,’ she said. ‘You’ve hardly aged at all.’

  ‘Neither have you,’ said Pierre. He came to her side and bent over the drawer.

  ‘I’d like to go through all that with you,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pierre. ‘It’s full of amusing things.’ He straightened himself up and ran his hand along Françoise’s arm. ‘Do you think we were wrong to embark on this affair?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Do you think we’ll succeed in carrying it through?’

  ‘I’ve sometimes had my doubts,’ said Françoise. ‘But this evening hope is returning.’

 
She walked away from the chest of drawers and went back to sit down by her glass of whisky.

  ‘And where have you got to?’ said Pierre, sitting down beside her.

  ‘I?’ said Françoise. When she was in her ordinary state of mind, it always frightened her a little to talk about herself.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pierre. ‘Do you still feel Xavière’s existence to be an abomination of evil?’

  ‘You know that idea never comes to me except in moments of inspiration,’ said Françoise.

  ‘But still it does recur from time to time?’ Pierre insisted.

  ‘It’s bound to,’ said Françoise.

  ‘You amaze me,’ said Pierre. ‘You’re the only living being I know who’s capable of shedding tears on discovering in someone else a conscience similar to your own.’

  ‘Do you consider that stupid?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Pierre. ‘It’s quite true that everyone experiences his own conscience as an absolute. How can several absolutes be compatible? The problem is as great a mystery as birth or death, in fact, it’s such a problem that all philosophers break their heads over it.’

  ‘Well then, why are you amazed?’ said Françoise.

  ‘What surprises me is that you should be affected in such a concrete manner by a metaphysical problem.’

  ‘But it is something concrete,’ said Françoise. ‘The whole meaning of my life is at stake.’

  ‘I don’t say it isn’t,’ said Pierre. He surveyed her with curiosity. ‘Nevertheless, this power you have to live an idea, body and soul, is unusual.’

  ‘But to me, an idea is not a question of theory,’ said Françoise. ‘It passes the test or, if it remains theoretical, it has no value.’ She smiled. ‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t have waited for Xavière’s arrival to be certain that my conscience is not unique in this world.’

  Pierre ran his finger over his lower lip as he thought this over.

  ‘I can readily understand you making this discovery apropos of Xavière,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Françoise. ‘I’ve never had any difficulty with you, because I barely distinguish you from myself.’

  ‘And besides, there’s give and take between us.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The moment you acknowledge my conscience, you know that I acknowledge one in you, too. That makes all the difference.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Françoise. She stared in momentary perplexity at the bottom of her glass. ‘In short, that is friendship. Each renounces individual self-importance. But what if either refuses to renounce it?’

  ‘In that case, friendship is impossible,’ said Pierre.

  ‘Well then, what can be done about it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Pierre.

  Xavière never renounced any part of herself. No matter how high she placed one, even if it amounted to worship, one remained an object to her.

  ‘It can’t be remedied,’ said Françoise.

  She smiled. One would have to kill Xavière … She rose and walked to the window. Tonight, Xavière did not weigh heavily on her mind. She drew back the curtain. She loved this small peaceful square where the people of the neighbourhood came to get a breath of fresh air. An old man seated on a bench was taking some food out of a paper bag; a child was running round a tree, of which the leaves were silhouetted, with metallic clarity, by a street lamp. Pierre was free. She was alone. But, within this separateness, they could re-establish a union as essential as the one she used to dream of too easily.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ said Pierre.

  She took his face between her hands and, without answering, kissed it again and again.

  ‘What a wonderful evening we’ve had,’ said Françoise.

  She squeezed Pierre’s arm happily. They had looked at old photographs together, re-read old letters, and then made a grand tour by the river, le Châtelet and les Halles, discussing Françoise’s novel, and their youth, and the future of Europe. It was the first time for weeks that they had had such a long, unrestricted, and objective conversation. At last the circle of violent emotion and anxiety, in which Xavière’s sorcery imprisoned them, had been broken, and they found themselves once more at one at the central point of the vast world. Behind them stretched the limitless past. Continents and oceans were spread like huge sheets over the surface of the globe, and the miraculous certainty of existing amid this incalculable wealth overran even the too narrow bounds of space and time.

  ‘Look, there’s a light in Xavière’s room,’ said Pierre.

  Françoice shuddered. After that untrammelled flight, she was coming down to earth in this dark little street, in front of her hotel, and the shock was painful. It was two o’clock in the morning. Pierre, like a detective on the watch, was staring at a lighted window in the black facade.

  ‘What’s so surprising about that?’ asked Françoise.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pierre. He opened the door and hurried up the stairs. On the third-floor landing he stopped. A murmur of voices broke the silence.

  ‘Someone’s talking in her room,’ said Pierre. He stood stock still, his ears cocked. A few paces behind him, her hand on the banister, Françoise stood motionless. ‘Who on earth can it be?’ he said.

  ‘With whom was she to go out tonight?’ said Françoise.

  ‘She had no plans,’ said Pierre. He took a step. ‘I want to know who it is.’

  He took another step and a floor-board creaked.

  ‘They’ll hear you,’ said Françoise.

  Pierre hesitated. Then he bent down and began to untie his shoe laces. Françoise was overwhelmed by despair more bitter than any she had ever known. Pierre had begun to tip-toe along between the yellow walls of the corridor. He was pressing his ear to the door. Everything had been obliterated at one stroke: the happy evening, Françoise herself, the whole world. There was nothing but the silent landing, the wooden door panels, and those whispering voices behind them. Françoise looked at him in distress. In his haunted, maniacal features, she could barely recognize the beloved face that had been smiling at her so tenderly only a short, while ago. She mounted the last few steps. She felt that she had allowed herself to be deluded by the precarious lucidity of some lunatic, for whom a breath would suffice to topple him back into madness. Those rational hours of relaxation had been merely a temporary alleviation. There would never be a cure. Pierre tip-toed back to her.

  ‘It’s Gerbert,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I suspected as much.’

  Shoes in hand, he climbed up to the top floor.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing so mysterious about that,’ said Françoise, walking into her room. ‘They went out together, and he came home with her.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me she was going to see him,’ said Pierre. ‘Why did she hide it from me? Or else she decided on the spur of the moment.’

  Françoise had taken off her coat. She slipped off her dress and put on her dressing-gown.

  ‘They must have run into each other,’ she said.

  ‘They no longer go to Dominique’s. No, she must have deliberately gone to look for him.’

  ‘Unless it was he,’ said Françoise.

  ‘He would never have dared to ask her to go out with him at the last minute.’

  Pierre was sitting on the edge of the divan, gazing at his stockinged feet in apparent perplexity.

  ‘In all probability she suddenly felt like going out dancing,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Yes, so violent a feeling that she rang him up, she, who’s frightened to death of a telephone! Or else she went all the way down to Saint-Germain-des-Près, she, who’s incapable of walking three steps away from Montparnasse!’ Pierre kept staring at his feet. The right sock had a hole in it, and the protruding tip of his little toe seemed to fascinate him. ‘There’s something behind all this,’ he said.

  ‘What should there be?’ said Françoise. She was resignedly brushing her hair. How long was this indefinite and perpetually new discussion to last? What has Xav
ière done? What would she do? What was she thinking? Why? How? Evening after evening, the obsession was revived, always as harassing, always as futile, and with the same hasty feverish taste in her mouth, the same desolation in her heart, the same weariness in her sleepy body. When these questions had finally been answered, a new series of identical questions would take up their relentless round. What does Xavière want? What will she say? How? Why? There was no way of putting a stop to them.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Pierre. ‘She was so affectionate last night, so yielding, so trusting.’

  ‘Well, who says that she’s changed?’ said Françoise. ‘Whatever you may say, going out with Gerbert is no crime.’

  ‘No one, except you or me, has ever entered her room,’ said Pierre. ‘If she did invite Gerbert, it’s either in revenge against me, which means that she’s begun to hate me; or else she had a sudden desire for him to come up to her room. And that means that he attracts her very strongly.’ He was twitching his feet in a puzzled and foolish manner. ‘It could be both.’

  ‘Probably it’s a mere whim,’ said Françoise without conviction. Last night’s reconciliation with Pierre had certainly been sincere, that was one kind of pretence of which Xavière was incapable: but, with her, the latest smiles were not to be trusted, they were only the forerunners of lulls of uncertain duration. As soon as she had parted from anyone, Xavière immediately began to review the situation, and it very often happened that after leaving her, following a calm, reasonable, and affectionate talk, one returned to find her blazing with hatred.

  Pierre shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know very well that it isn’t,’ he said.

  Françoise took a step towards him. ‘Do you think she’s angry with you because of that conversation? I really am sorry.’

  ‘There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,’ said Pierre brusquely. ‘She ought to be able to stand hearing someone tell her the truth.’