She Came to Stay

by Simone de Beauvoir

  ‘Are you there?’ said the operator. ‘Hold on. Here’s your number.’

  Françoise stepped into the booth. ‘Hullo. May I speak to Monsieur Gerbert, please.’

  ‘Speaking,’ said Gerbert. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s Françoise. Could you come and meet us at the Dôme? We’ll explain why.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Gerbert. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  ‘Good,’ said Françoise. She dropped forty sous on the plate and went up to the café. At one of the tables some way down the room sat Elisabeth, with the daily papers spread out in front of her and a cigarette between her lips. Pierre was sitting beside her, his face puckered with annoyance.

  ‘Well! You here?’ said Françoise. Elisabeth was not unaware of the fact that they came there almost every morning and she had certainly come there to spy on them. Did she know anything?

  ‘I came to read the newspapers and write a few letters,’ said Elisabeth. She added with a hint of satisfaction: ‘Things aren’t going so well.’

  ‘No,’ said Françoise. She noticed that Pierre had not ordered anything; obviously he wanted to get away as soon as possible.

  Elisabeth gave an amused laugh. ‘What’s the matter with the two of you this morning? You look like a pair of mutes.’

  Françoise hesitated.

  ‘Xavière got drunk last night,’ said Pierre. ‘She wrote a demented note saying that she wanted to kill herself, and now she refuses to open her door to us.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘She’s capable of any kind of idiocy.’

  ‘In fact, we must get back to the hotel as quickly as possible,’ said Françoise. ‘I don’t feel at all easy.’

  ‘Go on! She won’t kill herself, said Elisabeth. She stared at the tip of her cigarette. ‘I met her last night in the boulevard Raspail; she was skipping along with Gerbert. I can assure you that she had no thoughts of suicide.’

  ‘Did she seem to be drunk then?’ said Françoise.

  ‘She always looks more or less doped,’ said Elisabeth. ‘I can’t tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘You take her far too seriously. I know what she really needs. You ought to make her join a sports club, where she’d be obliged to do eight hours’ exercise a day and eat steaks. She’d feel a lot better for that, believe me.’

  ‘Well go back and see what’s happening to her,’ said Pierre, getting up.

  They shook hands with Elisabeth and left the café.

  ‘I told her at once that we’d only come to telephone,’ said Pierre.

  ‘Yes, but I told Gerbert to meet us here,’ said Françoise.

  ‘We’ll wait for him outside,’ said Pierre, ‘and catch him as he arrives.’

  They began to walk up and down the pavement in silence.

  ‘If Elisabeth comes out and finds us here, what will we look like?’ said Françoise.

  ‘Oh! to hell with her!’ said Pierre nervously.

  ‘She ran into them last night, and she came along to find out what’s going on,’ said Françoise. ‘How she hates us!’

  Pierre did not answer. His eyes never left the métro exit. Françoise was apprehensively watching the café terrace. She had no wish to be caught by Elisabeth in this moment of agitation.

  ‘There he is,’ said Pierre.

  Gerbert was coming towards them with a smile. Beneath his eyes, two huge blue circles discoloured half his cheeks. Pierre’s face brightened.

  ‘Greetings. We’ve got to make a quick getaway,’ he said with a pleasant smile. ‘Elisabeth’s watching us from in there. We’ll go and hide in the café opposite.’

  ‘It wasn’t inconvenient for you to come?’ Françoise asked him.

  She was embarrassed. Gerbert would think the step they had taken very odd. He already looked constrained.

  ‘No, not at all,’ he said.

  They sat down at a table and Pierre ordered three coffees. He alone looked at his ease.

  ‘Look at what we found under our door this morning,’ he said, taking Xavière’s message from his pocket. ‘Françoise knocked at her door and she refused to open it. Perhaps you can enlighten us. We heard your voice last night. Was she drunk, or what? What condition was she in when you left her?’

  ‘She wasn’t drunk,’ said Gerbert. ‘But we brought back a bottle of whisky with us. Maybe she drank it afterwards.’ He paused and tossed back his forelock with an embarrassed look. ‘I’ll have to tell you. I slept with her last night,’ he said.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘That’s no reason for her wanting to jump out of the window,’ said Pierre, with freedom and vigour.

  Françoise looked at him almost with admiration. How well he could act! She might almost have been taken in herself.

  ‘It’s easy to understand that, from her point of view, it is world-shaking,’ she said stiffly. Surely this news had not taken Pierre unawares: he must have sworn to himself that he would put a good face on it. But when Gerbert left them, what form of anger, what outburst of suffering might be expected?

  ‘She came to look for me at the Deux Magots,’ said Gerbert. ‘There we talked for a while, until she asked me to come back to her room. After we got there, I don’t know any more just how it happened, but she fell on my mouth, and finally – well, we slept together.’

  He was staring fixedly at the bottom of his glass with a sheepish and somewhat annoyed expression.

  ‘Has this been brewing for some time?’ said Pierre.

  ‘And you think that she attacked the whisky after you left?’ said Françoise.

  ‘Probably,’ said Gerbert. He raised his head. ‘She threw me out. But I swear to you that it wasn’t I who wanted it,’ he said defiantly. His face relaxed. ‘How she cursed me! I was petrified! You’d have thought I’d raped her.’

  ‘That’s just what she would do,’ said Françoise.

  Gerbert looked at Pierre with sudden timidity. ‘You don’t blame me?’

  ‘For what?’ said Pierre.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gerbert with embarrassment. ‘She’s young. I don’t know,’ he concluded with a faint blush.

  ‘Don’t make her pregnant, that’s all I ask of you,’ said Pierre.

  Françoise crushed her cigarette in the saucer. She was ill at ease. Pierre’s duplicity made her uncomfortable: it was more than play-acting. He was sneering at himself and at everything that meant most to him; but this fierce cairn was achieved only at the cost of a strain which it was painful to imagine.

  ‘Oh! You can rest assured of that,’ said Gerbert. He added with a preoccupied look: ‘I wonder if she’ll come back.’

  ‘If she’ll come back – where to?’ asked Françoise.

  ‘I told her when I left that she would know where to find me, but that I wouldn’t go looking for her,’ said Gerbert with dignity.

  ‘Oh! you’ll go all the same,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Gerbert indignantly. ‘She’s not going to get the idea into her head that she can run me.’

  ‘Don’t get excited. She’ll come back,’ said Pierre. ‘She’s proud when it suits her, but she has no consistent principles. If she feels like seeing you, she’ll rake up some good reason to do so.’ He puffed at his pipe.

  ‘Do you think she’s in love with you, or what?’

  ‘I can’t quite make it out,’ said Gerbert ‘I had kissed her now and then, but she didn’t always seem to like it.’

  ‘You ought to go and see what’s happening to her,’ said Pierre.

  ‘But she’s already sent me flying,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Well, never mind that. Go on insisting until she lets you in. She mustn’t be left alone. God knows what ideas she’s got into her head.’ Pierre smiled. ‘I’d gladly go myself, but I don’t think it would be wise.’

  ‘Don’t tell her you have seen me,’ said Gerbert anxiously.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Françoise.

  ‘And remind her that we’re expecting her at noon,’ said Pierre.


  Françoise left the café and turned into the rue Delambre. She detested this role of go-between which Pierre and Xavière had all too often made her play and which made her hateful to each of them in turn. But today, she had made up her mind to throw herself into it wholeheartedly. She was really frightened on their account.

  She went upstairs and knocked. Xavière opened the door. Her skin was yellow, her eyelids swollen, but she had dressed carefully. She had put lipstick on her mouth and mascara on her eyelashes.

  ‘I’ve come to ask how you are,’ said Françoise gaily.

  Xavière cast a gloomy look in her direction. ‘How I am? I’m not ill.’

  ‘You wrote me a note that gave me a terrible fright,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Did I write a note?’ said Xavière.

  ‘Look,’ said Françoise, handing her the pink slip.

  ‘Ah! I do vaguely remember,’ said Xavière. She sat down on the divan beside Françoise. ‘I got disgracefully drunk,’ she said.

  ‘I thought that you really intended to commit suicide,’ said Françoise. ‘That’s why I knocked this morning.’

  Xavière stared at the paper in disgust.

  ‘I must have been even more drunk than I thought,’ she said. She passed her hand across her forehead. ‘I met Gerbert at the Deux Magots, and I don’t really remember why, but we came back to my room with a bottle of whisky. We had a few drinks together, and after he left, I finished the bottle.’ She was staring into space, her mouth partly opened in a faint sneer. ‘Yes, I remember now. I stayed at the window for a long time thinking I ought to jump out. And then I felt cold.’

  ‘Well! It would have been cheerful if they’d brought your little corpse back to me,’ said Françoise.

  Xavière shivered. ‘In any case, that’s not the way I’d kill myself,’ she said.

  Her face fell. Françoise had never seen her look so miserable. She felt her heart go out to her. She so much wanted to help her! But Xavière would have to be willing to accept this help.

  ‘Why did you think of committing suicide?’ she said softly. ‘Are you so unhappy?’

  Xavière showed the whites of her eyes, and her features were transformed by a spasm of suffering. Françoise suddenly felt torn asunder, and overcome herself by this unbearable pain. She put her arms round Xavière and hugged her.

  ‘My darling little Xavière, what’s the matter? Tell me.’

  Xavière fell limply against her shoulder and burst into sobs.

  ‘What is it?’ repeated Françoise.

  ‘I’m ashamed,’ said Xavière.

  ‘Why ashamed? Because you got drunk?’

  Xavière swallowed her tears and said in a lisping childish voice: ‘Because of that, because of everything. I don’t know how to behave. I quarrelled with Gerbert: I threw him out: I was loathsome. And then I wrote that stupid letter. And then …’ She moaned and began to weep again.

  ‘And then what?’ said Françoise.

  ‘And then nothing. Don’t you think that’s enough? I feel filthy,’ said Xavière. She blew her nose pitifully.

  ‘All that isn’t so serious,’ said Françoise. The beautiful, generous suffering which had, for a moment, filled her heart, had become cramped and bitter. In the depths of her despair, Xavière was keeping herself under such absolute control … How richly she was lying!

  ‘You mustn’t get so upset.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Xavière. She dried her eyes, and said in rage: ‘I’ll never get drunk again.’

  It had been folly to hope for a moment that Xavière would turn to Françoise as to a friend, in order to unburden her heart: she had too much pride and too little courage. Silence ensued. Françoise was filled with compassion at the thought of the inevitable future that was threatening Xavière. She would undoubtedly lose Pierre for ever and her relationship with Françoise would itself be affected by such a rupture. Françoise would not succeed in saving them if Xavière spurned all her advances.

  ‘Labrousse is expecting us for lunch,’ said Françoise.

  Xavière drew back. ‘Oh! I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I feel so clammy and tired,’ said Xavière.

  ‘That’s no reason.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Xavière. She pushed Françoise away from her with a hunted look. ‘I don’t want to see Labrousse just now.’

  Françoise put her arm round her. How she wished she might drag the truth from her! Xavière did not suspect to what extent she was in need of help.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ she said.

  ‘He’ll think that I got drunk on purpose, because of the night before, because I was so intimate with him,’ said Xavière. ‘There’ll be more explanations, and I’ve had enough, enough, enough.’ She resolved into tears.

  Françoise hugged her tighter, and said noncommittally: ‘There’s nothing to explain.’

  ‘Yes, there’s everything to explain,’ said Xavière. The tears were pouring down her cheeks and her face became the essence of human misery.

  ‘Whenever I see Gerbert, Labrousse thinks that I’ve turned against him, and he gets angry with me. I can’t bear it any more. I never want to see him again,’ she cried in a paroxysm of despair.

  ‘On the contrary, if you were to see him,’ said Françoise, ‘if you were to speak to him yourself, I’m sure everything would be cleared up.’

  ‘No, it’s hopeless,’ said Xavière. ‘Everything’s finished. He’ll hate me.’ She let her head sink on Françoise’s knees. She was sobbing violently. How unhappy she would be! And how Pierre was suffering at this very moment …

  Françoise felt utterly miserable and tears came to her eyes. Why was all their love put to no better use than to torture each of them? A black hell lay in wait for them now.

  Xavière raised her head and looked at Françoise in amazement.

  ‘You’re crying because of me,’ she said. ‘You’re crying! Oh! I don’t want you to.’

  Impulsively, she took Françoise’s face between her hands and began to kiss her with fanatical devotion. These were sacred kisses, purifying Xavière of all her defilement and restoring her own self-respect. With these kisses, Françoise felt so noble, so ethereal, so sublime, that her heart swelled. She longed for a human friendship, and not this fanatical and imperious worship of which she was forced to be the docile idol.

  ‘I don’t deserve that you should cry over me,’ said Xavière. ‘When I see what you are and what I am! If you only knew what I am! And it’s because of me that you’re crying!’

  Françoise returned her kisses. Despite everything, this violent tenderness and humility were intended for her. On Xavière’s cheeks, mixed with a salty taste of tears, she found the memory of those hours in a sleepy little café, when she had vowed to make her happy. She had not made a success of it, but if only Xavière were to consent, she could, whatever the cost, protect her from the entire world.

  ‘I don’t want any harm to come to you,’ she said passionately.

  Xavière shook her head. ‘You don’t know me. You’re wrong to love me.’

  ‘I do love you. I can’t help it,’ said Françoise with a smile.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ repeated Xavière sobbing.

  ‘You do find life so difficult,’ said Françoise. ‘Let me help you.’

  She wanted to say to Xavière: ‘I know everything, and it doesn’t make any difference,’ but she could not speak without betraying Gerbert. She remained encumbered by her useless mercy, which sought in vain a precise wound to heal. If only Xavière would bring herself to confess, she could console her and reassure her. She would protect her even from Pierre himself.

  ‘Tell me what is upsetting you so much,’ she said in an urgent tone. ‘Tell me.’

  In Xavière’s face something wavered. Françoise was waiting, hanging on her lips. In one sentence, Xavière was on the verge of bringing about what Françoise had so long desired: the complete union, which would encompass t
heir joys, their worries, their torments.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ said Xavière in despair. She recovered her breath and said more calmly: ‘There’s nothing to say.’

  Her frustration flared into anger and Françoise longed to crush that obstinate little head between her hands until it split open. Was there no way of breaking down Xavière’s seclusion? For all the gentleness, for all the vehemence expended, she remained obstinately entrenched behind her aggressive reserve. An avalanche was about to crash down on her, and Françoise was condemned to remain in the background as a helpless witness.

  ‘I could help you, I’m sure,’ she said in a voice trembling with anger.

  ‘No one can help me,’ said Xavière. She threw back her head and tidied her hair with her finger-tips. ‘I’ve already told you that I’m worthless. I warned you,’ she added impatiently. Her wild, faraway look had returned.

  Françoise could not insist any further without becoming indiscreet. She had felt ready to give herself to Xavière unreservedly, and had this gift been accepted, she would have been freed both from herself and from this woeful alien presence which constantly barred her path. But Xavière had repelled her. She was willing to weep in Françoise’s presence, yet not to permit her to share her tears. Françoise was alone, faced by a solitary and stubborn conscience. Her finger brushed lightly over Xavière’s hand disfigured by a large lump.

  ‘Is the burn quite healed?’ she said.

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Xavière. She looked at her hand. ‘I would never have thought that it could hurt so.’

  ‘No wonder! You gave it a queer treatment,’ said Françoise. In her dejection, she could find no more to say. Then she added: ‘I’ll have to go. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Xavière.

  ‘What shall I tell Labrousse?’

  Xavière shrugged her shoulders, as if the question were none of her concern. ‘Whatever you like.’

  Françoise got up.

  ‘I’ll try to manage something,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Xavière.