The Woman Destroyed (4 page)

The key turned in the lock; he kissed me; he looked preoccupied. “I’m late.”

“Yes, rather.”

“Philippe came to fetch me at the Ecole Normale. We had a drink together.”

“Why didn’t you bring him here?”

“He wanted to speak to me alone. So that I should be the one to tell you what he has to say.” (Was he leaving for abroad, a great way off, for years and years?) “You won’t like it. He could not bring himself to tell us the other evening, but it is all settled. His father-in-law has found him a job. He is getting him into the Ministry of Culture. He tells me that for anyone his age it is a splendid post. But you see what it implies.”

“It’s impossible. Philippe?”

It was impossible. He shared our ideas. He had taken great risks during the Algerian war—that war which had torn our hearts and which now seems never to have taken place at all—he had got himself beaten up in anti-Gaullist demonstrations; he had voted as we voted during the last elections.…

“He says he has developed. He has come to understand that the French left wing’s negativism has led it nowhere, that it is done for, finished, and he wants to be in the swim, to have a grip on the world, accomplish something, construct, build.”

“Anyone would think it was Irène speaking.”

“Yet it was Philippe,” said André in a hard voice.

Suddenly everything fell into place. Anger took hold of me. “So that’s it? He’s an
arriviste
—a creature that’s going to succeed whatever it costs? He’s turning his coat out of
vulgar ambition. I hope you told him what you thought of him.”

“I told him I was against it.”

“You didn’t try to make him change his mind?”

“Of course I did. I argued.”

“Argued! You ought to have frightened him—told him that we should never see him again. You were too soft: I know you.” All at once it crashed over me, an avalanche of suspicions and uneasy feelings that I had thrust back. Why had he never had anything but pretentious, fashionable, too well-dressed young women? Why Irène and that great frothy marriage in church? Why did he display such an eager desire to please his in-laws—why so winning? He was at home in those surroundings, like a fish in its native water. I had not wanted to ask myself any questions, and if ever André ventured a criticism I stood up for Philippe. All my obstinate trust turned into bitterness of heart. In an instant Philippe showed another face. Unscrupulous ambition: plotting. “I’m going to have a word with him.”

I went angrily toward the telephone. André stopped me. “Calm down first. A scene will do nobody any good.”

“It will relieve my mind.”

“Please.”

“Leave me alone.”

I dialed Philippe’s number. “Your father has just told me you’re joining the Ministry of Culture right up at the top. Congratulations!”

“Oh, please don’t take it like that,” he said to me.

“How am I to take it, then? I ought to be glad you’re so ashamed of yourself that you didn’t dare tell me to my face.”

“I’m not ashamed at all. One has the right to reconsider one’s opinions.”

“Reconsider! Only six months ago and you were utterly condemning the regime’s entire cultural policy.”

“There you are, then! I’m going to try to change it.”

“Come, come, you aren’t of that caliber and you know it. You’ll play their little game as good as gold and you’ll carve yourself out a charming little career. Your motive is mere ambition, nothing more.…” I don’t know what else I said to him. He shouted, “Shut up, shut up.” I went on: he interrupted, his voice filled with hatred, and in the end he shouted furiously, “I’m not a swine just because I won’t share in your senile obstinacy.”

“That’s enough. I shall never see you again as long as I live.”

I hung up: I sat down, sweating, trembling, my legs too weak to hold me. We had broken off forever more than once; but this clash was really serious. I should never see him again. His turning his coat sickened me, and his words had hurt me deeply because he had meant them to hurt deeply.

“He insulted us. He spoke of our senile obstinacy. I shall never see him again, and I don’t want you to see him again either.”

“You were pretty hard, too. You should never have treated it on an emotional basis.”

“And just why not? He has not taken our feelings into account at all. He has put his career first, before us, and he is willing to pay the price of a break.…”

“He had not expected any break. Besides, there won’t be one: I won’t have it.’ ”

“As far as I’m concerned it’s there already: everything’s
over between Philippe and me.” I closed my mouth: I was still quivering with anger.

“For some time now Philippe has been very odd and shifty,” said André. “You would not admit it, but I saw it clearly enough. Still, I should never have believed he could have reached that point.”

“He’s just an ambitious little rat.”

“Yes,” said André in a puzzled voice. “But why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“As we were saying the other evening, we certainly have our share of responsibility.” He hesitated. “It was you who put ambition into his mind; left to himself he was comparatively apathetic. And no doubt I built up an antagonism in him.”

“It’s all Irène’s fault,” I burst out. “If he had not married her, if he had not got into that environment, he would never have ratted.”

“But he did marry her, and he married her partly because he found people of that environment impressive. For a long time now his values have no longer been ours. I can see a great many reasons—”

“You’re not going to stand up for him.”

“I’m trying to find an explanation.”

“No explanation will ever convince me. I shall never see him again. And I don’t want you to see him, either.”

“Make no mistake about this. I disapprove of him. I disapprove very strongly. But I shall see him again. So will you.”

“No, I shan’t. And if you let me down, after what he said to me on the telephone, I’ll take it more unkindly—I’ll resent it more than I have ever resented anything you’ve done all my life. Don’t talk to me about him anymore.”

But we could not talk of anything else, either. We had dinner almost in silence, very quickly, and then each of us took up a book. I felt bitter ill will against Irène, against André, against the world in general. “We certainly have our share of responsibility.” How trifling it was to look for reasons and excuses. “Your senile obstinacy”: he had shouted those words at me. I had been so certain of his love for us, for me: in actual fact I did not amount to anything much—I was nothing to him; just some old object to be filed away among the minor details. All I had to do was to file him away in the same fashion. The whole night through I choked with resentment. The next morning, as soon as André was gone, I went into Philippe’s room, tore up the old letters, flung out the old papers, filled one suitcase with his books, piled his pullover, pajamas, and everything that was left in the cupboards into another. Looking at the bare shelves I felt my eyes fill with tears. So many moving, overwhelming memories rose up within me. I wrung their necks for them. He had left me, betrayed me, jeered at me, insulted me. I should never forgive him.

Two days went by without our mentioning Philippe. The third morning, as we were looking at our post, I said to André, “A letter from Philippe.”

“I imagine he is saying he’s sorry.”

“He’s wasting his time. I shan’t read it.”

“Oh, but have a look at it, though. You know how hard he finds it to make the first step. Give him a chance.”

“Certainly not.” I folded the letter, put it into an envelope, and wrote Philippe’s address. “Please post that for me.”

I had always given in too easily to his charming smiles and his pretty ways. I should not give in this time.

Two days later, early in the afternoon, Irène rang the bell. “I’d like to talk to you for five minutes.”

A very simple little dress, bare arms, hair down her back: she looked like a girl, very young, dewy and shy. I had never yet seen her in that particular role. I let her in. She had come to plead for Philippe, of course. The sending back of his letter had grieved him dreadfully. He was sorry for what he had said to me on the telephone; he did not mean a word of it; but I knew his nature—he lost his temper very quickly and then he would say anything at all, but it was really only so much hot air. He absolutely had to have it out with me.

“Why didn’t he come himself?”

“He was afraid you would slam the door on him.”

“And that’s just what I should have done. I don’t want to see him again. Full stop. The end.”

She persisted. He could not bear my being cross with him: he had never imagined I should take things so much to heart.

“In that case he must have turned into a half-wit: he can go to hell.”

“But you don’t realize. Papa has worked a miracle for him: a post like this, at his age, is something absolutely extraordinary. You can’t ask him to sacrifice his future for you.”

“He had a future—a clean one, true to his own ideas.”

“I beg your pardon—true to your ideas. He has developed.”

“He will go on developing; it’s a tune we all know. He will make his opinions chime with his interests. For the moment he is up to his middle in bad faith—his only idea
is to succeed. He is betraying himself and he knows it; that is what is so tenth-rate,” I said passionately.

Irène gave me a dirty look. “I imagine your own life has always been perfect, and so that allows you to judge everybody else from a great height.”

I stiffened. “I have always tried to be honest. I wanted Philippe to be the same. I am sorry that you should have turned him from that course.”

She burst out laughing. “Anyone would think he had become a burglar, or a counterfeiter.”

“For a man of his convictions, I do not consider his an honorable choice.”

Irène stood up. “But after all it is strange, this high moral stand of yours,” she said slowly. “His father is more committed, politically, than you; and he has not broken with Philippe. Whereas you—”

I interrupted her. “He has not broken.… You mean they’ve seen one another?”

“I don’t know,” she replied quickly. “I know he never spoke of breaking when Philippe told him about his decision.”

“That was before the phone call. What about since?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know who Philippe sees and who he doesn’t?”

Looking stubborn, she said, “No.”

“All right. It doesn’t matter,” I said.

I saw her as far as the door. I turned our last exchanges over in my mind. Had she cut herself short on purpose—a cunning stroke—or was it a blunder? At all events my mind was made up. Almost made up. Not quite enough
for it to find an outlet in rage. Just enough for me to be choked with distress and anxiety.

As soon as André came in I went for him. “Why didn’t you tell me you had seen Philippe again?”

“Who told you that?”

“Irène. She came to ask me why I didn’t see him, since you did.”

“I warned you I should see him again.”

“I warned you that I should resent it most bitterly. It was you who persuaded him to write to me.”

“No: not really.”

“It certainly was. Oh, you had fun with me, all right: ‘You know how hard it is for him to make the first step.’ And it was you who had made it! Secretly.”

“With regard to you, he did make the first step.”

“Urged on by you. You plotted together behind my back. You treated me like a child—an invalid. You had no right to do so.”

Suddenly there was red smoke in my brain, a red mist in front of my eyes, something red shouting out in my throat. I am used to my rages against Philippe; I know myself when I am in one of them. But when it happens (and it is rare, very rare) that I grow furious with André, it is a hurricane that carries me away thousands of miles from him and from myself, into a desert that is both scorching and freezing cold.

“You have never lied to me before! This is the first time.”

“Let us agree that I was in the wrong.”

“Wrong to see Philippe again, wrong to plot against me with him and Irène, wrong to make a fool of me, to lie to me. That’s very far in the wrong.”

“Listen … will you listen to me quietly?”

“No. I don’t want to talk to you anymore; I don’t want to see you anymore. I must be by myself: I am going out for a walk.”

“Go for a walk then, and try to calm yourself down,” he said curtly.

I set off through the streets, and I walked as I often used to do when I wanted to calm my fears or rages or to get rid of mental images. Only I am not twenty anymore, or even fifty, and weariness came over me very soon. I went into a café and drank a glass of wine, my eyes hurting in the cruel glare of the neon. Philippe: it was all over. Married, a deserter to the other side. André was all I had left, and there it was—I did not have him either. I had supposed that each of us could see right into the other, that we were united, linked to one another like Siamese twins. He had cast himself off from me, lied to me; and here I was on this café bench, alone. I continually called his face, his voice, to mind, and I blew on the fire of the furious resentment that was burning me up. It was like one of those illnesses in which you manufacture your own suffering—every breath tears your lungs to pieces, and yet you are forced to breathe.

I left, and I set off again, walking. So what now? I asked myself in a daze. We were not going to part. Each of us alone, we should go on living side by side. I should bury my grievances, then, these grievances that I did not want to forget. The notion that one day my anger would have left me made it far worse.

When I got home I found a note on the table:
I have gone to the cinema
. I opened our bedroom door. There were André’s pajamas on the bed, the moccasins he wears
as slippers on the floor, a pipe, a packet of tobacco and his blood pressure medicines on the bedside table. For a moment he existed—a heart-piercing existence—as though he had been taken far from me by illness or exile and I were seeing him again in these forgotten, scattered objects. Tears came into my eyes. I took a sleeping pill: I went to bed.