Bonjour Tristesse
Authors: Francoise Sagan
Bonjour
Tristesse
a novel by
FRANÇOISE SAGAN
TRANSLATED BY
IRENE ASH
F
IRST
E
NGLISH
E
DITION
M
AY
1955
CONTENTS
Adieu tristesse
Bonjour tristesse
Tu es inscrite dans les lignes du plafond
Tu es inscrite dans les
yeux que j'aime
Tu n'es pas tout à fait la misère
Car les lèvres les plus pauvres te dénoncent
Par un sourire
Bonjour tristesse
Amour des corps aimables
Puissance de l'amour
Dont l'amabilité surgit
Comme un monstre sans corps
Tête desappointée
Tristesse beau visage.
P. E
LUARD
(La vie immediate)
PART One
1
A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness. In the past the idea of sadness always appealed to me, now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I had known boredom, regret, and at times remorse, but never sadness. To-day something envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, which isolates me.
That summer I was seventeen and perfectly happy. I lived with my father, and there was also Elsa, who for the time being was his mistress. I must explain this situation at once, or it might give a false impression. My father was forty, and had been a widower for fifteen years. He was young for his age, full of vitality and possibilities, and when I left school two years before, I soon noticed that he lived with a woman. It took me rather longer to realise that it was a different one every six months. But gradually his charm, my new easy life, and my own disposition led me to accept it. He was a frivolous man, clever at business, always curious, quickly bored, and attractive to women. It was easy to love him, for he was kind, generous, gay, and full of affection for me. I cannot imagine a better or a more amusing friend. At the beginning of the summer he even went so far as to ask me whether I would object to Elsa's company during the holidays. She was a tall red-haired girl, sensual and worldly, gentle, rather simple, and unpretentious; one might have come across her any day in the studios and bars of the Champs-Elysées. I encouraged him to invite her. He needed women around him, and I knew that Elsa would not get in our way. In any case my father and I were so delighted at the prospect of going away together that we were in no mood to cavil at anything. He had rented a large white villa on the Mediterranean, for which we had been longing since the spring. It was remote and beautiful, and stood on a promontory dominating the sea, hidden from the road by a pine wood; a mule path led down to a tiny creek where the sea lapped against rust-coloured rocks.
The first days were dazzling. We spent hours on the beach overwhelmed by the heat and gradually assuming a healthy golden tan; except Elsa, whose skin reddened and peeled, causing her atrocious suffering. My father performed all sorts of complicated leg exercises to reduce a rounding stomach unsuitable for a Don Juan. From dawn onwards I was in the water. It was cool and transparent, and I plunged wildly about in my efforts to wash away the shadows and dust of the city. I lay full length on the sand, took up a handful and let it run through my fingers in soft yellow streams. I told myself that it ran out like time. It was an idle thought, and it was pleasant to have idle thoughts, for it was summer.
On the sixth day I saw Cyril. He was sailing a small boat which capsized in front of our creek. We had a good deal of fun rescuing his possessions, during which he told me his name, that he was studying law, and was spending his holidays with his mother in a neighbouring villa. He looked typically Latin, and was very dark and sunburnt. There was something reliable and protective about him which I liked at once. Usually I avoided university students, whom I considered rough, and only interested in themselves and their own problems, which they dramatised, or used as an excuse for their boredom. I did not care for young people, but much preferred my father's friends, men of forty, who spoke to me with courtesy and tenderness, and treated me with the gentleness of a father or a lover.
Cyril was different. He was tall and sometimes beautiful, with the sort of good looks that immediately inspire one with confidence. Although I did not share my father's aversion to ugliness, which often led us to associate with stupid people, I felt vaguely uncomfortable with anyone devoid of physical charms. Their resignation to the fact that they were unattractive seemed to me somehow indecent.
When Cyril left he offered to teach me to sail. I went up to dinner absorbed by my thoughts and hardly joined in the conversation; neither did I pay much attention to my father's nervousness. After dinner we lay in chairs on the terrace as usual. The sky was studded with stars. I gazed upwards, vaguely hoping to see a sudden, exciting flash across the heavens, but it was early in July and too soon for meteors. On the terrace the crickets were chirruping. There must have been thousands of them, drunk with heat and moonlight, pouring out their strange song all night long. I had been told they were only rubbing their wing-cases together, but I preferred to believe that it came from the throat, guttural and instinctive like the purr of a cat. We were very comfortable. Only some tiny grains of sand between my skin and my shirt kept me from dropping off to sleep. Suddenly my father coughed apologetically and sat up.
"Someone is coming to stay," he announced.
I shut my eyes tightly. We were too peaceful, it just couldn't last!
"Hurry up and tell us who it is!" cried Elsa, always avid for gossip.
"Anne Larsen," said my father, and he turned towards me.
I could hardly believe my ears. Anne was the last person I would have thought of. She had been a friend of my mother's, and had very little contact with my father. But all the same, when I left school two years before and my father was at his wits' end about me, he had asked her to take me in hand. Within a week she had dressed me in the right clothes and taught me something of life. I remember thinking her the most wonderful person and being quite embarrassingly fond of her, but she soon found me a young man to whom I could transfer my affections. To her I owed my first glimpse of elegance and my first flirtation, and I was very grateful. At forty-two she was a most attractive woman, much sought after, with a beautiful face, proud, tired and indifferent. This indifference was the only complaint one could make against her: she was amiable and distant. Everything about her denoted a strong will and an inner serenity which were disconcerting. Although divorced, she seemed to have no attachments; but then we did not know the same people. Her friends were clever, intelligent and discreet; ours, from whom my father demanded only good looks or amusement, were noisy and insatiable. I think she rather despised us for our love of diversion and frivolity, as she despised all extremes. We had few points of contact: she was concerned with fashion and my father with publicity, so they met occasionally at business dinners; then there was the memory of my mother, and lastly my own determined efforts to keep in touch, because although she intimidated me, I greatly admired her. In short, her sudden arrival appeared disastrous in view of Elsa's presence and Anne's ideas on education.
Elsa went up to bed after making close enquiries about Anne's social position. I remained alone with my father and moved to the steps, where I sat at his feet. He leaned forward and laid his hands on my shoulders.
"Why are you so thin, darling? You look like a little wild cat. I'd rather have a beautiful fair-haired daughter, a bit plump, with china-blue eyes and ..."
"That's hardly the point," I said. "What made you invite Anne, and why did she accept?"
"Perhaps she wants to see your old father, one never knows."
"You're not the type of man who interests Anne," I said. "She's too intelligent and thinks too much of herself. And what about Elsa, have you thought of her? Can you imagine a conversation between Elsa and Anne? I can't!"
"I'm afraid it hadn't occurred to me," he confessed. "But you're right, it's a dreadful thought! Cécile, my sweet, shall we go back to Paris?"
He laughed softly and rubbed the back of my neck. I turned to look at him. His dark eyes gleamed, funny little wrinkles marked their edges, his mouth turned up slightly. He looked like a faun. I laughed with him as I always did when he created complications for himself.
"My little accomplice," he said. "What would I do without you?"
From the tender inflection of his voice I knew that he would really have been unhappy. Late into the night we talked of love, of its complications. In my father's eyes they were imaginary. He refused categorically all notions of fidelity and serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile. From anyone else such views would have shocked me, but I knew that in his case they did not exclude either tenderness or devotion; feelings which came all the more easily to him since he was determined that they should be transient. This conception of rapid, violent and passing love affairs appealed to my imagination. I was not at the age when fidelity is attractive. I knew very little about love.
2
Anne was not due for another week, and I made the most of these last days of real freedom. We had rented the villa for two months, but I knew that once she had come it would be impossible for any of us to relax completely. Anne gave a shape to things and a meaning to words that my father and I preferred to ignore. She set a standard of good taste and fastidiousness which one could not help noticing in her sudden withdrawals, her expressions, and her pained silences. It was both stimulating and exhausting, but in the long run humiliating, because I could not help feeling that she was right.
On the day of her arrival we decided that my father and Elsa should meet her at the station in Fréjus. I absolutely refused to go with them. In desperation my father cut all the gladioli in the garden to offer her as soon as she got off the train. My only advice to him was not to allow Elsa to carry the bouquet. After they had left I went down to the beach. It was three o'clock and the heat was overpowering. I was lying on the sand half asleep when I heard Cyril's voice. I opened my eyes: the sky was white, shimmering with heat. I made no reply, because I did not want to speak to him, nor to anyone. I was nailed to the sand by all the forces of summer.
"
Are you dead?" he said. "From over there you looked as if you had been washed up by the sea."
I smiled. He sat down near me and my heart began to beat faster because his hand had just touched my shoulder. A dozen times during the past week my brilliant seamanship had precipitated us into the water, our arms entwined, and I had not felt the least twinge of excitement, but to-day the heat, my half-sleep, and an inadvertent movement had somehow broken down my defences. We looked at each other. I was getting to know him better. He was steady, and more restrained than is perhaps usual at his age. For this reason our circumstances—our unusual trio—shocked him. He was too kind or too timid to tell me, but I felt it in the oblique looks of recrimination he gave my father. He would have liked to know that I was tormented by our situation, but I was not; in fact my only torment at that moment was the way my heart was thumping. He bent over me. I thought of the past few days, of my feeling of peace and confidence when I was with him, and I regretted the approach of that wide and rather full mouth.
"Cyril," I said. "We were so happy. ..."
He kissed me gently. I looked at the sky, then saw nothing but lights bursting under my closed eyelids. The warmth, dizziness, and the taste of our first kisses continued for long moments. The sound of a motor-horn separated us like thieves. I left Cyril without a word and went up to the house. I was surprised by their quick return; Anne's train could hardly have arrived yet. Nevertheless I found her on the terrace just getting out of a car.