Library of Unrequited Love (7 page)

finally dealt with all its traumas and sexual hang-ups. Because in the end that's all writers ever think about. Take Maupassant, for instance: he went mad before he died. After
Le Horla
, the critics churned out pages of stuff about how it displayed existential angst which had been there since his childhood, and a repressed dual personality, and so on and so on. Oh, give me a break! The truth is that Maupassant died from the final brain lesions resulting from a case of syphilis that wasn't properly treated. Maupassant was sexually obsessed. Remember the night he got Flaubert, plus some official, to stand witness that he could have sex with six women of the night in one hour? Away to the whorehouse, under starter's orders, and they're off! Great role model, wouldn't you say? Anyway, Maupassant said, “Bel-Ami, that's me.” And
Bel-Ami
isn't a satire on the world of journalism, as they say in those textbooks for provincial schoolchildren.
Bel-Ami
isn't even a novel, it's an ode to male potency as a weapon of domination, allied to money. How exemplary is that? And what about Balzac, eh? A man who spends his time in his dressing-gown, drinking
litre after litre of black coffee, would you like him to marry your daughter? And Sartre? Even worse. An old satyr, and an alcoholic. He smoked, he drank whisky, and he stuffed himself with pills on top of that. If they'd offered him the Nobel Prize for substance abuse, I bet he wouldn't have turned it down. Everyone knows he wrote
Nausea
under the influence of mescaline. Simone de Beauvoir, who liked her tipple too, by the way, says she could hear him munching amphetamines while he was writing … Martin, now – with him it's chocolate. Sartre, you know, with his pills, by the end of the day he was deaf as a post … No, Martin never offers me a piece of chocolate, I suppose it's a bit too intimate. It was Sartre, and only Sartre, who forced all this free union stuff on Simone de Beauvoir, with affairs left, right and centre.
She
wouldn't have minded getting married. But Sartre just thought about himself … Yes, there he sits, he takes notes for his thesis, when all the time I could be telling him about the
ancien régime
. Louis XV for example: now
he
was a paedophile. No need to spend years doing research to learn that … Contingent loves and necessary
loves, all that blarney, oh, she suffered, poor Simone … No, Martin prefers to flirt with his blonde. Yes, there's a blonde in the frame – the other day she even dared ask me a question, oh I wasn't going to help
her
, worse than an architect … Nobody will say this, but take it from me – Beauvoir used to throw these jealous tantrums with Sartre, but he wouldn't budge an inch. Like Martin. Whatever I try, he never so much as looks at me … So when he went chasing after some other woman, Simone had to copy him. But it was because she was miffed. And I understand … So what am
I
supposed to do? Try and get off with one of the warehousemen? Bring in another rubber plant? Borrow some D.V.D.s? … It's pitiful. There was a lot of talk about the American, Nelson Algren, Simone had an affair with. But it was Sartre who started it. When he was in the States, the great philosopher fell for some little American tootsie. So what do you expect, poor Simone was bound to feel abandoned … I can see him now, Martin, chatting about Madame de Pompadour with his blonde hussy … So of course, being miffed, Beauvoir found herself a transatlantic oddball, look at
me, I'm doing the same as Jean-Paul. And she called herself a feminist! Oh, the heartache … Martin and this blonde, no it breaks my heart to imagine that he could be in love … And don't try to cheer me up, you can't know what it's like waiting in this basement every day for Martin to come down the stairs, it's awful. One morning they even arrived together, him and his blonde. He might even be sleeping with her. Right here, in my library! That woman … Then Simone de Beauvoir, with all that suffering and misery and love inside her, spent the next five years writing
The Mandarins
, five years, her best book, shelfmark FR BEA … But what can I do, I'm just a cockroach. Wait for Martin to arrive, then lock him in the basement one night? I'd never dare, I know that perfectly well. But why doesn't he come and ask me questions more often? Then something might finally happen … That's all I ask. Why does Martin just leave me alone with these damned books? Tell me, frankly, do you think a boy like him might one day actually look at me? … Poor old Simone and poor old me … No, really, I never thought culture would turn out like this. Wait, I can
hear something now … Yes, they're opening up. You can go upstairs now and get out. I'm truly sorry for what happened. But please, don't go repeating anything I said. I feel a bit ashamed now. You mustn't take it literally. It was just, you know, a flight of fancy. It isn't always easy to stay put, you have to do what you can. You caught me unawares and sometimes in this prison, with all the books, something's got to give. Yes, some days it feels like I could die down here and nobody would notice. People don't know where the library is. They walk by without seeing me. Ungrateful lot. I've never got a word of thanks from Martin, my refugees, my little old men, my school dunces. Once they leave here, they forget about me. I'm stuck in my basement, while the duchesses upstairs are giggling. When I get home at night, I can't even bring myself to read. And yet it all starts up again every day. I fall for it. The Homeric struggle. Every day, I go back into the arena. Every day I say to myself: What if he doesn't come? What if all is lost? What good will it have been to put shelf-marks on all these books? What good will it have been
to spend my entire youth in overheated libraries? Yes, what's the point of Simone de Beauvoir and Eugène Morel if Martin doesn't come?

SOPHIE DIVRY
lives in Lyon. She likes aubergines, olive oil and her mother's homemade jam. She hates cars, is a feminist and has a phobia about open doors. She likes swimming in the sea, lakes or rivers, but does not like buying a book without knowing what's inside it.
The Library of Unrequited Love
is her first novel.

SIÂN REYNOLDS
is a past winner of the Scott Moncrieff Translation prize, and has translated many French writers, from Fernand Braudel to Fred Vargas. She lives in Edinburgh.