The Devil in the Flesh (3 page)

Then spring came, which brightened up my first
escapades. On the pretext of collecting for charity, several times that spring I went for a walk in my best clothes with a young lady. I carried the collection box; she had the basket of badges. After the second time, my fellow collectors told me how to make the most of these days of leisure that brought me into contact with a girl. From then on we rushed to collect as much money as possible in the morning, handed in our takings to the Lady Bountiful at lunchtime, and spent the rest of the day getting up to mischief in the hills by Chennevières. For the first time I had a friend. I enjoyed going out collecting with his sister. For the first time I got along with another boy who was as advanced for his age as I was, even admired his beauty, his impudence. The contempt we shared for others of our generation brought us even closer. We considered that we were the only ones capable of understanding things; in short, we believed we were the only ones worthy of women. We believed we were men. By a lucky chance we weren’t separated. René was already at the Lycée Henri IV, and I was going to be in his class, in the Remove. He didn’t have to take Greek, but he made the ultimate sacrifice for me, and persuaded his parents to let him do it. This meant we could stay together. Since he had missed the first year, he had to have private tuition. René’s parents, who the year before had given in to his pleas and agreed that he didn’t have to learn Greek, couldn’t understand. In it they saw my good influence, and if they put up with his other classmates, at least I was the only friend of whom they approved.

For the first time, not a single day of that year’s holidays weighed on me. It was then I realised that no one can escape his age, and that my dangerous contempt had
melted like ice the moment someone was kind enough to show they cared about me, and in a way that suited me. The progress we made together halved the journey that pride ensures that each of us must travel.

On the first day of the school year, René was an invaluable guide.

With him everything was a pleasure, and twice a day I, who couldn’t take a single step on my own, enjoyed our walks between Henri IV and the station at the Bastille, where we caught the train.

Three years went by in this way, without any other friendships, without any hopes other than our naughty games on Thursdays—with young girls innocently provided for us by my friend’s parents, who invited their son’s and their daughter’s friends to tea together—trifling little favours that we stole, and which they surreptitiously stole—on the pretence of playing forfeits.

WHEN THE FINE WEATHER ARRIVED, MY FATHER liked to take my brothers and I on long walks. One of our favourite places to go was Ormesson, beside the Morbras, a river that was at least a metre wide, across meadows where there were flowers that you never saw anywhere else, and whose names I’ve forgotten. Clumps of water cress or mint hid the marshy banks from our wandering feet. In springtime, thousands of pink and white petals floated on the surface of the water. It was May blossom.

One Sunday in April 1917, as we often did, we caught the train to La Varenne, after which we had to walk to Ormesson. My father said we would be meeting up with some agreeable people at La Varenne, the Grangiers. I knew of them from having seen the name of their daughter Marthe in the catalogue for an exhibition of paintings. I had once overheard my parents talking about a visit from a Monsieur Grangier. He had brought a box of pictures painted by his daughter, who was eighteen. Marthe wasn’t very well. Her father had wanted to give her a surprise: having her watercolours included in an exhibition organised by a charity of which my mother was chairwoman. The watercolours were quite unremarkable; they bore the hallmark of the dutiful pupil of the art class, moistening her brushes with the tip of her tongue.

The Grangiers were waiting for us on the platform at La Varenne. Monsieur and Madame Grangier must have been the same age, almost fifty. Yet Madame Grangier seemed older than her husband; her ungainliness, the fact that she was short, made me dislike her at first glance.

During the walk I would notice that she often frowned, which covered her brow with creases that took a moment or two to fade. So I would have every reason to dislike her, and thus wouldn’t need to reproach myself for being unfair, I hoped she would have a common way of speaking. But in that respect she disappointed me.

As for the father, he seemed a decent fellow, a former non-commissioned officer worshipped by his men. But where was Marthe? I shuddered at the prospect of a walk with no other company except her parents. She was coming on the next train, “in a quarter-of-an-hour,” Madame Grangier told us, “because she couldn’t get ready in time. Her brother is with her.”

As the train drew in, Marthe was standing on the steps of the carriage. “Wait till the train stops,” called her mother … Such recklessness enchanted me.

Her dress, her hat, both very simple, were signs of the scant regard she had for other people’s opinions. She was holding hands with a young boy who looked about eleven. It was her brother, a pale child with the hair of an albino, and whose every movement spoke of illness.

On the path Marthe and I walked in front. My father followed behind, between the Grangiers.

Meanwhile my brothers yawned at their puny new friend, who wasn’t allowed to run around.

When I complimented Marthe on her water-colours, she replied modestly that they were only studies. She
didn’t attach any importance to them. She would show me better ones, “stylized” flowers. Since it was the first time we had met, I felt it best not to tell her that I thought flowers of that kind were absurd.

She couldn’t see me properly from beneath her hat. But I was studying her.

“You don’t look much like your mother,” I said.

It was a compliment.

“People sometimes tell me that, but when you come to our house, I’ll show you photographs of Mama when she was young; I look a lot like her.”

I was grieved at this reply, and prayed to God I would never see her when she got to her mother’s age.

Keen to dispel my distress at her painful reply, and not realising that it could only have been painful to me, because luckily Marthe didn’t see her mother in the same way as I did, I told her:

“You’re wrong to wear your hair like that, having it loose would suit you better.”

I was petrified, never having said anything like that to a woman before. And I remembered what my own hair was like.

“You could always ask Mama” (as if she needed to explain herself!). “My hair doesn’t usually look as bad as this, but I was late, and I was afraid of missing the next train. Besides, I wasn’t intending to take my hat off.”

“What kind of girl is this,” I wondered, “who allows some boy to criticise the way she does her hair?”

I tried to guess her literary tastes; I was pleased that she knew Baudelaire and Verlaine, delighted at her way of liking Baudelaire, which wasn’t the same as mine, however. I thought I detected rebellion. Her parents had eventually
accepted her likes and dislikes. Marthe resented them for this, taking it as only a token sign of affection. In his letters, her fiancé told her about what he was reading, and while he recommended certain books to her, he forbade others. He had forbidden her to read
Les Fleurs du mal
. Unpleasantly surprised to find out that she was engaged, I rejoiced that she had disobeyed a soldier who was enough of an idiot to be frightened of Baudelaire. I was glad to get the feeling that he sometimes shocked Marthe. After this first unpleasant surprise, his narrow-mindedness delighted me, even more so because I had feared that if he also appreciated
Les Fleurs du mal
then their future marital apartment might have been like the one in
La Mort des amants
. But then I asked myself what business this was of mine.

Her fiancé had also forbidden her to go to drawing classes. I offered to take her—me, who never went to one—adding that I often went there. But, afraid I would be caught out in this lie, I urged her not to mention it to my father. He didn’t know that I cut gym lessons so I could go to the Grande-Chaumière, I told her. Because I didn’t want her to imagine that I concealed going to this art school from my parents because they wouldn’t allow me to see naked women. I was glad for it to be our secret, and shy though I was, I sensed that I already had some power over her.

I was also proud that she preferred me to the countryside, because we hadn’t once mentioned our surroundings. Sometimes her parents called out: “Look over to the right, Marthe, the Chennevières hills are so lovely,” or her brother would come and ask her the name of a flower he had just picked. She took just enough notice of them so that they didn’t get annoyed.

We sat in the meadows at Ormesson. In my innocence I regretted having been so distant, so hasty over things. “After a less romantic, more natural conversation,” I thought, “I could impress Marthe, win her parents over by talking about the history of the village.” But I didn’t. I imagined my reasons were deep ones, and that after everything that had happened, a conversation unrelated to our mutual concerns could only break the spell. I believed that something important had happened. And in fact this was actually the case, as I realised afterwards, because Marthe had slanted the conversation in the same way as I had. But being unable to understand this, I had the impression that I had said something significant. I thought I had made a declaration of love to someone who was insensitive. I had forgotten that Monsieur and Madame Grangier could have easily overhead everything I was saying to their daughter; yet could I actually have said it while they were there?

“Marthe doesn’t frighten me,” I kept telling myself. “It was just her parents and my father who stopped me putting my arm round her neck and kissing her.”

Deep down inside me, a different boy was glad that these spoilsports had been there; the same boy who was thinking—

“It’s just as well we weren’t alone together! Because I still wouldn’t have dared kiss her, but I wouldn’t have had an excuse.”

Which is simply the coward’s way out.

We caught the train back from Sucy. Having more than half-an-hour to wait, we sat outside a café. I had to endure Madame Grangier’s compliments. They were humiliating.
She reminded her daughter that I was still at the
lycée
and wouldn’t be taking the
baccalauréat
for another year. Marthe asked for a glass of grenadine; I ordered one too. That same morning I would have thought it a disgrace to drink grenadine. My father couldn’t understand me. He always let me help myself to apéritifs. I was terrified that he would tease me about my moderation. He did, but obliquely, so that Marthe wouldn’t realize that I was drinking grenadine to copy her.

When we got to J …, we said goodbye to the Grangiers. I promised Marthe I would bring her a collection of
Le Mot
as well as
Une Saison en enfer
that Thursday.

“Another book that my fiancé would appreciate!” And she laughed.

“Now then, Marthe!” said her mother, frowning, shocked by such disobedience.

My father and brothers had been bored, but what did it matter! Happiness thinks only of itself.

AT SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY I DIDN’T FEEL THE need to say anything to René, to whom I told everything, about how I had spent my Sunday. I was in no mood to put up with him taunting me for not having kissed Marthe while no one was looking. And something else surprised me; I now found René less different than my other classmates.

Loving Marthe, I had less love to spare for René, my parents, my sisters.

I resolved to make an effort and not see her before the day we were due to meet. Yet, unable to wait, on Tuesday evening my weak will found plenty of good reasons to take her the book and the newspapers after dinner. I told myself that Marthe would see evidence of love in my impatience, and if she refused to see it then I knew how to make her.

I ran like a maniac for a quarter-of-an-hour to get to her house. Then, afraid of interrupting her dinner, I waited at the gate for ten minutes, bathed in sweat. During this time I thought my racing heart might slow down. Quite
the reverse, it beat faster. I almost went away, but for the last few minutes a woman had been watching me with interest from a nearby window, wondering what I was doing skulking in the doorway. That decided me. I rang the bell. I went in. I asked the maidservant if Madame was at home. Almost immediately Madame Grangier came into the small room where I had been shown. I started, as if the maid ought to have known that I had asked for “Madame” out of politeness, and that I really wished to see “Mademoiselle”. Blushing, I begged Madame Grangier to forgive me for disturbing her at this time of the evening, as if it were one o’clock in the morning: but since I was unable to come on Thursday, I had brought her daughter the book and the newspapers.

“Your timing couldn’t be better,” said Madame Grangier, “because Marthe wouldn’t have been able to see you anyway. Her fiancé was given leave two weeks earlier than he thought. He arrived yesterday, and Marthe is having dinner with her future parents-in-law this evening.”

So I left, and as I thought I would never have a chance to see her again, I did my best not to think of Marthe any more, with the result that I thought of nothing else but her.

However, one morning a month later as I jumped off the train at the Bastille, I saw her getting out of another carriage. She was going shopping for various things for her forthcoming marriage. I asked her to come with me as far as the Lycée Henri IV.

“Imagine,” she said, “next year when you’re in the fifth form you’ll have my father-in-law teaching you geography.”

Piqued that she should mention school, as if it were
the only thing you could discuss with someone my age, I replied tetchily that it would be quite amusing.

She frowned. It reminded me of her mother.

We got to Henri IV and, not wanting to leave her after saying something that I thought rather hurtful, I decided to be an hour late for school and arrive after the art lesson. On this occasion I was glad Marthe didn’t behave sensibly, didn’t chide me, but instead seemed grateful to me for making such a sacrifice, although it was nothing of the kind. I was grateful that in return she didn’t suggest I come to the shops with her, but that she would devote some of her time to me in the same way as I was doing for her.