The Devil in the Flesh (8 page)

In Marthe’s case I felt no such remorse. But I forced myself to. However much I said that I would never forgive her if she cheated on me, there was nothing I could do about it. “It’s not the same thing,” I said, making excuses for myself with that extraordinary lack of originality that characterizes the ego’s response to everything. Just as I readily conceded that I didn’t write to her, had she not written to me I would have taken it as evidence that she didn’t love me. And yet this minor infidelity strengthened my love.

JACQUES DIDN’T UNDERSTAND HIS WIFE’S attitude at all. Marthe, who was quite talkative, didn’t say a word to him. If he asked: “What’s the matter?” she would reply: “Nothing.”

Madame Grangier had various altercations with poor Jacques. She accused him of behaving tactlessly towards her daughter, and regretted having let him marry her. She put the sudden changes in her daughter down to this tactlessness of Jacques’s. She thought she ought to come back and live at home. Jacques gave way. A few days after he got back, he took Marthe to her parents’ house, where her mother, by pandering to her slightest whim, unknowingly incited her love for me. Marthe had been born in this house. Every little thing, she told Jacques, reminded her of the happy times when she had belonged here. She was going to sleep in the room she had had as a girl. Jacques asked if a bed could at least be set up for him in there. This caused a fit of hysterics. Marthe refused to sully her maidenly room.

Monsieur Grangier found this prudery of hers ridiculous. Madame Grangier used it as an opportunity to tell her husband and son-in-law that they hadn’t the first idea about feminine sensitivities. She was gratified that Jacques
had so little hold over her daughter’s heart. Because everything that Marthe withdrew from her husband, Madame Grangier attributed to herself, thinking her scruples sublime. Sublime they were, but for me.

On days when Marthe claimed to be feeling even more unwell, she would insist on going out. Jacques was well aware that it wasn’t for the pleasure of taking him with her. Unable to entrust anyone else with letters addressed to me, she posted them herself.

I congratulated myself even more for my own silence, because had I been able to write to her, my response to her accounts of the pain she was inflicting would have been to side with the victim. At times I was horrified by the harm I was causing; at others I told myself that Marthe could never punish Jacques enough for the crime of depriving me of her virginity. But since nothing makes us less ‘romantic’ than passion, ultimately I was delighted that I wasn’t able to write, and that as a result Marthe continued driving Jacques to despair.

He left again, disheartened.

Everyone attributed these problems to the irksome solitude in which Marthe was living. Her parents and her husband were the only ones who didn’t know about our relationship, while the owners didn’t dare tell Jacques out of respect for the uniform. In fact Madame Grangier was very pleased to have her daughter back, and that she was living as she had done before she got married. So the Grangiers couldn’t believe it when the day after Jacques left, Marthe told them she was going back to J.…

I saw her that same day. At first I reproached her halfheartedly for being so unkind. But when I read Jacques’s first letter, I was panic-stricken. He told her how easy it
would be to get himself killed if Marthe didn’t love him any more.

I didn’t detect the ‘blackmail’ here. I believed I was responsible for a death, forgetting that that was what I had wanted. I became even more unfathomable, more unfair. Whatever we said or did opened another wound. However much Marthe told me that it was kinder not to build Jacques’s hopes up, it was me who forced her to go gently in her replies to him. It was me who dictated the only affectionate letters that he ever received from his wife. She wrote them under protest, in tears, but I threatened never to see her again if she didn’t do as I said. That Jacques should owe his only moments of joy to me helped ease my remorse.

I could tell how hollow his wish to kill himself was from the hope that overflowed from the letters in which he replied to
ours
.

I was proud of my behaviour towards poor Jacques, even though I did it for my own benefit, out of the fear of having a crime on my conscience.

AFTER THESE DRAMAS CAME A TIME OF HAPPINESS. But sadly it still had a temporary feeling to it. It stemmed from my age, my lack of backbone. I didn’t have the willpower to do anything, whether to abandon Marthe, who might forget me and go back to her responsibilities, or to drive Jacques to his death. So our relationship was at the mercy of the permanent return of peace and the troops. If he threw his wife out, she would still be mine. If he kept her, I was incapable of taking her back by force. Our happiness was built on sand. But since we had no idea when the tide would come in, I just hoped that it would be as late as possible.

It was now a delighted Jacques who stood up for Marthe against her mother, who was annoyed at her going back to J.… Incited by her acrimony, the move had also roused Madame Grangier’s suspicions. And there was something else she found dubious: Marthe refused to have servants, to the horror of her family and, even more so, that of her husband’s. Yet what could parents or parents-in-law do, faced with a Jacques who was now our ally, thanks to the excuses I had provided for him through Marthe.

It was at that moment that J … declared war on her.

The owners made a point of not speaking to her now. No one said hello to her. It was only the local tradespeople
who, from a business point of view, felt less obliged to maintain this haughty moratorium. So, sometimes feeling the need to pass the time of day, Marthe would linger in the shops. Whenever I was at her apartment, if she went out to buy milk and cakes and wasn’t back after five minutes, I would imagine that she’d been knocked down by a tram and run as fast as I could to the dairy or the pâtisserie. I would find her there, chatting. As soon as we were outside, furious with myself for letting myself be carried away by my neurotic anxiety, I would lose my temper. I accused her of having common taste, of enjoying the company of shopkeepers. The latter disliked me intensely, since I interrupted their conversations.

Like everything noble, court etiquette is simple. But for paradoxes, nothing quite rivals the protocol of the common people. Their mania for hierarchies is based first and foremost on age. Nothing shocks them more than seeing an elderly duchess curtsy to a young prince. You can imagine the loathing felt by the staff in the pâtisserie and the dairy when a mere boy butted in on their casual friendship with Marthe. For the sake of these conversations they would have found a host of excuses for her.

The owners had a twenty-two-year-old son. He came home on leave. Marthe invited him for tea.

That evening we heard raised voices; they forbade him to see their tenant again. Accustomed to my father never vetoing anything I did, I was quite astonished that the great lump was so obedient.

The next day, as we walked across the garden, he was doing some digging. It was probably a punishment.
Slightly embarrassed, he looked away so as not to have to say hello.

These little skirmishes saddened Marthe; sufficiently intelligent and in love to realize that happiness isn’t to be found in the regard of other people, she was like those poets who realize that true poetry is ‘cursed’, and yet who, despite knowing this, are still sometimes hurt when they don’t receive the public approval which they so despise.

MEMBERS OF THE TOWN COUNCIL ALWAYS PLAY a part in my adventures. Monsieur Marin, who lived downstairs from Marthe, an elderly man with a grey beard and dignified bearing, was a former town councillor in J.… He had retired just before the War, and still enjoyed serving his country when a convenient opportunity arose. Content to just criticise local politics, he lived with his wife and only entertained or paid social calls just before the New Year.

For several days there had been a lot of hustle and bustle downstairs, even more noticeable because from our bedroom we could hear the slightest noise on the ground floor. Cleaners arrived. Out in the garden, their maid, helped by the landlord’s servant, was polishing the silver, getting verdigris off the brass ceiling lights. We found out from the woman in the dairy that the Marins were getting ready for a surprise society reception at their house, under a cloak of secrecy. Madame Marin had invited the Mayor, begging him to allocate her eight litres of milk. So was he going to give the woman in the dairy permission to make cream as well?

Permits being granted, when the day came (a Friday), about fifteen local worthies arrived at the appointed time with their wives, each of them the founder of a society for
breast-feeding or aid for the wounded, and of which she was chairwoman, along with other members of the society. To show ‘good form’, the mistress of the house greeted her guests at the door. She had used her reception’s aura of mystery to turn it into a picnic. All these ladies preached the gospel of thrift as well as dreaming up recipes. Their favourite sweet dishes were cakes without flour, cream desserts made with lichen, etc. As they arrived, they each told Madame Marin: “It doesn’t look very appetizing, but even so I think it’s very good!”

Monsieur Marin used the event as an opportunity to lay the foundations for his ‘political comeback’.

The surprise attraction, however, was Marthe and me. I found out about it as a result of a friendly slip of the tongue by someone I knew from the train, the son of one of the worthies. Imagine my amazement when I discovered that the entertainment the Marins were planning was to stand under our bedroom later in the afternoon and catch us in the act.

They had probably acquired a taste for it, and wanted to broadcast their little pleasures. Being respectable people, the Marins naturally attributed this prurience of theirs to moral decency. They wished to share their indignation with all the other upright folk in the district.

The guests were in position. Madame Marin knew that I was in Marthe’s apartment and had set up the table beneath her bedroom. She was champing at the bit. All she needed was the compère’s baton to introduce the performance. Thanks to the indiscretion of the young man, who had given the game away in order to dupe his parents as well as out of solidarity with people his own age, we didn’t make a sound. I hadn’t dared tell Marthe the reason
for the picnic. I could imagine the contorted expression on Madame Marin’s face, her gaze fastened on the hands of the clock, her guests’ impatience. Eventually, at about seven o’clock, the couples went home empty-handed, saying to themselves that the Marins were frauds and that poor seventy-year-old Monsieur Marin was an upstart. This councillor-to-be promised you the earth and didn’t even wait until he was elected to go back on his word. As for Madame Marin, the ladies just saw the reception as a way for her to supply herself with desserts. The mayor had only put in an appearance for a few minutes, and the eight litres of milk got them whispering to each other that he was on intimate terms with the Marin’s daughter, who taught at a local school. Mademoiselle Marin had already caused an outcry by marrying a policeman, which people didn’t think fitting for a schoolmistress.

Out of spite I let them hear what they had wanted the others to hear. Marthe was surprised at my belated passion. Unable to contain myself any longer, and at the risk of upsetting her, I told her the purpose of the reception. We both cried with laughter.

Madame Marin, who might have felt benevolent had I served her purposes, never forgave us for this catastrophe. It filled her with hate. But she wasn’t able to indulge it, having now run out of ways of doing so, and didn’t dare write anonymous letters.

IT WAS MAY. I WENT TO SEE MARTHE LESS OFTEN now, and only spent the night at her house if I was able to think of a lie to tell at home which would let me stay on into the morning. I managed it once or twice a week. The fact that my lies always worked surprised me. But my father didn’t really believe me. With wild indulgence he chose not to see, on condition that neither my brothers nor the servants found out. So all I needed to do was say that I was leaving at five in the morning, like on the day of my walk in the forest of Sénart. Except my mother didn’t pack any more hampers.

My father would put up with everything, and then abruptly take a stand and rebuke me for my idleness. His outbursts blew up and subsided again quickly, like waves out to sea.

Nothing is more absorbing than love. You don’t have time to be idle, because, being in love, you are idle. Love is vaguely aware that its only real distraction is work. So it regards it as a rival. And a rival is one thing it won’t tolerate. Yet love is a benign form of idleness, like soft refreshing rain.

If youth is foolish, it is from want of idleness. What cripples our educational system is that it is designed for nonentities, who make up the majority. For the nimble
mind there is no such thing as idleness. I never learnt as much as during these long days, which to an observer would have seemed empty, as when I was watching my novice’s heart like a social climber does his table manners.

Whenever I didn’t sleep at Marthe’s, which was almost every day, we would go for a walk along the Marne after dinner until eleven o’clock. I would untie my father’s boat. Marthe would row; lying down, I laid my head in her lap. I got in her way. And then suddenly one of the oars would bump against me, and remind me that this excursion wouldn’t last our whole life.

Love likes to share its bliss. A mistress who is naturally cold will become tender, kiss our neck, dream up a million coquetries if we are busy writing a letter. I never felt a greater desire to kiss Marthe than when she was preoccupied with something other than me; never any greater yearning to touch her hair, muss it up, than when she was arranging it. When we were in the boat, I would throw myself at her, smother her with kisses so that she would drop the oars, and then the boat would drift, hostage to the rushes, the white and yellow water lilies. In this she saw evidence of ungovernable passion, whereas what drove me more than anything, and violently, was the compulsion to distract her. We would moor the boat behind some clumps of long grass. The fear of being seen or capsizing made our frolics infinitely more exquisite.