The Woman Destroyed (21 page)

The period after the war was a disappointment to Maurice. His work at Simca began to bore him. Couturier—who had made a success of his staff job—persuaded him to join him in Talbot’s hospital, to work as a member of his team and to specialize. No doubt (and Marie Lambert made this clear to me) I did struggle too violently against his decision, ten years ago now: no doubt I did show too plainly that in my heart of hearts I never really came to agree with it. But that is not an adequate reason for his having stopped loving me. Precisely what relationship is there between the alteration in his life and the alteration in his feelings?

She asked me whether he often blamed me or criticized me. Oh, we quarrel—we’re both of us quick-tempered. But it’s never serious. At least not with me.

Our sexual life? I don’t know exactly when it lost its warmth. Which of us wearied of it first? At one time I was vexed by his indifference—that was what caused my little affair with Quillan. But might he not have been disappointed by my coldness? That is of secondary importance, it seems to me. It would explain his going to bed with other women, but not his breaking away from me. Nor his losing his head over Noëllie.

Why her? If she were at least genuinely beautiful, really young and outstandingly intelligent I should understand it. I should suffer, but I should understand. She is thirty-eight; she is fairly pleasant to look at—no more; and she is very superficial. So why? I said to Marie Lambert, “I’m certain that I am worth more than she is.”

She smiled. “That is not where the question lies.”

Where did it lie? Apart from novelty and a pleasant body, what could Noëllie give Maurice that I do not give
him? She said, “Other people’s loves are never comprehensible.”

But I am convinced of something that I cannot find adequate words for. With me Maurice has a relationship in depth, one to which his essential being is committed and which is therefore indestructible. He is only attached to Noëllie by his most superficial feelings—each of them might just as well be in love with someone else. Maurice and I are wholly conjoined. The flaw is that my relationship with Maurice is
not
indestructible, since he is destroying it. Or is it? Is not his feeling for Noëllie an infatuation that takes on the look of something greater but that will fade away? Oh, these splinters of hope that pierce my heart every now and then, more wounding than despair itself! There is another question I turn over and over in my mind, one that he did not really answer. Why did he tell me now? Why not before? There is no conceivable doubt that he ought to have warned me. I should have had affairs, too. And I should have worked: eight years ago I should have found the strength of mind to do something—there would not be this vacuum around me. That was what shocked Marie Lambert most—the fact that by his silence Maurice had refused me the possibility of confronting a break, armed with weapons of my own. As soon as he doubted his own feelings he ought to have urged me to build myself up a life that would be independent of him. She imagines, and so do I, that Maurice remained silent in order to insure a happy home for his daughters. I got it wrong when I was pleased about Lucienne’s absence, at the time of his first confession—it was not just a matter of chance. But in that case it’s appalling. He chose the very
time when I no longer had my daughters as the moment for leaving me.

Impossible to accept that I can have committed the whole of my life to love so selfish a man as that. I must certainly be being unfair! In any case Marie Lambert told me so. “His point of view ought to be known. There is never anything to be understood in these cases of separation when they are recounted by the wife.” It was the “masculine mystery,” far more impenetrable than the “feminine mystery.” I suggested that she should speak to Maurice; she refused—I should have less confidence in her if she knew him. She was very friendly; but with a certain amount of holding back and hesitation, nevertheless.

Certainly Lucienne is the person who would be most useful to me—Lucienne, with her penetrating critical sense. She has lived all these years in a state of half enmity toward me, and this would allow her to enlighten me. But by letter she would only say little commonplace things.

Thursday 10 December
.

Couturier lives not far from Noëllie, and as I was going there I thought I recognized the car. No. But every time I see a big dark-green Citroën with a gray roof and red and green upholstery I think it is the one I used to call our car and which is now his car because our lives are no longer one. And it torments me. Before, I used to know exactly where he was, what he was doing. Now he might be absolutely anywhere—in the very place where I saw that car, for example.

It was almost indecent to go and see Couturier, and he
seemed very embarrassed when I telephoned to say I was coming. But I want to know.

“I know you are primarily Maurice’s friend,” I said when I arrived. “I have not come to ask you for information—only to give me a man’s point of view about the situation.”

He relaxed. But he told me nothing at all. Men need change more than women. Fourteen years of faithfulness is in itself uncommon. It is the usual thing to lie—one does not want to cause pain. And when a man is angry he says things he does not mean. Maurice certainly loves me still: it is possible to love two people, in different ways.…

They all explain the usual to you—that is to say, what happens to others. And I am trying to use this master key! Just as though it was not Maurice, me, and the unique aspect of our love that was in question.

How very low I must have fallen! I had a spurt of hope when I looked at a magazine and saw that as far as romance was concerned Sagittarius would win a considerable victory this week. On the other hand it depressed me when I looked into a little astrology book at Diana’s—it would seem that Sagittarius and Aries are not really made for one another. I asked Diana whether she knew Noëllie’s sign. No. She is not pleased with me since our disagreeable talk, and she took a delight in telling me that Noëllie had spoken to her about Maurice at greater length. She will never give him up, nor he her. As for me, I am an admirable woman (she is fond of that formula, it seems), but I do not value Maurice at his true worth. I found it
hard to control myself when Diana repeated that piece. Has Maurice complained of me to Noëllie? “You at least,
you
take an interest in my career.” No, he could not have said that to her: I won’t believe it. His true worth.… Maurice’s worth does not come down to his worldly success: as he knows very well himself, what he appreciates in people is something quite different. Or am I mistaken about him? Has he a trifling, social side that comes into flower when he is with Noëllie? I forced myself to laugh. And then I said that after all I should still like to understand what men see in Noëllie. Diana gave me an idea—have our three handwritings analyzed. She told me an address and gave me one of Noëllie’s letters—nothing in it. I went to find one of Maurice’s recent letters, wrote the graphologist a note in which I asked for a quick reply, and went and left the lot with the concierge.

Saturday 12
.

I am taken aback by the graphologist’s analyses. The most interesting hand, according to him, is Maurice’s—great intelligence, wide culture, capacity for work, tenacity, deep sensitivity, a mixture of pride and lack of self-confidence, on the surface very open but fundamentally reticent (I summarize). As for me, he finds I have many qualities—poise, cheerfulness, frankness and a lively care for others; he also mentions a kind of emotional demandingness that might make me rather wearisome to those around me. That agrees with what Maurice reproaches me for—that I am encroaching and possessive. I know perfectly well that there is that tendency in me: but I have fought
against it so strongly! I tried so hard to leave Colette and Lucienne free, not to overwhelm them with questions, to respect their privacy. And with Maurice how often have I not choked back my anxiety, bottled up my impulses, avoided going into his study in spite of my longing, and prevented myself from gazing lovingly at him while he read at my side! For them I wanted to be both present and unobtrusive: have I failed? Graphology shows tendencies rather than actual behavior. And Maurice went for me when he was in a rage. Their verdict leaves me still wondering. In any case, even if I am rather overzealous, overdemonstrative, overattentive—in short, rather a nuisance—that is not an adequate reason for liking Noëllie more than me.

As for her, although her portrait is more sharply distinguished than mine and contains more faults, it seems to me, all things considered, more flattering. She is ambitious; she likes display, but she has a delicate sensitivity and a great deal of energy; she is generous and she has a very lively intelligence. I don’t claim to be anything extraordinary, but Noëllie is so superficial that she cannot possibly be my superior, not even in intelligence. I shall have to get another expert opinion. In any case graphology is not an exact science.

I am torturing myself. What is the general opinion of me? Quite objectively, who am I? Am I less intelligent than I suppose? As for that, it is the kind of question it is no use asking anybody: no one would like to reply that I was a fool. And how can one tell? Everybody thinks he is intelligent, even the people I find stupid. That is why a woman is always more affected by compliments about her
looks than by those about her mind—for she has inner certainties about her mind, those which everybody has and which therefore prove nothing. To know your limits you have to be able to go beyond them: in other words, you have to be able to jump right over your own shadow. I always understand what I hear and what I read: but perhaps I grasp it all too quickly, for want of being able to understand the full wealth and complexity of an idea. Is it my shortcomings that prevent me from seeing Noëllie’s superiority?

Saturday evening
.

Is this the good fortune Sagittarius was promised this week? On the telephone Diana told me a piece of news that may be of decisive importance: it seems that Noëllie goes to bed with Jacques Vallin, the publisher. It was Mme. Vallin herself who told a friend of Diana’s—she happened to find some letters and she hates Noëllie. How to let Maurice know? He is so certain of Noëllie’s love that he would be knocked all to a heap. Only he would not believe me. I should have to have proof. But I can’t very well go and see Mme. Vallin, whom I don’t know, and ask her for the letters. Vallin is very wealthy. Of the two, Maurice and Vallin, he is the one Noëllie would choose if he were to agree to divorce. What a schemer! If only I could have any respect for her I should suffer less. (I know. Another woman, talking to herself about her rival, is saying, “If only I could despise her I should suffer less.” Besides, I myself have thought,
I have too low an opinion of her to suffer
.)

Sunday 13
.

I showed Isabelle the graphologist’s replies: she did not look convinced—she does not believe in graphology. Yet, as I pointed out to her, the emotional demandingness shown in the analysis chimes in with the unkind things Maurice said the other day. And I know that in fact I do expect a lot from people: maybe I ask them too much.

“Obviously. Since you live very much for others, you also live a great deal through them,” she said. “But that’s what love and friendship is—a kind of symbiosis.”

“But for someone who doesn’t want the symbiosis, am I a bore?”

“When you like them and they don’t like you, you bore people. It depends on situation, not on character.”

I begged her to make an effort and to tell me what kind of a person she saw me as—what she thought of me. She smiled. “In fact I don’t
see
you at all; you are my friend: and that’s that.”

She maintained that when there is nothing at stake one either likes being with people or one does not like being with them; but one does not see them as being this or that. She likes being with me, that’s all.

“Candidly, quite candidily now, do you think me intelligent?”

“Of course. Except when you ask me that. If we are both of us half-wits each will think the other very bright—what does that prove?”

She told me again that in this business my virtues and faults are not in question—it is novelty that is attracting Maurice. Eighteen months: that’s still novelty.

Monday 14
.

The hideous fall into the abyss of sadness. From the very fact of being sad one no longer has the least wish to do anything cheerful. Now I never put on a record when I wake up. I never listen to music anymore, never go to the cinema, never buy myself anything pleasant. I got up when I heard Mme. Dormoy come in. I drank my tea and ate a piece of toast to please her. And I look forward over this day, still another day that I must get through. And I say to myself.…

A ring at the bell. A delivery boy put a great bunch of lilacs and roses into my arms with a note saying:
Happy birthday. Maurice
. As soon as the door was shut I burst into tears. I defend myself with restless activity, horrid plans and hatred; and these flowers, this reminder of lost, hopelessly lost, happiness, knocked all my defenses to the ground.

Toward one o’clock the key turned in the lock and there was that horrible taste in my mouth—the taste of dread. (The same, exactly, as when I used to go to see my father dying in the nursing home.) That presence, as familiar to me as my own reflection, my reason for living, my delight, is now this stranger, this judge, this enemy: my heart beats high with fear when he opens the door. He came quickly over to me, smiling as he took me in his arms. “Happy birthday, darling.”

Gently I wept on his shoulder. He stroked my hair. “Don’t cry. I can’t bear it when you’re unhappy. I’m so very fond of you.”

“You told me that for the past eight years you had no longer loved me.”

“Oh, stuff. I told you afterwards it wasn’t true. I
am
fond of you.”

“But you’re not in love with me anymore?”

“There are so many kinds of love.”

We sat down; we talked. I talked to him as I might have talked to Isabelle or Marie Lambert, full of trust and friendliness, quite detachedly—as if it were not a question of ourselves at all. It was a problem that we were discussing, objectively, impersonally, just as we have discussed so many others. Once again I said how surprising his eight years’ silence was. Again he said, “You used to say you would die of grief.”