The Woman Destroyed (22 page)

“You made me say it. The notion of unfaithfulness seemed to torment you so.…”

“It did torment me. That was why I remained silent—so that everything should be as though I were not deceiving you.… There was magic in it.… And of course I was ashamed, too.…”

I said that above all I should like to know why he had told me this year. He admitted that it was partially because his relationship with Noëllie called for it; but also, he said, he thought I had a right to the truth.

“But you didn’t tell me the truth.”

“Out of shame at having lied.”

He wrapped me in that dark, warm gaze that seems to open him to me to the very bottom of his heart—delivered up wholly and entirely, as it were, innocent and loving, as he used to be.

“The worst thing you did,” I said, “was to let me lull
myself in a sense of false security. Here I am at forty-four, empty-handed, with no occupation, no other interest in life apart from you. If you had warned me eight years ago I should have made an independent existence for myself and now it would be easier for me to accept the situation.”

“But, Monique!” he cried, looking astonished. “I urged you as strongly as I possibly could to take that job as secretary of the
Revue médicale
seven years ago. It was right up your street and you could have reached a worthwhile position. You wouldn’t!”

The suggestion had seemed to me so untimely that I had almost entirely forgotten it. “I couldn’t see any point in spending the day away from the house and the children just for a hundred thousand francs a month,” I said.

“That was your answer then. I pressed you very hard.”

“If you had told me your real reasons—if you had told me I no longer meant everything to you and that I too should stand off a little myself, I should have accepted it.”

“I suggested your getting a job again when we were at Mougins. And again you refused.”

“At that time your love was enough for me.”

“It is not too late,” he said. “I can easily find you something to do.”

“Do you suppose that that would console me? Eight years ago I might have thought it less ludicrous—I should have had more chance of getting somewhere. But now.…”

We marked time for a great while over this. I feel no doubt that it would soothe his conscience if he got me something to do. I have not the least wish to soothe it.

I went back to our conversation of December 1—a date
to remember. Did he really consider me selfish, domineering, encroaching? “Even though you were in a rage, you didn’t make that up entirely, did you?”

He hesitated, smiled, explained. I have the defects of my qualities. I am quick-witted and attentive, which is extremely valuable; but sometimes, when one is ill-tempered, it is wearing. I am so faithful to the past that the least forgetfulness seems a crime and one has a feeling of guilt if one changes a taste or an opinion. All right. But had he any grudges against me? He resented my conduct ten years ago, as I knew very well, for we had quarreled about it often enough; but all that is over and done with because he did what he wanted to do and in the long run I have admitted that he was right. As for our marriage, did he think I had forced his hand? Not at all: we had made the decision together.…

“What about your reproach the other day that I did not take an interest in your work?”

“I do rather regret it, that’s true; but I should think it even more regrettable if you were to force yourself to take an interest in it just to please me.”

His voice was so encouraging that I asked the question that harasses me most. “You are against me because of Colette and Lucienne? They are a disappointment to you and you hold me responsible?”

“What right have I to be disappointed? And what right would I have to hold it against you?”

“Then why did you speak to me with such hatred?”

“Oh, the position is not very easy for me, either! I grow angry with myself, and that very unfairly turns against you.”

“Still, you don’t love me as you did before; you’re fond
of me, yes; but it’s no longer love as we knew it in our twenties.”

“It’s no longer the love of our twenties for you, either. When I was twenty I was in love with love at the same time that I was in love with you. I have lost the whole of that glowing, enthusiastic side of myself: that is what has changed.”

It was delightful talking with him, like two friends, as we used to do. Difficulties grew smaller; questions wafted away like smoke; events faded; true and false merged in a iridescence of converging shades. Fundamentally, nothing had happened. I ended up by believing that Noëllie did not exist.… Illusion: sleight of hand. In fact this comfortable talk has not changed anything in the very least. Things have been given other names: they have not altered in any way. I have learned nothing. The past remains as obscure as ever. The future as uncertain.

Tuesday 15
.

Yesterday evening I wanted to return to that afternoon’s disappointing conversation. But Maurice had work to do after dinner, and when he finished he wanted to go to bed.

“We talked quite enough this afternoon. There is nothing to add. I must get up early tomorrow.”

“We didn’t really say anything, when you come to look into it.”

He put on a look of resignation. “What more do you want me to say?”

“Well, there is after all something that I should like to know. How do you envisage our future?”

He was silent. I had driven him into a corner. “I don’t
want to lose you. I don’t want to give up Noëllie, either. As for everything else, I just don’t know where I am.…”

“She puts up with this double life?”

“She is obliged to.”

“Yes: like me. And when I think that at the Club 46 you dared tell me that there was nothing changed between us!”

“I never said that.”

“We were dancing, and you said to me, ‘Nothing is changed.’ And I believed you!”

“Monique, it was you who said to me, ‘All that matters is that there is nothing changed between us.’ I did not contradict you: I remained silent. At that particular moment it was impossible to go into things thoroughly.”

“It was you who said it. I remember it perfectly.”

“You had drunk a lot, you know: you have built it up.…”

I dropped the subject. What did it matter? What does matter is that he does not want to give Noëllie up. I know it, and yet I cannot bring myself to believe it. Curtly I told him that I had decided not to go skiing. I have thought it over thoroughly and I am glad I made that decision. I used so to love the mountains with him in the old days. To see them again in these conditions would be a torment. I couldn’t bear going there with him first and then leaving, defeated, thrust out by the other woman and yielding the place to her. I should find it no less revolting to come after Noëllie, knowing that Maurice was regretting her absence, comparing her figure with mine, my sadness with her laughter. I should pile up blunder upon blunder and he would only feel more eager to get rid of me.

“Spend the ten days with her that you have promised, and come back,” I said.

It was the first time in this whole business that I had taken the initiative, and he seemed quite flabbergasted. “But, Monique, I
want
to take you with me. We have had such splendid days in the snow!”

“Exactly.”

“You won’t go skiing this winter?”

“Just at present, you know, the joys of skiing don’t mean very much to me.”

He argued with me, he pressed me, he looked wretched. He is used to my sadness of every day, but to deprive me of skiing—that crams him with remorse. (I am unfair: he is not used to it—he drips with guilty conscience, he takes pills to go to sleep, he looks like death warmed up. I am not touched by that; indeed I even rather resent it. If he tortures me, knowing what he is at and torturing himself at the same time, then he must be disgustingly fond of Noëllie.) We argued for a long while. I did not give way. In the end he looked so exhausted—drawn face, rings under his eyes—that I sent him to bed. He sank down into sleep as though into a refuge of peace.

Wednesday 16
.

I watch the drops of water running down the window-pane—a moment ago the rain was beating upon it. They don’t go down straight: they are like little creatures that for mysterious reasons of their own slant off to the right or the left, slipping between other motionles drops, stopping and then starting again as though they were in quest of something. It seems to me that I no longer have anything whatever to do. I always used to be busy. Now everything—knitting, cooking, reading, putting on a record—everything
seems pointless. Maurice’s love gave every moment of my life a meaning. Now it is hollow. Everything is hollow—things are empty: time is empty. And so am I.

I asked Marie Lambert the other day whether she thought me intelligent. She looked me straight in the eye. “You are very intelligent.…”

“There is a
but
,” I said.

“Intelligence withers if it is not fed. You ought to let your husband find you a job.”

“The kind of work I could do would bring me nothing.”

“That is very far from certain.”

Evening
.

I had an inspiration this morning: the whole thing is my fault. My worst mistake has been not grasping that
time goes by
. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together. I imagined I had kept my thirty-year-old face and body instead of taking care of myself, doing gymnastics and going to a beauty parlor. I let my intelligence wither away: I no longer cultivated my mind—
later
, I said,
when the children have gone
. (Perhaps my father’s death was not without bearing on this way of letting things slide. Something snapped. I stopped time from that moment on.) Yes: the young student Maurice married felt passionately about what was happening in the world, about books and ideas; she was very unlike the woman of today, whose world lies between the four walls of this apartment. It is true enough that I tended to shut Maurice in. I thought his home was enough for him: I
thought I owned him entirely. Generally speaking I took everything for granted; and that must have irritated him intensely—Maurice who changes and who calls things in question. Being irritating—no one can ever get away with that. I should never have been obstinate about our promise of faithfulness, either. If I had given Maurice back his freedom—and made use of mine, too, perhaps—Noëllie would not have profited by the glamour of clandestinity. I should have coped with the situation at once. Is there still time? I told Marie Lambert that I was going to have it all out with Maurice and take steps to deal with the position. I have already taken to reading again a little and to listening to records: I must make a greater effort. Lose several pounds, dress better. Talk with Maurice more openly, refuse to have silences. She listened to me without enthusiasm. She wanted to know which of us was responsible for my first pregnancy, Maurice or I. Both of us. Or I was, if you like, in that I trusted in the calendar too much; but it was not my fault if it let me down. Had I insisted upon keeping the child? No. Upon not keeping it? No. The thing decided itself. She seemed skeptical. Her idea is that Maurice harbors a serious grudge against me. I countered that with Isabelle’s argument—the beginning of our marriage would not have been so happy if he had not wanted it. Her reply seems to me very far-fetched: so as not to admit his disappointment Maurice staked everything on love—he went all out for happiness, and once his enthusiasm faded he rediscovered the resentment that he had repressed. She herself feels that her argument is weak. His old grievances would not have sprung up again with such strength as to separate him from me if there had been no new ones. I asserted that he had none whatever.

To tell the truth Marie Lambert rather annoys me. They all annoy me because they look as though they know things that I don’t. It may be that Maurice or Noëllie pass around their version of the affair. It may be that the people I know have experience of matters of this kind and they apply their patterns to me. It may be that they see me from the outside, as I cannot manage to see myself, and that for that reason everything is plain to them. They are tactful with me, and I feel them holding things back when I talk to them. Marie Lambert approves of my having given up the skiing, but only insofar as it prevents me from suffering; she does not think it will make any difference to Maurice’s attitude.

I told Maurice that I understood all my faults. He stopped me—with one of those irritated gestures that I am getting so used to. “You have nothing to blame yourself for. Don’t let’s always be going over and over the past.”

“What else do I possess?”

That heavy silence.

I possess nothing other than my past. But it is no longer pride or happiness—a riddle, a source of bitter distress. I should like to force it to tell the truth. But can one trust one’s memory? I have forgotten a great deal, and it would appear that sometimes I have gone so far as to distort the facts. (Who was it who said, “There is nothing changed”? Maurice or I? In this diary I wrote that it was he. Perhaps because I wanted to believe it.…) To some extent it was out of hostility that I contradicted Marie Lambert. In fact I have more than once felt resentment in Maurice. He denied it, on my birthday. But there are remarks and tones of voice that still ring in my mind: I had not wanted to attribute any importance to them, and yet I do in fact remember
them. When Colette made up her mind to make that “imbecile marriage” it is obvious that although he was vexed with her he was also indirectly attacking me—he held me responsible for her sentimentality, her need for security, her shyness and her passive attitude of mind. But above all it was Lucienne’s leaving home that hit him hardest. “It was to escape from you that Lucienne left.” I know that’s what he really thinks. To what degree is it true? With a different kind of a mother, less anxious, less perpetually there, would Lucienne have put up with family life? Yet I had thought things were better between us during the last year, that she was less tense—perhaps because she was about to leave? I can no longer tell. If I have failed with the bringing up of my daughters, my whole life has been a mere failure. I cannot believe it. But as soon as doubt so much as touches me, how my mind reels!