The Woman Destroyed (6 page)

“Let’s go and see.”

The little inn at the water’s edge, with its simple, delightful food, had once been one of our favorite places. We celebrated our silver wedding anniversary there, but we had not been back since. This village, with its silence and its little cobbles, had not changed. We went right along the main street in both directions: the Truite d’Or had vanished. We did not like the restaurant in the forest where we stopped: perhaps because we compared it with our memories.

“And what shall we do now?” I asked.

“We had thought of the Château de Vaux and the towers at Blandy.”

“But do you want to go?”

“Why not?”

He did not give a damn about them, and nor indeed did I; but neither of us liked to say so. What exactly was he thinking of, as we drove along the little leaf-scented country roads? About the desert of his future? I could not follow him onto that ground. I felt that there beside me he was alone. I was, too. Philippe had tried to telephone me several times. I had hung up as soon as I recognized his voice. I questioned myself. Had I been too demanding with regard to him? Had André been too scornfully indulgent? Was it this lack of harmony that had damaged him? I should have liked to talk about it with André, but I was afraid of starting a quarrel again.

The Château de Vaux, the towers at Blandy: we carried
out our program. We said, “I remembered it perfectly, I did not remember it at all, these towers are quite splendid.…” But in one way the mere sight of things is neither here nor there. You have to be linked to them by some plan or some question. All I saw was stones piled one on top of the other.

The day did not bring us any closer together; I felt that we were both disappointed and very remote from one another as we drove back to Paris. It seemed to me that we were no longer capable of talking to one another. Might all one heard about noncommunication perhaps be true, then? Were we, as I had glimpsed in my anger, condemned to silence and loneliness? Had that always been the case with me, and had it only been that stubborn optimism that had made me say it was not?
I must make an effort
, I said to myself as I went to bed.
Tomorrow morning we will discuss it. We will try to get to the bottom of it
. The fact that our quarrel had not been dissipated was because it was merely a symptom. Everything would have to be gone into again, radically. Above all, not to be afraid of talking about Philippe. A single forbidden subject and our dialogue would be wholly frustrated.

I poured out the tea, and I was trying to find the words to begin this discussion when André said, “Do you know what I should like? To go to Villeneuve straightaway. I should rest there better than in Paris.”

So that was the conclusion he had drawn from the failure of yesterday: instead of trying to come closer he was escaping! It sometimes happens that he spends a few days at his mother’s house without me, out of affection for her. But this was a way of escaping from our tête-à-tête. I was cut to the quick.

“A splendid idea,” I said curtly. “Your mother will be delighted. Do go.”

“Wouldn’t you like to come?” he asked, in an unnatural tone.

“You know very well that I haven’t the least wish to leave Paris so early. I shall come at the date we fixed.”

“As you like.”

I should have stayed in any case: I wanted to work and also to see how my book would be received—to talk to my friends about it. But I was much taken aback at the way he did not press me. Coldly I asked, “When do you think of going?”

“I don’t know: soon. I have absolutely nothing to do here.”

“What does soon mean? Tomorrow? The day after?”

“Why not tomorrow morning?”

So we should be away from one another for a fortnight: he never used to leave me for more than three or four days, except for congresses. Had I been so very unpleasant? He ought to have talked things over with me instead of running away. And yet it was not like him, avoiding an issue. I could only see one explanation for it—always the same explanation—he was getting old. I thought crossly,
Let him go and get over his aging somewhere else
. I was certainly not going to raise a finger to keep him here.

We agreed that he should take the car. He spent the day at the garage, shopping, telephoning: he said goodbye to his colleagues. I scarcely saw him. When he got into the car the next day we exchanged kisses and smiles. Then I was back in the library, quite at a loss. I had the feeling that André, ditching me in this way, was punishing me. No: it was merely that he wanted to get rid of me.

Once my first amazement was over I felt lightened. Life as a couple implies decisions. When shall we eat? What would you like to have? Plans come into being. When one is alone things happen without premeditation: it is restful. I got up late; I stayed there lapped in the gentle warmth of the sheets, trying to catch the fleeting shreds of my dreams. I read my letters as I drank my tea, and I hummed, “I get along without you very well … of course I do.” Between working hours I strolled about the streets.

This state of grace lasted for three days. On the afternoon of the fourth someone rang with little quick touches on the bell. Only one person rings like that. My heart began to thump furiously. Through the door I said, “Who is that?”

“Open the door,” cried Philippe. “I shall keep my finger on the bell until you do.”

I opened, and immediately there were his arms around me and his head leaning on my shoulder. “Darling, sweetheart, please, please don’t hate me. I can’t bear life if we are cross with one another. Please. I do so love you!”

How often this imploring voice had melted away my resentment! I let him come into the library. He loved me; I could have no doubt of that. Did anything else matter? The familiar words,
My little boy
, were just coming to my lips, but I thrust them back. He was not a little boy.

“Don’t try to soften my heart: it’s too late. You’ve spoiled everything.”

“Listen. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps I have behaved badly—I don’t know. It keeps me awake all night. But I don’t want to lose you. Have pity on me. You’re making me so unhappy!” Childish tears shone in his eyes. But this
was not a child anymore. A man, Irène’s husband, an entirely adult person.

“That’s too easy altogether,” I said. “You quietly go about your business, knowing perfectly well that you are setting us poles apart. And you want me to take it all with a smile—you want everything to be just the same as it was before! No, no, no.”

“Really, you are too hard—you have too much party spirit altogether. There are parents and children who love one another without having the same political opinions.”

“It is not a question of differing political opinions. You are changing sides out of mere ambition and a desire to succeed at any price. That is what is so tenth-rate.”

“No, no, not at all. My views
have
changed! Maybe I’m easily influenced, but truly I have come to see things in another light. I promise you I have!”

“Then you should have told me about it earlier. Not have carried out your wire-pulling behind my back and then face me with a
fait accompli
. I shall never forgive you that.”

“I didn’t dare. You have a way of looking at me that frightens me.”

“You always used to say that: it has never been a valid excuse.”

“Yet you used to forgive me. Forgive me again this time. Please, please do. I can’t bear it when we are against one another, you and I.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it. You have acted in such a way that I cannot respect you anymore.”

His eyes began to grow stormy: I preferred that. His anger would keep mine up.

“Sometimes you say the cruelest things. For my part I have never wondered whether I respected you or not. You could do bloody fool things as much as ever you liked and I shouldn’t love you any the less. You think love has to be deserved. Oh, yes, you do: and I’ve tried hard enough not to be undeserving. Everything I ever wanted to be—a pilot, a racing driver, a reporter: action, adventure—they were all mere whims according to you: I sacrificed them all to please you. The first time I don’t give way, you break with me.”

I cut in. “You’re trying to wear me down. Your behavior disgusts me: that is why I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“It disgusts you because it goes against your plans. But after all, I’m not going to obey you all my life long. You’re too tyrannical. Fundamentally you have no heart, only a love of power.” His voice was full of rage and tears. “All right! Good-bye. Despise me as much as you bloody well like—I shall get along without you very well.”

He stalked toward the door; slammed it behind him. I stood there in the hall, thinking,
He will come back
. He always came back. I should no longer have had the strength to stand out against him; I should have burst into tears with him. After five minutes I went back to the library; I sat down, and I wept, alone.
My little boy
.…What is an adult? A child puffed with age. I plucked the years away from him and saw him at twelve again: impossible to hold anything against him. Yet, no, he was a man. There was not the slightest reason to judge him less severely than anyone else. Had I a hard heart? Are there people who can love without respect? Where does respect begin and end? And love? If he had failed in his university career, if he had led a commonplace, unsuccessful life, my affection would
never have failed him: because he would have needed it. If I had come to be of no use to him any longer, but had remained proud of him, I would cheerfully have gone on loving him. But now he escapes me, and at the same time I condemn him. What have I to do with him?

Sadness came down on me again, and it never left me. From that time on when I stayed late in bed it was because, unsupported, I was reluctant to come to a waking knowledge of the world and of my life. Once I was up I was sometimes tempted to go back to bed again until the evening. I flung myself into my work. I stayed at my desk for hours and hours on end, keeping myself going with fruit juice. When I stopped at the end of the afternoon my head was on fire and my bones hurt. Sometimes I would go so deeply to sleep on my divan that on waking I felt dazed and intensely distressed—it was as though my consciousness, rising up secretly from the darkness, were hesitating before taking flesh again. Or else I stared around at these familiar surroundings with unbelieving eyes—they were the illusory, shimmering other side of the void into which I had sunk. My gaze lingered with astonishment upon the things I had brought back from every part of Europe. Space had retained no mark of my journeys, and my recollection would not trouble to call them to mind; and yet there they were, the dolls, the pots, the little ornaments. The merest trifles fascinated me and preoccupied my mind. The juxtaposition of a red scarf and a violet cushion: when did I last see fuchsias, with their bishop’s and cardinal’s robes and their long frail penises? When the light-filled convolvulus, the simple dog rose, the disheveled honeysuckle, the narcissus with astonished, wide-open eyes in the midst of its whiteness—when? There might be none left on earth, and I
should know nothing about it. Nor water lilies on the lakes nor buckwheat in the fields. All around me the world lies like an immense hypothesis that I no longer verify.

I wrenched myself out of these dark clouds: I went down into the streets; I looked at the sky, the shabby houses. Nothing moved me at all. The moonlight and the sunset, the smell of showery spring and hot tar, the brilliance and the changing of the year: I have known moments that had the pure blaze of a diamond. But they have always come without being called for. They used to spring up unexpectedly, an unlooked-for truce, an unhoped-for promise, cutting across the activities that insisted upon my presence; I would enjoy them almost illicitly, coming out of the lycée, or the exit of a metro, or on my balcony between two sessions of work, or hurrying along the boulevard to meet André. Now I walked about Paris, free, receptive, and frigidly indifferent. My overflowing leisure handed me the world and at the same time prevented me from seeing it. Just as the sun, filtering through the closed venetian blinds on a hot afternoon, makes the whole magnificence of summer blaze in my mind; whereas if I face its direct harsh glare it blinds me.

I went home: I telephoned André, or he would telephone me. His mother was more pugnacious than ever; he was seeing old schoolfellows, walking, gardening. His cheerful friendliness depressed me. I told myself that we should meet again exactly where we had been before, with this wall of silence between us. The telephone—it is not a thing that brings people nearer: it underlines their remoteness. You are not together as you are in a conversation, for you do not see one another. You are not alone as you are in front of a piece of paper that allows you to talk inwardly
while you are addressing the other—to seek out and find the truth. I felt like writing to him: but what? Anxiety began to mingle with my distress. The friends to whom I had sent my book ought to have written to tell me about it: not one had done so, not even Martine. The week after André left there were suddenly a great many articles dealing with it. I was disappointed by Monday’s, vexed by Wednesday’s, quite crushed by Thursday’s. The harshest spoke of wearisome repetition, the kindest of “an interesting restatement.” Not one had grasped the originality of my work. Had I not managed to make it clear? I telephoned Martine. The reviews were stupid, she said; I should take no notice of them. As for her own opinion, she wanted to wait until she had finished the book before letting me know it: she was going to finish it and think it over that very evening, and the next day she would be coming to Paris. I hung up with a bitter taste in my mouth. Martine had not wanted to talk to me over the telephone: so her opinion was unfavorable. I could not understand. I do not usually delude myself about my own work.

Three weeks had passed since our meeting in the Parc Montsouris—three weeks that counted among the most unpleasant I had ever known. Ordinarily I should have been delighted at the idea of seeing Martine again. But I felt more anxious than I had when I was waiting for the results of the
agrégation
. After the first quick civilities I plunged straight in. “Well? What do you think of it?”