The Woman Destroyed (23 page)

Does Maurice stay with me out of pity? If so I ought to tell him to go. I could not bring myself to it. If he stays, perhaps Noëllie will lose heart and turn to Vallin or someone else. Or perhaps he will come to understand once more what we have been for one another.

What exhausts me is the way he is kind one day and surly and unaffectionate the next. I never know which is going to open the door. It is as though he were appalled at having hurt me and yet afraid of giving me too much hope. Should I settle down definitively into despair? But then he would quite forget what I was once and why he had loved me.

Thursday 17
.

Marguerite has run away again and they can’t find her. She went off with a girl who is a real tramp. She will go on
the streets, steal things. It’s heartbreaking. Yet my heart is not broken. Nothing touches me anymore.

Friday 18
.

I saw them again yesterday evening. I was prowling about L’An 2000, where they often go. They got out of Noëllie’s convertible; he took her arm; they were laughing. At home, even when he is being pleasant, he has a grim expression: his smiles are forced. “It’s not an easy position.…” When he is with me, he never forgets it for a moment. With her, he does. He laughed, unconstrained, careless, easy. I felt like doing her an injury. I know that is female and unfair; she has no duty toward me—but there it is.

What cowards people are. I asked Diana to introduce me to the friend Mme. Valiin had talked to about Noëllie. She looked embarrassed. The friend is no longer so sure of her facts. Vallin goes to bed with a young woman attorney, very much in the swim. Mme. Vallin did not mention her name. It is reasonable to suppose that it is Noëllie, who has often appeared in court for the publishing house. But it may be someone else.… The other day Diana was perfectly definite. Either it is the friend who is frightened of stirring up trouble or it is Diana who is afraid that I will. She swore it was not so—she only wants to help me! No doubt. But they all have their own ideas of the best way of setting about it.

Sunday 20
.

Every time I see Colette I overwhelm her with questions. Yesterday it almost made her cry. “
I
never thought you
coddled us too much; I liked being coddled.… What did Lucienne think of you during the last year? We weren’t very intimate—she sat in judgment on me, too. She thought us too soft-centered; she acted the tough girl. Anyhow, what does it matter what she thought? She’s not an oracle.”

Of course. Colette never felt herself ill-treated because of her own free will she complied with what I expected of her. And obviously she cannot think that it is a pity that she is what she is. I asked her whether she did not get bored? (Jean-Pierre is a worthy soul, but not much fun.) No: it was rather that she can hardly cope with all she has to do. Keeping house is not as easy as she had thought. She no longer has time to read or to listen to music. “Try to find it,” I told her; “otherwise one ends up by growing completely stupid.” I said that I really knew what I was talking about. She laughed—if I was stupid, then she was quite happy to be stupid too. She loves me dearly: that at least will not be taken away from me. But have I crushed her? Certainly I foresaw a completely different kind of life for her—a more active, richer life. At her age mine, with Maurice, was far more so. Has she lost her vitality, living in my shade?

How I should like to see myself as others see me! I showed the three letters to a friend of Colette’s who goes in for graphology a little. It was chiefly Maurice’s hand that interested her. She said pleasant things about me: much less about Noëllie. But the results were falsified because she had certainly grasped the meaning of the consultation.

Sunday evening
.

I had a sudden spurt of happy surprise just now, when Maurice said to me, “We’ll spend Christmas Eve and New
Year’s Eve together, of course.” I think he is offering me a compensation for the skiing I have given up. What does the reason matter? I have determined not to hold aloof from my pleasure.

27 December—Sunday
.

It was rather pleasure that held aloof from me. I hope Maurice did not notice it. He had booked a table at the Club 46. Magnificent supper, excellent cabaret. He was lavish with his money and his kindness. I had on a pretty new dress and I smiled, but I was in an unbearable state of distress. All those couples.… These women, all well-dressed, well-jeweled, well made up, their hair well done—they laughed, showing their well-tended teeth, looked after by excellent dentists. The men lit their cigarettes for them, poured them out champagne: they exchanged affectionate looks and little loving remarks. Other years it had seemed to me that the bond that joined each him to each personal her, each her to each personal him, was positively tangible. I believed in unions, because I believe in ours. Now what I saw was individuals set down by chance opposite one another. From time to time the old illusion came to life again: Maurice seemed welded to me—he was my husband just as Colette was my daughter, in a way that could not be undone: a relationship that could be forgotten, that could be twisted, but that could never be done away with. And then there was no current between him and me anymore—nothing passing whatever: two strangers. I felt like shouting,
It’s all untrue, it’s all playacting, it’s all a farce—drinking champagne together does not mean taking communion
. As
we came home Maurice kissed me. “That was a good evening, wasn’t it?”

He looked pleased and relaxed. I said yes, of course. On December 31 we go to the New Year’s Eve party at Isabelle’s.

1 January
.

I ought not to be delighted at Maurice’s good temper: the real reason for it is that he is going away for ten days with Noëllie. But if at the cost of a sacrifice I rediscover his affection and cheerfulness, whereas so often he is unyielding and surly, why, then I gain by it. We were a pair once again when we arrived at Isabelle’s. Other pairs, more or less limping, more or less patched up, but united for all that, surrounded us. Isabelle and Charles, the Couturiers, Colette and Jean-Pierre, and others. There were excellent jazz records; I let myself drink a little, and for the first time since—how long?—I felt cheerful. Cheerfulness—a transparent quality in the air, a smooth flowing in the passage of time, an ease in breathing: I asked no more of it. I don’t know how I came to be talking about the Salines de Ledoux and describing them in detail. They listened to me and asked me questions, but suddenly I wondered whether it did not look as though I were imitating Noëllie, trying to shine as she does, and whether Maurice would not think me ridiculous once again. He seemed rather tense. I took Isabelle aside. “Did I talk too much? Did I put on a ludicrous act?”

“No, no!” she protested. “What you told us was very interesting.”

She was dreadfully concerned at seeing me so upset. Because
I was wrong to be uneasy? Or because I was right? Later on I asked Maurice why he had looked vexed.

“But I wasn’t!”

“You say that as though you were.”

“No. Not at all.”

Perhaps it was my question that vexed him. I cannot tell anymore. From now on, always, everywhere, there is a reverse side to my words and my actions that escapes me.

2 January
.

Yesterday we had dinner with Colette. The poor child had taken a very great deal of trouble, and nothing went right. I looked at her through Maurice’s eyes. Her apartment certainly lacks charm. She scarcely possesses any ideas of her own, even for her clothes or her furniture. Jean-Pierre is very kind; he adores her—a heart of gold. But it is impossible to know what to talk to him about. They never go out; they have few friends. A very dismal, very narrow existence. Once again, and with terror, I asked myself,
Is it my fault that the brilliant fifteen-year-old schoolgirl has grown into this lifeless young woman?
It is a metamorphosis that happens often enough, and I have seen plenty like it: but perhaps each time it was the parents’ fault. Maurice was very cheerful, very friendly all through the evening, and when we left he said nothing about them. I imagine that did not stop him from thinking, however.

I thought it strange that Maurice should spend all yesterday at home and the evening at Colette’s with me. A suspicion came into my mind, and I have just telephoned Noëllie’s apartment: if she had answered I should have hung up.
I got her secretary. “Maîtresse Guérard will not be back in Paris until tomorrow.”

What an utter simpleton I must be! Noëllie was away, and there I was, acting as the stopgap. I choke with rage. I feel like flinging Maurice out—finishing with him for good and all.

I went for him furiously. He replied that Noëllie had gone because he had decided to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve with me.

“Oh no! I remember now: she always spends the holidays with her daughter, at her husband’s place.”

“She had only meant to stay four days.” He gazed at me with that sincere look that comes so easy to him.

“In any case you worked this out together!”

“Obviously I spoke to her about it.” He shrugged. “A woman is never happy unless what she is given has been violently wrenched from another. It is not the thing in itself that counts: it is the victory won.”

They had settled it together. And it is true that that spoils all the pleasure these days have brought me. If she had reacted strongly he would certainly have yielded. So I am dependent on her, upon her whims, her magnanimity or her mean-mindedness—upon her interests, in fact.

They leave tomorrow evening for Courchevel. I wonder whether my decision was not utterly mistaken. He is only taking a fortnight’s holiday instead of three weeks (which is a sacrifice, he pointed out to me, seeing how passionately he loves skiing). So he is spending five days longer than he had planned with Noëllie. And I lose ten days alone with him. She will have ample time to get around him entirely. When he comes back he will tell me that everything
is over between us. I have put the finishing touches to my own destruction! I tell myself this with a kind of heavy inertness. I feel that in any case I am done for. He is kind and tactful with me; perhaps he is afraid that I will kill myself—which is out of the question: I do not want to die. But his attachment to Noëllie does not lessen.

15 January
.

I ought to open some canned food. Or run myself a bath. But in that case I should go on pursuing my thoughts around and around. If I write it fills up my time; it lets me escape. How many hours without eating? How many days without washing? I sent the daily woman away; I shut myself up; people have rung at the door twice, telephoned several times, but I never answer except at eight o’clock in the evening, when it is Maurice. He rings me up punctually every day, speaking anxiously.

“What have you done today?”

I reply that I have seen Isabelle, Diana or Colette; that I have been to a concert—to the cinema.

“And this evening, what are you doing?”

I say I am going to see Diana or Isabelle, that I shall go to the theater. He presses me. “You’re all right? You sleep well?”

I reassure him, and I ask what the snow is like. Not terribly good; and the weather is nothing much either. There is gloom in his voice, as though he were carrying out some tolerably dreary task there at Courchevel. And I know that as soon as he has hung up he goes laughing into the bar where Noëllie is waiting for him and they drink martinis,
talking twenty to the dozen about what has happened during the day.

That’s what I chose, isn’t it?

I chose going to pieces: I no longer know when it is day and when it is night: when things are too bad, when it becomes unbearable, I gulp down spirits, tranquilizers or sleeping pills. When things are a little better I take stimulants and plunge into a detective story—I have laid in a stock. When the silence stifles me I turn on the radio and from a remote planet there come voices that I can hardly understand: that world has a time, set hours, laws, speech, anxieties and amusements that are essentially foreign to me. How far one can let oneself go, when one is entirely alone and shut in! The bedroom stinks of stale tobacco and spirits; there is ash everywhere; I am filthy; the sheets are filthy; the sky is filthy behind the filthy windows: this filth is a shell that protects me; I shall never leave it again. It would be easy to slide just a little further into the void, as far as the point of no return. I have all that is needed in my drawer. But I won’t, I won’t! I’m forty-four; it’s too early to die—it’s unfair! I can’t live any longer. I don’t want to die.

For a fortnight I have written nothing in this notebook because I read over what I had written before. And I saw that words say nothing. Rages, nightmares, horror—words cannot encompass them. I set things down on paper when I recover strength, either in despair or in hope. But the feeling of total bewilderment, of stunned stupidity, of falling apart—these pages do not contain them. And then these pages lie so—they get things so wrong. How I have been manipulated! Gently, gently Maurice brought me to the
point of saying, “Make your choice!” so that he could reply, “I shall not give up Noëllie.…” Oh, I am not going over the whole business again, with comments. There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial. For example, the reason why I began to keep it, at Les Salines, was not that I had suddenly recovered my youth, nor that I wanted to fill my loneliness with people, but because I had to exorcise a certain anxiety that would not admit its own existence. It was hidden deep under the silence and the warmth of that disturbing afternoon, bound up with Maurice’s gloom and with his departure. Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost. There are some remarks that make me blush for shame.…
I have always wanted the truth; and the reason why I have had it is that I desired it
. Is it possible to be so mistaken about one’s life as all that? Is everybody as blind as this or am I an outstanding prize half-wit? And not only a half-wit. I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself! I said that Noëllie did not amount to anything and that Maurice preferred me; and I knew perfectly well that was untrue. I have taken to my pen again not to go back over the same ground but because the emptiness within me, around me, is so vast that this movement of my hand is necessary to tell myself that I am still alive.