Bonjour Tristesse (6 page)

One afternoon the maid knocked at my door and announced with an air of mystery: "Someone's downstairs." I at once thought of Cyril and went down. It was not Cyril, but Elsa. She greeted me effusively. Looking at her, I was astonished at her new beauty. She was tanned at last, evenly and smoothly, and was carefully made up and brilliantly youthful.

"I've come to fetch my suitcase," she explained. "Juan bought me a few dresses, but not enough, and I need my things."

I wondered for a moment who Juan could be, but did not enquire further. I was pleased Elsa had come back. She brought with her the aura of a kept woman, of bars, of gay evenings, which reminded me of happier days. I told her how glad I was to see her again, and she assured me that we had always got on so well together because we had common interests. I suppressed a slight shudder and suggested that we should go up to my room to avoid meeting Anne and my father. When I mentioned my father she made an involuntary movement with her head, and I wondered whether perhaps she was still in love with him, in spite of Juan and the dresses. I also thought that three weeks before I would not have noticed that movement of hers.

In my room I listened while she described in glowing terms her smart and dizzy life in the fashionable places along the Riviera. A strange confusion of thoughts went through my head, partly suggested by her different appearance. At last she stopped talking, perhaps because I was silent. She took a few steps across the room, and without turning round asked in an off-hand way if Raymond was happy. In a moment I knew what I must say to her:

"'Happy' is saying too much! Anne doesn't give him a chance to think otherwise. She is very clever."

"Very!" sighed Elsa.

"You'll never guess what she's persuaded him to do . . . she's going to marry him. ..."

Elsa turned a horrified face towards me:

"Marry him? Raymond actually wants to get married?"

"Yes," I answered. "Raymond is going to be married."

A sudden desire to laugh caught me by the throat. My hands were shaking. Elsa seemed prostrated, almost as if I had given her a knockout blow. On no account must she be allowed to realise that after all he was of an age to marry, and could not be expected to spend his life with women of her sort. I leant forward and suddenly lowered my voice to make a stronger impression on her:

"It simply mustn't happen, Elsa. He's suffering already. It's an impossible state of affairs, as you can very well imagine."

"Yes," she said. She seemed fascinated.

"You're just the person I've been waiting for," I went on, "because you are the only one who is a match for Anne. You alone are up to her standard."

She seemed to swallow the bait.

"But if he's marrying her it must be because he loves her?" she objected.

"But look here, Elsa, it's you he loves! Do you want to make me believe that you don't know it?"

I saw her bat her eyelids, and she turned away to hide her pleasure, and the hope my words had given her. I was prompted by a sort of infallible instinct, and I knew just how to continue.

"Don't you see? Anne kept harping on the bliss of married life, morality, and all that, and in the end she caught him."

I was surprised at my own words. For even though I had expressed myself somewhat crudely, that was just what I felt.

"If they get married, our lives will be ruined, Elsa! My father must be protected, he's nothing but a big baby ..."

I repeated 'a big baby' with stronger emphasis. It seemed to me that I was being rather too melodramatic, but I saw Elsa's beautiful green eyes fill with pity, and I ended up, like in a canticle:

"Help me, Elsa! It's for your own sake, for my father, and for the love between you."

I added to myself: 'and for Johnny Chinaman!'

"But what can I do?" asked Elsa. "It seems an impossible situation."

"If you think it's impossible, then give up the idea," I said sadly.

"What a bitch!" murmured Elsa.

"You've hit the nail on the head," I said, turning away to hide my expression.

Elsa visibly brightened up. She had been jilted, and now she was going to show that adventuress just what she, Elsa Mackenbourg, could do. And my father loved her, as she had always known he did. Even while she had been with Juan she hadn't been able to put Raymond out of her mind. She'd never as much as mentioned the word marriage to him, and she had never bored him either, and she'd never tried ... but by now I could endure her no longer:

"Elsa," I said, "go and ask Cyril from me if you could possibly stay with his mother; say you are in need of hospitality. Tomorrow morning I'll come and see him, and we'll all three discuss the situation."

On the doorstep I added for a joke: "You are fighting for your own future, Elsa!"

She gravely acquiesced as if there were not fifteen or twenty 'futures' in store for her, in the shape of men who would keep her. I watched her walking away in the sunshine with her mincing steps. I thought it would not be a week before my father wanted her back.

It was half past three; I imagined my father asleep in Anne's arms. I began to formulate plans one after another without pausing to think of myself. I walked up and down in my room between the door and the window, looking out from time to time at the calm sea flattening out along the beach. I calculated risks, estimated possibilities, and gradually I broke down every objection. I felt dangerously clever, and the wave of self-disgust which had swept over me from the moment I had begun to talk to Elsa now gave place to a feeling of pride in my own capabilities.

I need hardly say that all this collapsed when we went down to bathe. As soon as I saw Anne, I was overcome by remorse and did my utmost to atone for my past behaviour. I carried her bag, I rushed forward with her wrap when she came out of the water. I smothered her with attention and said the nicest things. This sudden change after my silence of the past few days was naturally a surprise to her. My father was delighted, Anne smiled at me. I thought of the words I had used in speaking of her to Elsa. How could I have said them, and how could I have put up with Elsa's nonsense? Tomorrow I would advise her to go away, saying that I had made a mistake. Everything would be as before, and, after all, why should I not pass my examination? The
baccalauriat
was sure to come in useful.

"Isn't that so?" I asked Anne. "Isn't it useful to get one's
baccalauriat?"

She gave me a look and burst out laughing. I followed suit, happy to see her so gay.

"You're really incredible!" she exclaimed.

I certainly was incredible, and she would have thought me even more so if she had known what I had been planning. I was dying to tell her all about it so that she should see how incredible I could be. I would have said: 'Can you imagine that I was going to make Elsa pretend to be in love with Cyril; she was to go and stay in his house, and we would have seen them passing by on his boat; strolling in the wood or along the road. Elsa looks lovely again; of course she hasn't your beauty, hers is the flamboyant kind that makes men turn round. My father wouldn't have stood it for long, he has never tolerated that a good-looking woman who had lived with him should console herself so soon, and, so to speak, before his very eyes, and above all with a man younger than himself. You understand, Anne, he would have wanted her again very quickly even though he loves you, just in order to bolster up his morale. He's very vain, or not very sure of himself, whichever way you like to put it. Elsa, under my direction, would have done all that was necessary. One day he would have been unfaithful to you and you couldn't bear that, could you? You're not one of those women who can share a man. So you would have gone away and that was exactly what I wanted. It's stupid, I know, but I was angry with you because of Bergson, of the heat; I somehow imagined ... I daren't even tell you, it was so ridiculous and unreal. On account of my
baccalauriat
I might have quarrelled with you for ever. But it's useful to have one's
baccalauriat
all the same, isn't it. ...'

"Isn't it?" I said aloud.

"What are you trying to say?" asked Anne. "That the
baccalauriat
is useful?"

"Yes," I replied.

After all it was better not to tell her anything, perhaps she would not have understood. There were things Anne did not understand at all. I ran into the sea after my father and wrestled with him. Once more I was able to enjoy frolicking in the water, for I had a good conscience. Tomorrow I would change my room; I would move up to the attic with my lesson books, but Bergson would not be among them; there was no need to overdo it! For two hours every day I would concentrate in solitude on my work. I imagined myself being successful in October, and thought of my father's astonished laugh, Anne's approbation, my degree. I would be intelligent, cultured, somewhat aloof, like Anne. Perhaps I had intellectual gifts? Hadn't I been capable of producing a logical plan, despicable perhaps, but logical? And what about Elsa? I had known how to appeal to her vanity and sentimentality, and within a few minutes had managed to persaude her, when her only object in coming had been to fetch a suitcase. I felt proud of myself: I had taken stock of Elsa, found her weak spot, and carefully aimed my words. For the first time in my life I had known the intense pleasure of getting under another person's skin. It was a new experience; in the past I had always been too impulsive, and whenever I had come close to someone, it had been inadvertently. Now, when I had caught a sudden glimpse of the marvellous mechanism of human reflexes, and the power of speech, I felt sorry that I had come to it through lies. The day might come when I would love someone passionately, and would have to search warily and gently to find the way to him.

3

Walking down to Cyril's villa the next morning, I felt far less sure of myself. To celebrate my recovery I had drunk too much at dinner the night before, and had been rather more than gay. I had told my father that I was going to take my degree, and would associate in future only with highbrows; that I wanted to become famous and a thorough bore. I said he must make use of every scandalous trick known to publicity in order to launch me. Roaring with laughter, we exchanged the most far-fetched ideas. Anne laughed too, but indulgently and not so loudly. When I became too extravagant, she stopped laughing altogether, but our hilarious fun had put my father into such a happy frame of mind that she said nothing. At last they went to bed, after tucking me up. I thanked them from the bottom of my heart, and asked what I would do without them. My father had no answer, but Anne seemed to have very decided views on the subject. Just as she leaned over to speak to me, I fell asleep. In the middle of the night I was sick, and my awakening the next morning was the worst I could ever remember. Still feeling very muzzy and in low spirits, I walked slowly towards the wood, but had no eyes for the sea, or for the skimming swallows.

Cyril was at the garden gate. He rushed towards me, took me in his arms, and held me tightly, talking incoherently:

"I was so worried, Darling . . . it's been so long ... I had no idea what you were doing, or if that woman was making you unhappy . . . I've never been so miserable. . . . Several times I spent all the afternoon near your creek ... I didn't know I loved you so much. ..."

"Neither did I."

To tell the truth, I was both surprised and touched, but I could hardly express my emotion because I felt so sick.

"How pale you are," he said. "From now on I'm going to look after you. I won't let you be ill-treated any more."

I recognised Elsa's exaggerations, and asked Cyril what his mother thought of her.

"I introduced her as a friend of yours, an orphan. As a matter of fact she's very nice, she told me all about that woman. How strange it seems that, with a face like hers, she should be such an adventuress."

"Elsa is too sensational," I said weakly. "But I was going to tell her ..."

"I too, have something to tell you," interrupted Cyril. "Cécile, I want to marry you."

I had a moment of panic. I absolutely had to do or say something. If only I had not felt so ill!

"I love you," said Cyril, speaking into my hair. "I'll give up studying law, an uncle has offered me an interesting job. I'm twenty-six. I'm not a boy any longer; I am quite serious. What do you say?"

I tried desperately to think of a non-commital, high-sounding phrase. I did not want to marry him. I loved him, but marriage was out of the question. I had no intention of marrying anyone. I was tired.

"It's quite impossible," I stammered. "My father ..."

"I'll manage your father," said Cyril.

"Anne wouldn't approve," I said. "She doesn't think I'm grown-up. If she says no, my father will say the same. I'm exhausted, Cyril. All this emotion wears me out. Here's Elsa!"

She was wearing a dressing-gown, and looked fresh and radiant. I felt dull and thin. They both seemed to be overflowing with health and high spirits, which depressed me even more. She treated me as though I had come out of prison, and fussed over me, while I sat down.

"How is Raymond?" she asked. "Does he know that I'm back?"

She had the happy smile of one who has forgiven and is full of hope. How could I tell her that my father had forgotten her, and explain to Cyril that I did not want to marry him? I shut my eyes. Cyril went to fetch some coffee. Elsa talked on and on. She obviously thought me a very subtle person in whom she could have confidence. The coffee was strong and aromatic, the sun was hot; I began to feel a little better.

"I've thought and thought, but without finding a solution," said Elsa.

"There isn't one," said Cyril. "It's an infatuation; there's nothing to be done."

"Oh yes there is!" I said. "You just haven't any imagination."

It flattered me to see how they hung on my words. They were ten years older than I, and they had no ideas. I said with a superior air:

"It is a question of psychology."