Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (52 page)

And it was mainly joy I felt. As I was revising for the examination in my room one warm afternoon, I recalled very similar hours when I had been preparing for my school-leaving certificate: this was the same peace I had known then, the same fervour: but how much richer I had become since then – three long years ago! I sent a note to Pradelle fixing the time of a meeting, and ended with the words: ‘Be happy!' Two years ago, he reminded me, I had asked him to make sure that I was always on my guard against happiness; I was touched by his vigilance. But the word had another meaning now: happiness was no longer abdication from responsibilities or a sluggish torpor, for it no longer depended on Jacques. I made a decision. Next year, even if I was ploughed, I would leave home; and if I passed, I wouldn't take a teaching post, but would stay in Paris: in either case, I would take a place of my own and earn my living by giving private lessons. My grandmother had been letting rooms since her husband's death. I would rent a room from her; this would give me complete independence without alarming my parents. They were in agreement. I would earn my own living, and be free to come and go, to have people in and to write: life was really beginning to open out.

*

I made my sister a part of this future. At nightfall, on the banks of the Seine, we would talk and talk about our triumphant tomorrows: my books, her pictures, our travels, the world. . . . In the flowing river waters trembled reflected columns and shadows went gliding over the inverted bridges; we would pull down our crêpe veils in order to make the sight even more fantastic. We often brought Jacques into our plans; we would talk about him, not as the great love of my life, but as the brilliant elder cousin who had been the hero of our youth.

‘
I
shan't be here next year,' said Lisa, who was with great difficulty struggling through her final exams; she had applied for a post in Saigon. Pradelle had probably guessed her secret: he was keeping out of her way. ‘Oh! how unhappy I am!' she would
murmur, with a wry smile. We would meet at the Nationale and at the Sorbonne, and drink lemonade in the Luxembourg Gardens. Or we would eat mandarines in the dusk of her room fragrant with pink and white hawthorn blossom. One day, as we were talking to Clairaut in the courtyard of the Sorbonne, he asked us in that intense tone of voice he affected: ‘What do you like best in yourselves?' Lying like mad, I declared: ‘Someone else.' Lisa answered: ‘
I
like a door left open.' On another occasion she had told me: ‘The really good thing about you, Simone, is that you never refuse anything, you leave all your doors wide open. Now
I'm
always out, and I take everything with me. Whatever possessed me to knock on your door, and enter? Or was it you who came to me, and had the good sense to wait for me while I was out? Of course, when the tenant is away, one may think that he'll be back in a moment; but people don't think that way . . . not about me.' She sometimes looked almost pretty, in the twilight, in her white lawn négligé; but her face was withering with despair and weariness.

Pradelle never uttered her name; on the other hand, he often talked about Zaza: ‘Why don't you bring your friend!' he urged when he invited me to a discussion between Garric and Guéhenno. She dined at our house, and then went with me to the rue Dufour. Maxence was chairman of the meeting, at which Jean Daniélou, Clairaut, and other high-minded thinkers from the Normale were present. I recalled Garric's lecture of three years ago, when he had seemed to me like a demi-god and Jacques had shaken hands with all kinds of inaccessible people: today, I was shaking hands with all and sundry. I still enjoyed listening to Garric's warm, eager voice: unfortunately, I thought he talked a lot of nonsense; how remote I now felt from all these ‘Holy Willies', with whom the whole of my past was bound up! When Guéhenno got up to speak, a lot of
Action Française
louts started kicking up a row, and nothing would make them shut up. Garric and Guéhenno went to have a drink in a neighbouring bar, and the authence dispersed. Despite the rain, Pradelle, Zaza, and I walked back along the boulevard Saint-Germain and the Champs-Élysées. My two friends were much more light-hearted than usual and joined forces in teasing me affectionately. Zaza called me ‘the amoral woman' – Iris Storm's nickname in
The Green Hat.
Pradelle improved the shining hour by telling me: ‘You have the mind of a hermit.' Their complicity amused me.

Although the meeting had been a pitiable flop, Zaza thanked me a few days later for a happy evening; in a voice touched with emotion she told me that she had suddenly understood, once and for all, that she could never accept that atrophy of the heart and mind which her environment imposed upon her. Pradelle and I took our orals, and she came to listen; we celebrated our success by having tea at the Yvelines. I organized what Herbaud called ‘the great Bois de Boulogne do'. One fine, warm evening, Zaza, Lisa, my sister, Gégé, Pradelle, Clairaut, Zaza's second-eldest brother, and I all went boating on the lake. There were races; we laughed and sang songs. Zaza was wearing a dress of pink silk, a little straw hat, and her dark eyes were sparkling – never had I seen her looking so pretty; in Pradelle I found again all the youth and gaiety which had rejoiced my heart at the beginning of our friendship. Together with them both in a rowing-boat, I was again struck by their conspiratorial air, and felt rather surprised that their affection for me on that particular evening should be so demonstrative: they kept giving
me
the fond looks and smiles which they didn't yet dare to give one another. The next day, I went with Zaza in the car to do some shopping, and she talked to me about Pradelle in ecstatic terms. A few moments later, she told me that the thought of getting married upset her more and more; she would not be forced to marry someone mediocre, but she didn't think she was worthy to be loved by a really fine man. Once again I failed to put my finger on the exact cause of her melancholy. To tell the truth, despite my affection for her, I was only giving her half my attention. The competitive examination was to take place the day after next. I had said good-bye to Herbaud; for how long? I would catch glimpses of him during the exams; then he was expecting to leave Paris, and on his return was going to prepare for his oral with Sartre and Nizan. Our daily meetings at the Nationale were over: how I would miss them! Nevertheless I was in good spirits the next day when ‘the Bois de Boulogne gang' met for a picnic in the forest of Fontainebleau. Pradelle and Zaza were radiant with happiness. Only Clairaut seemed to be rather cast down; he was paying marked attention to my sister but without making the least impression upon her. He went about it in the queerest manner; he invited my sister and me to have a drink in a baker's back-shop, and without consulting us ordered, in a masterful voice: ‘Three teas!' ‘No, I'll have a lemonade,' said Poupette. ‘Tea is more
refreshing,' he stated. ‘I prefer lemonade.' ‘Oh, very well, then, three lemonades!' he called out angrily. ‘But you have tea if you want it!' ‘I have no wish to make myself conspicuous,' he retorted, in a huff. He tirelessly collected injustices which filled him with rage and resentment. From time to time he would send my sister an express letter in which he would beg her forgiveness for having been in a bad mood. He would promise to be merry and bright in the future; he would cultivate a gay spontaneity, and so on: but at our next meeting his forced exuberance would give us the shudders and again his face would be contorted with hatred.

‘Good luck, Beaver,' Herbaud said in his most affectionate voice when we took our places in the library at the Sorbonne. I put a thermos flask full of coffee and a box of biscuits within reach: Monsieur Lalande's voice announced the subject: ‘Liberty and Contingency': faces stared at the ceiling, and pens started to scratch; I covered page after page and had the feeling that I hadn't done too badly. At two o'clock in the afternoon Zaza and Pradelle came to fetch me; after drinking a lemonade in the Café de Flore, which was then only a small local bar, we walked for a long time in the Luxembourg Gardens which were flagged with giant mauve and yellow irises. I had a sharp but friendly discussion with Pradelle: we had always thought differently on certain points. He held that it was a very short step from happiness to sadness, from faith to unbelief, from any feeling I cared to mention and its absence. I argued the contrary with fanatical intensity. Although Herbaud reproached me for associating with any Tom, Dick, and Harry, I placed people in two categories: the few for whom I felt a lively affection, and the common herd, for whom I had a disdainful indifference. But Pradelle wanted everybody to be in the same boat. During the last two years we had become more set in our attitudes. The day before, he had written me a letter in which he brought me to book: ‘We are separated by so many things, many more, probably, than you or I are aware of . . . I cannot bear to think that your attitude towards people should be so narrowly exclusive. How can one live without gathering all mankind into the same wide net of love? But you are so intolerant when it's a question of doing just that.' He ended on a cordial note: ‘Despite your fanaticism, which upsets me as much as if it were a lack of consideration for others and which is so contrary to my own way of thinking, I have the greatest and most inexplicable affection for
you.' Once more that afternoon he gave me a sermon on loving my fellow-men; Zaza gave him cautious support, because she believed in the New Testament precept: ‘Judge not . . .' In my opinion, one cannot love without hating: I loved Zaza, but I hated her mother. Pradelle and I took leave of one another without either of us having budged an inch. I stayed with Zaza until dinner time: for the first time, she told me, she had not felt like an intruder with Pradelle and me, and she was deeply grateful. ‘I don't think there can be any man as fine as Pradelle,' she added enthusiastically.

They were waiting for me in the courtyard of the Sorbonne, deep in an animated conversation, when I came out of my final examination a couple of days later. What a relief it was to have it all over and done with! That evening my father took me to the Lune Rousse, and we had fried eggs at Lipp's. The next day I slept till noon. After lunch, I went to see Zaza in the rue de Berri. She was wearing a new dress in blue voile with a black and white all-over pattern and a huge straw sun-bonnet: how she had blossomed out since the beginning of the summer! As we sauntered down the Champs-Élysées, she expressed her astonishment at this selfrenewal. Two years ago, when she had broken with André, she had thought that from then on her life would be a living death; and here she was now as calm and happy as she had been in the best years of her childhood; she had begun to take an interest in books, ideas, and her own thoughts again. Moreover, she was facing the future with a self-confidence which she found hard to explain.

The same day, as we were leaving the Cinéma des Agriculteurs round about midnight, Pradelle told me how highly he thought of my friend; she never laid down the law about things on which she was an authority or about which she felt very deeply, and that was why she was so often silent: but when she
did
speak, every word was charged with meaning. He also admired the way in which she kept a firm hand on her feelings in the very difficult circumstances in which she found herself. He asked me to invite her to come for another walk with us, and I went home highly delighted. I recalled how attentively Pradelle had listened, that winter, whenever I had had news of Zaza, and how she had often spoken affectionately of him in her letters. They were made for one another; they loved one another. One of my dearest dreams was about to be realized: Zaza's life would be a happy one!

The next morning, my mother told me that while I had been to the cinema Herbaud had called at the house: I was sorry to have missed him, all the more so because as we had left the examination room he had felt he hadn't done himself justice, and had not arranged when we were to meet again. Sadly disappointed, I went out about noon to buy a cream tart and met him at the bottom of the stairs; he invited me to lunch. I got my shopping done in double-quick time. For old time's sake, we went to the Fleur-de-Lys. He had been enchanted by the welcome my parents had given him; my father had propounded anti-militarist sentiments, and Herbaud had heartily agreed with him. He laughed long and loud when I told him how mistaken he had been. He was leaving the next day to join his wife at Bagnoles-de-I'Ome; on his return, in ten days' time, he would be preparing for his oral with Sartre and Nizan who had issued a cordial invitation to me to join their group. Sartre wanted to make my acquaintance; he had suggested meeting me one evening in the near future. But Herbaud asked me not to go: Sartre would take advantage of his absence in order to monopolize the conversation. ‘I don't want the bloom knocked off my most cherished opinions,' Herbaud told me in a conspiratorial manner. We decided that my sister would go to meet Sartre at the time and place that had been arranged; she was to tell him that I had had to leave suddenly for the country and that she had come to take my place.

So I would soon be seeing Herbaud again, and I was accepted by his group: I was over the moon. I made half-hearted attempts to revise for the oral. I did some light and amusing reading, I strolled around Paris, I enjoyed myself. During the evening Poupette was spending with Sartre, I went over in my mind the year which was now coming to a close, and the whole of my youth; I was moved by thoughts of the future, and wrote in my journal: ‘Curious certainty that this reserve of riches that I feel within me will make its mark, that I shall utter words that will be listened to, that this life of mine will be a well-spring from which others will drink: the certainty of a vocation. . . .' I felt as intensely elated as in the days when I had been borne aloft on mystical flights of fancy; but now I had my feet still on the ground. My kingdom was definitely of this world. When my sister returned, she said I had done well to stay at home. Sartre had courteously accepted our little white lie; he had taken her to the cinema and had been very kind; but
conversation had dried up. ‘Everything Herbaud says about Sartre is pure invention,' my sister told me; she knew Herbaud fairly well, and found him amusing.