Climates (19 page)

I asked her to tell me about Odile. She had not forgiven her for making Philippe so unhappy.

“But, Mother,” I said, “he adored her; he
still
loves her. So in spite of everything, she must have given him something …”

“I believe he’ll be much happier with you,” she said, “and I’m grateful to you for that, my dear Isabelle.”

We had several conversations that might have seemed strange to anyone listening, because I was the one defending the mythical Odile that Philippe had created and passed on to me.

“You amaze me,” my mother-in-law said. “It’s true; you appear to have known her better than me, and you never even spoke to her … No, I can assure you, I feel only pity for the poor little thing, but we really must speak the truth, and I’m describing her as I saw her.”

Time flew by like a magic spell; I felt as if my life had started the day of my wedding. Before leaving for the factory in the morning, Philippe would choose books for me to read. Some of them, particularly the philosophers, remained inaccessible to me, but as soon as there was anything to do with love, I read it quite happily. In a small notebook I copied out the passages that Philippe had marked in pencil in the margin.

At about eleven o’clock I would go for a walk in the grounds. I very much liked accompanying my mother-in-law to the garden village she had had built in memory of her husband on the slopes overlooking the Loue valley. It was a cluster of clean, hygienic houses that Philippe thought ugly, but they were comfortable and practical. In the center of the village, Madame Marcenat had created quite a group of collective institutions that I found interesting. She showed me her school of domestic science, her infirmary, and her child-care center. I helped her, qualified by my wartime experience. I had anyway always had a taste for organization and order.

I even took great pleasure in going to the factory with Philippe. In a few days I learned what it was he did at work. I thought it rather fun; I liked sitting facing him in his office piled high with paper in every color, reading letters from newspaper administrators and editors, and listening to workmen’s descriptions of processes. Occasionally, when all the employees had left, I would sit on Philippe’s lap and he would kiss me with one eye anxiously on the door. I noticed with delight that he had an almost constant need for my body; the moment I was close to him, he would take me by the shoulders or the
waist. I learned that the most perfectly real aspect of him was the lover, and I too discovered a delicious sensuality I had ignored all those years but that now colored my whole life.

I liked being in the slightly wild region of Limousin, a place I felt was suffused with Philippe. The only place I avoided was that observatory in the grounds where I knew he had gone with Denise Aubry and later Odile. I started feeling a peculiar posthumous jealousy. Sometimes I wanted to know. I interrogated Philippe about Odile with almost cruel bitterness. But these flashes of ill temper were fleeting. My only fear was to discover that Philippe was not happy in quite the same way I was. He loved me, I could not doubt that, but he did not have my grateful sense of wonderment about this new life.

“Philippe, I want to scream with happiness!” I said from time to time.

“You’re so young, oh my God!” he replied.

At the beginning
of November we went back to Paris. I had told Philippe that I would like to keep the apartment I had been using in my parents’ house.

“I can see nothing but advantages. I don’t pay any rent, the apartment’s furnished, it’s big enough for the two of us, and my parents can’t get in the way because they’re only in Paris for a few weeks a year. If at some later date they return to France and move back into rue Ampère, then it would be time to look for somewhere else.”

Philippe refused.

“You
are
odd sometimes, Isabelle,” he said. “I couldn’t live in that house. It’s ugly and badly decorated, and the walls and ceilings have those monstrous plaster moldings. Your parents would never let you change it. No, I can tell you, it would be a big mistake … I wouldn’t be happy at home.”

“Even with me, Philippe? … Don’t you think that what’s important in life is people, not furnishings?”

“Yes, all right, we can always say things like that and they sound right and true … But we’ll be lost if you’re still going in for superficial sentimentality … When you ask, ‘Even with me,’ I have to reply, ‘Of course not, my darling.’ Only it’s not true: I just know I wouldn’t be happy in that house.”

I gave in but then wanted to move the furniture, which was mine and had been given to me by my parents, into the new apartment Philippe had found.

“My poor Isabelle,” Philippe said. “Which pieces of your furniture are worth keeping? Perhaps a few white bathroom chairs, a kitchen table, if you like, the odd linen press. All the rest is awful.”

I was heartbroken. I knew perfectly well that none of the furniture was beautiful, but it had always been there and I did not find it offensive. Quite
the opposite, I felt comfortable surrounded by it and, more important, I thought it would be madness to go and buy any more. I knew that when she came back, my mother would criticize me severely, and deep down I would agree with her.

“What do you think we should do with the furniture, then, Philippe?”

“Well, we must sell it, my darling.”

“You know we’d get nothing for it. The minute you want to get rid of something, everyone says it isn’t worth anything.”

“Of course. But it
isn’t
worth anything. That mock Henri II dining room furniture … Isabelle, I’m surprised you can be attached to horrors like that when you didn’t even choose them yourself.”

“Yes, perhaps I was wrong, Philippe. Do whatever you like.”

This little scene was repeated so frequently, over the most insignificant things, that I actually ended up laughing about it, but in Philippe’s red notebook I find this:

Oh, Philippe, dear, silent Philippe, why did you not say something? I already knew so clearly what you were writing in secret. No, you would not have hurt me by telling me such things; quite the opposite, you might have cured me. Perhaps if we had said everything we might have been able to meet in the middle again. I knew I was taking a risk when I said, “Every minute is precious … Getting into
a car with you, trying to catch your eye during a meal, hearing your door slam …” You are right to say I had only one thing on my mind at the time: being alone with you. Looking at you, listening to you, that was enough for me.
I
had absolutely no desire to see new people. I was afraid of them, but if I had known that you had such a burning need, perhaps I would have behaved differently.

Philippe wanted
me to get to know his friends. I was surprised to find there were so many of them. I do not know why I had pictured—hoped for—a more secret, more rarefied life. Every Saturday he spent the end of the afternoon with Madame de Thianges, who seemed to be his great confidante, and whose sister, Madame Antoine Quesnay, he also liked very much. It was a pleasant salon, but it frightened me a little. In spite of myself, I clung to Philippe. I could see he was slightly irritated to find I was always in the same group as him, but I could not help following him.

All the women greeted me very warmly, but I felt no urge to form friendships with them. They had a composure and confidence that I found astonishing and embarrassing. I was particularly surprised to see how intimate they were with Philippe. There was a camaraderie between them and him the likes of which I had never seen in my family. Philippe went out with Françoise Quesnay when she was alone in Paris, or Yvonne Prévost, the naval officer’s wife, or a young woman called Thérèse de Saint-Cast who wrote poetry and whom I did not care for. These outings seemed utterly innocent. Philippe and his women friends went to art exhibitions, sometimes a film in the evening or to a concert on Sunday afternoons. In the early days he always invited me to join them, and a few times I did. It was not enjoyable for me.

On these occasions Philippe would behave with an animated gaiety he had once had with me. The spectacle of his pleasure hurt me. It particularly pained me to see him taking an interest in such a variety of women. I feel I would have coped better with a single irresistible passion. It would probably have been appalling and much more dangerous for
my marriage, but at least the harm would have had the same stature as my love. What was hurtful was seeing my hero attaching such importance to creatures who may well have been likable but whom I found unremarkable. One day I dared tell him so: “Philippe, darling, I want to understand you. What pleasure do you get from seeing little Yvonne Prévost? She isn’t your mistress, you’ve told me that and I believe you, but what does she mean to you, then? Do you find her intelligent? I can’t think of anyone more boring.”

“Yvonne? Oh, no! She’s not boring. You have to get her to talk about things she knows about. She’s the daughter and the wife of naval men; she knows a lot about boats and the sea. Last spring I spent a few days in the south with her and her husband. We swam and sailed; it was great fun … and she’s so jolly, she has a nice figure, she’s pleasant to look at. What more do you want?”

“For you? Well, much more … You must understand, darling, I think you’re worthy of the most remarkable women, and I see you growing fond of little creatures who are pretty but ordinary.”

“You’re so harsh and unfair! Take Hélène and Françoise, for example: they’re both remarkable
women. And anyway they’re very old friends of mine. Before the war, when I was very ill, Hélène was commendable. She came and looked after me, she may have saved me … You are strange, Isabelle! What is it you want? For me to break off ties with the entire human race and stay alone with you? But I’d be bored after a couple of days … and so would you.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t be!
I’d
be quite happy to shut myself away in a prison with you for the rest of my days. Only you wouldn’t bear it.”

“But nor would you, my poor Isabelle. You want that because you haven’t got it. If I made you live that life, you would loathe it.”

“Try, darling, you’ll see. Listen, it’s nearly Christmas. Let’s go away together, alone, it would make me so happy. You know I didn’t have a honeymoon.”

“Willingly, of course. Where would you like to go?”

“Oh, it couldn’t matter less to me, anywhere, so long as I’m with you.”

It was agreed that we would go and spend a few days in the mountains, and I immediately wrote to a hotel in Saint-Moritz to reserve the rooms.

Just the thought of this trip was enough to make me very happy. But Philippe was still gloomy. He wrote: