Climates (21 page)

“Philippe, kiss me, we must consecrate this room … Oh, I would so love to have dinner here alone with you! And we’re going to have to dress up, meet up with those people and talk and talk …”

“But they’re very nice.”

“Very nice … on condition that we don’t have to see them.”

“You’re so harsh! Didn’t you think Solange was pleasant on the journey?”

“Come on, Philippe, you’re in love with her.”

“Never in my life. Why?”

“Because if you weren’t in love with her you wouldn’t put up with her for two minutes … I mean, what did she talk to you about? Can you
think of a single idea in everything she’s told you since this morning?”

“Well, yes … She has a strong feeling for nature. She spoke very prettily about the snow, the fir trees … wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, she occasionally comes out with an image, but I do too. All women would if they let their tongues run away with them … it’s our natural way of thinking … The big difference between Solange and me is that I have far too much respect for you to tell you everything that comes into my head.”

“My dear friend,” Philippe said with tender irony, “I’ve never doubted your aptitude to think pretty things, nor your modesty that keeps you from telling them to me.”

“Don’t make fun of me, darling … I’m being serious … If you weren’t slightly tempted by that young woman, you’d see that she’s incoherent, she jumps about from one subject to another … Isn’t that true? Be honest.”

“It’s not true at all,” said Philippe.

In my memory
that trip to the mountains is like an appalling form of torture. Before we left I knew I was naturally inept at all physical activities but had thought Philippe and I would tackle the difficulties together, as a couple of novices, and that it would be fun. On the very first morning I discovered that Solange Villier had a divine ability for these games. Philippe was less experienced than her but was supple and relaxed. From the first day I had to watch them skating together jubilantly while I dragged myself along awkwardly, supported by an instructor.

After dinner, Philippe and Solange pulled their chairs closer together in the hotel foyer and chatted all
evening, while I had to listen to Jacques Villier’s financial theories. It was the days of the sixty-franc pound, and I remember him saying, “You know, that’s a very long way from the true value of the pound: you should tell your husband to put at least some of his fortune in foreign currency because, you see …”

Sometimes he also talked to me about his mistresses, even naming them. “You must have heard that I’m with Jenny Sorbier, the actress? That’s no longer the case … No … I loved her very much, but it’s over … I’m now with Madame Lhauterie … Do you know her? She’s a pretty woman, and very gentle … A man like me, who’s constantly battling in his business life, needs to find tenderness in women, a tenderness that’s very calm, almost an animal quality …”

Meanwhile I would be maneuvering to get closer to Philippe to try and instigate a general conversation. When I succeeded, there was immediately evidence, between Solange and myself, of the irremediable opposition derived from two different philosophies of life. Solange’s great theme was “adventure.” That is what she called a search for unexpected and dangerous incidents. She claimed to abhor “comfort,” moral or physical.

“I’m glad I’m a woman,” she told me one evening, “because a woman has many more ‘possibilities’ before her than a man.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “A man has his career. He can
do
something.”

“A man has
one
career,” Solange said, “while a woman can live the lives of all the men she loves. An officer brings her war, a sailor the ocean, a diplomat intrigue, a writer the pleasures of creation … She can have all the emotion of ten lives without the day-to-day disadvantages of living them.”

“What an awful thought!” I cried. “That presupposes she loves ten different men.”

“And that all ten of them are intelligent, which is highly unrealistic,” Villier interjected, putting a great deal of emphasis on the word
highly
.

“Mind you,” said Philippe, “you could say the same of men. They too are brought different lives by the successive women they love.”

“Yes, perhaps,” said Solange, “but women are so much less individual; they have nothing to bring.”

Something she said one day particularly struck me because of the tone in which she delivered it. She had been talking about the pleasure to be gained
from escaping civilized life, and I had said, “But why escape, if you’re happy?”

“Because happiness never stands still,” Solange said. “Happiness is the respite between periods of worry.”

“Quite right,” said Villier, and this sentiment from him surprised me.

So, in order to please Solange, Philippe picked up on the theme of escape. “Oh yes!” he said. “… To escape … that would be wonderful.”

“You?” Solange asked. “You’re the last person who wants to escape.”

Her words hurt me on his behalf.

Solange rather liked stirring people’s self-esteem with a crack of the whip like that. As soon as Philippe behaved as if he loved me or said a kind word to me, she would treat him sarcastically. But most of the time she and Philippe seemed like a courting couple. Every morning Solange came down in a new brightly colored sweater, and every time Philippe would murmur, “Goodness, you have such taste!” Toward the end of our stay, he had become very intimate with her. What really hurt me was the familiar, tender way they talked together, and the way he helped her into her coat, it looked like a caress.
Besides, she knew he liked her, and she played on her power. She was terribly catlike. I can think of no other way to describe it. When she came down in evening dress, I thought I could see electric currents running the length of her naked back.

As we arrived back in our room, I could not help asking, though without bitterness, “So, Philippe, do you love her?”

“Who, my darling?”

“Solange, of course.”

“Oh! God no!”

“And yet you really look as if you do.”

“Me?” Philippe asked, secretly delighted. “But in what way?”

I explained at length what I felt I had seen, and he listened accommodatingly. I had noticed that as soon as it was to do with Solange, Philippe took an interest in what I had to say.

“They do have a peculiar relationship, though,” I said the day before we left. “He told me he spends six months of the year in Morocco, and his wife goes there only once every two years, and just for three months. So she stays in Paris alone for whole seasons. If you had to live in Indochina … or the
Kamchatka Peninsula, I know
I’d
follow you anywhere … like a little dog … mind you, you’d find me terribly annoying, wouldn’t you, Philippe? When it comes down to it, she’s the one who’s right.”

“In other words she’s found the best way to ensure he doesn’t tire of her.”

“A lesson for Isabelle?”

“You’re so sensitive! No, not a lesson for anyone; a statement of fact: Villier adores his wife …”

“She’s the one telling you that, Philippe.”

“Well, he certainly admires her.”

“And doesn’t keep an eye on her.”

“Why would you want him to keep an eye on her?” Philippe asked rather irritably. “I’ve never heard anyone say she behaved badly.”

“Oh, Philippe! I haven’t known her three weeks and I’ve already heard three of her former lovers mentioned.”

“People say that about all women,” Philippe muttered with a shrug.

I felt I had stooped to pettiness, baseness almost, something entirely new for me. Then, because I was not unkind in my heart of hearts, I pulled myself together, made a great effort to be friendly toward
Solange, and made a point of going for a walk with Villier to leave her alone with Philippe at the skating rink. I passionately longed for that trip to be over and was scrupulous not to say a word that would bring it to an end.

When we returned
to Paris, Philippe found that his director was unwell, and he had to work more than usual. He often could not come home for lunch. I wondered whether he was seeing Solange Villier but did not dare put the question to him. When we went to the Thianges’ on Saturdays, if Solange was there, Philippe made straight for her, took her off into a corner, and did not leave her side all evening. It could have been a favorable sign. If he were seeing her freely during the week, perhaps he would have feigned avoiding her on Saturday. I could not help myself talking to the other women about her; I never said anything detrimental, but I
listened. She was said to be a dreadful coquette. One evening when I was sitting next to Maurice de Thianges, he saw Jacques Villier arrive and said under his breath, “Goodness! Hasn’t he left yet? I’d have thought his wife would have sent him back to his Atlas mountains by now!” Almost everyone who mentioned Villier added the words, “Poor fellow!”

Hélène de Thianges was a friend of Solange’s and we spoke about her at length. She painted a portrait of her that was at once rather lovely and rather worrying.

“First and foremost,” she told me, “Solange is a beautiful creature with very strong instincts. She loved Villier passionately at a time when he was very poor, and it was because he was handsome. It was brave. She was the daughter of a certain Comte de Vaulges, a Picardy family, very highborn; she was ravishing; she could have made an excellent marriage. She decided instead to go off to Morocco with Villier, and in the early days they led a colonial life there, a tough life. When Villier was ill for a time, Solange had to keep the books and pay the workmen herself. It’s worth pointing out that she has the tremendous pride of the Vaulges: that sort
of life must have grated on her, and yet she played the game. In that sense, she really does have the qualities of an honest man. Only she has two great failings or, if you like, two great weaknesses: she’s terribly sensual and has a need to triumph wherever she goes. For example, she tells people (not men, she says this to women) that whenever she’s wanted a man, she’s always had him, and it’s true, and with quite different types of men.”

“Has she had a great many lovers, then?” I asked.

“You know how difficult it is to be sure with these things. People know when a man and woman see a great deal of each other. But are they lovers? Who knows? … When I say ‘she had them,’ what I really mean is she took hold over their minds and they became dependent on her, she felt she could get them to do what she wanted, do you understand?”

“Do you think her intelligent?”

“Very intelligent for a woman … Yes … Well, there’s nothing she doesn’t know about. Of course, she depends on the man she loves for her topics of interest. In the days when she adored her husband,
she was brilliant on colonial and economic issues; when it was Raymond Berger, she was interested in things to do with art. She has a great deal of taste. Her house in Morocco is a marvel, and the one in Fontainebleau is very unusual … She’s driven more by love than intellect. But, all the same, she has tremendous judgment when she has a clear head.”

“What would you say it is that’s so attractive about her, Hélène?”

“It’s mostly that she’s so feminine.”

“What do you call ‘feminine’?”

“Well, a combination of qualities and faults: tenderness, prodigious devotion to the man she loves … for a time, but also a lack of scruples … When Solange wants a new conquest, she’ll overlook everyone else, even her best friend. It’s not nastiness, it’s instinctive.”

“Well,
I
would call it nastiness. You could just as easily say a tiger isn’t nasty when it eats a man, because it’s instinctive.”

“Exactly,” said Hélène. “A tiger isn’t nasty, or at least not consciously so … What you’ve just said is actually very accurate: Solange is a tigress.”

“But she seems so gentle.”

“Do you think? Oh, no! There are flashes of steel; that’s one element of her beauty.”

Other women were less indulgent. Old Madame de Thianges, Hélène’s mother-in-law, said, “No, I don’t like your little friend Madame Villier … She made a nephew of mine very unhappy, he was a charming boy and he literally went off and had himself killed in the war, not
for
her, if you will, but
because
of her … he’d been so terribly hurt. He had a position in Paris and it was absolutely right for him … She won his heart, drove him mad, then abandoned him for someone else … Poor Armand didn’t want to stay and he died, so pointlessly, in a flying accident … I won’t have her in my house anymore.”

I did not want to relate this malicious gossip to Philippe, and yet I always ended up reporting it back to him.

He remained calm, “Yes, that could be true,” he said. “She may have had lovers. She has a right to, it’s none of our business.”

Then, after a while, he became agitated: “In any event, I’d be most surprised if she were cheating on
him at the moment because her life is so transparent. You can call her at almost any time of day. She is at home a great deal and, if you want to see her, she’s always free. A woman who had a lover would be much more secretive.”

“But how do you know that, Philippe? Do you telephone her? And go to see her?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

A little later
I had proof both that they had long conversations together and that these conversations were innocent. One morning after Philippe had left, I received a letter to which I could not reply without his opinion. I asked to be put through to his office, and it so happened that I ended up on the same line as Solange Villier. I recognized her voice and Philippe’s. I should have hung up but did not have the strength to, and I listened to their cheerful exchange for some time. Philippe came across as amusing and witty, a side of him I never saw anymore and had almost forgotten. I myself preferred the serious, melancholy Philippe as Renée had once
described him to me and whom I met immediately after the war, but I also knew the very different Philippe who was currently saying pleasant, lighthearted things to Solange. What I heard was reassuring. They were telling each other what they had been doing and what they had read in the last couple of days; Philippe summarized a play we had been to see together the day before, and Solange asked, “Did Isabelle like it?”