Climates (24 page)

“Yes,” he said. “They were childhood friends. Then there was some trouble. Odile didn’t behave very well toward Misa, I mean Marie-Thérèse, but I call my wife Misa.”

“Yes, of course.”

Then, realizing this was a little strange, I changed the subject. He explained the relationship between France and Germany in the world of steel, coke, and coal. He showed how major industrial issues influenced foreign policy. He had far-reaching ideas and
I found them interesting. I asked him whether he knew Jacques Villier.

“The one from Morocco?” he asked. “Yes, he’s on one of my committees.”

“Do you think him an intelligent man?”

“I hardly know him; he’s successful …”

After dinner I maneuvered to ensure I was alone with his wife. I knew Philippe would not have allowed me to do this, and I had made an effort to forbid myself, but passionate curiosity drove me on and urged me toward her. She seemed surprised.

“During dinner,” I said, “your husband reminded me that you once knew mine very well.”

“Yes,” she said coldly. “Julien and I lived at Gandumas for several months.”

She threw me a strange look, both questioning and sad. She seemed to be thinking, “Do you know the truth? And is this apparent friendliness false?” The strange thing is I did not dislike her. Quite the opposite. I warmed to her. I was touched by her grace, her serious, melancholy expression. “She looks like a woman who has suffered a great deal,” I thought to myself. “Who knows? Perhaps she wanted Philippe to be happy? Perhaps, because she loved him, she wanted to warn him against a woman
who could only possibly make him unhappy? Is that such a great crime?”

I sat near her and tried to bring her out of her shell. After an hour I managed to get her to talk about Odile. She could not do so without a degree of discomfort, which showed how raw the feelings these memories stirred still were.

“I find it very difficult to talk of Odile,” she said. “I really loved her and really admired her. Later she hurt me and then she died. I don’t want to sully her memory, particularly for you.”

She glanced at me again with that strange look in her eyes, loaded with questions.

“Oh!” I said. “Please don’t think I’m hostile to her memory. In fact, I’ve heard so much about her I’ve ended up thinking of her as a part of who I am. She must have been so beautiful.”

“Yes,” she said sadly, “she was remarkably beautiful. And yet there was something in her eyes that I didn’t like. A bit of … no … I don’t want to say falsity … that would be too … it was—I don’t know how to explain it—it was something like triumphant cunning. Odile needed to dominate. She wanted to impose
her
will,
her
version of the truth. Her beauty had given her a lot of self-confidence
and she believed, almost in good faith, that if she said something then it became true. This worked with your husband, who adored her, but not with me, and she resented me for that.”

I listened to her and suffered. I was seeing Renée’s Odile, my mother-in-law’s Odile, almost Hélène de Thianges’s Solange, and not Philippe’s Odile, whom I liked.

“It’s so strange,” I said. “The person you’re describing is strong and willful. When Philippe talks about her, I get the impression she was frail, always having to lie down, rather childlike and good at heart.”

“Yes,” said Misa, “that was true too, but I think that was on the surface. The real Odile deep down had a sort of audacity like … well, I wouldn’t know how to put it … the audacity of a soldier, a partisan. For example, when she wanted to hide … But no, I don’t want to tell you about that, not you.”

“What you call audacity, Philippe called courage; he says that was one of her great qualities.”

“Yes, if you like. That’s true in a way, but she didn’t have the courage to set limits on herself. She had the courage to do the things she wanted. Which is still a fine thing but not so difficult.”

“Do you have children?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she replied, looking down. “Three: two boys and a girl.”

We talked for the whole evening and parted having sketched the beginnings of a friendship. For the first time, I completely disagreed with a verdict of Philippe’s. No, this woman was not spiteful. She had been in love and jealous. Who was I to blame her? At the last moment I did something impulsive that I later regretted. I said, “Goodbye. I’m glad we talked. I’m on my own at the moment, we could go out together.”

As soon as I left the salon, I realized this had been a mistake and Philippe would not approve. When he learned that I had become friendly with Misa, he would be fiercely critical and would probably be right.

She too must have derived some pleasure from our conversation. Perhaps she was curious about me and my marriage, because she did indeed telephone two days later and we agreed to meet for a walk in the Bois de Boulogne. What I wanted was to get her to talk about Odile, to find out about Odile’s tastes and habits and foibles from her, and I hoped that, with this knowledge, I might find more ways of pleasing
Philippe, whom I dared not ask about the past. I asked Misa countless questions: “How did she dress? Who was her milliner? People said she arranged flowers very well … but how can something like flower arranging be so personal? Please explain … Oh, it’s so strange, you tell me and everyone tells me she had so much charm, but some details you’re giving me are actually quite hard, almost unpleasant … So what exactly constituted her charm?”

But Misa proved quite incapable of giving me even an idea of this, and I could tell she herself had often pondered this question without ever finding an answer. All I found in what she told me about Odile was the love of nature that Solange had too, and a spontaneous vivacity that I lacked. “I’m too methodical,” I thought. “I’m too wary of my own enthusiasm. I think Odile’s childish side and her gaiety charmed Philippe as much as, if not more than, her moral qualities.” Then we started to talk more intimately about Philippe, and I told her how much I loved him.

“Yes,” she said, “but are you happy with him?”

“Very happy. Why?”

“No reason … I was just asking. Besides, I completely understand your loving him; he’s endearing.
But, at the same time, he has such a weakness for women like Odile that it must make him very difficult to have as a husband.”

“Why do you say ‘women’? Have you known others besides Odile in his life?”

“Oh no! But I can tell. You see he’s a man who’s more likely to be driven away by devotion and passionate love … Well, here I am saying that when I know nothing about it. I don’t know him very well, but that’s what I imagine. Back when I knew him, I found he had moments of futility and frivolity that let him down slightly. But, you know, once again, nothing I say means very much. I’ve seen so little of him in my life.”

I felt very uncomfortable; she seemed to be enjoying this. Was Philippe right? Was she spiteful? When I arrived back home I had a terrible evening. I found a tender letter from Philippe on the mantelpiece and hoped he would forgive me for doubting him. Yes, he was weak, but I liked that weakness too, and all I chose to see in Misa’s ambiguous pronouncements about him was her own disappointment in love. She asked me to go out with her several times and even invited me to dinner. I declined.

Philippe’s absence was coming
to an end, which made me tremendously happy. My health was now restored, and I was even feeling better than before the pregnancy. The waiting, the sense of a life forming inside me, lent me a mood of calm and serenity. I worked hard to ensure Philippe was pleasantly surprised when he came home. He must have seen very beautiful women and perfect houses in America. In spite of my condition, because of my condition, I took great care with my dresses. I changed a few details in the furnishings because Misa had given me some ideas about what Odile might have liked. The day
he was due back I filled the house with a ridiculous profusion of white flowers. That day I succeeded in overcoming what Philippe jokingly called my “sordid economizing.”

When Philippe stepped off the transatlantic train at Saint-Lazare station, I thought he looked younger and in high spirits, his face tanned from his days at sea. He was full of memories and stories. The first few days were very pleasant. Solange was still in Morocco; I had made a point of checking. Before going back to work, Philippe allowed himself a week’s vacation, which he gave entirely to me.

It was during this week that an incident clearly demonstrated my husband’s true nature. One morning I went out just before ten o’clock because I had a fitting. Philippe stayed in bed. He told me later that after I left, the telephone rang. He went to answer, and a man’s voice he did not recognize said, “Madame Marcenat?”

“No,” he said. “This is Monsieur Marcenat. Who’s calling?”

A sharp click informed him that the man had hung up.

He was surprised and called the switchboard operator to find out who had been on the line. This
required lengthy negotiations and he was eventually told, “a booth at the stock exchange,” which must have been a mistake and explained nothing.

“Who could have telephoned you from the stock exchange?” he asked when I came home.

“From the stock exchange?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes, the stock exchange. They asked for you, I said it was me, and they hung up.”

“How odd! Are you sure?”

“That question’s beneath you, Isabelle. Yes, I’m sure. Anyway, the voice was perfectly clear.”

“A man’s voice or a woman’s?”

“A man’s of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

We had never talked quite like that; in spite of myself I looked embarrassed. Even though he had said “a man’s voice,” I was convinced it was Misa who had telephoned (she often called me), but I dared not name her. I was angry with Philippe, he almost seemed to be accusing a wife who adored him, and yet I was slightly flattered. So could he be jealous of me, then? I felt a woman I did not know blossoming in me with astonishing speed, an Isabelle who could be a little sarcastic, a little coquettish, a little sympathetic. Dear Philippe! If he only
knew how utterly my life revolved around him and for him, he could have rested easy, too easy. After lunch he asked with a nonchalance that reminded me of some of my own questions, “What are you doing this afternoon?”

“Me, nothing, a bit of shopping. Then I’m going to tea with Madame Brémont at five o’clock.”

“Would it bother you if I went with you, given I’m on vacation?”

“Oh, no, I’d love it. I’m not used to you being so kind to me. I’ll meet you there at six o’clock.”

“What? You said five o’clock.”

“Well, it’s like all these teas. The invitation says five o’clock but no one gets there before six.”

“Couldn’t I come with you to do your shopping?”

“Of course … I thought you wanted to go to the office to look at your mail?”

“There’s no rush. I’ll go tomorrow.”

“You’re a wonderful husband when you come home from abroad, Philippe.”

So he went out with me and we spent the afternoon in a completely new mood of constraint. There is a note about this in Philippe’s book; it reveals feelings that, at the time, I had not realized were so intense.

I have never had a better measure of how absurd jealousy is than reading that note, because no
suspicion was ever more foolish. Doctor Gaulin was a likable, intelligent man who was very fashionable in society circles that year and I enjoyed listening to him, but the thought that I could take an interest in him as a man had never occurred to me. Since my marriage to Philippe, I had become incapable of even “seeing” another man; I viewed them all as large objects that might be to Philippe’s advantage or disadvantage. I could never have conceived of myself loving them. And yet I find this on a scrap of paper pinned to the page I have just cited: