Climates (25 page)

I remember that incident. I did actually find it quite amusing and, as I said earlier, it made me rather happy. Philippe’s mind had been closed to me such a long time, it was an elusive thing that I tried in vain to pin down and open up, but all of a
sudden I felt I had a hold on it. It was very tempting and, if I have a right to any indulgence in my life, I feel it should be for that period, because it seemed to me that—had I wanted to play a particular game, a mysterious, coquettish game—I could have secured my husband’s affections with a quite new assurance. There was no question about it. I allowed myself two or three harmless experiments. Yes, that was how Philippe was made. He was tortured and captivated by doubt. But I also knew that doubt meant constant suffering for him, it was an obsession. I knew because I had read the story of his earlier life, and I saw proof of it every day. Anxious about what I said and did, he fell to wistful meditation, slept badly, and stopped taking an interest in his work. How could he succumb to such wild imaginings? I was expecting a child in four months’ time and all I could think of was this child and him. He could not see that.

I did not want to play that hand even though I could have won it. That is the only small credit I would ask, it is the only important sacrifice I made, but I did make it. And I would like to think that, because
of it, you forgave me, Philippe, for my sad, grim jealousy and the pettiness that sometimes—quite rightly—irritated you. I too could have tied you to me, stripped you of your strength, freedom, and happiness; I too could have filled you with the painful anxiety that you feared, that you sought. I did not want to. I wanted to love you without trickery, to fight with an open heart. I handed myself over to you with no defenses, while you yourself were handing me the weapons. I think I did the right thing. I think love should be a greater thing than the cruel war between lovers. It should be possible to admit loving someone and yet also succeed in being loved. That was your weakness, my darling, this need to be spared boredom by the indiscretions of the women you loved. That was not how I saw love. I felt capable of total devotion, slavery, even. There was nothing in the world for me but you. Some catastrophe could have annihilated every single man we knew, but if you were spared it would not have felt calamitous to me. You were my world. Perhaps it was unwise to let you see and know that. With you, my love, I did not want to observe sensible policies. I was incapable of pretence or caution. I loved you.

In just a few days my clear-cut behavior and placid way of life restored Philippe’s peace of mind. I stopped seeing Gaulin (which, incidentally, I regretted because he was a nice man) and I almost completely shut myself up at home.

The last months of my pregnancy were quite difficult. I felt so altered and did not want to go out with Philippe because I was afraid he would not like the way I looked. In the last weeks he kept me company very devotedly, spending time with me every day and reading to me. Our relationship was never closer to what I had always dreamed. We had both returned to some of the great novels. In my youth I had read Balzac and Tolstoy but had not fully understood them. Now everything seeemed loaded with meaning. The character of Dolly at the beginning of
Anna Karenina
was me; Anna herself was partly Odile, partly Solange. When Philippe read, I could tell he was making the same comparisons. Sometimes a sentence so closely resembled our relationship or me that Philippe looked up at me from his book with a smile he could not contain. I smiled too.

I would have been very happy if Philippe had not still seemed sad. He did not complain of any trouble and was in good health, but he often sighed, sat in his chair beside my bed, wearily stretched his long arms and ran a hand over his eyes.

“Are you tired, darling?” I asked.

“Yes, a little. I think I need a change of air. Being in that office all day …”

“Of course, particularly as you then stay with me all evening. Go out, darling … Have some fun … Why have you stopped going to the theater and concerts?”

“You know I hate going out on my own.”

“Won’t Solange be back soon? She was only meant to be away two months. Have you heard from her?”

“Yes, she’s written to me,” said Philippe. “She’s stayed on in Morocco. She didn’t want to leave her husband on his own.”

“What? But she leaves him on his own every year … Why this sudden concern? How odd.”

“How would I know?” Philippe asked irritably. “That’s what she wrote, that’s all I can tell you.”

Solange eventually came back
a few weeks before my baby was due. The abrupt transformation in Philippe made my heart bleed. One evening he suddenly seemed young and cheerful. He brought me flowers and some of the plump pink prawns I liked. He walked briskly around my bed with his hands in his pockets and told me amusing stories about his office and the editors he had seen during the course of the day.

“What’s got into him?” I wondered. “What’s given him that glow?”

He ate his dinner beside my bed and,
nonchalantly, without looking at him, I asked, “Still no news of Solange?”

“I beg your pardon?” Philippe asked with rather exaggerated casualness. “Didn’t I tell you she telephoned this morning? She’s been back in Paris since yesterday.”

“I’m happy for you, Philippe. You’ll have a companion to go out with just when I won’t be able to keep you company.”

“You must be mad, Isabelle. I’m not going to leave you for a moment.”

“I insist that you leave. Besides, I won’t be on my own because my mother will be in Paris soon.”

“That’s true,” said Philippe, clearly delighted. “She can’t be too far away now, your good lady mother. Where was her last telegram from?”

“It was radioed from the boat, but judging by what the shipping company told me, she should be in Suez tomorrow.”

“I’m very happy for you,” said Philippe. “It’s very kind of her to have made this huge journey to attend a birth.”

“My family’s like yours, Philippe, births and deaths are high points. I seem to remember my father’s happiest memories were of his provincial cousins’ funerals.”

“When my Marcenat grandfather was very old,” said Philippe, “his doctor forbade him from going to any funerals, and he complained bitterly. ‘They won’t let me follow poor Ludovic’s cortege,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if I have many other forms of entertainment.’ ”

“You seem very cheerful this evening, Philippe.”

“Me? Oh, no … But the weather’s so lovely. You’re feeling well. This nine-month nightmare is about to end. I’m happy. It’s only normal.”

I was humiliated to see him so alive and to know the cause of this resurrection. That evening he ate with an appetite I had previously seen in Saint-Moritz and which, to my considerable anxiety, he had lost for many months. After dinner he became agitated. He kept yawning.

“Would you like us to read a little?” I asked. “The Stendhal you started yesterday evening was very good …”

“Ah, yes!” said Philippe. “
Lamiel
 … Yes, it was quite splendid … If you like.” He gave a bored pout.

“Listen, Philippe. Do you know what you ought to do? Go and say hello to Solange. You haven’t seen her for five months, it would be nice.”

“Do you think? But I don’t want to leave you. And I have no idea whether she’s at home or whether
she’s free. Her first evening back she must be with her family, and her husband’s.”

“Telephone her.”

I had hoped he would defend his position better, but he immediately succumbed to the temptation.

“Oh well! I’ll give it a try,” he said and left the room.

Five minutes later he came back, his face beaming, and said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to nip over to see Solange. I’ll be there a quarter of an hour.”

“Stay as long as you like. I’m delighted, it’ll do you so much good. But come and say good night when you come in, even if it’s very late.”

“It won’t be very late. It’s nine o’clock now. I’ll be back at a quarter to ten.”

I saw him again at midnight. While I waited, I had read a little and cried a lot.

My mother arrived
from China a few days before my child’s birth. When I saw her again I was amazed to find I was closer and yet more estranged from her than I would have thought. She found fault with our way of life, our servants, our furniture, and our friends, and her criticisms struck invisible, long-buried chords in me that reverberated feebly to the same tune. Even the family base inside me had already been covered with a thick “Philippe layer,” and things that amazed and shocked her seemed quite normal to me. It was not long before she commented on the fact that, in the last weeks of my pregnancy, Philippe was
not entirely as attentive as he could have been. It pained me when she said, “I’ll come and keep you company this evening, because I don’t imagine your husband will have the heart to stay at home,” and I regretted that it hurt more because of my pride than my love. I was sorry she had not arrived before Solange returned, when, outside his working hours, Philippe had not left my side. I would have liked to show her that I too could be loved. She often stood by my bed, looking at me with a critical eye that reignited all my childhood anxieties. She was attentive, almost hostile as she brought a finger down onto the parting in my hair. “You’re graying,” she said. It was true.

If Philippe came home after midnight when there were fewer and fewer pedestrians on the street, I would listen to their footsteps, trying to recognize his. I can still remember that disappointing sound growing louder, awakening the hope that it might stop, then carrying on, growing quieter and fading away. A man who is really going to stop by a door starts slowing down several paces in advance; I eventually recognized Philippe from this dying rhythm. The soft sound of a bell in the house, a faraway door closing; he was back. I promised myself
I would be bright and indulgent yet almost always greeted him with complaints. I myself was hurt by the monotony and vehemence of the things I said to him then.

“Oh, Isabelle!” Philippe would say wearily. “I can’t take this anymore, I tell you … Can’t you see you’re contradicting yourself? You’re the one begging me to go out; I do as I’m told and then you bombard me with criticism … What do you want me to do? Shut myself away in this house? Well, then, say so … I’ll do it … Yes, I promise, I’ll do it … Anything rather than this constant quarreling … But please don’t try to be generous at nine o’clock in the evening and then so mean at midnight …”

“Yes, Philippe, you’re right … I’m awful. I swear I won’t do it again.”

But the following day an inner demon dictated the same pointless words to me. In fact it was mainly Solange who irritated me. I felt that at this particular point in my life she should have had the tact to leave me my husband.

She came to see me, and conversation was fairly awkward. She had a beautiful sable coat and recommended her furrier at some length. Then Philippe
arrived; she must have told him she would be visiting because he was home much earlier than usual. The coat became a useless, almost invisible prop, and the garden in Marrakesh took center stage.

“You can’t imagine what it’s like, Isabelle … In the morning, I walk barefoot over the warm tiles between the orange trees … there are roses and jasmines intertwined around all the columns. You can see the pale blue Zellige tiles through the flowers and foliage … and over the rooftops, the snow on the Atlas mountains gleaming like a magnificent diamond (“We already had the diamond back in Saint-Mortitz,” I thought) … And the nights! The cypress trees seem to be pointing at the moon like black fingers … Oh! Marcenat, Marcenat, I do so love it …”

She tilted her head back slightly and seemed to smell her jasmines and roses.

When she left, Philippe saw her to the door and came back looking slightly sheepish, and leaned against the chimney breast in my bedroom.

“You should come to Morocco with me one day,” he said after a long silence. “It really is very beautiful. Oh, by the way, I’ve brought you a book
by Robert Etienne about the Berbers, about their way of life … It’s a sort of novel … but also a poem … It’s remarkable.”

“My poor Philippe,” I said. “I do feel sorry for you having to deal with women. Such actresses!”

“What makes you say that, Isabelle?”

“I say it because it’s true, darling. I know plenty about them, women, I mean, and they’re not at all interesting.”

At last I felt the first pains. The labor was long and difficult, but I was happy to see Philippe’s reaction: he was white, more frightened than I was. I could see he cared for my life. His emotion gave me strength: I completely mastered my nerves in order to reassure him, and I talked about our little boy, because I was sure I would have a boy.

“We’ll call him Alain. His eyebrows will be slightly too high like yours; he’ll walk up and down with his hands in his pockets when something’s tormenting him … Because he’ll be terribly tormented, won’t he Philippe? With parents like us … What an inheritance!”

Philippe tried to smile, but I could see he was moved. When I was not in pain I told him to hold my hand.

“Do you remember my hand on yours, Philippe, when we went to see
Siegfried
 … That was the beginning of everything.”

From the bedroom I was in, I heard Doctor Crès talking to Philippe a little later.

“Your wife’s incredibly brave,” he said. “I’ve rarely seen anything like it.”

“Yes,” said Philippe, “my wife is a very good woman. I hope nothing will happen to her.”

“What do you think’s going to happen to her?” asked the doctor. “Everything’s normal.”

They decided I should have chloroform for the end, although I did not want it. When I opened my eyes, I saw Philippe beside me with a happy tender expression on his face. He kissed my hand. “We have a son, darling.” I wanted to see him and was disappointed.

My mother and Philippe’s had made themselves comfortable in the little sitting room next to my bedroom. The door was open and, as I lay half asleep with my eyes closed, I could hear their pessimistic prognostications about the child’s upbringing.
Although they were very different and doubtless disagreed on almost any subject, they had a generational loyalty in rebuking a younger couple.