Climates (26 page)

“Oh, it’s going to be a pretty sight!” said Madame Marcenat. “With Philippe taking care of everything except his son’s upbringing, and Isabelle only taking care of Philippe, you’ll see, the child will do whatever he pleases …”

“Well, of course,” said my mother, “the young can think of only one thing: happiness. Children must be happy, the husband must be happy, the mistress must be happy, the servants must be happy and, in order to achieve that, they abolish the rules, ignore barriers, they do away with punishments and sanctions, and they forgive everything before forgiveness has even been—I won’t said deserved—but asked for. It’s unimaginable. And with what results? If at least they were much ‘happier’ than we were, you and I, I mean, Madame, then I might understand. But the funny thing is they’re not as happy as us, much less so. I can see my daughter … Is she asleep? Are you asleep, Isabelle?”

I did not reply.

“It’s odd for her to be so sleepy on the third day,” said my mother.

“Why was she chloroformed?” asked Madame Marcenat. “I told Philippe that, in his shoes, I wouldn’t have allowed it. Women should have their children themselves. I had three children myself; sadly, I lost two, but I had them all naturally. These artificial births are bad for the child and for the mother. I was very angry when I heard Isabelle had been so soft. I think you could search through our whole family (there are Marcenats in ten different provinces), and you wouldn’t find one woman who’d agreed to that.”

“Really?” My mother asked politely, having herself recommended that I have chloroform but, as a diplomat’s wife, not wanting a conflict that might be unfavorable to the combined offensive she was currently enjoying with Madame Marcenat against the younger generation … “As I was saying,” my mother went on very quietly, “I can see my daughter. She says she’s unhappy? Well, it’s not Philippe’s fault, he’s a very kind husband and no more of a womanizer than the next man. No, it’s because she analyzes herself the whole time, she frets and constantly checks the barometer of her relationship, of ‘their love,’ as she calls it … Did you ever give much thought to the state of your marriage,
Madame? I gave it very little thought. I tried to help my husband in his career; I had a demanding household to run; we were very busy and everything was fine … It’s the same with bringing up children. Isabelle says what she wants most is for Alain to have a nicer childhood than she did. But I can assure you she didn’t have an unpleasant childhood. I brought her up quite strictly; I don’t regret that. You can see the results.”

“If you hadn’t brought her up the way you did,” Madame Marcenat said, and she too was talking very quietly, “Isabelle wouldn’t have grown into the delightful young woman she is. She owes you a great debt of gratitude, and so does my son.”

I did not move a muscle because their conversation amused me. “Who knows? They could be right,” I thought.

They stopped agreeing when the subject of how Alain was fed was discussed. My mother-in-law thought I should nurse him myself and abhorred English nannies. My mother had told me, “Don’t try. With your nerves, you’ll give up after three weeks, by which time you’ll have made the child ill.” Philippe did not want me to either. But I attached symbolic importance to the decision and dug my heels in. The
results were as my mother had predicted. Everything since that longed-for birth disappointed me. I had had such high hopes that reality was powerless to satisfy them. I had thought this child would be a new and much stronger connection between Philippe and myself. He was not. In fact, Philippe took little interest in his son. He went to see him once a day, amused himself speaking English with the nanny for a few minutes, then was back to the Philippe I had always known, gentle and distant, with a haze of boredom encroaching on his tender and melancholy courtesy. I even thought that it was now much more than boredom. Philippe was sad. He did not go out so often. I thought at first this was out of kindness, because he did not feel it right to leave me on my own when I was still so weak. But more than once, when my mother or a friend had said she would visit me, I said, “Philippe, I know you find these family conversations boring. Telephone Solange and take her to the cinema this evening.”

“Why on earth are you always forcing me to go out with Solange?” he replied. “I
can
last two days without seeing her.”

Poor Philippe! No, he could
not
last two days without seeing her. Although I did not know
precisely why, or know anything about Solange’s private life, I sensed that something had changed between them since she had returned from Morocco, and that Philippe was suffering because of her.

I did not dare ask him about this, but just from the look on his face I could track the progress of his ailing morale. In a few weeks he had lost an almost unbelievable amount of weight; his complexion was yellow, his eyes had dark rings around them. He complained that he was not sleeping well and he had the blank stare usually associated with sleeplessness. At mealtimes he was silent, then had to make an effort to speak to me; this visible effort pained me even more than his silence.

Renée came to visit me and brought a little gown for Alain. I noticed at once how much she had changed. She had organized her life as a working woman and talked about Doctor Gaulin in terms that made me think she had become his mistress. This liaison had been a topic of conversation at Gandumas for several months, but only for its existence to be denied. The family was keen to remain on cordial terms with Renée and would have felt obliged, by its own codes, to stop receiving her if her virtue could not be taken for granted. But when I saw
her I knew that, consciously or not, the Marcenats were wrong. Renée was full of joy, she looked like a woman who loved and was loved.

Since my marriage I had grown apart from her a great deal and, in several situations, had found her hard and nearly hostile, but on that day we almost immediately achieved the same mood of our long wartime conversations. We eventually talked about Philippe and talked about him intimately. Renée told me for the first time, very frankly, that she had loved him and it had hurt her terribly when I married him.

“In those days, Isabelle, I almost hated you, and then I rearranged my life and it all seems so far removed from me now … Even our strongest emotions die, don’t you think? And we can look back to the woman we were three years ago with the same curiosity and detachment as if it were someone else.”

“Yes,” I said, “perhaps. I haven’t got to that stage yet. I love Philippe as much as when we were first in love, much more, even. I feel I could make sacrifices for him now that I wouldn’t have been able to make six months ago.”

Renée looked at me for a moment in silence, appraising me as a doctor would.

“Yes, I believe that,” she said eventually. “Do you know, Isabelle, I said earlier I didn’t regret anything, but it’s actually stronger than that. Do you mind if I’m completely frank? I congratulate myself every day for not marrying Philippe.”

“And me for marrying him.”

“Yes, that’s right, because you love him and you’ve adopted his appalling habit of trying to find happiness in suffering. But Philippe is a terrible creature, not at all unkind—quite the opposite—but terrible because he’s obsessed. I knew Philippe when he was a little boy. He was already the same man, except that then there might have been other possible Philippes in him. Then along came Odile and she set his personality as a lover, and probably set it forever. For him, love is associated with a particular sort of face, a particular form of extravagant behavior, a particular gracefulness that is slightly disturbing, not altogether candid … And because he’s also absurdly sensitive, this type of woman, the only type he can love, makes him very unhappy … Wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s true and it’s not, Renée. I do realize that it’s absurd ever to say, ‘I’m loved,’ but Philippe does love me, I can’t be in any doubt about that … It’s just, at the same time, you’re quite right, he needs
completely different women, women like Odile, like Solange … Do you know Solange Villier?”

“Very well … I didn’t dare mention her to you, but I was thinking of her.”

“Oh, but you can talk about her; I’m not at all jealous anymore. I was … Are people saying Solange is Philippe’s mistress?”

“Oh no! … Absolutely not. In fact they’re saying that, during her last trip to Morocco, she fell for Robert Etienne, you know, the man who wrote that fascinating book about the Berbers … In her last few weeks in Marrakesh she spent all her time with him. He’s just come back to Paris … He’s a major writer and a wonderful person. Gaulin knows him and thinks very highly of him.”

I was lost in thought for a moment. Yes, it was just as I had suspected, and this name, Etienne, gave me an explanation for several conversations my husband had instigated. He had brought all Etienne’s books home, one after the other. He had read brief passages from them to me, asking me what I thought of them. I had liked them, particularly the long meditation called
Prayer to the Oudaïas Gardens
. “It’s beautiful,” Philippe had said. “Yes, it really is beautiful, it’s wild.” My poor Philippe, he must have been in
such pain! He was now probably analyzing Solange’s every utterance and every move, as he had once analyzed Odile’s, to look for traces of this man he did not know. It was likely to be this pointless, tortuous task that filled his sleepless nights. Oh, I suddenly felt so angry with that woman!

“You were right, Renée, what you said earlier about the appalling habit of deriving pleasure from suffering … It’s just that when circumstances have dictated that you begin your love life in that way, which is what happened in Philippe’s case and in mine, is it still possible to change?”

“I think we can always change, if we really want to.”

“But how do you want to, Renée? Don’t you already need to have changed for that?”

“Gaulin would say, ‘By understanding the mechanism and overcoming it.’ In other words, by being more intelligent.”

“But Philippe is intelligent.”

“Very, but Philippe makes too much use of his sensitivity and not enough of his intelligence.”

We chatted happily until it was time for Philippe to come home. Renée had a scientific way of talking about things, which soothed me because it made
me simply one individual like so many others in a clearly labeled group of women in love.

Philippe seemed happy to see Renée, asked her to stay for dinner with us, and for the first time in several weeks talked animatedly throughout the meal. He liked science, and Renée told him about new experiments he had not yet heard of. When she mentioned Gaulin’s name for the second time, Philippe asked abruptly, “Gaulin? do you know him well?”

“I would think so,” said Renée. “I work for him.”

“Isn’t he a friend of Robert Etienne, the one from Morocco, I mean the one who wrote the
Prayer to the Oudaïas
?”

“Yes,” said Renée.

“What about you?” asked Philippe. “Do you know Etienne?”

“Very well.”

“What sort of man is he?”

“Remarkable,” said Renée.

“Ah!” said Philippe. Then he added with some difficultly, “Yes, I too think he’s talented … But sometimes the man is inferior to the work …”

“That is not the case here,” said Renée, merciless.

I looked at her beseechingly. Philippe was silent for the whole rest of the evening.

I watched as Philippe’s love
for Solange Villier died beside me. He never talked to me about her. On the contrary, he obviously wanted me to think nothing had changed in their relationship. Besides, he still saw her often, but much less than before, and it did not give him such unmitigated pleasure. When they went for walks, he no longer came home young and happy, but serious and sometimes almost despairing. Occasionally I thought he might confide in me. He would take my hand and say, “Isabelle, you’re the one who chose the better course.”

“Why, darling?”

“Because …”

Then he would stop, but I understood perfectly. He continued to send Solange flowers, and to treat her as someone he loved dearly. Don Quixote and Lancelot remained faithful. But the notes I find in his papers from 1923 are quite sad: