Climates (28 page)

“What makes me sad sometimes,” I told him, “is thinking how long the apprenticeship is. You tell me I’m a better person than I used to be, and I think that’s true. When I’m forty perhaps I’ll start understanding life a bit, but it will be too late … Still … Darling, do you think it’s possible for two people to be in perfect agreement, without a single cloud?”

“It’s just been possible for the last hour,” said Philippe, getting to his feet.

My time of true marital happiness
was that summer at Gandumas. I think Philippe loved me twice: for a few weeks before we were married, and during those three months, from June to September. He was tender, with absolutely no ulterior motive. His mother had as good as forced us to share a bedroom; she thought this very important, could not understand how a husband and wife could be separate. This brought us even closer. I liked waking in Philippe’s arms, and then Alain would come and play on our bed. His teeth were hurting, but he was very brave. When he cried, Philippe would say, “You must smile, Alain. Your mother’s so stoic,
little boy.” I think the child ended up understanding the two words “smile, Alain,” because he always tried to stop his crying and open his mouth to try to look happy. It was very touching and Philippe was starting to love his son.

The weather was gorgeous. When my husband came home from the factory, he liked to “toast himself” in the blazing sun. We had two chairs carried out onto the lawn in front of the house, and we sat there in silence, lost in drifting daydreams. I liked to think we might both have the same images in mind: the heather, the ruined château at Chardeuil quivering in the scorching air, farther away the hazy curve of the hills, and perhaps even farther away, Solange’s face and the slightly hard expression in her eyes; on the horizon perhaps the Florentine landscape, the wide, shallow-sloping roofs, the domes, the cypress trees instead of firs on the hills, and Odile’s angelic face … Yes, they were in me too, Odile and Solange, and I thought this quite natural and necessary. From time to time Philippe would look at me and smile. I knew we were wonderfully at one; I was happy. The bell for dinner drew us from our voluptuous languor.

“Oh, Philippe!” I sighed. “I’d like to spend my whole life beside you like this, listless, with nothing more than your hand, the warmth in the air, the heather … It’s blissful and at the same time so melancholy, don’t you think? Why is that?”

“Beautiful moments are always melancholy. We can tell they’re only fleeting, we wish we could pin them down, but we cannot. When I was little, I always felt like that at the circus, and later at concerts, when I was too happy. I used to think, ‘In two hours it’ll all be over.’ ”

“But now, Philippe, we’ve got at least thirty years ahead of us.”

“That’s nothing, thirty years.”

“Oh! I couldn’t ask for more.”

My mother-in-law also seemed to hear the soft, pure note of our happiness.

“I’m finally seeing Philippe living as I’ve always hoped he would live,” she told me one evening. “My dear Isabelle, do you know what you should try to do if you were wise? Persuade Philippe to come back to Gandumas for good. Paris does nothing for him. Philippe’s like his father: deep down, he was shy and sensitive despite his inscrutable outward
appearance. All that hustle and bustle in Paris, all those complicated feelings—it makes him ill.”

“Sadly, Mother, I think he would be bored.”

“I don’t think so,” she retorted. “His father and I lived here for sixteen years, the best years of our lives.”

“Perhaps, but he’s adopted other habits. I know
I
would be happier because I like living alone, but he …”

“He would have you.”

“That won’t always be enough.”

“You’re too modest, my dear Isabelle,” she said. “And you have no confidence. You mustn’t give up the fight like that.”

“I’m not giving up the fight, Mother … Quite the opposite. I’m sure now that I can win … that I’ll stay the course while the others will be brief phases and will hardly feature in his life …”

“The others!” my mother-in-law said, surprised. “You really are extraordinarily weak.”

She often came back to her plan; she was gently insistent. But I was careful not to mention it to Philippe. I knew that a constraint like that would immediately wreck the perfect harmony I was so enjoying. In fact, I was so worried Philippe would
be bored that several times I suggested spending Sundays with neighbors, or going to visit some spot in the Périgord or Limousin that he had told me about and I did not know well. I liked him taking me around his region; I loved the slightly wild countryside and, on its sheer cliffs, the châteaux with huge walls that looked down over pretty views of rivers. Philippe told me old legends and anecdotes. I had always loved the history of France and was quite moved to hear familiar names once more: Hautefort, Biron, Brantôme. Sometimes, shyly, I would make a connection between what Philippe was telling me and something I had read, and was delighted to see him listen to me attentively.

“You know so much, Isabelle,” he said. “You’re very intelligent, perhaps more than any other woman.”

“Don’t make fun of me, Philippe,” I begged.

I felt I had finally been discovered by a lover whom I had loved for a long time without a shred of hope.

Philippe wanted to show me
the caves in the Vézère valley. I really liked the black river twisting between rocks carved and polished by the water, but I was disappointed by the caves. In oppressive heat, we had to climb steep paths, then ease through narrow corridors of stone to look at bisons sketched vaguely on the walls in red.

“Can you see anything?” I asked Philippe. “It’s a bison if you try hard enough, but even then … the wrong way up.”

“I can’t see a thing,” said Philippe. “I want to get out, I’m freezing.”

After the heat of the climb, I too felt an icy chill. Philippe was quiet on the way back. That evening he complained of catching a cold.

The following morning he woke me early. “I don’t feel well,” he said.

I got up quickly, opened the curtains, and was terrified by the sight of him: he was pale and looked anxious, his eyes had dark rings under them, and his nostrils, which looked pinched, palpitated oddly.

“Yes, you look ill, Philippe, you caught cold yesterday …”

“I’m having trouble breathing, and I’ve got a raging fever. I’m sure it’s nothing, darling. Give me some aspirin.”

He did not want to see the doctor and I did not dare insist, but when my mother-in-law, on my request, came to our room at about nine o’clock, she made him take his temperature. She treated him like a sick little boy, with an authority I found surprising. Despite Philippe’s protests, she called Doctor Toury up from Chardeuil. He was quite a shy, very gentle man who always peered at you for a long time through his tortoiseshell glasses before speaking. He listened to Philippe’s chest very methodically.

“Full-blown bronchitis,” he said. “Monsieur Marcenat, this will take a week at least.”

He gestured for me to leave the room with him. He looked at me from behind his glasses, his expression well-meaning but uncomfortable.

“Well, Madame Marcenat,” he said, “this is quite tricky. Your husband has bronchopneumonia. The stethoscope picked up rattling throughout his chest, almost like pulmonary edema. And his temperature’s at 104, his pulse at 140 … It’s a bad case of pneumonia.”

I felt half paralyzed. I did not fully understand.

“But he’s not in danger, is he, Doctor?” I asked, almost jokingly because it seemed so unrealistic for my vigorous Philippe to be so ill overnight.

He seemed surprised. “Pneumonia’s always dangerous. I’ll have to wait before giving a prognosis.”

Then he told me what I needed to do.

I remember hardly anything of the next few days; I had been hurled into the mystical, cloistered life of illness. I looked after Philippe, doing as much as I could because I felt that being useful would keep away the terrible, mysterious threat. When there was nothing I could do, I stayed beside him, wearing a white tunic, watching him and
trying—just by looking at him—to transmit some of my strength to him.

He went on recognizing me for a long time. He was so prostrate he could not speak; he thanked me with his eyes. Then he became delirious. There was a terrible moment for me, on the third day, when he thought I was Solange. All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, he started talking with great difficulty.

“Oh!” he said. “You came, my dear Solange, I knew you’d come. How kind.”

He was really struggling to get the words out but looked at me desperately tenderly.

“My dear Solange, kiss me,” he whispered. “You know you can. Go on, I’m so ill.”

Not really knowing what I was doing, I leaned over and, on my lips, he kissed Solange.

Oh! I would have given you Solange with all my heart, Philippe, if I had thought her love could save you. I think that if I ever loved you perfectly it was at that moment, because I had abdicated; I existed only for you. During that period of delirium, my mother-in-law was in the room several times when Philippe mentioned Solange. Not once did I experience a rebellious surge of wounded pride. All I could think was, “Let him live, my God, let him live!”

On the fifth day I had a little hope. When I took his temperature in the morning it had dropped, but when the doctor came and I said, “It’s better at last, it’s only 100.4,” I noticed that he still looked gloomy. He examined Philippe, who was almost insensible.

“So?” I asked shyly when he stood back up. “Are things better?”

He sighed and looked at me sadly. “No,” he said, “quite the contrary. I don’t like these sudden drops. It’s false defervescence … A bad sign.”

“But not a sign of the end?”

He did not answer.

That same evening, Philippe’s temperature went back up and his features collapsed alarmingly. I now knew he was going to die. I sat beside him and took his burning hand; he did not seem to feel me. I thought, “So you’re going to leave me on my own, my darling.” And I tried to imagine that inconceivable thing: life without Philippe. “My God!” I thought. “How could I be jealous! … He had only a few months to live, and …” I then swore to myself that, if by some miracle Philippe was saved, I would never want for any happiness but his.

At midnight, my mother-in-law wanted to take over from me; I shook my head forcefully. I could
not speak. I was still holding Philippe’s hand in mine, it was now covered in cloying sweat. His difficult breathing physically hurt me. All of a sudden he opened his eyes and said, “Isabelle, I can’t breathe. I think I’m going to die.”

These few words were spoken in a very clear voice, and then he fell back into his torpor. His mother took me by the shoulders and hugged me. The pulse I held beneath my fingers became imperceptible. At six o’clock in the morning, the doctor came and gave him an injection that revived him a little. At seven o’clock Philippe breathed his last without regaining consciousness. His mother closed his eyes. I thought of the words he had written when his father died:
Will I be alone, then, when I face death? I hope it will be as soon as possible
.

It came very soon, Philippe, just as you hoped, and it was such a shame, my dear darling. I do believe that, if I had been able to keep you, I would have made you happy. But our fates and our wishes almost always play to a different rhythm.