Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (12 page)

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At home, nothing was ever wasted: not a crust, not a wafer of soap, not a twist of string; free tickets and opportunities for free meals were always seized with avidity. My sister and I wore our clothes until they were threadbare, and even after that. My mother never wasted a second; she would knit while she was reading; when she talked to my father or to friends she would be sewing, patching, or embroidering; when she travelled by tram or by the Métro she would crochet miles of ‘tatting' with which she ornamented our petticoats. In the evenings, she did her accounts; for years, every penny that passed through her hands had been noted down in a big black ledger. I used to think that not only in my own family but everywhere time and money were so exactly measured that they had to be distributed with the greatest economy and strictness: this idea appealed to me, because I wanted to see a world free from all irregularities. Poupette and I often used to play at being explorers lost in a desert or castaways on a desert island; or, in a besieged town, we would be gallant defenders dying of starvation: we used to perform miracles of ingenuity in order to draw the maximum of profit from our most infinitesimal resources; it was one of our favourite themes in our play. Everything must be put to use: I felt I must carry out this command to the letter. In the little notebooks in which I used to write down each week a résumé of my lessons, I began to cover every page with minute script, taking care not to leave the smallest blank space anywhere. My teachers were puzzled: they asked my mother if I had a mean streak. I got over that mania fairly quickly: gratuitous economy is a contradiction in terms, and it isn't interesting or amusing. But I remained convinced that one must make use of everything, and of one's self, to the utmost. At La Grillière there were often unoccupied moments before and after meals or at the end of Mass; I would fret and fidget: ‘Can't that child sit still for just one minute?' my Uncle Maurice would mutter
impatiently. My parents and I used to laugh at him when he talked that way: my father and mother condemned idleness. I found it all the more reprehensible because it bored me so. Duty therefore was mixed with pleasure. That is why, at this period, my existence was such a happy one: I simply had to do just as I liked, and everyone was delighted with me.

The Cours Désir – or, to give it its full name, the Adeline Désir Institute – had boarders, day-boarders, special day-pupils, and others who, like myself, simply followed the lessons; twice a week there were the General Culture classes, which lasted for two hours; I took as extras English, the piano, and the catechism. My neophyte awe had not abated: the moment Mademoiselle entered the classroom, every second became holy. Our teachers didn't tell us anything wildly exciting; we would recite our lessons, and they would correct our exercises; but I asked for nothing more than that my existence should be publicly sanctioned by them. My merits were inscribed in a register which perpetuated their memory. I had to surpass myself all the time, or at least to equal my previous achievement. There was always a fresh start to be made; to have failed would have filled me with consternation, and victory exalted me. These glittering moments shone like beacons down the year: each day was leading me further on. I felt sorry for grown-ups whose uneventful weeks are feebly irradiated by the dullness of Sundays. To live without expecting anything seemed to me frightful.

I expected, and I was expected. I was responding ceaselessly to a necessity which spared me from asking: why am I here? Seated at Papa's desk, doing an English translation or copying out an essay, I was occupying my rightful place on earth and doing what I should be doing. The formidable array of ash-trays, ink-stands, paper-knives, pens, and pencils scattered round the pink blotting-pad played their own parts in that unalterable necessity, which informed my entire world, and the world itself. From my study armchair I listened to the harmony of the spheres.

But I did not carry out all my tasks with the same eagerness. My wish to conform had not entirely killed in me certain desires and repulsions. At La Grillière, whenever Aunt Hélène served pumpkin pie, I would rush from the table in tears rather than touch it; neither threats nor thumpings could persuade me to eat cheese. I was obstinate in other, more important matters. I couldn't tolerate being
bored: my boredom soon turned to real distress of mind; that is why, as I have remarked, I detested idleness; but tasks which paralysed my body without occupying my mind left me with the same feeling of emptiness. Grandmama succeeded in interesting me in tapestry work and embroidery; it was a question of accommodating the wool or cotton to a printed pattern on canvas, and this task used to keep me fairly well occupied; I cobbled up a dozen antimacassars and covered one of the chairs in my room with hideous tapestry. But I always made a mess of hems, ‘whipped' seams, darning and mending, scallops, buttonhole and cross-stitch, raised satin-stitch and knotted-bar work. In order to stimulate my interest, Mademoiselle Fayet told me a little story: an eligible young man was being regaled with the list of a certain young lady's talents; she was a musician, and well-read, and gifted with hundreds of attractive qualities. ‘Can she sew?' he inquired. Saving the respect I owed to my teacher, I found it quite ridiculous that I should be expected to conform to the requirements of an unknown young man. My skill with the needle did not improve. In every aspect of learning and culture, the more eager I was to learn, the more tiresome did I find the mechanics of study. When I opened my English text books, I seemed to be setting out on a journey, and I studied them with passionate absorption; but I could never take the trouble to acquire a correct accent. I enjoyed sight-reading a sonatina: but I could never bring myself to learn one by heart; my scales and Czerny exercises were always a scramble, so that in the pianoforte examinations I was always near the bottom. In solfeggio and musical theory I was hopeless: I sang either sharp or flat, and was a wretched failure in musical dictation. My handwriting was so shapeless that I had to have private lessons, which did not make any great improvement. If I had to trace the course of a river or the outline of a country, I was so clumsy that I was absolved from all blame for the messes I made. This characteristic was to remain with me all my life. I bungled all practical jobs and I was never any good at work requiring finicky precision.

It was not without some vexation that I became aware of my deficiencies; I should have liked to excel in everything. But they were too deeply rooted in my nature to be amenable to ephemeral spurts of will-power. As soon as I was able to think for myself, I found myself possessed of infinite power, and yet circumscribed by absurd limitations. When I was asleep, the earth disappeared; it
had need of me in order to be seen, discovered, and understood; I was, I felt, charged with a mission which I carried out with pride; but I did not assume that my imperfect body could have any part in it: on the contrary, as soon as my physical activities intervened, things tended to go wrong. Doubtless in order to express the full truth of any piece of music it was necessary to play it ‘with expression', and not to massacre it: but in any case, it would never, under
my
stumbling fingers, attain the fullest pitch of perfection, so why should I wear myself out trying to master it ? Why should I want to develop capabilities which would always remain fatally limited, and have only a relative importance in my life? The modest results of so much effort repelled me, for I had only to look, to read, and to think in order to reach the absolute. When I translated an English text, I discovered in it the one, complete, universal meaning, whereas the
th
sound was only one modulation among millions of others in my mouth: I really couldn't bother my head about
that.
The urgency of my self-appointed task debarred me from wasting time on such futilities: there were so many things to be learned! I had to call the past to life, and illuminate every corner of the five continents, descend to the centre of the earth and make the circuit of the moon and stars. When I was compelled to do tiresome exercises, my mind cried out at the barren waste of my gifts, and I used to think that I was losing precious time. I was frustrated and filled with guilt: I got through such impositions as quickly as possible, bashing them out on the rocks of my impatience.

I think I must also have considered the task of the executant to be a very minor one, because it seemed to me to be concerned only with appearances. Fundamentally I believed that the essential truth of a sonata could be discovered in the notes on the stave, as immutable and eternal as the truth of
Macbeth
in a printed book. The task of the creator was something quite superior. I thought it was wonderful that you could bring into the world something real, something new. There was only one region in which I could venture my creative talent: literature. Drawing was no more than copying, and I didn't care for art, all the more so because I was not very good at it: I reacted to the general appearance of an object without paying much attention to its details; I could never succeed in drawing even the simplest flower. In compensation, I knew how to use language, and as it expressed the essence of things, it illuminated them for me. I had a spontaneous urge to turn
everything that happened to me into a story: I used to talk freely, and loved to write. If I was describing in words an episode in my life, I felt that it was being rescued from oblivion, that it would interest others, and so be saved from extinction. I loved to make up stories, too: when they were inspired by my own experience, they seemed to justify it; in one sense they were of no use at all, but they were unique and irreplaceable, they
existed
, and I was proud of having snatched them out of nothingness. So I took a great deal of trouble over my French compositions: I even copied some of them into my ‘book of gold'.

When July came round, the prospect of the long holiday in the country enabled me to say good-bye to the Cours Désir without too much regret. But when we returned to Paris I would feverishly await the first day of school. I would sit in the leather armchair beside the black pear-wood bookcase, and make the spines of my new books crack gently as I opened them for the first time; I would sniff their special smell, look at the pictures and the maps, skim through a page of history: I used to wish that with the wave of a wand I could make all the characters and all the landscapes hidden in the shade of the black and white pages spring to life. The power I had over them intoxicated me as much as their silent presence.

Apart from my school work, reading was the great passion of my life. Mama now got her books from the Bibliothèque Cardinale, in the place Saint-Sulpice. A table loaded with reviews and magazines occupied the centre of a large room beyond which extended corridors lined with books: the clients had the right to wander where they pleased. I experienced one of the greatest joys I ever knew as a child the day when Mama announced that she was taking out a personal subscription for me. I stood with arms akimbo in front of the section marked ‘Works suitable for Children', in which there were hundreds of volumes. ‘All this belongs to me! ‘I said to myself, bewildered by such a profusion of riches. The reality surpassed my wildest dreams: before me lay the entry to a rich and unknown paradise. I took a catalogue home with me: assisted by my parents, I made a selection from the works marked ‘J' for juvenile, and I drew up lists of the books I required; each week I hovered, with delicious hesitations, over a multiplicity of desirable choices. In addition, my mother sometimes took me to a little bookshop near the school, to buy English novels; they were a ‘good buy', because it took me a long time to get through them.
I took great pleasure in lifting, with the aid of a dictionary, the dark veil of foreign words; descriptions and stories retained a certain mystery; I used to find them more charming and more profound than if I had merely read them in French.

That year my father made me a present of
L'Abbé Constantin
in a beautiful edition illustrated by Madeleine Lemaire. One Sunday he took me to the Comédie Française to see the play which had been adapted from the novel. For the very first time I was admitted to a real theatre, one that was frequented by grown-ups: quivering with excitement, I took my place on the red plush seat and listened to the actors with religious attention: I was rather disappointed in them; Cécile Sorel's dyed hair and affected manner of speaking did not correspond at all to the image I had in my mind of Madame Scott. Two or three years later, weeping at
Cyrano
, sobbing over
L'Aiglon
, vibrating to
Britannicus,
I was to give myself up body and soul to the magic of the stage. But on that first afternoon what delighted me was less the performance than being taken out by my father; to be attending, alone with him, the performance of a play he had chosen specially for me, created such a feeling of intimacy between us that for a few hours I had the intoxicating impression that he belonged to me alone.

About this period, my feelings for my father took a loftier turn. He was often worried. He said that Foch had let himself be talked into giving way to the Germans. He talked a lot about the Bolsheviks, whose name dangerously resembled that of the Boche and who had, he said, ruined him; he was so pessimistic about the future that he didn't dare set up in business as a lawyer again. He accepted the post of co-director in my grandfather's factory. He had already suffered many disappointments; as a consequence of my grandfather's bankruptcy, my mother's dowry had never been paid over to him. Now, his career finished, the Russian stocks which had brought in the larger part of his income having slumped disastrously, he regretfully placed himself in the category of the ‘newly-poor'. He nevertheless managed to preserve a good-tempered equanimity, and would rather seek the reason for his misfortunes in the state of the world than waste his time in self-pity: I was moved by the spectacle of a man of such superior attainments adapting himself so simply to the shabbiness of his new position in the world. I saw him one day playing, in a charity show, the leading part in
La Paix chez soi
by Courteline. He played
the role of a hard-up newspaper hack, beset by money troubles and by the extravagant caprices of a child-wife; the latter bore no resemblance to Mama; nevertheless, I identified my father with the character he played; he gave his interpretation a disillusioned irony which moved me almost to tears; there was melancholy in his resignation: the hidden wound I sensed in him added to his stature. I adored him, with a romantic fervour.